On a warm July morning, while waiting for my appointment in the hospital corridor, I found myself overwhelmed by the gloominess of the dark hallway and escaped into my imagination. My mind was already flipping through the pages of a sketchbook. While my eyes were fixed on the end of the long corridor, voices began to echo inside my head.
A corridor can represent a time of sorrowful or joyful waiting, a fluctuation between fear and hope. These hallways have witnessed moments of joyful tears and painful screams. There are days when we run through them, flapping our wings towards freedom, and days when our steps retreat, leaving us confined within four walls.
Which corridor is harder to walk, wait, and breathe in, I wonder?
School, hospital, or prison? Which one would you choose? Perhaps most of the time, we traverse these corridors not by choice but by circumstance, living out our fate.
School corridors… Where we walked step by step from childhood to youth, where our dreams grew along with us, where we faced the pivotal moments of high school and university exams. Those hallways, seemingly endless, where time stood still, where we either ran away or rushed through with excitement.
Prison corridors lead innocent people, with their heads held high and their foreheads clear, to the School of Joseph (prison). They unite different courtyards under the same sky in prayer, and foster dreams of running on the slopes of Paradise with loved ones.
Hospital corridors open different doors to birth and death happening simultaneously. It either becomes a reunion or the night of union (with the Divine).
In those hospital corridors, we either receive joyous news or hear of trials to come. We say, “Such is life.”
Indeed, such is life…
Isn’t the womb, where we await birth for nine months, also a corridor prepared by our Lord’s infinite wisdom and compassion, leading to the world?
Picture by Betül Sena Güneş.
And the realm of Barzakh, starting with the end of worldly life, is a corridor where we await the Hereafter.
Some corridors have no exit.
We must go back and pass through corridors that have an exit, like repenting for a mistake and making amends…
The choices we make using our life’s capital, the direction and correctness of our steps in the corridors of life, will lead us to the place we deserve.
