من يرد الله به خيرا، يفقه في الدين

Living by the River

by Ayman Ahwal

I am not a scientist in the way one understands nowadays. From an early age my education had a distinctly classical leaning but I have a good eye for observing people and phenomena in the attempt to derive the universal from the specific, quantifying experience and learning from it. I might describe myself as a past master at the trial and error method. I have nothing against modern science and indeed I sometimes regret my lack of knowledge in physics chemistry, mechanics and the like. But I strongly reproach what people call modern science for its lack of an overall holistic approach in its various specialised domains. I have learned by experience that everything seems to be inter-connected in often unsuspected ways.

When my father retired from banking he disappeared into a Cornish garden with a gypsy gardener who arrived every day on a horse and cart hardly to be seen again in the household except for silently consumed meals and to read books late into the night. Twice a week he emerged from the garden to walk to the golf club where he would play a round of golf and a few rounds of bridge with his also retired cronies. We had a garden of some ten acres, with a stream running through it at its lowest level. It was big enough to get lost in. It included a large vegetable patch, a fruit garden, an orchard, a paddock, extensive lawns, rosegardens galore, a greenhouse, an ornamental pond, even a small wood of various species of trees. Dutifully, as a young boy I would sometimes watch my father and listen to him expound eloquent on the mysteries of rose cultivation, crop rotation, the intricacies of seedling boxes and transplanting in neat rows in well prepared soils. I used to wonder what an educated man found exciting about digging and getting his hands dirty with earth. I would watch as he and Jenkins the gypsy gardener patiently, endlessly weeded lawns and beds, while I was endlessly and patiently bored. Surely life was about other things, I thought.

Some fifty years later, by now in Malaysia, a writer, Muslim since more than half of my life, having lived in many countries and travelled all over the world, I suddenly arrived at a crossroads in my life. I had just divorced my third wife. In business as in my personal life I have not been so successful at choosing partners. I wanted to get away from the city and urban life. Living in Kuala Lumpur at the time, I just went to the forest and found a piece of land with a wooden house on stilts on it. I decided to settle there. From there my life took a totally unexpected turn from which, I believe, I will never turn back. Images of disappearing for ever in a tropical forest flashed across my mind. At last, I thought, I would write all those books I had intended to write but had never quite had the right quality time for reflection, or any time at all with city preoccupations. Now it was quality time all the time. So I made the intention to make the most of it.

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من يرد الله به خيرا، يفقه في الدين

Barangsiapa yang Allah inginkan darinya kebaikan, maka dijadikannya faqih dalam deen.

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