Transforming Sorrow into Song
Hayat Aamir succeeds in the great task of saying yes to life despite all the horror it entails. To the question “What do you do?” the poet’s answer is “I praise”, as Rilke phrased it. Why is it so? It is through praise that man rises to the challenge of “the deadly and monstrous… the nameless and the anonymous.” Heschel noted that "There are three ways in which a man expresses his deep sorrow: the man on the lowest level cries; the man on the next level is silent; the man on the highest level knows how to turn his sorrow into a song." Jesus said that “Blessed are they that weep and wail, for they shall be comforted.” One of the greatest contributions of Islamic culture – great poets of marsiya and traditional exponents of Shiite perspective – to the world heritage is teaching how suffering/tragedy may ennoble us and be an instrument of gnosis ( irfan ). Our most blessed task consists in blessing that which made the blessing called life possible and this task is performed...