A GLIMPSE OF DEATH

It was gentle night; the breeze explained everything as I lay on my bed trying to comprehend all the figures and formulas in my engineering thermodynamics handout. I am the nocturnal type; I spend most of the time in the night reading rather than sleeping. Well, it is much easier an effort whenever I have a hot Lipton tea by my side. As usual, it was midnight and I was in my books. This time around, things didn’t go on well as after a while I could hear nature calling out for me; I was reluctant to respond. I taught I could play cunning as I stubbornly tried not to succumb to sleep, my eyelids were so heavy, I would probably say it felt like pianos were sitting on them. They struggled against slumber but nature did prove me wrong. I slipped into trance in a flash, unnoticed. It wasn’t like I was awake and it wasn’t a dream either, it was something in the middle. I found myself in a world I have never imagined; my body lay hopelessly on the floor, void of life. It seemed as if a black wall separated my soul from my body. I couldn’t move; my soul struggled to find its way back to the human body. At that moment, even time was petrified by the spectacle, as it budged into a slow pace and I could hear its ticking sound as the bold stumping sound of the African elephant. If I could steal a chance, I would tell the world Einstein was right – indeed, time is relative to the observer. As my heart abnormally beat like funeral drums, so did my time on earth count down like a time bomb – it was defined. Mother kept on calling out my name in the Dagbani dialect, “Nazif, wake up, Nazif wake up!!!, please wake up!!!, don’t do this to me” her shrill voice accentuating the degree of her anxiety. She tried to exterminate the despair that lived in her fears and rather feed the flames that would ignite her hope that her only son was still alive. I wished I could at least hold her by the hand and confess “Mama, I am dead, I am gone, please tell the world that God is alive” but I was robbed of speech, so numb, if not, worse than a deserted log - totally lifeless. I was caught in a war between two completely distinct realms, the thrilled voices of my blood lineage were now fading away into resounding echoes – I could barely hear them as their mouths screamed out my name. It was a ‘magic’ moment; the life of this material world was giving way for the other as it helplessly stood by the hallway and watched as I was been whisked away. Dirges played in the background and the entire atmosphere lacked even a whiff of life. I conceived the best of my moments, of my family and peers – I didn’t forget, I couldn’t forget. I had limited time, so I quickly flip through those great moments as if I was revising for a biology exam. And when I saw that perfect picture of mother and me on my eighth birthday, my eyes were a flood of tears and I would cry a river; if only I had tears, if only I had eyes by then. I felt like jumping out of the timeline but I am sure death flexed a grin after reading that thought because that was so impossible for the lad. If only I had a second chance. “O’ Lord, please spare me another chance” I cried out to the King, my faint voice tried to beckon the ears of the heavens. I was still very young, I hadn’t fulfilled my noble promises I made to this world and my Allah. More to the point, I didn’t want to hatch a pinch of thought about the state of mother after I lay six feet down the dust, mother? I don’t know how life would mean to her afterwards, and my dad, I was going to miss my best pal. “The good die very young”, I know, but I couldn’t tell my fate, my destination was a vague question in my mind. If I was perfectly assured that I would reside in heaven, in gardens where honey was a river, hard liquor overthrown by the purest of wines and more importantly where death was no more. “O’ Lord, give me another chance. Let me live. I promise I would voice this out to the world. I will let my friends know that life is but an insignificant dimension.” After uttering my last words, I just imagined how my roommates would wake up to the rising sun to meet a still Naz who was probably skipping a lecture in bed. I know that, after some minutes of fruitless efforts to wake me up, “He’s just playing dead” I bet that’s the first thought of anticipation that would echoe in the room of their ignorant brains. “Never miss, Sunday church service” that would be the parable I would preach to them, if I bargained with time for at least a Pico second. Just as I relinquished the hope that I would meet the next morning, I recapitulated – travelled through time, back to my birth date but yet, struggled to tell my death date. How sad? The only thing left on the menu was the arrival of the Angel of death, to execute his usual time-stringent duty - to strip me off my mortal soul. My greatest fear is death, well, it was just a few seconds away, I have never been scared in my life not until this moment. It all happened when I was whiling away time with these heart stabbing emotions, swoosh!!!, I gushed out of sleep like the fresh water of the springs. My eyelids slipped open and I could see the four corners of my room, and my roommates, as they comfortably lay in their beds still in slumber. If the statement ‘believing in this situation’ was a man, then I promise I had never seen him, the real world now seemed like a dream, but it wasn’t; God heard my cry, wiped my tears and gave me a second chance, Alhamdulillah my heart spoke. I wept, the tears stained my heart. I stole a quick glance at time, it all happened in a couple of minutes, how quaint? I lay on my bed and fixed my gaze on the ceiling, whiles my mind was absent trying to understand where I went and why I was still here, but it was too complicated. How useless I was a few minutes ago, how useless the Homo sapiens species were without their souls. And today, I confess that we are all nothing worthy of mentioning without God. Ikhlas, the verse of the Holy Quran that expatiates the oneness of God, I prayed and till now, it is as fresh as the morning dew in my memory - a favourite verse. This moment will forever remain in my memory, I have been saved and transformed. I don’t know what to say, I have had a glimpse of death. We may have fun in this world but I promise it is a scary realm out there. Let’s seek happiness in this world and the hereafter. The world needs change…