Aisha descends to the underworld

Author's name: Buthaina Al-Essa

In "Aisha Descends to the Underworld," Buthaina Al-Essa's philosophical work highlights the interconnectedness between life and death, the worldly and the afterlife, offering a different perspective on time. It's the story of a mother who lost her son and wanted to keep his memory alive after his tragic death. There's nothing more painful than losing a loved one, and nothing more horrific than the gradual fading of his memory, especially when death comes by drowning right in front of her eyes. After her child's tragic death, the mother refuses to accept the idea of ​​life after him, so she decides to descend into the underworld through writing. On her way to the underworld, she must pass through seven gates, and now she's crossing the seventh gate, on the final threshold of departure. She sees nothingness glittering, radiating, and absorbing her soul. However, there is a condition for entering this world: she must shed her raw wound—her son and his memory. Can a mother exist outside of this wound? "O Aisha (the laws of the netherworld were carefully and completely formulated, so do not discuss the rituals of the netherworld, O Aisha), your child is your pain, your pain is you. The wound now has your face, your name, and your panting breath. The one looking at you does not know where your wound begins and where your scream ends. You cling to the ropes of your tears as if they were your salvation. You are clothed in your eternal sorrow and you hurt the world with your pain. The universe cannot be your victim, O Aisha. Remove your wound, kiss it between the eyes and release it, free it, the precious ghost of it, and allow it to depart. All the relationships you left behind in the six previous gates were to prepare you for this. None of them compare to this in weight and density. Salvation will not be written for you except by transcending yourself. Be filled with love, O Aisha, and set its spirit free. What are you now? A pure spirit." And now Aisha confesses that for the first time in her life, “...for the first time in my life I have been able to be myself, without being a wife, a mother, or a daughter, without being anything other than what I am, a pure spirit. My sense of my spiritual truth is so strong, I don’t need to die to feel that... So let me stop writing and go experience the world...” And after “Aisha Descends into the Underworld,” a novelistic work that entails a great effort on the level of language, discourse, techniques, and connotations, and perhaps it is greater than the story requires, which in turn requires an effort in reading