Home » Mind & Soul » Shi'ite Islam » Once upon a Time, Someone didn’t Make a Back-up

Once upon a Time, Someone didn’t Make a Back-up

© Fatima Aly Jaffer

I went AWOL after my last article in March, and to make up for it, here's a little true story to get Shiasm Explained back on track...

Some weeks ago, my computer crashed. Completely, totally and irreversibly. It took with it all my work over the past few years. Work that I had not backed up.

You see, my computer had very - what I like to call - Kenyan tendencies. It usually bounced back from about any problem it ever came across. Viruses were always removable, light fluctuations never seemed blow any circuits (and I don't have a UPS either), power surges seemed only to energize it. It served me as faithfully as I neglected it.

Until the last crash.

For a few days after I got the news from the service workshop, I was in denial. I couldn't accept that everything I had ever considered to be a part of me was gone, everything that I had always known would be there, wasn't.

After the denial came the depression. How was I supposed to get back all those words? As a writer, I squeeze each word out, washed in my sweat and blood, wrung through the tissue of my heart before placing it on that clean, white space to make it's impression on the world. And I had lost each and every syllable.

It was as if my world had come crashing down (I am a little melodramatic by nature so that's about exactly what it felt like). Nothing would ever be the same again. I would never manage to make up all that lost effort, all those wonderful ideas, all those half completed stories ... the list was endless.

It took me over a fortnight to come to terms with it and then suddenly, I sat back, took a deep breath and looked for a place to rest my tired spirit. I was exhausted from the emotional roller-coaster I had been riding for days.

And that was when I felt the peace around me. I can't explain where it came from or how I realised it existed and frankly I don't care to. Because riding on the crest of that calm wave of silence, came one of the greatest lessons I have ever learnt in life.

I can't lose the really important stuff. It's impossible.

I lost my work, but I can't lose the source of all those words. And if I could think them, weave them and put them down once, I can do it again.

The copyright of the article Once upon a Time, Someone didn’t Make a Back-up in Shi'ite Islam is owned by . Permission to republish Once upon a Time, Someone didn’t Make a Back-up in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.