The rain poured hard and true.
She knew that the rain had its passengers – angels, who went back to the Heavens, bringing with them wishes and prayers, hopes and dreams. Maybe that was why she had always loved the rain. It was her favourite perfume, this scent of fresh promises and new adventures. It was as if each torrent opened up another page in a different life. Like everything had been fixed and washed away in little streams of aftermath. Like the way God brought the flowers and the grass and the trees back to life with the drizzle.
As was the case, she welcomed rain. She had needed many fixer-uppers in her life; many washes to get the dirt all clean. And with each downpour, she felt like the rest of the world was born anew. She felt like she could hope again, rebuild again, live again.
It’s as if the rain tells her each time, with a little whisper, that there is nothing she cannot do.
Smiling to herself, she remembered lonely rains that she spent with the piano in the alcove of her home, when no one else was there. She would revel in the disguise of rainfall, knowing that her mistakes on the keys would be saved from all but her, but in the spirit of the moment, she wouldn’t care at all. The piano keys were hard on her fingers, and in them, she lay out her one-sided tales of heartbreak and adolescent pain, wondering why God had made her the way He did. She had reckoned that she must have been special, to warrant so much disappointment in her being. She had skimmed through her feelings and her thoughts and theories as her fingers padded the wooden keys, her eyes focusing on the wet, pallid grey of the world outside. Smiling a special one, she would not feel so alone anymore.
There were many times when she would deliberately forget her umbrella on a darkened day, and find herself having to walk through the rain. It was never long enough to appease her hunger of a proper shower, but it gave her a sense of syukr – maybe for being able to shiver in the cold and tilt her head up to the pouring sky. Not that she had anything against a clear-blue sky with its smattering of clouds, or the sunshine that pours onto the earth and warms her back. Its just that rain and wetness and dull skies made her feel lonely and also comfortable. Maybe it was the knowledge that it would always be temporary; that it never lasted long.
Rainy days were an excuse to curl up under warm blankets with a good book in hand. It gave her a chance to slow down and reflect – something she had wanted to do for days, but never found the time for. The stunted act of an autumn shower made time go still and the rest of the world cease from haste.
She could feel the folds of her hijab flopping to one side with the weight of the damp, but she marked it as fate that she should be stuck out here, in the middle of nowhere, without an umbrella or some form of shade in view. Because the rain would wash her troubles away, if only for a while.
And the angels would bring the blessings of Paradise with each drop of rain.
