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I went to a masjid today that wasn't marked by towering minarets or grand domes. It was a humble prayer space tucked away inside the quiet confines of an old-age home campus.
Places like these carry a specific kind of atmosphere. The air feels heavier, often thick with unspoken memories, quiet resignation, and the lingering echo of lives that once roared with activity but have now slowed to a whisper. I went there simply to offer my obligatory prayers.
I left carrying a lesson that will stay engraved on my heart forever.
As I stood in the rows, preparing myself, I found myself next to an elderly man. He was frail, his posture bent by the weight of time. He was an "inmate" here—a clinical word that felt too harsh for the gentle, weathered face I glimpsed.
Later, I would learn the fragments of his story. He was a survivor of the brutal COVID era, a period that had swept through his life like a wildfire, taking almost his entire family with it. He was left behind in the ashes, eventually finding his way to this facility to live out his remaining days among strangers.
Knowing his history, if I had heard him crying out to God in anguish, asking "Why me?", I would have understood. If I had heard him praying for a swift end to his loneliness, I would have sympathized.
But as the prayers ended and the mosque fell silent, I heard his hushed whisper as he made his niyyah (intention) for the prayer. The words were distinct, and they stopped me cold.
“...Niyyah karta hoon do rakat Namaz-e-Shukrana...”
(I intend to offer two units of the Prayer of Gratitude).
I froze. My own breath caught in my throat.
Shukrana? Gratitude?
I stared at the back of this frail man, stripped of everything the world tells us is necessary for happiness—family, home, independence. He was living in the final chapter of a tragic story. And yet, here he stood, raising his hands not to beg, not to complain, but to say thank you.
In that split second, the towering edifice of my own privilege came crashing down around me.
How often do my prayers sound like a grocery list of demands? How often is my connection with the Almighty defined by what I want, rather than what I have?
I complain when the traffic is slow. I get frustrated when my coffee order is wrong. I feel slighted by minor inconveniences. I have my health, my youth, a roof over my head, and a phone in my pocket buzzing with messages from friends. I am swimming in an ocean of bounties, yet I remain thirsty for more, blind to the water around me.
This man, standing in the ruins of what was once his life, had found something amongst the rubble that I had missed in my palace of comfort. He hadn't lost his perspective. He still had his breath. He still had his sanity. Most importantly, he still had his Imaan (faith)—the anchor that held him steady when the storm took everything else.
He wasn't looking at the empty chairs at his dinner table; he was looking at the prayer mat beneath his feet, grateful for the ability to stand on it one more time.
I went through the motions of my own prayer that day, tears blurring my vision on the sajdah place. I felt a profound sense of shame, followed by an overwhelming wave of humility.
We often think gratitude is what we feel after a big promotion, a new car, or a joyous wedding. That day, an old man in a forgotten corner of the city taught me that true gratitude is not a reaction to good fortune. It is a state of being. It is the defiant act of recognizing the Divine light even when you are surrounded by darkness.
If a man with "nothing" can find the heart to offer Shukrana Namaz, what excuse do the rest of us have?
Alhamdulillah for everything we have. And Alhamdulillah for the things we lost, which brought us back to Him.