Ignition

Dear diary,

I’m going to make it big one day very, very soon. My name is going to light up the sky. It will be on posters and in airport bookstores. All my detractors will be forced to pronounce my name whenever they take another ostensible business flight. My words will carry me into the world and back. My words will be the change that we so desperately need. There are X number of Somali people in the world. The clear majority advise one another to do the safe thing – to cop out young: “Keep your head down and stop all that wishful thinking.”

Imagine living in a borderless country of poets who’ve suppressed their ability to dream. To be surrounded by artists in denial. To be surrounded by upward social mobility maniacs, frothing at the mouth; talking about get money this and professional networking that. Go get a degree and a smiling picture to match. But what if their smiles don’t come from the Qalb? And their eyes, what if they only hold back rivers of tears? And the money, what if it’s their way of extinguishing pain?

I’m going to make it, diary. I’m going to make it big, Insha Allah. They’ll see. They’ll all see. Then they’ll want to be just like me. They’ll emulate my style. They’ll take the same Community College English classes which they deemed ‘useless’ just a week ago. But they won’t ever be like me, diary, because they won’t do it from the heart. They’ll do it for the money, and nothing will have changed.

But what if I can change a single child’s outlook on life? Get them to protect their dreams? Get them to believe that anything they want to do with their life is completely valid and that Allah SWT forgives all? Well, then, I’ll have won. I’ll have died a happy man, diary. I’ll have saved the innocence of one child. I’ll have protected them from going down a self-hating path. I might not be the one who changes the world, I can only hope to try. In the process, though, I might ignite the fire in the one who ends up saving us all from destruction.

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