Ghoulish

Have a fun filled Halloween.

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My aunt Zarin would talk of ghosts coming every Thursday evening to see their homes, and loved ones. It wasn’t, and it isn’t true. It was just stories she made up to keep us in one place. When I was young thinking of dead people would give me the creeps. Anytime when the thought of death would come into my mind, I would give it a shove to the back. As a child I knew death had taken away my mother, and as a teenager I lost my father. As if by not thinking of it I was trying to keep my loved ones safe.

I keep away from watching scary, or ghoulish movies. Sitting alone, I was switching channels in the hope of seeing something worthwhile. There was one which looked interesting. I looked at the guide. Once I determined it was going to be a horror one, I hurriedly switched to another channel. I was alone. I didn’t want to scare myself. Although there was a moment when I was about to give in to the urge to see it.

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DAILY PROMPT

Ghoulish

Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt.

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Mythical

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Mythical shadows on the beach

There is no one there as far I can see

But the frightening shadows loom over me

Scaring me as I sit on the beach 

(Sheen-November 2016)

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DAILY PROMPT

Mythical

Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt.

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Bed Ghost

There was definitely something in the room. What was it? I really don’t know. I was scared when I was sleeping alone. Normally when my (late) husband R was sleeping next to me, I wouldn’t get scared. When he wasn’t there, I would lie awake. I would recite the Ayat-ul-kursi  from the Quran to drive away the scary ghost moving our king size bed.

R had given it a funny name. I have totally forgotten the name. R would smirk at me at breakfast time and ask, “Did it trouble you last night?” I would gave him a glare, because it was all his fault in abandoning, and leaving me alone in our room. 

R was a light sleeper, and if disturbed during sleep, and he got woken up, he wouldn’t let me sleep. On the nights I watched a late night show, or a movie on tv, he would go and sleep in the guest room so that his sleep wasn’t disturbed.

The ghost was in our downstairs bedroom. With downsizing my furniture in the lower portion of our home, I sold off the bed, and moved upstairs after R’s death. I have never mentioned the ghost to my tenent downstairs. She hasn’t said anything, so maybe the ghost went elsewhere. Another reason it may have moved with the bed, and is terrorizing someone else.

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DAILY PROMPT

Ghost

Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt. 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/ghost/

A WORLD OF MY OWN

I am staying with my son. It’s so different from staying on my own. At my own home I remained busy. Looking after the house, getting groceries, cooking, gardening, going for my Quran classes, visiting friends and relatives or having them in return, the days whizzed by. Here, mostly I sit in my room overlooking the back lawn and stare out of the window. 😕 Occasionally a bird stirs and fly through and that’s it.

My days brighten up when my sister calls, so I get someone to talk to. She introduced me to VC Andrews recently. I got my third book of VC and have started reading it. I am so glad that I have got books to read otherwise I would have died of boredom.

Books are fun. They are companions. They take you to their world, making you forget the world you are in. I am weak at heart and that’s why I choose light fiction in books. At times even these books have scary parts which gives me terrible pangs. What I do is—— skip that part, or jump right to the end to see that, ‘All’s Well.’ I see in my mind’s eye at moments like these, my granddaughter M2 shaking her head at me, “No Nano, you can’t do this.”

Learning The Quran

Before learning the Quran, a person has to start with a preliminary book called the Qaida. This has the Arabic alphabets (28 in all) plus the different shapes of the alphabets when they are joined. A religious teacher makes you learn their different sounds. After finishing the Qaida, you start with the Quran.

Normally, parents start with their children at an early age. They hire a teacher who can come and spend time with the child to make him or her learn. Now times are different. It’s easy to connect to a teacher via internet. My learning started at the age of three. A maid servant would accompany me to a nearby mosque. My lessons were thrice a week. I used to dread going there. The moulvi sahib (religious teacher) would be punishing boys left and right (I was the only girl there). Though he was never harsh with me, it was scary for me. Fortunately, my father got posted from that area so my learning came to a stop.

After a longer period, I started again with a lady teacher. My mother would send me to her house twice a week. This lady was a smiling sort of a woman. I don’t think I learnt a great deal from her. After my mother died and I shifted from uncle’s house to live with my father, my school started. Father hired another moulvi sahib to come in the evenings daily, except for weekends. I would be tired from school and homework, and there would come the moulvi sahib. I resented him a lot. Why? Because he would make me recite the Holy Book over and over (there was no escape from it) and my elder brother Lala would go scot free after a few minutes of his lessons. I would be sitting for hours on end (to me the time looked endless) and wanting to go and play.

One day I got so fed up with my teacher I threw my sipara (one of the thirty parts of the Quran) down on the floor. It was a terrible thing to do. I expected dire punishment from him, but he calmly told me to pick it up and went on with the lesson. I don’t exactly remember when I finished learning the Quran. Perhaps I was about seven.

I was eleven when my father gave me a Quran with English translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali as a gift. It was a marvelous gift. To this day, I have not seen a better translation. Before that, I did not know what was written as it was all in Arabic. Reading the Holy Book with translation opened its doors to me. My favorite time was reading the Quran after Fajr (morning prayers). Here, I confess sheepishly, I think as a child the stories fascinated me more than the religious aspect of it.

My childhood reading continued into adulthood. The Quran has always been my mentor, guiding me on the right path. Shukr Alhumdulillah (thanks and praise be to Allah) for giving me this Book. I would have been lost without it. Reading it has always been an uplifting experience for me. The Quran opens a person’s spiritual eyes. I always feel a sense of wonder,joy and elation. I feel truly blessed. There so many people who go through life unaware of what they are missing.