Futūḥāt - Openings of The Heart
A conversation without sound
I sat beneath an old tree, its roots were ancient, gnarled like the hands of the earth in duʿa’, holding secrets beneath the soil. The kind of tree that had listened to centuries of wind and whispers. I leaned my back against its trunk - firm, grounded, still - and felt something wash over me. A stillness that wasn’t empty, but brimming. The kind of stillness that feels soaked in dhikr, the tree itself had been glorifying its Lord for decades before I ever came to rest at its feet and share in its essence.
Full of meaning, full of presence, full of Al Illah. I closed my eyes and listened, not with ears, but with the inward faculty, the baṣīrah, the inner eye of the heart. The Qur’an was reverberating within me, verses I didn’t recite aloud but felt vibrating through my bones. And in that stillness, the āyah welled up within me:
‘Verily, in the creation of the heavens and the earth… are signs for those of understanding’ (3:190).”
Signs.
The world is full of signs.
And then, two souls approached.
A man and a woman, smiling, kind-eyed, gesture to sit beside me. I nodded, welcoming them in the way you welcome old friends, even when you’re only just meeting. At first, we simply shared space. But slowly, my awareness shifted. Their hands were moving, fluidly, intentionally. It was sign. They were both deaf. And in that realisation, something inside me expanded.
Something opened in me. A futūḥ. A spiritual unveiling. Not just of awareness - but of awe. We were communicating now - not through sound, not through language as I knew it - but through expression, through presence, through the raw sincerity of two human souls desiring to meet.
And somehow, we did meet.
Somehow, in the shade of that tree, we spoke.
I do not remember how it began.
I just know that soon we were in the midst of the most heartfelt, soul-rich encounter I have been blessed with in recent moments.
Their hands moved like du’a, like calligraphy in the air. Their faces, expressive with joy and wonder, lit with a kind of love that words rarely carry. It was as if I had been invited into a world beyond noise - a space where only Al Haqq could pass through.
They asked me what I did, what I was doing there, and I attempted to explain, through the help of gestures and shared intuition, that I work with the heart. That I teach about al-Qalb - the vessel of knowing, of longing, of returning to Allah Azzawjal. And their eyes widened with fascination.
There was such joy. Pure, radiant joy. They laughed when I expressed things awkwardly but lovingly. They taught me words in sign. I mirrored them, clumsily at first, then slowly with more fluency. And something in me was shifting the entire time - a realm of perception expanding.
Because suddenly, I was aware: