We can’t force it to conform to our desires. It is what it actually is, not what we wish it to be. He never tried to force events to follow a predetermined path. When the situation on the ground – or in the heavens – changed, his plan changed accordingly. Rahman used to say that the key to his extraordinary success in combat was that he applied tactics according to how things actually were, rather than how he wished them to be. Love is a broad and imprecise word, and encompasses many things. I mean no disrespect to Weili Menco Zhang, who was my true friend. I could say that he and I sometimes argued, or that he occasionally seemed to disapprove of my essential personality, or that we were friends in the way that the ocean and the beach are friends, coming together and moving apart. If I say that Yasin Rahman loved me, many will accuse me of aggrandizing my role in his life for the sake of celebrity. Timing might not be everything, but it’s as big as Besar.Īlso, not all love is the same. But let the same man meet the same woman when he is thirty, and maybe the spark never catches. A man meets a woman when he is nineteen years old, falls in love, and marries her. A seed of love that may have flourished at one time, under a certain sun, might never sprout in other circumstances, or might emerge pale and stunted. It’s a matter of degree, or a matter of different flavors and the intensity of flavor, and even of simple timing. I believe that a man can love more than one woman, and vice versa. But the secrets of love have yet to unfold, no matter how we philosophize and wax poetic. We humans have begun to solve the mysteries of spacetime, and have settled hundreds of worlds. Even an empath can only tell you whether or not a person believes his own words. I say this because people sometimes lie to themselves. To be more accurate, if I do not know the actual, underlying reality of things – that is Allah’s realm – I do know what Rahman believed, as surely as I know that angels surround us from the earth to the heavens. So I speak with ‘ilm al-yaqeen, the knowledge of certainty. This was not true in the case of myself and Rahman. We rely on intuition, clues, words, and body language. What was I, the author, to Yasin Rahman? So often we can only guess what feelings and thoughts others harbor in the silent halls of their hearts. 18 years old.Įxcerpt from The Life and Death of Yasin Rahman, By Dr. Multiple awards for valor, but also repeated misconduct violations. Ship’s pilot, mechanic and fabricator, married to Bilal. United Army Squad 3690 of the UA Starburst, in order of rank: