'Abasa · Makki · ayah 39 of 42

'Abasa 80:39

ضَاحِكَةٌ مُّسْتَبْشِرَةٌ

“Laughing, rejoicing at good news.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Laughing and rejoicing, these faces brim over like a pond after rain, glowing with the last and best good news they will ever receive.

A reflection

When the pond laughs

Ḍāḥika, 'laughing', comes from a root the lexicons describe with lovely pictures, and they are well established. The root means laying bare and coming into view. Laughter is the face opening and the teeth showing from gladness of heart; the front teeth were even called 'the laughers'.

Then the Arabs used the word for nature. A cloud laughed when lightning flashed from it. The earth laughed when it put out its flowers. A palm's sheath laughed when it split open. And a pool laughed when it brimmed over.

So the laughter of this ayah is an overflowing. Something held in finally opens and spills out, the way a pond fills to its lip and runs over.

Picture a farmer's wife in a long, dry summer. For weeks she has watched the pond behind the house shrink to a cracked, muddy circle. The animals are thirsty and so is the land. Then one night a storm breaks. In the morning she walks out and finds the pond full to the brim, water spilling over its edge into the field. She stands in her wellingtons and laughs out loud, alone, for no reason she could explain to anyone.

That is ḍaḥk in its root sense. Joy that has been waiting, then arrives in abundance and overflows.

The commentators explain these faces as laughing from joy at the bliss and honour Allah has given them. It is the laughter of people who have waited, perhaps through a whole lifetime of dry seasons, and have finally seen the rain.

Many of the faces described here spent their lives holding things in: grief swallowed, patience practised, good deeds hidden, prayers made in the night. On that Day, all of it opens. The pond brims. The palm sheath splits. The face laughs.

If you are in a dry season now, hold on to this picture. The waiting is not wasted. There is a morning coming when the pond will be full.

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.