YOU WILL BE IN GARDENS WHERE RIVERS FLOW

Sunday 13 January 2013

You Will Be in Gardens Where Rivers Flow

Dear Rizana,

I dreaded this day and though I knew it was coming there was always a flutter of hope in my heart that you would come home and be with your family and neighbours living your life of misery with sparks of happiness every now and then like most of us who have to trudge through life till we meet our Creator.

When the news of your conviction for alleged murder broke out I couldn’t fathom the Quazis’ decision to sentence you to death, try hard as I might. How was it possible for them to sentence a little girl from a backward village without giving thought to your pitiful circumstances? And I wondered how the brutes here at home went about their functions to forge documents to make you 18 when you were barely 17? I can’t help but imagine it was filthy lucre that motivated them. Little did they know what horrible results their evil deed would entail!

A COLLEAGUE AS PRECIOUS AS AMILA

    Thursday 27 December, 2012

 

Letters to the Editor

A Colleague as Precious as Amila 

Hameed Abdul Karim 

It was deeply grieving to hear of the tragic demise of Amila Jayasinghe. Reading the stories about her written by the staff at Ceylon Today it would only be a hard heart that wouldn't break. Poor thing. So young and like a flower about to bloom.

Having a daughter her age, my heart goes out to her parents and the rest of the family in this terrible heart rending moment of their lives. No father, and here I speak as a father, should suffer the agony of having to bury his child. It's just not fair. Our children are supposed to bury us and not the other way around.

Oh, but such is life...and I guess we can philosophise  as much as we want, but our hearts ache all the while. But then we do that just to make the pain bearable. Her parents....how shall they bear the pain? How does one move on in life after a tragedy like this? Is there another day tomorrow?

Poor Amila will forever be in their hearts and minds. And all the while her soul, as she says in her poetry, 'will be locked inside an invisible cage, but neither of us will find the key to ours and be free'. How prophetic here words were! And as we mull those words of a girl in the tender years of her youth, we wonder if  they were premonitions, informing the world in advance of her early departure.

I pray to God almighty that He gives Amila's folks and those of you at Ceylon Today the courage and fortitude to bear the the pain of losing a daughter and a colleague as precious as her. And may God guide and bless you all.

SHEIKH AHMED DEEDAT

 Sheikh Ahmed Deedat - A Tribute

The voice and words of this scholar won’t fade away

Hameed Abdul Karim


The news of Sh. Ahmed Deedat’s demise did not come as a shock because in a way we were all expecting the inevitable, since he was ailing for well over eight years. But still there was a feeling of sorrow because this great man – this wonderful man – had entered into the lives and minds of Muslim kings, princes and scholars to the students and the average men and women alike with his charm and brilliant scholarship in comparative religion.

Never was the truism ‘walk with kings and still not lose the common touch’ more true than in the case of Sh. Ahmed Deedat. He would chew the fat with King Fahd one day and sip coffee with a Bedouin the next chatting away, with a child like eagerness to learn something new.