The Vial of Truth

For years, I was merely an observer of my own existence, that boy sitting on the shore, letting the waves wet his feet without ever wondering where they came from. The world was vast, colorful, and casual. I minded my own business while life carried me like a current carries a leaf, without resistance or a plan, in that innocent belief that the world was a safe playground where the sun never sets. Children’s eyes have the power to turn an ordinary stone into a mountain and a puddle into an ocean, but they lack the power to see what hides behind the horizon. And there, clouds were gathering that I did not know how to read. The silence ended the moment the waves, until then gentle and predictable, threw me onto a shore I did not recognize. Suddenly, the sand beneath my feet became coarse, and the air grew heavy. That was the moment the gate of the childhood world closed, and before me opened a vast, gray field where I could see people, here and there, fighting their own battles on that somber battlefield.

My first enemies arrived at a run to meet me, and I, completely confused, prepared for the first close contact with them. It was then I realized that the enemy you meet there is not a man of flesh and blood standing across from you. The enemy is temptation. It is that tiny, vile voice that whispers to you to give up when things get difficult. It is the challenge that trips you just when you think you’ve caught your rhythm. It is fear, laziness, or the need to conform to the crowd just to be accepted. The battlefield does not cease even when we are happy; we may sit with family at a rich table, yet the inner war never pauses. While we exchange smiles, each of us, deep inside, fights our own enemy on our part of the field. There are two types of enemies: those we summon ourselves through our wrong decisions, and those more cruel ones who appear out of nowhere, violent and unannounced.

High school, besides being for education, became for me an arena where what I now call my personality was formed. It was about the survival of character. Onto that field stepped a massive, mysterious opponent. He did not attack me immediately; he was just a mysterious presence for which I had no answer. Over time, the silence of that enemy began to create more pressure on me than any physical attack. I began to notice flaws in my own strength. When I would run up the stairs, it felt as if someone, for half a second, simply "switched me off" like a button. My knees would buckle. I would be surprised, but I would continue on, refusing to take seriously the internal exhaustion hiding behind my physical facade. I tried to silence the doubts by buying exercise equipment, striking that motionless giant with all my might, but my blows left no mark on him. He was unavoidable; wherever I tried to move forward, he stood in the way.

Everything changed on an ordinary snowy day. A friend, out of pure jest, kicked my leg while it was in stride. Unexpectedly, I lost my balance. I fell forward. The ice beneath my feet, the thick winter jacket, and the backpack full of books pressed down on me like a lead weight. I found myself in the middle of the road, in a spot where hundreds of students had to pass at that very moment to go home. I tried to stand up quickly, but my feet only slipped. In that fraction of a second, I felt a total shutdown of functions. My legs, my muscles, simply did not react. That pressure and stress while hundreds of people watch you on the ground, while your image and character fall apart on that cold concrete, is indescribable. My friends laughed, thinking it was a joke, pulling me upward by my backpack, but that only made it worse; I had lost all control over the lower part of my body. That motionless enemy struck me with all his might that evening, even though he had not moved until then. That fall on the ice was not an ordinary fall, it was the moment the enemy removed his mask and showed me that my battle was only beginning.

I became a stranger in my own skin from that night on. Later, the blows became frequent, fast, and surgically precise: a system failure while exiting a bus, crouching in the middle of the sidewalk like a piece of trash someone threw away, while people nearby watched with a mixture of pity and misunderstanding. In front of the mirror one day, I completely broke down, realizing a clear truth: I was no longer me. I fell to my knees, broken and scared to my very bones, and declared my surrender. I called my older sister and, through sobs, let it all out: “I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to go out again.” My parents searched for a cause, until the enemy finally got a name: Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Doctors explained the mechanics of my body to me as if they were talking about a broken machine. I was like a Sentry of everything good within me, at the bottom of my "Cube" that was slowly and imperceptibly forming, completely motionless, in a deep sleep.

From that helplessness, the Cube was born. It was an inexplicable phenomenon, walls that rose every time I said “NO” to a chance to be part of the normal world. Every time I withdrew, the walls became thicker. Inside that Cube, the Sentry was sealed, representing everything human in the mind of a being. The most terrifying part was that I, that Sentry, was asleep; I was a prisoner of my own dreams and mistakes. All for some momentary, false peace I would flee to. The price of that false peace was the total loss of my own being. While life passed by, I watched it through a keyhole. My greatest wound was the day my sister got married. I lay on the bed, in the dark, choking in tears because I was not there to give her my hand on that significant day. My massive enemy choked me without ceasing, choosing the most sensitive parts of my soul. The gaming world became my refuge, but also a digital void. I was a permanent resident in a world that has no other place under the sun. I hid my reality, withdrawing from conversations with friends about the gym or similar topics, using sarcasm as a bitter joke at my own expense.

While I lay on the battlefield, covered in wounds from the blows of the giant enemy, I noticed a white bird. She was free, detached from everything that hurt me. When she landed on the ground beside me one day, she began to walk in one direction, taking pauses to stop and look back at me. I decided, wounded as I was, to gather what little strength I had left and begin to crawl after her. I collected the white feathers she left on the ground behind her; each feather was a crumb of realization, a signpost that glowed in the dark. Those feathers gave me the knowledge to defend the dignity of Islam from those who called faith a delusion in various online conversations I found myself in. The feathers represented my research; prompted by those people, I often searched for answers about the Creator. With every moment, I closed the circles of understanding and comprehension more clearly. Then, with all that knowledge and insight, I reached a very significant moment on the battlefield. When I finally reached out my hand toward that white bird and touched her, the battlefield vanished in a blinding flash. That was the moment of my total acceptance of the absolute truth. A moment when everything made sense, all that struggle, all that pain, and all those wounds, they all led to these gates of knowledge. Everything made sense; all the feathers suddenly became a hundred times lighter and more precious.

After the flash, the bird vanished, and I saw a gift on the ground: a weapon. It was a small shield, chains with small weights on the ends, and a small sword, all of which glowed with light. That light was the source of my newly ignited activities in faith, the practice of faith itself. I leaned down and accepted that gift; I was no longer a helpless child. Only then did I clearly hear, and only then was I aware of, that poisonous voice of the enemy who for years had been whispering bad things, like pouring venom into my ear. That enemy, who was heard only as a voice, was the open and sworn enemy of all warriors on the battlefield who armed themselves with the weapon of faith. My warrior recognized very important things in that moment, clearly establishing and accepting them. He had his four main pillars: trust in God’s plan, hope in the good, the realization that pain and that entire enemy were actually a great test and challenge, and finally, the ability to hear the poisonous voice. All of this represented what we call Tawakkul in faith, complete surrender.

Taking the weapon in my hands, hurriedly and decisively, I swung vengefully at the massive giant. The first blow echoed like the shattering of a jewel, shaking the foundations of the Cube in the other universe. My sleeping Sentry jolted awake from the force of that powerful tremor; the padlocks rattled because they felt that keys finally threatened them. Over time, as the enemy’s body shrank under my blows, the mystery that densely shrouded and made that enemy strong had taken on the properties of a massive body, and the greater our fear and ignorance were, the stronger and more powerful the mystery became, and vice versa. Consequently, with the shrinking of the enemy’s body, my resentment also faded. I realized that God does not test a servant because He hates him, but because He loves him. At the final blow, a second great flash occurred. In front of me, the giant was no more. In front of me stood me, from real life, thin, weak, and frail. The warrior was incredibly confused by the sight; he was confused why he saw himself but in a much worse state. Since he did not know what the real world was, or that the Cube and the Sentry existed, he reacted the best way he knew how. As he thought, with every passing moment, the warrior became more and more astonished by the discovery that had been right in front of him all along. Only then did I understand the cruel irony: the thing I had begged God to remove was the very thing that had saved me. I realized that my enemy was not an executioner, but a “slap of love,” a rampart that prevented me from falling into the abyss of vice where other warriors on that battlefield vanished. He was my shield. I threw down the weapon and embraced my former executioner, now as my best friend, accepting God’s decree with absolute peace. It was a moment that is hard to describe; it was like looking at something the purest and most beautiful, like looking at your own mother doing something most wonderful for you. I stood speechless, silent, before a vision that took my breath away.

On the battlefield, I later continued fighting my other battles, now with a new friend who would quietly observe from the side. He did not have many options; he was now accepted, he was a part of me, a part of the warrior. From time to time, at every reminder of the warrior's difficult moments in the past, he would feel an urge to come and strike him, weakly and frailly as he knew how, because his purpose and point had not yet passed. His job still continues, only now there is no mystery to give him strength; he was harmless but still persistent in his task. Then one day, I came across and saw a female warrior wearing a hijab. She was not a reward, but a reminder that meaning still existed beyond survival. Noticing how she left small pieces of paper on the ground as she moved on, I followed behind and collected her messages. To the warrior's wonder and astonishment, he found on them a wisdom never seen before, translated into words and poetry intended to encourage the warriors who read them. Transcribing them into my notebook separately, over time I came to the whole story of getting to know that warrior. I found out that I was following a person who fights with knowledge and faith, dreaming of one day teaching the little ones who have not yet arrived on the battlefield and who are just beginning to float on the sea of life. That was one of many, many incredible things I learned in conversation and in getting to know her. God joined our souls in the strangest place, within the framework of pure communication and religious principles. Although we exchanged messages until midnight, putting together the puzzle of each other from a thousand pieces, we had to part; she went toward her own battles, and I remained aware that with the Almighty, all things are possible and that even the greatest suffering is not invincible.

My story is still being written, and the action is happening at this very moment. I stand on the battlefield with my friend by side. I have learned that every darkness can become a path to light if one surrenders to the One who governs all outcomes. I hope that this concise work has provided you with at least a small portion of the enjoyment I felt while creating it. This short story, which is only a fraction of the main book, is like a well I found in the middle of the battlefield. It is a special well into which I decided to dive my face and cast out all the weight that remained in me, despite all the acceptance and struggles. I needed a place where I could confess this burden and tell it to someone who wants to listen.

I would like you, while reading these last lines, to imagine that you too are standing on your own battlefield. You may be tired, you may be wounded, but right now, unconsciously, a small, mysterious bottle has appeared in your hands. This is a sample of water from my well, a testimony told in drops of clarity. As you drink from it, remember that it was intended for that warrior whom I promised we would meet again if fate so decreed; she was supposed to drink this truth that I did not manage to tell her in those few days of our unfinished and extraordinary story. But today, I share this same water with you, dear reader.

I hope that these drops of knowledge and struggle find a way to your heart, just as they found a way to mine. Thank you for your time. I hope that I will get the opportunity, through this award, to step further on my path, to prove to myself in this battle, which is also currently taking place on the field, that it is worth trying in the end. You must know that this is my first encounter with paper and pen in my life as a new young writer. Do not hold my mistakes against me, for this was not written by a hand, but by a heart that has finally spoken everything it kept secret from the world for years. All the best.