Voice of British Muslim Women

Yusra Dahri, Tilford

Paradise is a garden.
So I collect good deeds,
And as if they were seeds
I try to plant them.
But I am too eager to check
If they have borne fruit.
I pull out my good deeds
Without giving them the chance
To set root.

Paradise is a garden.
But I must remember that I am
A poor judge of my own character.
I doubt myself and question my intentions.
I watch my good motives rot in a second.
My harshest winter has always been myself
So I cannot tell the best time to harvest.
I must leave it to the Gardener.

Paradise is a garden.
I try to strive in the principles
Of the Gardener:
Water. Light. Patience. Hope.
Even strong winds push out stagnant air.
Even darkness triggers growth.
All this I know, but I still have to
Tie up my fingers with garden string,
Push sticks into the dirt as deep as they will go,
So on nights when I’m blind with fear
Something holds me
From destroying everything I’ve ever known.

Paradise is a garden.
Are we the seeds, or are we planting them?
Somehow, when we do good, we also become it.
But there is still a hard shell around me.
I need water, light, patience
So that it might soften.
I need hope to believe that inside me
There is something worth growing.

Paradise is a garden.
And sometimes I wonder why I exist at all.
If I am a seed, then what is it for?
I blink slowly out of the earth,
My small arms outstretched.
The longer I live, the stronger I am drawn to it:
The Gardener’s presence.
Why He gives me Light, Water, Patience,
I cannot know. But the time I have spent
Among living things has caused me to hope
That it is because the Gardener takes pleasure
In watching me grow.

Paradise is a garden.
Each day of my life is another flower
That You give to me. Guide me
So that I treat this world as gentle as a petal.
Let me hold it well, but not too tightly.
Remind me that even if everything
I do here dies, all my fallen leaves
Will prepare the soil
For the next garden of my life.
The one You have tended to
All this time.