Al-Mursalat · Makki · ayah 43 of 50

Al-Mursalat 77:43

كُلُوا۟ وَٱشْرَبُوا۟ هَنِيٓـًٔۢا بِمَا كُنتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ

“[Being told], "Eat and drink in satisfaction for what you used to do."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Eat and drink with nothing bad trailing behind it — the one meal in this whole account with no hidden cost folded into its pleasure.

A reflection

Pleasure with no bill arriving afterwards

This word's home, the lexicons explain, is food: something pleasant, easy to take in, that brings no harm behind it. The same root was used of the tar rubbed onto a mangy camel's sores, perhaps for the relief and healing it brought — good that costs nothing further once it has been received.

Every pleasure in this life carries at least a small shadow somewhere behind it. The richest meal still asks something of digestion. The sweetest rest still ends. Even generosity given freely can leave a quiet debt of gratitude behind it that someone, somewhere, has to carry. Hanīʾ names the one kind of good that asks nothing further at all — enjoyed completely, in the moment it is given, with no bill of any kind arriving later to collect on it.

That is worth sitting with as something genuinely rare rather than simply pleasant. Nearly everything called "guilt-free" in ordinary life turns out, on closer inspection, to still cost something eventually. This is the one meal in the whole of this surah's account — set directly against flying sparks and a false shade earlier — where the word itself insists there is nothing hidden left to find.

That absence of hidden cost is worth connecting back to the camel's healing tar. A remedy is only truly good when it actually resolves the wound rather than merely numbing it for a while; a salve that masked pain while the sore underneath kept worsening would not deserve this word at all. The same root being used for both the meal and the cure suggests this reward is not simply pleasant in the moment. It is pleasant because whatever it answers has been genuinely, permanently resolved, not covered over.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.