The Three Things I Can Do With A Woman -By Omar Muaz

“There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn into her literature.”

—Lawrence Durrell, Justine

To cut the prologue short, it’s a woman who brought me to this world.

If there’s a creature on earth I could creep to love, to suffer for and to read or write on, it would unhesitatingly be a woman. Despite not subscribing to the quote or belief that; what a man can do, a woman can do – even better, I am satisfied that men are underdone without women. When the first man on Earth, Adam, was created, Allah the all-knowing, in His wisdom, created a woman, Hauwa/Eve, to eke-out his life. And as a Muslim who believes in the sound prophetic traditions, I have nodded that the greatest joy of this world is living in the arms of a [faithful] woman. I would rather be dead than to ever underestimate the power of women and their values.

001: The first thing I can do with a woman is to love her. love is often misinterpreted to mean lust of infatuation by some dystopian people. Love, to me, is the ability to share one’s suffering and distress. And that kind of love I mean to have for women. The person who owns my heart is a woman. She’s the woman I whispered in her ears; she’s the one I love and the one I would serve. My life, of its entirety, belongs to her. She’s the one I plan to live my life with until eternity.

The creature I love the most on the face of earth, so far, is a woman. She’s someone who carried me in her for nine months—I ate that she ate, drank that she drank and breathed the air she breathed. She’s the woman who had sleepless nights because of my inability to sleep. She’s the woman who felt angrier because people hollered at me. She’s the woman who watched over me day and night. She’s the woman who firstly understood my tongue. She’s the woman who loves me the most today and forever and she’s no one but my mother—Ummul-kairi Muaz. I celebrate her every year, month, week, day, hour, minute and second not only on International Women’s Day.

002: The second thing I can do for a woman is to suffer for her. Men are the protectors and maintainers of women because Allāh has made one of them to excel the other, and because they spend [to support them] from their means.¹ Every human being who has seized to have a healthy normal life has had weaknesses but women’s weaknesses are more than those of men. Consequently, they are in a desperate need to be protected and suffered for than any other creature. Marriage is almost the only business in which there is any chance of success, that the world (to its shame be it told) willingly leaves to women, that I strongly fight the opinion and can wholly stand to suffer it. Plus, home chores I will do alongside my woman.

003: The last but not the least, I ‘ll be their literature. It could be seen from my writings that I write a lot about women; be it fictional, nonfictional, poetic or prosaic. It actually depends on what and how one sees literature. It belike sounds weird or silly that I croon to be someone’s literature. Literature doesn’t mean written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit or leaflets and other printed matter used to advertise products or give advice as defined by Oxford or Wiki but a world abbuted on a serene land beautified by nature, to me.

To conclude; if I am to worship a creature beside God, it would definitely be a woman.

¹ [Nisā Q4:34].

—Omar Muaz, March 2021.
Happy International Women’s Day