Revisiting Sex Without Love

A while back, I wrote about Sharon Olds’ poem Sex Without Love and its application to Muslims.

I was thinking about that poem again, when I found out about, surrogacy contracts . In its core essence, a surrogacy contract is between a party who wants a baby and a mother who will act as a surrogate to carry a child through pregnancy and then give the child to party – ending her relationship with the child at birth. It’s much more complicated than that since there is no uniform law on it, with some states absolutely against it, some for it, and others totally have no law on the matter (find out what your state law. is on the issue.

I mention surrogacy contracts and the Olds poem because Olds actually mentioned something similar to this:

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? […]
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away.

Surrogacy agreements got me thinking about this because Olds’ poem uses the example of the mothers giving away their children to equate how emotionally cold one’s act is when its sex without love.

The whole notion is upsetting to me. I feel as if the surrogate mother is an unaware victim. I say this because I personally believe that no woman can waive the right to a child she carries for months and endures the difficulties of pregnancy and childbirth, only to hand the living being over to another. While the law has made it very hard to engage in ‘selling babies,’ I still feel that it the core level – the law is sanctioning the transactions of humans.

A Requiem of Self Sorrow

How did…

How did my heart become the cold rock that
Lies buried in dark abyss of an ocean
Of Isolation from

Allah.

Kyuh hum umpe dil ko dukhate h'ei
Jab humarah dil dukh sayhe baraeh hai

(Why do we wound our hearts
When our hearts are wounds themselves)

I felt something today, something that reached me deeper than the words that come as sound waves to my body. Today the words meshed through my clothing, through my skin and drowned my heart.

When my heart had drowned, I felt void in my chest.

All of this from words? Just simple words.

Words.

It has been a long time since I have met a person who has recently become Muslim. I didn't meet them today... but their words met me.

This person became Muslim only recently, last Sunday. I was told that they grew up believing without Allah... as a Muslim they other day, they started to cry when driving and seeing the trees and the creation of Allah.

I... I reflected on why I no longer felt this... did I ever feel this. In my heart I felt sorrow because I had neglect my heart to the point I could not feel this...

May Allah bless this Muslim for helping me see the condition I had fallen to myself.

Realizing this is only half the step, the next is to correct it. May Allah help me.