Among Geniuses at 4:44 - Lesson from the Unseen.

                                   Standing with my friends, Hasnol J.Saidon and Najjar Musawil.

(Photo: with my dear friends and kindred spirits, Hasnol J. Saidon and Najjar Musawir — standing on a fallen tree trunk, our fists raised in shared victory. Hasnol once directed the Museum Gallery at USM, while Najjar served as visiting professor from Illinois. Both men I hold in the highest regard — artists, thinkers, and brothers in the pursuit of truth.)
 

Among Geniuses at 4:44

Lessons from the Unseen

I woke up at 4:44 AM, and the clock’s triple four seemed to echo in my chest like a hidden chord. I knew it was not an ordinary hour. Something had visited me in the night — a teaching, perhaps — wrapped in a dream as vivid as it was unsettling.

In it, I found myself walking among geniuses. Two young prodigies, one Chinese and one European, both seemed born of the same celestial order — their eyes quick with the light of intellect. We sat at a table, and I felt awkward, an impostor among the mathematically gifted. I had always disliked numbers — or feared them. Yet, as they began sketching their abstract forms, I found myself drawing too, and what emerged from my hand was far more intricate than theirs. Still, I could not accept belonging among them.

We visited a college-like place filled with bright young minds. Their teacher — an elderly lady, Asian yet not quite — greeted us with calm authority. There was something timeless in her face, like she had seen civilizations rise and fall and still found them all one and the same.

Then came the bus ride at the edge of the cliff. Our driver, a young European girl, smiled as she performed what seemed like madness — driving half the vehicle over the precipice before making an impossible U-turn back to safety. My heart nearly leaped

out of my chest, but we survived. Her reckless mastery frightened and inspired me both.

Earlier in the dream, I had seen another young woman, one who collapsed into a seizure before my eyes, writhing on the floor. My cousin watched calmly while I recoiled in fear, thinking her possessed or ill. Perhaps that, too, was a lesson — that raw genius, unbalanced by grace, burns itself out.

When I awoke, I remembered my midnight declaration — how, under the open sky with a cigarette in hand, I had spoken half in jest:

“I wish to be claimed as a genius in my lifetime.”

The dream answered me, not with flattery, but with initiation.

I was shown that genius is not a crown to wear but a balance to master — between intellect and intuition, reason and revelation, chaos and control. To walk among geniuses is to walk the narrow ridge between brilliance and oblivion, between the edge and the return.

So at 4:44 AM, I gave thanks.
Not for being called a genius, but for being allowed to glimpse what genius truly means:
to see through the veil,
to dare,
to surrender,
and still return home.

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Postscript:
As I stepped outside after recording this dream, the Subuh azan rose in the stillness. Its echo reached deep within me, humbling every thought of genius or greatness. In that moment, I knew — there is no true intellect but what the Creator bestows, no brilliance but what returns in remembrance of Him.