Dear Makkah,
I have known you without knowing you. I knew your name before I knew your streets, and I knew the Ka'bah long before I understood what it feels like to stand before it. For years, I have turned in your direction without ever seeing what lies beyond the horizon. Perhaps that's the strange beauty of you: where you can be thousands of miles from someone's home and still feel remarkably close to their heart.
People speak of you differently. They do not simply say they visited. They speak of returning, as though some part of them had always been waiting there. They remember you with softness reserved for things that cannot quite be replaced. Maybe that's because Makkah is never simply a place on a map. It's a place the heart can spend years moving toward.
When someone finally reaches you, they do not arrive empty-handed. They bring their unanswered duas, their gratitude, their regrets, their hopes and the people they have carried in their hearts along the way. They arrive with an entire life behind them and stand before the Ka'bah asking Allah for what only He can give.
I only wonder how many people think about you before they ever see you. How many times your name is mentioned in a dua, how many people quietly save for the journey and how many families speak about the day they dream to go. You're part of so many people's lives, that's what I find most beautiful about you. You're a place we've known from a distance, a place longed for, and, if Allah wills, a place we will return to soon.
Until then, Makkah, I'll leave you where you have always belonged, in the direction of our prayers & somewhere very deep in our hearts...
