O most beloved, will you accept this humble supplicant?

O beloved, how I long for you so,
How I wish to be with you,
How I wish to mesh my existence with yours,

O most beloved, will you accept this humble supplicant?

O dearest, I am no Gauss, no Faraday,
No Ramanujan, no Einstein,
No Ulam, no Fermi,

O most beloved, will you accept this humble supplicant?

But O how I long to be illuminated by your light,
To be cured of my blindness,
To be saved from my darkness,
To be intoxicated with your divine scent,

O most beloved, will you accept this humble supplicant?

O purest, transport me back to Los Alamos,
To Göttingen, to Lwów,
To that time before time, with only He who is you,

O most beloved, will you accept Sadik, this humble supplicant?

For Comparison, a Traditional Sindhi Maulud

Remembering, my little heart longs for the beloved.

Difficult desolate distances,
Dear beloved makes me travel,

Remembering, my little heart longs for the beloved.

O Generous One,
Show me the tomb of the Prophet

Remembering, my little heart longs for the beloved.

Woe on my condition that I forgot his abode

Remembering, my little heart longs for the beloved.

Love for Medina kills the “rebel” Abd ur-Ra’uf

Remembering, my little heart longs for the beloved.

“Maulud for Sadik”, implicitly voiced by myself, is written in a similar poetic vein to that of Sindhi mauluds, short lyrical poems of five to ten verses on subjects ranging from the Prophet’s birth to his life and character. The initial verse, written in italics, is the thal, repeated until the last verse, where it is modified to include the name of the poet, Sadik. However, rather than eulogizing the Prophet, this poem’s object of focus is mathematical and scientific truth. Yet it is similar to a maulud in that it expresses deep affection for the truth, as evinced by phrases such as “O beloved, how I long for you”, “to be intoxicated with your divine scent”, “O dearest”, and “O most beloved,” and also yearning for the old, great centers of physical and mathematical discovery, “Los Alamos… Göttingen… Lwów”, in the eighth verse, in analogy to yearning for the city of the Prophet, Medina.

And the acknowledgment that the poet is not a great mathematician or physicist of old in the fourth verse, yet still wishes to pursue the truth, is analogous to the virahini’s primal quest for the Prophet and his place of burial, even though she has no training as a religious scholar. Further analogies are symbolized in the sixth verse, this time between the light of truth, Prophetic light, and God’s light, with God and the truth becoming one entity in the eyes of the poet in the second to last verse, with the uttering of the phrase “with only He who is you”.

The last verse then connects back with the title of the poem, “Maulud for Sadik,” creating confusion in the mind of the reader/listener, as it appears that Sadik plays both the role of the poet and the object of admiration, leading to the natural conclusion that the poet wrote this poem to glorify himself. But this ambiguity is alleviated when one realizes that Sadik means “one who is truthful,” as it becomes clear that the title is meant to be interpreted as “Maulud for the Truth,” whereas the Sadik of the last verse refers to the poet himself.