Midnight Calls and Angelic Touches

Good Morning, we all know the dread of a call in the night. The first time this happened was in 2019, my dad had insisted on going to Pakistan despite our protests, when my brother and I escalated our opposition to the chief (our mum) she quietened us with her response, “this may be his last chance to visit the graves of his parents, see his siblings, touch the land he was born in.” We piped down, but sure enough one week into his trip, we got the midnight call; dad was in hospital on life support. I took the first flight out. I hadn’t been back to Pakistan for almost 15 years, and I’d certainly never travelled there without my parents. I felt anxious, unmoored, alone. On the plane I ended up seated next to an older couple, I immediately called them aunty and uncle as per our cultural norms, they naturally called me “beti”, daughter. When I told them the cause for my visit, uncle told me they’d actually booked a flight for the day before but had arrived 5 minutes too late and had been prevented from boarding so he’d had to book this next flight out. He said, “now we know why that happened, God wanted us to bring this daughter to Pakistan”. They showed such kindness and gentleness the whole trip. I felt graced by angels in my most difficult of times.

The Prophet Muhammad (S) said, “Allah is kind and He loves kindness and confers upon kindness what he does not confer upon harshness and does not confer upon anything else besides it.” Is there anything that touches, connects, builds, like kindness, even between strangers?

I pray for a world brimming, healed, and prospering in kindness, ameen.