In His Name, the Most High
1. يَا مُمْتَحَنَةُ
2. امْتَحَنَكِ اللَّهُ الَّذِي خَلَقَكِ قَبْلَ أَنْ يَخْلُقَكِ
3. فَوَجَدَكِ لِمَا امْتَحَنَكِ صَابِرَةً
4. وَ زَعَمْنَا أَنَّا لَكِ أَوْلِيَاءُ
5. وَ مُصَدِّقُونَ وَ صَابِرُونَ
6. لِكُلِّ مَا أَتَانَا بِهِ أَبُوكِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَ آلِهِ
7. وَ أَتَى [أَتَانَا] بِهِ وَصِيُّهُ
8. فَإِنَّا نَسْأَلُكِ إِنْ كُنَّا صَدَّقْنَاكِ
9. إِلا أَلْحَقْتِنَا بِتَصْدِيقِنَا لَهُمَا
10. لِنُبَشِّرَ أَنْفُسَنَا بِأَنَّا قَدْ طَهُرْنَا بِوِلايَتِكِ.
O you who were tested —
God, who created you, tested you before He created you,
and found you, in all that He tested you with, patient.
And we have claimed that we are your friends,
and that we hold you true, and are patient
with all that your father brought us — God bless him and his family —
and all that his successor brought.
So we ask you — if we have held you true —
for nothing but this: that, for our holding the two of them true, you join us to them;
so that we may bring our own souls the glad news that we have become pure, through belonging to you.
The Voice of the Awaited One
This maqtal is spoken, as every maqtal of various is spoken, in the voice of the Awaited Imam — the Mahdi, the son of Hasan, may our souls be his ransom and may God hasten his return — looking back across the veils of his long absence.
And he is not negligent of attending to us, and he is not forgetful of remembering him, therefore we too should not forget him.
Voiced in the series’ Mahdi-Maqtal-Voice — an imagining of the Awaited Imam’s voice, rendered in clear English by the means of our age, belonging to no living man.
Fatimiyyah Maqtal — “The Door He Called At”
I. The Days Between
I was not there — but I remember.
I remember the days between.
Seventy-five, or ninety-five — the count is kept two ways, and the number is not the thing.
It does not matter.She followed him soon after he left; that is the whole of it.
Between the day my grandfather, the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, left this world, and the day his daughter followed him, there was hardly any time at all.
My grandmother Fatimah al-Zahra, peace and blessings be upon her, lived out the last of her life in the house of her father’s absence — and she was eighteen years old.
I was not there.
But I remember the nearness of it.
And the nearness is the grief.
II. He Wept When He Saw Her
And I remember what Ibn Abbas told — of a day my grandfather sat with his companions, and they came in to him, one by one.
My forefather al-Hasan came, and he wept, and said: come to me, my son — and sat him on his right knee.
My forefather al-Husayn came, and he wept, and sat him on his left. And then my grandmother Fatimah came.And when the Messenger of God saw her, he wept.
And he said: come to me, my daughter — and he sat her down before him.His companions asked him: you have not looked on one of them without weeping.
Why?And he told them.
And of his daughter he said: she is a part of me.
She is the light of my eye.
She is the fruit of my heart.The fruit of my heart.
That is what he called her — and that is the name this series carries.And he said: when she stands at her prayer-niche before her Lord, her light shines for the angels of the heavens, as the stars shine for the people of the earth.
And God says to His angels: look at My servant Fatimah, standing before Me, trembling for fear of Me — I have made her followers safe from the Fire.
III. As If I Am With Her
And then he told them why he had wept when he saw her.
He said: when I looked at her, I remembered what would be done to her after me.
As if I am with her — and disgrace has entered her home, and her sanctity is violated, and her right is taken from her, and she is kept from her inheritance.
As if I see her side broken, and her unborn child lost — and she calls out, O Muhammada, and no one answers.She calls for help, and is not helped.
O Muhammada.
She calls her father’s name.And no one answers.
I was not there.
But I remember the name she called — because it is the name the whole house has carried ever since.
IV. The Door
And there was a door.
The door my grandfather had come to, five times a day, calling her household to prayer.
And what was brought to it — the fire — my house remembers, and I remember it.I name no one here.
The door is enough.
The fire is enough.
God keeps the rest, and God keeps it best.
V. When Night Comes
And he said: after me she will grieve, and she will weep.
She will remember the revelation that has stopped coming to her house, and she will remember my absence.
And when night comes she will be lonely — because she no longer hears my voice, reciting the Qur’an in the night prayer, the voice she had listened to all her life.
All her life, she had heard that voice in the night.
And now the nights were silent.
VI. Mary at Her Sickbed
But she was not left without comfort.
My grandfather said that God would send the angels to console her, and that they would call to her as they had called to Mary, the daughter of Imran, peace be upon her:
O Fatimah, God has chosen you and purified you, and chosen you above the women of the worlds.
And when her pain began, and she fell ill, God sent Mary to her — to nurse her, and to keep her company in her illness.
Mary.
The girl whose mother vowed her to God before she was born.
The woman who stood at my grandmother’s cradle, on the night she was born, when the women of Mecca would not come.
She stood at her cradle.
And now she sits at her sickbed.
VII. Reunite Me With My Father
And then the daughter spoke.
She said:
O Lord, I have grown weary of this life, and I am discontented with the people of this world — so reunite me with my father.
And my grandfather had answered her, long before, on that day when he wept:
God will reunite her with me, and she will be the first of my family to follow me.
She will come to me grieving, and robbed, and killed.
And I will say:
O God, may Your mercy be distant from those who oppressed her, and punish those who robbed her — and the angels will say Amen.
The first of his family to follow him.
Seventy-five days.
And Ibn Abbas said: the Messenger of God wept, and those around him wept, until their voices rose.
And he stood, and said:
O God, I complain to You of what will be done to my household after me. And he went into his house.
My brothers. My sisters.
I was not there.
But I remember — because I am the one who carries the memory of my house, and the door she was behind is the door I am behind.
She called for her father, and no one answered.
I am not yet permitted to answer.
But I am not gone.
Wait for me with the lamp lit.
Wait for me at the door — not with fire, but with the prayer.
May our Lord hasten my return.
Pray ardently for my return, pray ardently for my return.
Sources Cited
Shaykh al-Saduq, al-Amali, hadith 198 (thaqalayn) — through Sa’id ibn Jubayr, from Ibn Abbas: the Messenger of God weeps at the sight of each of the four; the fruit of my heart; the prayer-niche; the foretelling; O Muhammada; the nights without his voice; the angels’ consolation and Mary sent to nurse her; reunite me with my father; the angels’ Amen; and his complaint.
Shaykh al-Kulayni, al-Kafi, Volume 1, hadith 1234 (thaqalayn) — the seventy-five days; with hadith 1232, Imam al-Baqir’s report of her age.
The ninety-five days — located in the noor collection: Imla’ ma manna bihi al-Rahman, printed p. 300; al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya (jami’ al-Abtahi), printed p. 150; Ma nazala min al-Qur’an fi sha’n Fatimah, printed p. 911. The recitation narrates the variant (”the count is kept two ways”) and does not adjudicate it. al-Irshad (Shaykh al-Mufid).
Kitab Sulaym ibn Qays (page 153); Ibn Jarir al-Tabari al-Imami, Dala’il al-Imama (page 134) — the door, and the fire brought to it: narrated, not quoted; no one named.
