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Invited by ALLAH TA'ALA

Although words can never truly do justice to the soul-stirring experience of performing Umrah, my heart kept searching for the right language to embrace memories that were far greater than any vocabulary I possess. That is why it took me almost one hundred days to write about this journey—not because I had forgotten a single moment, but because my heart needed time to translate what my soul had witnessed. Some journeys are measured in miles, some in memories, and a few are measured in miracles. My Umrah was never merely a trip from one country to another; it was the longest voyage my heart had ever undertaken and the shortest distance between a trembling soul and its Creator. Since childhood, the world has reached me through blurred outlines, softened colours, and incomplete pictures. Faces have often been recognized by voices, footsteps have painted clearer portraits than appearances, and kindness has always shone brighter than light itself. My eyes may struggle to capture details, bu...
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CREATIVITY ISN'T BORROWED

While my fellow artists stood beside their paintings gracefully unveiling the hidden stories behind every brushstroke, every shade, and every carefully chosen medium, I stood beside a handful of bookmarks carrying fragments of my heart. The paintings around me were framed on gallery walls, yet my words were hanging in an invisible courtroom, waiting for a verdict. They were admired, picked up, and sold—but the moment someone whispered that they were not truly mine, only borrowed from AI, every bookmark suddenly felt as though it carried a silent question mark instead of my signature. In that instant, the applause faded into the background, and the brightest exhibition lights could not illuminate the darkness that settled within me. I had travelled a long, exhausting road from rejection to acceptance, believing that at last my voice had found its own canvas, only to watch my creativity be painted over with doubt. For a fortnight, every sunrise reopened the same unfinished sketch in my ...
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REJECTION REJECTED

At every crossroads of life, fear stood beside me like a harsh art critic waiting to dismiss my existence before I could even present my masterpiece to the world. I feared rejection in classrooms, opportunities, competitions, conversations, and dreams that trembled quietly inside my heart. Before every attempt, my mind painted dark sketches of failure - unfinished canvases torn apart before anyone could even see their beauty. Yet life surprised me again and again. Every door I approached with hesitant footsteps opened wider than my fears had imagined. Every moment I expected rejection, acceptance arrived like sunlight spilling across a gallery wall. And slowly, the most beautiful irony revealed itself: my fear of rejection was the only thing that kept getting rejected. It felt as though destiny itself was correcting the rough draft my insecurities had written. While fear kept framing me as unworthy, life kept hanging my efforts in places I never thought I belonged to. The applause I...
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Permanence Slipped But I Didn't

I met my friend after what felt like a lifetime, only to find her heart framed in quiet heartbreak, cracked by a rejection stamped in official ink. The word rejected doesn’t simply arrive as a notification — it crashes like a gavel in a courtroom where society is both judge and jury. For a girl who dared to dream of a government badge pinned to her chest, of a scale and grade that would silence whispers and lift her family’s pride, that single word feels like a stamp pressed hard on the heart. In a world where relatives measure worth in pay scales and neighbors audit your success like accountants of destiny, rejection becomes more than a result — it becomes a headline. She didn’t just lose a job; she watched a carefully built castle of expectations crumble into dust. Every late-night study session, every highlighted page, every whispered Aameen folded into prayer — they all seemed to echo back unanswered. But here is the quiet truth no rejection letter mentions: a stamp of “not se...
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NOT HIRED, STILL FIRED UP

They say it so lightly—“aim higher, earn better, don’t waste your talent”—as if ambition were only a matter of stepping forward, not stumbling through unseen shadows. My friends and colleagues stand around me like gentle winds refusing to let me settle into stillness. They see a horizon I keep avoiding, a version of me I am too afraid to meet. Where I have built a comfort zone, they see a comfort cage—soft, familiar, yet quietly limiting. I call it pressure, but perhaps it is polished encouragement, a quiet rebellion against my fears.They don’t walk in my shoes, but they refuse to let me stand still in them.They compel me not with force, but with faith; not with criticism, but with conviction. I smile, I nod, I let the moment pass like a polite breeze, because how do I explain that my dreams are not limited by ambition, but guarded by unseen battles? My coworkers see my potential like a bright skyline, but they do not see the fog I walk through every day. Where they see opportunit...
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SELF REJECTED

She grew up learning the language of silence before she ever learned the language of dreams—a girl who slowly began to reject herself before the world could finish the sentence. Every comment, every raised eyebrow, every “you can’t” stitched doubt into her bones until she wore insecurity like a second skin. Society became a hall of mirrors where her reflection was never her own—always distorted, always diminished. When relatives measured her worth in marks she never chose, when strangers weighed her future in salaries she hadn’t earned yet, when whispers followed her low vision like a shadow—she began to believe she was less, not enough, almost but never quite. In classrooms, she hid behind books she couldn’t fully see, pretending understanding while battling the blur—a silent war between courage and criticism. At family gatherings, she smiled on cue, laughing just a second late, careful not to reveal the cracks within. When friends spoke of fearless leaps—new jobs, bold decisions—she ...
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REJECTED CHOICE

I still remember standing at the threshold of my matriculation years. I stood at the quiet crossroads of my academic life, where dreams should have been chosen like favorite books from a shelf—but mine were chosen for me, wrapped not in curiosity but in compulsion. The subjects I longed for, the ones that sparked curiosity like sunlight on a fresh page, were gently but firmly set aside, replaced by choices that did not belong to me. It felt like being handed a book already written, expected to read it with passion when my heart had never inked a single word in it. How do you pour your soul into something that never called out to you? How do you bloom in a garden where your roots were never meant to grow? I was handed Biology—a garden I was told to nurture, even though my heart did not bloom there. The diagrams of cells, the silent stories of tissues and systems—beautiful, yes—but they never echoed my own rhythm. While others saw life in those pages, I felt a quiet distance, like watchi...
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