“Mom! Mom, wake up!” I cried shaking her by her shoulders, determined to stop her dreaming before something terrible happened to the boy.

Mom sat up robotically, opened her eyes, and as the contours of her room sat in place under the moonlight, she took a deep breath and urged me back to sleep. Alas, I spent the rest of the night wondering who the lost boy was. Was it my brother, the only son in our family? Did the dream mean that something bad would happen to him?

Although my curiosity almost killed me like the proverbial cat, I dared not ask Mom about the dream which continued visiting her in the following months. For one thing, dreams good or bad were never told in our family. Mom believed that if you put a dream into words, if you articulated it even in a whisper, you pronounced an undeniable invitation for the dream to become true.

“Dreams,” Mom often said, “should be left alone. Dreams are tricky. Everything you see in them stand for something else in the real world. Rats stand for money, money for gossip, crack and holes in houses for deaths in the household.”

So I kept my peace and never talked with anyone about the matter.

One day, long after that night, I was looking for a dear necklace of mine which I couldn’t find, having hidden it too well for my own good. As it often happens, if you look into all possible hiding places in a household, you are bound to find unexpected things—like your sister’s secret diary in the wardrobe or your brother’s savings under the mattress. But what are the chances that you will find pictures of a brother you never knew!

At first, I couldn’t make sense of those two pictures. One was a photo of a baby in his crib with eyes half open and the other was a shot of the same baby with Mom, in her younger years, leaning over the crib as if to place a kiss on the baby’s face. Mom’s face seemed so sad that I wanted to tear up the photo right there.

I went to my older sister instead and asked her, “Who is this baby?” My sister snatched the photos from me and reproachfully said, “Why can’t just you leave anything alone?”

She immediately headed toward mom’s bedroom, apparently knowing the hiding place. Then she stopped midway and replied without turning around, “He is our brother. He died from a fever when he was ten months old. And don’t ask Mom about him. After all these years, she still cries when she speaks of him.”

A tender feeling of longing, gripped my heart. “What was his name?” I asked.

“Leonard,” she replied. “He would have been fifteen-years-old now, had he lived.”

I wanted to take another look at the photos and stroke with my fingers the little face of my brother, but I dreaded my sister’s anger. She went into Mom’s bedroom and closed the door shut.

On the days that followed, I started fantasizing about what it would have been like for me to have another brother, four years older. I imagined us going to school together, his arm on my shoulder, me proud of my protective brother, daring the bullies to come even closer.

I imagined covering up for him when he came home late and he telling me first, before anyone else, about the girl whom he loved. I smiled as tears welled up in my eyes when I thought of those happy moments that never came to pass. It was then that I willed myself to believe death couldn’t be the end of all things. A sweet hope invaded my heart that one day I would see him, hug him, and catch up on missed happiness.

I wanted so much to share this hope with Mom so that she could accept her loss, so that her nightmares would stop tormenting her, so that those two photos would come out of hiding and join the light in the family album. But I never had the courage to confront her grief. I had understood by then that no matter how many living children a mother has, her heart will always mourn the death of a child.

One afternoon, five years later, I overheard my aunt talking in low tones to Mom. “He would have been twenty years old today,” she said while she stroked Mom’s hand in sympathy.

“It’s kismet!” Mom said, taking a deep breath. “It’s the destiny.” Her voice quavered, but she did not cry. “It wasn’t meant to be.”

After this, the photos came out of hiding and took their place on my mom’s dresser. Yet, Mom’s nightmares did not vanish. They continued to torture her. One thing remained a mystery to me. Why did Mom never ask, “Where is my boy?” It was always the boy? And during all these years, why hadn’t she uttered his name in her dream even once?

Every time I heard her search in the darkness of the night for the nameless boy, I wanted to whisper into her subconscious before waking her up, “Mom, you have to let things go. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t meant to be.” But I never did. ***

Tonight, Mom is having another of her nightmares, but I won’t wake her up as I have before. I watch her turn in her sleep, hoping that her dream, left undisturbed this time, will relieve her from the burden of her conscience. Tonight, I know Mom is looking for some other boy. One she doesn’t dare to own.

We were talking this afternoon about how life had changed for her and Dad after each of us, their children had married and left home. Mom didn’t enjoy her empty nest as much as one would expect.

“People always remarked that my five children were too much for any normal person to handle, but look at us now,” she said, taking in the tidy and spotless living room. “The house is quite, empty, just me and your Dad and… the memories. It would have been nice to have another child for our senior years, someone who would tie us to life with bittersweet worries.”

A wave of sadness covered her face, a feeling of regret I couldn’t quite grasp. Did she remember Leonard? But he still wouldn’t have been the child of my parents’ senior years. What else?

“It wasn’t meant to be,” I said insinuating on his death. “Destiny.” Mom’s eyes watered and her voice trembled. “Sometimes you pick your destiny.”

“But what could you do? The doctors couldn’t reduce his fever and…”

“I am not talking about Leonard,” she interrupted and then paused in pain. Seeing my shock, Mom, with great difficulty, told the story of her last child. While listening to her, I realized that a house cannot hold enough hiding places for the secrets of the past.

“When you were nine years old, I discovered I was pregnant again,” Mom continued.

“Everybody was so against the idea of me giving birth to that baby. Your father worried about our already strained finances. My doctor warned me about the difficulties of a labor at forty-one. Your eldest sister, who was newly engaged at that time, complained of how ashamed she would feel to tell her fiancé’s family that her mother was pregnant when it was her own time to have children. My friends told me that women my age often gave birth to children with disabilities. I felt so helpless and scared, so alone.” She let out a sigh.

Gathering her strength, she continued. “People push you to take one definitive step and leave you to bear the burden alone afterwards. It was hard for me. I regretted it the moment it was done.” Mom sniffed and closed her eyes, struggling for a deep breath.

“As I was about to leave the hospital, the nurse told me the baby was a boy. It was then that I remembered Leonard, my son whom I had lost in infancy. I know, it sounds crazy, but at that moment I felt as if the soul of Leonard had made a second attempt to come to this world, to my arms, and I had brutally rejected him.”

Mom couldn’t continue any longer. Her chest was heaving for air. I took her hand and stroked it lovingly. Who of us hasn’t done things that we terribly regret? Don’t the tears of remorse expiate the past? Shouldn’t we forgive ourselves as we are asked to forgive others? Mom listened, nodded, but she did not speak a word. She excused herself and went to her room. Tonight as I lay in the dark by her side, I pray Mom will find the boy in her dream, present her tears to him, and find peace in reconciliation.

The plumber? What bit of insight into world events could a plumber from New Jersey have?, I thought. The plumber from small-town America, driving his pick-up truck and proudly displaying the Stars and Stripes bandanna on his head, came up with an important observation: The laws of this country (America) have made us weak. Whenever we have a problem, our first reaction is to call our lawyer or someone else to take away our problems for us. This has made us weak. We have forgotten how to take care of our own business.

My teacher was in complete agreement with him. In fact, during his 11 years of living in America, he has commented frequently on this very thing. While he was growing up outside America, everything about America was cowboys and Indians and rugged individualism. America represented strength, bravery, and toughness. Now, while actually living in America, he sees a society of illness and weakness that is buried under materialism, violence, and greed. With the tragedy of September 11, the illusion of the my country’s collective consciousness that America, is somehow immune to external aggression was dealt a major blow, as was the psyche of the American public and its ability to cope with the reality of vulnerability.

What the plumber meant

The plumber’s statements alluded to a nation and people that once prided itself on its toughness, self-reliance, and pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps outlook on life driven by the Protestant work ethic. Too much material success, too many lawyers and psychiatrists, and too many service industries doing everything for everyone, however, is causing America to lose its edge and. essentially, its Americanness.

If you carefully recall how America once was and then notice where contemporary American culture is heading, you can see the signs clearly. The nature, not just the statistics, of social ills in America today point to deep-seated problems and stem from a loss of soulfulness. Go to your local bookstore or turn on Oprah, and almost daily you will see some show or read some article about a social or psychological malaise affecting some man or woman, child or group. Emotionally, people are hurting, confused, and depressed. Many are shunning traditional remedies for alternative or more eastern approaches to their problems.

Sadly, Americans are suffering and America is running out of ideas about how to save itself. Take schools and education. Now, American children essentially run the schools. Teachers everywhere, particularly in inner-city schools, are scared of their students. They find it nearly impossible to control them, let alone discipline them. Parents today are more prone to back their children in contentious teacher-student situations, no matter what the child does to earn the teacher’s displeasure, than to defend the teacher. Gone are the days when parents and teachers formed a united front to teach and enforce respect and correct children’s behavior. Now, teachers are under attack, and students are leading the assault. This is an example of the social backwardness that the Prophets warned us about as we approach the end of time.

Contributing factors

The weakening of America, as put by the plumber, also is being facilitated by the never-ending lawsuits in which society is literally drowning. (In)famous cases like the woman who won $2 million from McDonald’s because she spilled hot coffee on herself while driving is just an example of how the extreme litigiousness of American society is manufacturing greed to the point where people become fixated on suing over every little thing in the hope of making a quick buck. Judges frequently are forced to throw cases out of court due to superfluous lawsuits brought about by people trying to capitalize on the slightest misfortune.

This mentality of whatever wrong is done to me means that I am owed something, which often translates into large sums of money, has added a great deal to America’s psychological fragility. It is also another indicator of an increasingly atheistic worldview, one in which there is little belief that everything happens to us for a reason, even if that thing is as mundane as spilling hot coffee on ourselves. Such a mentality represents a major step backward for those who believe in the importance of meeting responsibilities before being granted rights and privileges. American culture today, however, teaches us to demand our rights regardless as to whether or not we meet our responsibilities. We have the right to sue for huge sums of money if we act like fools and put scolding hot coffee between are legs, even though commonsense would teach us that we have a responsibility to ourselves not to do it because it is physically dangerous.

These developments, which have evolved primarily over the past half century, have been heavily influenced by Western psychology, which is atheistic, materialistic, and has no soul or spirit. This is in stark contrast to religion and the concept of spirituality, which views human being as the complex meeting point of mental, physical, and spiritual faculties. The Western psychological schools of thought and their ranks of foot soldiers have greatly influenced Western society through the systematic application of God-less psychology. With their widespread application and influence on mainstream culture, psychological schools such as Freud’s admittedly do not address such human aspects as the soul, because such concepts are outside of the measurable, positivist scientific scope. In fact, Ahmed writes, Freud and many of his followers explained religion as nothing more than the universal obsessional neurosis.

An example of this from my time spent at an academy in New Jersey is of one particular teenage boy. His parents, unable to his behavior that included drug use, alcohol use, and free sex, sent him to a psychiatrist out of desperation. But after treating the boy several times, the psychiatrist, far from helping the boy understand why he needed to be more obedient and respectful to his parents so as to help mend the family according to its correct structure, sided with the boy and told the parents that their requiring him to pray regularly was borderline abusive and excessive, and that they should let him have more freedom to do what he wants.

Although only an example, this is how people in America”children more than anyone else”are being stripped of their humanness. They are being spoon-fed the notion that they need to indulge every urge, want, and desire in order to be happy. Ironically, the opposite effect has taken hold and its proof is in the pudding. As of 1998, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five American adults were considered to have suffered from some sort of diagnosable mental disorder. In addition, 4 of the 10 in America and other developed countries are such mental disorders as major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Creating a culture of dependency

The psychic deterioration of America is thus being facilitated through the use of modern-day psychology and exaggerated notions of mental illness to make people dependent on everything and everyone but God and themselves. Although modern psychology has made some positive contributions toward understanding human behavior, its atheistic roots and assumptions often make it work against religion and the critical role of spirituality in each individual’s development. Thus, it essentially goes against our very nature as human beings. As a result, religion has been reduced from a way of life to an extracurricular activity. Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike who are avid practitioners of their faiths often get strange looks and clich d labels such as fundamentalists if they speak publicly about religion or even use the word god in a professional context.

People all over the world who are experiencing more Western culture in their daily lives have to guard against the dangers of dependency culture. This is one of the downsides to Western culture, for it promotes a way of life that encourages individuals to do less for themselves, to look away from themselves, to complain when they do not get their way, to blame others for their problems, and to shy away from critiquing the man or woman in the mirror. As a result, we start to believe that we are owed things or that certain luxuries and status are due to us, regardless of whether or not we are meeting our responsibilities, are grateful to God for what we have, and are busy with the ongoing work of self-improvement and reflection.

In many parts of the world today, we are seeing larger numbers of believers devoted to God getting sucked into the traps of dependency culture. This is precisely how God is being replaced. This is how Western cultural elites have been able to systematically remove God and religion from everyday life with atheistic and materialist psychology”by making us dependent on things and people rather than God. On the contrary, however, as human beings we must seek help in constant prayer and dependence on God in order to rediscover our essential nature. We also should know how to resist any dependency culture devoid of God and religion.

Following the Prophets

Looking back on human history, we see that those most heroic of people, the Prophets, always relied on God. They did not pursue positions, take concessions from rulers, or complain to anyone other than God about their situation and the lack of support and humiliation they were made to receive.

From one’s own personal perspective, the drive toward self-perfection can be quite a challenge at times. The idea that everything comes to us from God, and that we have to train and condition ourselves to understand this and be grateful for whatever God sends us, is truly a struggle to put into practice. Every moment we have to fight the urge to complain about this, complain about that, demand to know why this happened or why that happened, blame our misfortunes on others, and just lie down and give in to our lower selves. Believers, however, must differentiate themselves through quiet determination and resignation to the fact that God is always in charge. Naturally, this includes improving the world around us, standing up to oppression, and doing our best to correct falsehoods. It is part of our collective responsibility, and must be conducted correctly.

Conclusion

People everywhere today are being conditioned to look outside of themselves first to solve their problems, and thus are becoming more and more incapable of keeping their own houses in order. This is the formula that is creating societies replete with self-hatred and weakness, which is what the plumber from New Jersey so poignantly picked up on. The signs are there in the form of social ills growing out of control. This is surely the path to self-destruction first, and societal destruction second.

As people who understand this, we must avoid making these same mistakes and help others by bringing them into the light of God’s grace and formula for ultimate success. The results of not doing so could be disastrous for all of humanity. In addition, America must take stock of itself and see if this is really the path it wants to follow. As the world looks to it for all types of leadership, among them moral leadership, America could help solve many of these problems by resurrecting and then following the ideals that made it great: spirituality, accountability to God and self, self-confidence, and individual striving to reach one’s full potential.

References

• Ahmed, B. Islamic Values and Ethics in Prevention and Treatment of Emotional Disorders. (2001). Online at www.crescentlife.com.
• National Institute of Mental Health. (1998). Online at: www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/numbers.cfm.
• Salahi, A. Muhammad, Man and Prophet: A Complete Study of the Life of the Prophet of Islam. Shaftesbury, UK: Element, 1995, 167.
• www.crescentlife.com/articles/islamic_values_in_treatment_of_emotional_disorders.htm.
• This article originally appeared online at www.islam-online.net. Reprinted with permission.

I could hear the voices of children crying in the ward at the other end of the corridor. My own poor child could only say ‘mum’ in fear while he was being examined. A little later, he fell asleep. After the examination the specialist took me aside. He had a look of deep concern and sorrow on his face:

-‘I am very sorry, doctor. It could be polio,’ he said.

I stared at him blankly, not believing what I was hearing. I could believe that some other mother’s child caught polio but I could never imagine that such a disaster would touch my own child. I no longer felt like a doctor but like a mother, waiting at her child’s bedside in an agony of anxiety.

-‘But he has not caught polio yet, has he?’ I asked again.

-‘No, not yet. I hope he will not’, the specialist answered. When he looked at my face, he noticed my worry and went on:

-‘He is sleeping now. You’d better go and get some sleep, too. I’ll call you if there is any change.’

I decided to do as I was advised. It was already very late, past midnight. I had been very busy since five o’clock in the morning, along with the other doctors. Everyone had been working very hard as the epidemic had got worse. I looked at my son’s red lace, longing to help him, to take away his pain, but there was nothing I could do except wait. I wanted to take him in my arms and surround him with all my love. But that was not possible then, so after a time I left his bedside and headed home.

The house was still and quiet when I opened the door. My husband had gone to Chicago on business. I did not tell him about our son’s condition. I did not want him to panic. Besides, if there was no change in his condition overnight, chances of his not getting polio would be very high.

I had to take some pills to help me sleep. I was deep in sleep when I heard the phone ringing. I got out of bed. It was four o’clock. The person on the phone was a woman, obviously very agitated and anxious.

-‘Is that the doctor?’ she asked.

I heaved a sigh of relief as I understood that I was being called out to visit a patient. As the woman described her son’s condition, I realized that it was probably another case of polio. After taking a note of her name and address. I couldn’t help taking a minute to phone the hospital to find out about my son: luckily, there was no change.

I felt utterly alone as I drove through the streets of the silent, sleeping city to the woman’s home. After some time, I noticed that this was the poorest part of town. On reaching the address, I stopped the car and got out. The desperate woman had been waiting and ran out to me, holding a candle. She grabbed my hand and said urgently, almost shouting:

-‘Be quick doctor! Be quick!’

I looked at her face, which was wet with crying. I couldn’t tell in the dark if the woman was young or old. I was quite shocked when I stepped into the cold one-room house. Even though I saw lots of different kinds of patients in my job, I had not seen poverty such as this before. Three thin children with pale, bony faces were sitting around an empty table in the corner of the room dimly lit by the one candle the mother was holding. The rest of the room was quite dark. However, I could just make out a child doubled up in pain at the other end of the room, moaning under a very old, patched blanket. The boy was about five years old, very thin and very weak. I told the woman I must go out to call the hospital. I did so from a telephone box in the market near the house and asked them to send an ambulance at once.

I went back and examined the other children. They were very weak but not in danger of polio. Just then the sick boy started to cry. The mother held my hand pleadingly. She wanted to learn what the illness was and how serious it was. I did not have the courage to tell her the truth.

-‘Your child is very ill, but we will do whatever we can,’ I said.

After lovingly caressing her son’s hair, the woman turned to me and said:

-‘Let’s pray’.

Although I had been visiting patients for years, I had never met one who offered to pray. I felt this woman must know something that I did not, so I agreed. I joined the children and the mother in their prayer. As the woman prayed, her mild soft voice pleading so sincerely touched me to the heart.

For a moment the hospital corridor came to mind again, the worried face of the specialist, my own dear son’s lovely face. Though far from the hospital, I felt just as if I was at my son’s bedside. I saw him as if standing in front of me and smiling. I tried to clear my mind of this picture. I watched the woman and the children still praying, now silently. The sincerity of their faith moved me so much that I could not help saying out loud and with utmost sincerity:

-‘Our Lord, do please accept these prayers!’

The mother then went over to the bedside of her sick child. The boy was sleeping peacefully. She straight away turned towards me and said joyfully:

-‘Do you see? Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate, has accepted our prayer.’

I was totally lost for words. The boy did not even wake up while being carried to the ambulance. By the time we got to the hospital, his breathing and pulse had returned to normal. I drove back to the woman’s home with the good news and, before leaving again for my day’s work at hospital, I gave her what money I had.

-‘I’ll call back again tomorrow evening,’ I said.

As I walked to my car, I looked up at the sky. The sun was rising and everything was becoming lit up. I was not worried this time as I drove to the hospital. A voice inside me was saying that my son would meet me smiling when I next saw him.