And Their Father Was Righteous
A reflection after the dawn prayer on the blessing of righteous fathers — how the trace of a man's devotion lives on in his children after he is gone.
And Their Father Was Righteous
I went down to the dawn prayer after the call to stand had been given, and when I reached the mosque and caught the first rak’ah, I found a small boy standing ahead of me in the very first row.
When the prayer was over, the image of that small boy kept returning to me — a child I do not think had yet completed his twelfth year. And then there came to mind the memory of this same boy when he was younger, playing in our neighborhood; and had I seen him then, and seen the world he was growing up in, I would surely have foretold what would become of him.
And so I marveled.
Because I know their house — two streets from ours in the village — I remembered his brothers. If I searched my memory, I would find among them nothing but young men on the verge of being seized by the affliction of this age: its waywardness. I had even supposed that his eldest brother was one of those whose faces carry the mark of an old wound.
So my mind could not yet grasp why this boy was standing in the first row.
And then there rose before me the image of his father, who, I came to learn, had passed away while I was living outside the village some years ago.
He was a man I only ever saw at the dawn prayer, and I never knew him but with a smiling face, always.
He was — truly and in truth — a righteous man, one of those you see and know their righteousness at a glance.
Then I understood that the hand of God, and His doing, and His mercy, were here.
Afterward I saw the brothers at the Friday prayer, hurrying ahead of me to the row, listening closely to the imam.
How small I am, that I judged these people as lost — when it is I who am the lost one.
And I understood then that the nearness of God had never left them. For His servant who had stood in his prayer, God repaid the standing in the state of his children: He made them people of righteousness, and watched over them — in confirmation of His words, exalted is He:
﴿وَكَانَ أَبُوهُمَا صَالِحًا﴾
And their father had been righteous.
— Surah al-Kahf, verse 82