The Inevitable (Sonnet 1), read by Jak Kilby

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We were together in Abu Dhabi, judges of the international arts competition, Al-Mahabba Awards, to express love of the Prophet Muhammad, prayer and peace be on him.

When we were leaving, each to our own ways, Sidi Abdal-Hayy gave me a parting gift, one of his many books of ecstatic verse, ‘Ramadan Sonnets’. Shortly after, I was on the plane to London. I decided to delve into those verses. Abdal-Hayy wrote these sonnets daily each and every day of Ramadan that year, a reflection of his thoughts and feelings at that time.

I opened the book. He’d written inside, “For Muhsin, with love and respect in Allah, co-judges of the unjudgable, 4/26/08, Abu Dhabi,” and signed.

As I flitted this title page, printed information, Abdal-Hayy’s words to me, ‘Bismillah’, Ramadan Sonnets, poems, May 9 – June 11, 1986. Subhan’Allah! I shuddered. I was shaken and moved. That Ramadan, that year. It was the time I shuddered and was shaken as I made my shahadah in London Central Mosque, Regents Park. On that very first day of that Ramadan, simultaneous to the poet putting pen to paper to shape words and express.

The first thing I did on that return to London was to write an email to Abdal-Hayy to tell him of our mutual moment in time. He replied, “I was writing while you were grinning wide from ear to ear, as if soaked in cream cheese. That was the best endorsement of my work I ever had”.

P.S. And he wrote in the last verse of that first sonnet on our mutual moment, “And The Inevitable surely comes”.

Jak Muhsin Kilby, Malaysia, May 2016