One often wonders what is the meaning of life. Do we live like birds? Or do we live like livestock or rocks?
Maybe our experiences will show us that life goes on whether we were among the living or the dead. We are but a part of a speck of dust or at best a part of a drop of water.
How many were those who lived amongst us, laughing, weeping, working, acting as though they will live forever? Then suddenly we are shocked with news about their passing away.
I could not believe that a dear friend passed away. He left without bidding us adieu and without any hope of returning. The sad news is conveyed to you and you are invited to visit the cemetery, only to see that person in a white shroud, surrounded by his friends and maybe his enemies as well. Memories unwind and the friend is put to rest. How morbid is this year with its number 13? A number detested by many cultures, but may be favoured by others.
My dear and wise friend, I was not expecting to bid you farewell. You became the UAE’s ambassador to Kuwait. Kuwait gave us a lot in the past, but took away one of our dearest people, a friend who never ceased smiling, and who was giving with kindness all the time. You, O Ali, loved life and art, and thus your wife — a painter herself — was always colouring life with her paints and brushes. But this time the colour was black.
I saw tears in my wife’s and daughter’s eyes as they respected you and valued the spirit of humanity which you upheld.
Harsh reality
As for your friend Khalil Qaid, grief was knotted with his words as he was informed about your demise. How harsh this is on the living when they lose their friends one after the other.
Those who have died have made peace with this world of ours; the living, however, have to taste the bitterness of losing their friends. No one can stand in the face of Allah’s will, and how long we live is in His hands alone.
We all tread this road with a similar end for all human beings, we all return to the soil and are dissolved in it. The earth is our resting place whether we are among the living or the dead.
God has bestowed upon us the gift of forgetting, and the ability to resume life. Our march continues until it is the time for another person to depart. All this makes our grief lighter and gives us the strength to get on with life.
Life is beautiful, my friend, and grief is but a passing moment in our life, and just as we are engulfed by the sorrow of losing a friend, one day our friends will cry for us.
This is the beauty of life, and you shall stay in our memory well after life.
The reasons for death are numerous, but the end is the same. No one is immortal and living forever is a pipe dream that no one can ever achieve, no matter how influential, affluent or powerful.
Death, my friend, is inevitable.
Books that are 100s of years old make us feel that their past deceased writers are still living amongst us. We still read Ibn Khaldoun, Al Farabi, Aristotle, Plato, Ibn Rushd, and many others. And despite the fact that they have gone a long time ago, their work is still living with us.
Libraries are a part of life and we do live with the dead through their works and intellect.
May Allah have mercy on you my dear friend — Dr Ali Bin Shukr, and may you live forever in paradise.
Dr Mohammad Abdullah Al Mutawa is a professor of sociology.
