The Barzakh Dream

Shaykh Ahmad once had a dream in which the land in front of the Bab Kheymegah (the place where the Ahl al-Bayt’s tents had been pitched at the time of the battle of Karbala, and where Qasim, the son of Imam Husayn, is buried) had become a vast, open green ‘desert’. Beautiful trees stood tall, and hundreds of streams flowed in a grid-like pattern, while other plants abounded. In it he saw some people just sitting on these square islands and others moving about, jumping over the streams. He saw some people who looked familiar, and then suddenly noticed his own father stepping across a stream. He rushed over to him and asked, ‘What is this place?’

Shaykh Muhammad Husayn replied, ‘This is the Barzakh of the Mu’mineen.’

‘How come some people move around freely while others just sit?’ asked Shaykh Ahmad.

His father replied, ‘Everyone has been given a maqām that reflects the level of their ‘amal (deeds) in their lives. So you see some like us are able to move freely, for Allah has favoured us with good ‘amal.

Shaykh Ahmad woke up in a deep sweat.

This dream was narrated to me by our beloved paternal grandmother, Bibi Fadhila, may Allah have mercy on her soul, and was written down by me at the very time of narration. I spent many hours listening to her, sharing with me her memories and recorded much of it. For that I am so grateful and in due course will share more inshallah. Coming across this dream in my notebook today after fajr prayers, I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for the connection, for my heritage  (without pride), and was reminded I ‘belonged’ to some thread of light.

Let me therefore shed a little light on some of the elements of this dream.

Shaykh Ahmad was my paternal grandfather whom I never knew, other than through stories and his own children, my father, uncle and two aunts.  He also had five children from his first wife, but I was only privileged to know the youngest son of that group. Shaykh Ahmad died a few years before I was born to my parents. But the few photographs we had and regular visits from my grandmother rendered flesh unto his name and image  and Jiddo (Granpa) became a part of the fabric of my world, if a background one.

His story truly deserves a telling, but not here, not now. Suffice to say he and his four brothers were the legatees of a line of esteemed erudite ‘ulama (religious scholars) and spiritually awakened beings who originated from Mazandaran in northern Iran and settled in Karbala Iraq.

Shaykh Ahmad had been widowed some five years when he married our grandmother who was at the age of 14, it has to be said, very young to be a bride, but not, of course, according to the custom of the time. Their marriage was a truly loving one. From the many times Bibi and I conversed about her life story, whenever the conversation veered towards her husband her eyes would well up with tears, not out of loss but out of love.

The home they shared in Karbala was right down the alley opposite the Bab az-Zaynabiyyah. It has long since been demolished but a wonderful peep into that world can be had from reading my father’s autobiography ‘Son of Karbala’. My grandfather apparently lead many a prayer in the shrine of Imam Husayn (alayhi’s-salām), and welcomed many seekers of knowledge to his majlis (sitting place) in the burrani (outer quarters) of their home. Shaykh Ahmad would have known the shrine and its environs like the back of his hand.

The word Barzakh is very interesting. In this dream it is clearly the ‘interspace’ between this life and the next, the interim period between the world of form and the world of spirit, after death and before resurrection. Barzakh also means ‘barrier’, as in the Qur’anic verses (23:99-10; 25:53; & 55:19-20).  The term barzakh is often used metaphorically, and in the sense of a bridge or isthmus between different but contiguous states.

Lastly, the term maqām means station or level, literally, ‘where one stands’, and so it has a somewhat permanent connotation. It is often, therefore, contrasted in Sufi discourse with hāl, which means state or condition, and is therefore more transient. Both these terms are used in the context of discourses on spiritual progress as understood by Muslim luminaries. Ultimately the sincere wayfarer on the path of truth seeks to go beyond state and station.

May Allah have mercy on Shaykh Ahmad and reward him beyond measure.