Where does your God reside?

Dedicated to all the young, promising lives lost in Kenya, Peshawar school attacks; unfortunately eternally relevant by continued cowardly, shameful and bloody attacks in the name of God!

An angel of love met a soldier of hate and asked him -

Where does your God reside? 

He courses through your veins, you proclaim

Why then drench our mother with the blood drawn of the very she nourished?

The nectar of her rivers and the grains from her fields having nurtured ungrudgingly;

Having borrowed our roofs under her benevolent azure sky;

Absorbing her rays, each darting in a million directions simultaneously, forfeiting its identity;

Our weary bodies having rested under the shade of the mighty trees,

Replenished through fruits that hung from its arms, invitingly, that you too once humbly sought refuge under,

Must we ask each to bear its allegiance now that you regard the power of destruction over the mightiness of benevolence? 

 

Where does your God reside?

You say he is sought through penance, by forfeiting life’s pleasures that is ‘haram’ and by bowing in submission to his call,

When then did your cross become heavier than mine? 

You don't know me any better than I know you,

Granted, there might have been days when I ate what ought to have been your share, 

Slept on silken mattresses while your body shivered on the cold, hard floor, all bare,

Celebrated life with its frivolities, while its essentials continued to elude you,

But is my blood worth the price?

 

Where does your God reside?

You say you are a soldier safeguarding His mission, even if that would imply a guardian seeking a refugee’s protection,

Aren’t we though His children first?

Since when did your quest become more important than mine that it seemed justice to snuff it out?  

You await your plot in Paradise, bartered for the ‘glorious’ death you embraced,

What though shall you sow on it now that you have sacrificed us at its altar? What fruits might those trees grow, the roots of which are drenched with blood?

You mistake blood to be as potent as water, 

However, what must feed on murdered dreams, barren aspirations and teary curses, save for death and destruction, the wails of which will follow you beyond time?  

 

Where does your God reside?

You say you seek HIM in HIS Words, encapsulated by a mortal nonetheless,

Why then weigh one verse above the other from a text that you hold sacred?

Can an ethereal voice be so contained as much as an eternal instinct brushed off?

Whispered through the lullabies that the wind gently hums, passing freely through each form, soothing every blade of leaf,

Reverberated in the sound of the raindrops, the smell of the wet earth, the song of a cuckoo, the joy in a frog’s leap,

Transferred through the warmth of an embrace, the comfort of words and the gratitude in a prayer,

The very element which connects God and A Believer,

There is NO truth like Love that has surpassed all,

Independent of a propagator, Devoid of a proprietor it remains, Unblemished.

 

Where does God reside?

Whom then do we seek through mercilessness, anger and savagery?

Is it God or a self-propagated illusion feeding off life’s insecurities?

Waging bloody battles in His name, one maiming the other;

We exist in a zombie land, bereft of dreams, with each having killed his neighbour’s,

Each destined to reap yet another legacy as savage as that of his ancestors,

Ironically made kin, if nothing, bound by the inheritance of loss;

Isn’t it time our Gods met at a middle path?

Rather than draw swords, why don’t we look within our hearts,

With your eyes as my mirror and mine yours.