Garden History

The indescribable scent of a sky that has remained still for years, and the gentle caress of a breeze that whispers of the desert: this is how certain returns reveal themselves, fleeting yet profound, on an ordinary day graced by a rare, almost unattainable stillness. True peace seems never to fully belong to this world; yet humanity continues to chase it, often without even realizing. Only later does one understand that such a pursuit is like trying to grasp a balloon that b

The storm always ends, the sun returns to shine, and often what we could not see becomes visible once everything has passed—when the clouds that prevented us from seeing clearly have been swept away by the alchemy of time. Because time is something mysterious, known only to God: capable of making us believe that everything is motionless and that all things follow a predetermined order. But that is not the case. There is no order as defined by humankind—only transformations, f

Silence may sound like an ancient concept, but in this time more than ever, it has returned as a necessity. When you are forced to constantly explain yourself, to justify your existence, to ask for permission to be what you already are, something subtle begins to happen: your roots weaken. Not because they are fragile, but because they are being exposed for too long, searching for approval instead of nourishment. The Strength of Stillness Turn your head. Step aside. A tree do

Today, when we check the weather on Google, we want to know whether it will rain, whether the sun will shine, whether the wind will disrupt our plans—as if everything depended on a forecast. We no longer truly observe the sky. It has become a backdrop, a piece of data to glance at quickly. We have forgotten how to read it. Yet in many spiritual traditions—and particularly in Islam—the sky speaks. Rain is never just rain, wind is never only wind, and clouds are never merely cl

In a society that worships sameness, thinking becomes an act of defiance. I learned this early—before I even knew the word different . I was three years old. In kindergarten, a teacher pulled my hair because I hadn’t colored the stars yellow. Her scream split the room in two. The other children fell silent. There was no question, no curiosity—only punishment. My drawing was torn apart. An order was given: never do that again. That moment was the opening wound of a story too l

It is the voices of children in the courtyards that fracture the silence, an echo rising up, drawing the deepest memories to the surface: those of a life within life, as though another current were moving beneath the skin, while the very sense of being in the world turns dim, almost opaque. This is the story of a rose. She is called damascena, for she comes from Damascus. Her petals, over time, fell one by one, and still she endured, motionless for years, in a neighborhood dr

This is the story of Jasmine, a flower that once lived widely across Syria, when the world was still dormant and seemed to breathe slowly, sweetly, and safely. Jasmine was pure and luminous, climbing with quiet modesty along the railings of homes and the balconies of Damascus, carrying elegance through the air and releasing a fragrance woven from fragile, unspoken dreams. Anyone who passed beside her, even for an instant, felt suspended — captured by an intoxicating happiness

The five keys of the Unseen For the Persians, the word garden  meant Paradise : a place of beauty, harmony, and peace where everything exists in perfect correspondence. And it’s precisely this correspondence  that I’d like to reflect on. The garden is a gentle workshop of creation, one that speaks in the language of nature rather than the noise of humankind. Flowers reveal their secrets only to those who observe with patience. They trust that only a few will truly understand.

Today, I found a huge spiderweb in the old shed at the back of my garden. Soon, that shed will be replaced by a more welcoming little garden house — hopefully with a more confortable place to write. I spent a long time observing the tiny spiders under the eaves, sitting on my bench, wondering what I could write about. This morning, I woke up with a word in my mind: Al- Ankabut . I didn’t even remember what it meant. I looked it up, reopened the Qur’an, and reread the Surah. O

There’s a road I used to walk often. It wasn’t remarkable, just the same path I took when returning from long journeys—dust on my shoes,...