LAILA: the one thing Qais never live without.

The month my parents married, the Poet wrote his most famous narrative poem, Laila.  Reconfiguring the Laila-Majnu story, the poem centres on Laila, bereft after Qais has been banished from her presence. Unable to endure the thought of a life without him, she seeks out his likeness everywhere – in other men (she is soon regarded as a town whore), in nature (sometimes the wind brushing her neck reminds her of his touch), in art (she risks her life to steal a painting, because a man at the edge of its crowd scene leans forward in a manner suggestive of the angle of Qais’s back of the first he bend to embrace her). But all her attempts to find her Beloved’s exact copy lead only to frustration, so she starts to adopt his manner of speech, his gait, his dress, his expressions in order to keep his characteristics alive. She becomes an outcast, shunned by all of her madness and, driven out of town, she makes her way into forest where Qais has been living – and walks past without seeing him. He watches her go and senses something familiar in her, but is too distracted by composing love poems about Laila to give the matter much thought. Years go by and one day, she meets a young man who greets her by the name ‘Qais’. She realized she has finally succeeded in becoming her Beloved and need never be without him again.  In that moment of triumph she looks into forest pool and sees Qais’s face where her reflection should have been and remembers: the one thing Qais could never live without is Laila.

From:

Broken Verses

By Kamila Shamsie

Who is guilty for cartoon issue: Denmark or we?

I strongly condemn the anti-Islamic act of Norway and Denmark. They do not have any right to do such act. But according to the freedom of expression they can write, sketch or publish anything that they want to do. But one thing is really disturbing me, who is really guilty for all that: Denmark and Norway, who had misused their rights of expression or we, who had built a mistaken image of our religion on their minds?

People understand what the see in real practice not what they told in speeches, literature and books. In real practice, we proudly say ourselves citizens of ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF PAKISTAN, but where is Islam in this republic??? Loud music, western dresses, corruption, dishonesty, no respect for elders, no affection for younger… that’s all isn’t Islamic teachings. If we don’t have any respect for our teaching and our religion so why we expect that others will do so.

These days, the commercials and dramas and shows we see on TV, none of them airing anything Islamic from story to dialogues, from dresses to festivals and from traditions to moral values. We are keeping on copying whatever shown on the other side of border. We released, I must say proudly release their movies which shows Muslims as extremists, corrupted, terrorists, drug dealers, smugglers, suicide bombers but nobody protest against that. We do proud hanging posters in which girls wearing western clothes, mini skirts, short dresses but no one protest in front of concerned authorities to remove those things. Why don’t our leaders and ullamas and moulivis condemn that? That’s something more serious than cartoon issue. Those cartoons were made and published by non Muslim in a non Islamic country. But these all activities that I mentioned above are going on in an Islamic country.

If we want other to respect our religion and our values so I think first we must respect our religion and values. Its we who give them opportunity to do such things. It was portrait of Islam made by us which Denmark and Norway published. If we want the whole world to respect Islamic values I think we should with our homeland first. We must have to stop each and every non Islamic activity in our country. Otherwise we don’t have any right to show the finger on others.

“A good name is like a good will, is got by many actions and lost by one” (Lord Jeffery)