The Night of Miraj

She had not planned to fall asleep during her tahajjud. The prayer rug was still beneath her knees when the world softened — edges blurring like ink in water — and she found herself standing somewhere she had never been, yet somehow recognised. The sky was not dark. It was a deep, luminous blue, the colour of water beneath moonlight, and the stars were not distant but close, breathing, as though the heavens themselves were alive. Layla pressed her hand to her chest. Her heart was steady. That surprised her most of all — that in a place so unlike anything she had ever known, she felt no fear. She felt, instead, like she had come home. A voice, gentle and vast all at once, said: "You have been searching." She had. For years, she had prayed and read and sought and questioned. She had sat in circles of knowledge and returned home still hungry. She had wept in sujood for things she could not name. "Yes," she said. And her voice, in this place, sounded like she had always wished it would — certain. Whole. "Then walk," said the voice. "And see."