When the Night Whispers Defeat.

When the Night Whispers Defeat

By Kateb Shunnar

As I sit here, my hands trembling and my eyes heavy, I hear those quiet, sneaky whispers sliding into my mind: “It’s over. You’re finished. You’ve been beaten. The sun has set on your story.” And for a moment, I almost believe them. My home feels broken, my accounts sit deep in red, and my calling as a writer crawls at a pace so slow it makes me wonder if I misunderstood the path altogether. I feel lost. Truly lost.

There’s a strange kind of weight pressing on me, the same weight I imagine Ayyūb carried when everything he loved was stripped from him his health, his wealth, his family. He wasn’t just dealing with heartbreak; he was standing face-to-face with the question that has haunted humanity since the beginning: Why do the faithful suffer?

But here’s the thing. Ayyūb’s story isn’t about punishment. It’s about being tested in the fire, about the negative forces of the world betting against his soul, hoping to break his spirit, to prove his devotion was only tied to comfort. The Creator allowed that trial not as cruelty, but as proof that faith can live even when blessings are gone. And that hits me differently right now, because I feel like I’m standing in that very furnace, unsure if I’ll walk out whole.

I can’t lie. This trial doesn’t feel noble. It feels messy. It feels unfair. Some days, I don’t even have the words for my prayers. But deep down, I hear a whisper softer than the lies, a voice saying, “Stay. Endure. Don’t give up.”

And it reminds me of a story my grandmother used to tell me, a bit of folklore passed down in hushed tones under the stars.

She spoke of an old woman who lived in a dusty little village where drought had stolen the crops year after year. The people mocked her because, every morning, she carried a small clay jug down to the dry riverbed, filled it with nothing, and carried it home as though it were heavy with water. “She’s lost her mind,” they laughed. “She thinks she can drink air.” But she never missed a day.

One evening, when the whole village had grown weary of hope, she went again to that riverbed. Only this time, when she set her jug down, water flowed up from the earth so suddenly and so freely that the villagers had to scramble to catch it in pots and pans. Someone asked her, “Why did you keep going when the river was nothing but dust?” She smiled, her face lined with both pain and faith, and said, “Because the Creator doesn’t dry up faith. Only rivers.”

That story lives in me tonight. Maybe my accounts are empty, maybe my words are crawling out too slow, maybe my spirit feels battered but perhaps this is just my empty-jug season. Maybe I’ve been carrying something invisible, trusting that one day, the flow will come again.

Ayyūb’s life shows me that suffering doesn’t mean abandonment. Sometimes it’s the stage where the Creator reveals that our faith isn’t for sale. That even when stripped bare, we still belong to something greater. The test isn’t about breaking me; it’s about refining me.

So yes, I’m trembling. Yes, I’m weary. But I’m not done. The whispers of defeat don’t get the final word, not here. Not in me. The Creator does. And if my jug feels light today, I’ll still carry it, because I know what my grandmother knew: faith has a way of turning dust back into rivers.

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