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The idea of a garden has always been central to Islam for reasons that are at once hopeful,
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because nature is so beautiful, and deeply melancholy because life itself can never be
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made perfect.
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For Islam, the world we inhabit will always be mired in khaṭīʾa or sin. No human enterprise
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or institution can ever be without significant degrees of dhanb or wrong-doing: jealousy,
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stubbornness, rage and lack of forgiveness predominate. Only in the next life can we
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hope to escape the irritation and the agony; only in jannah or paradise, will we be assured
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of true contentment. In paradise, to listen to the Quran, there be flowing rivers, flowers,
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incorruptible waters and unchangeable milk, golden goblets, 'virgin companions of equal
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age' and rows of cushions set out in the balmy shade of fruit trees.
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Yet because this might all be a long way off, Islam recommends an unusual technique to prevent
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us from losing our poise and despairing: we should become bustani or gardeners. The enlightened
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should redirect their frustrations with the state of humanity towards the construction
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of a hadiqa or garden which can, within its limited circumference, with due modesty, be
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endowed with many of the qualities of the eventual garden of paradise.
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Our garden should have flowing water, some reflecting pools, symmetrical flower beds,
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fruit trees and places to sit. Everywhere where Muslim civilisation spread, gardens
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developed along with it and in the drier regions, where nothing would grow, flowers and trees
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were represented on carpets, which functioned as miniature mobile gardens that could be
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carried on the back of a camel. When the Muslims reached Southern Spain, the climate allowed
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them to create pieces of horticulture which astonish and seduce us to this day.
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A telling observation about gardening is that almost everyone over the age of sixty-five
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is concerned with it, and almost no one in their late teens has ever evinced the slightest
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interest in it. The difference isn't coincidental. A person's enthusiasm for gardening is inversely
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correlated to their degrees of hope for life in general. The more one believes that the
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whole of existence can be rendered perfect, that love and marriage can be idyllic, that
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our careers can reward us materially and honour us creatively, the less time we will have
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for beds of laurel or thyme, lavender or rosemary. Why would we let such minor interventions
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detain us when far greater perfection is within reach?
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But a few decades on, most of our dreams are liable to have taken a substantial hit, much
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of what we put our faith in professionally and romantically will have failed, at which
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point we might be ready to look with different, and significantly more sympathetic eyes, at
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the consolations offered by cyprus trees and myrtle hedges, geraniums and lilies of the
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valley. No longer will gardening be a petty distraction from a mighty destiny, rather
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a shelter from gusts and squalls of despair.
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Islam is appropriately wise in its ambitions. It doesn't tell its followers to plough
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themselves a farm, nor does it advise them to focus on a window box. The scale is carefully
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calibrated: neither too big to mire us in unmanageable expense and bureaucracy nor too
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small to humiliate and sadden us. The garden becomes a perfect home for our remaining pleasures
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in a troubled world; it's where we can repair to contemplate islands of beauty once we have
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come to know and sorrowfully navigated oceans of pain.
