The Flowers of Multan

"You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue or church." — Shams of Tabriz

Some memories don't fade — they just wait quietly until the right season brings them back.

It's spring again. And every year when the air turns soft and the world starts blooming, I find myself back in Multan, a child again, walking through a flower mela with my mother, my younger brother and sister trailing close behind.

The exhibition was a full sensory event. Rows upon rows of colour — tulips standing upright like little soldiers in reds and yellows, pansies with their dark velvety faces, orchids that looked too elegant for an outdoor fair, jasmine releasing that unmistakable sweetness into the warm air. Roses everywhere, in every shade. My mother would slow down at each stall, and we would slow down with her.

But the one that stopped me completely — the one I still think about — was the Apple of Sodom. A wild, unusual thing. Purple blooms on a plant that looked like it belonged to another world. I didn't know its name at the time. I just knew it looked like nothing else there, and I couldn't stop staring. There's something about a flower that doesn't follow the usual rules of beauty that gets under your skin.

We also watched a 3D rollercoaster simulation that day — my first time ever. I remember gripping the armrest, convinced I was actually falling, my brother laughing beside me. Strange how a flower exhibition became the setting for that memory too.

What strikes me most now, looking back, is not any single flower or any single moment. It's the feeling of standing in the middle of so much beauty and thinking — almost involuntarily, the way a child thinks — who made all of this? The patterns on a pansy petal. The geometry of an orchid. The dramatic strangeness of the Apple of Sodom. None of it accidental.

I remember feeling grateful for my eyes. Not in a dramatic way — just quietly, genuinely. That I got to see this. That I was there. Alhamdulillah.

Shams of Tabriz said you can study God through everything and everyone in the universe. A seven-year-old at a flower mela in Multan didn't know Shams of Tabriz. But he knew, standing between rows of jasmine and strange purple blooms, that something far greater than himself had arranged all of this. That was enough.

I'm older now. My tastes have shifted — I've traded the Apple of Sodom for black roses, which feel more like me. Dark, deliberate, beautiful in a way that takes a moment to appreciate. But the gratitude hasn't changed. If anything it's grown quieter and deeper — less of a feeling, more of a posture.

This spring I built a sakura theme for this website. Cherry blossoms in the navbar, a road lined with pink trees in the footer, petals drifting across every page. I told myself it was a fun technical challenge. But if I'm honest, it started much earlier — with a kid from Multan who went to a flower mela and never quite got over the feeling of standing inside something beautiful.

Nature has always been the best reminder. And the eyes to see it — that's the gift.