MAKATI CITY (MindaNews / 30 July) – Physically touching them for the first time.
It’s a strange thing, really. One moment, they were mere digital ghosts—lines of thought left on the margins of news, politics, memory, and prayer. The next, they’re here. Tangible. With weight. With scent. With paper that resists a fingertip’s press.
One of them is Marginalia of Story, Struggle, and the Sacred: My Personal Reflections (https://bit.ly/MarginaliaOrderForm)—a title that has long hovered over my writing projects like a quiet aspiration. It is not just a collection of essays. It is a cartography of a decade’s worth of scribbled thoughts, half-formed questions, full-throated critiques, and whispered prayers. Over 160 pieces. Written in transit—between planes and parliaments. Between a frozen shoulder and a rising sugar level. Between brownouts in Cotabato and dawns in Makati. Between deadlines I almost missed and deadlines I chose to miss for the sake of a story.
The other is Labbayk: A Pilgrimage Memoir – Answering the Call, Returning to the Heart (https://bit.ly/labbaykmemoir). It was written entirely within one sacred window of time: a month-long spiritual journey to Makkah and Madinah. It began not with the boarding pass, but with an inner vow—whispered for years yet deferred by life’s endless justifications. I had always said, “I’ll perform Hajj when I’m financially able.” That vow felt noble, responsible even. But beneath it, I would later learn, was a quiet fear. A procrastination clothed in piety. A spiritual postponement wrapped in economic language.
It took our daughter’s unexpected tears—and our trembling “Yes” in response—to turn a vague plan into a sacred decision. It took being tagged in a friend’s Facebook post during his ṭawāf to finally admit I wasn’t really “waiting” for God’s invitation; I was avoiding it.
That one month in the Hijaz, spent with my Roommate and Lady Zaynab, was nothing short of transformative. Every day, I scribbled in a notebook—on buses between sacred sites, after almost collapsing from the crowd at the Jamarāt, or during the odd quiet of Muzdalifah under a sky full of unseen stars. Labbayk emerged not as a guidebook or a theological treatise, but as a travelogue of the heart. A memoir of delay and arrival. Of excuses shed, and surrender embraced.
And now, I held them both—Marginalia and Labbayk—for the first time. Their covers touching each other like two chapters of one life.
One is the slow burn of public reflection, grounded in Mindanao’s evolving political terrain: the rise of BARMM, the lately decision to take the Shari‘ah Bar Exam, the painful beauty of bayuk and palendag, the loud silences after the Marawi siege, the deep grammar of social constructivism in international relations. It is a book of many voices: that of the teacher, the translator, the columnist, the father, the witness.
The other is a quiet fire of interiority. A record of what happens when three pilgrims—husband, wife, and daughter—trade certainty for sacred motion. From the first sight of the Ka‘bah to the final stone thrown at the Devil, from the quiet sobs of Lady Zaynab in Madinah to the trembling voice that whispered “Here I am” while boarding a plane back home.
Together, these books mirror what it means to be caught between the sacred and the secular. Between Bangsamoro politics and Qur’anic silence. Between classroom classes and the call to prayer. Between being an aspiring (or pretending) idealist and a father trying to raise a daughter in a world of noise.
One took ten years to write—often unintentionally, article by article, post by post.
The other took one month—intentionally, every day, word by aching word.
But both were years in the making.
And so, when I held them for the first time—one in each hand—I realized something:
These books are not the end result of writing.
They are the result of waiting. Of remembering. Of choosing to say yes when it would have been easier to scroll past the sacred. Of answering calls—one from within, the other from Above.
To those who read my weekly notes and Facebook essays, to those who wrestle with memory, longing, transition, governance, faith, and fatigue—I hope you’ll find your own margins in these pages.
Marginalia (https://bit.ly/MarginaliaOrderForm) is where I remember who we are.
Labbayk (https://bit.ly/labbaykmemoir) is where I remember whose we are.
They are now available at ElziStyle Bookshop, online and soon in your hands.
Because at the end of it all, what is writing but a way to leave footprints—however small, however marginal—on the shifting sands of our time?
#MarginaliaAndLabbayk #ElziStyle #MindanaoMemoirs #PilgrimagePages #AuthorLife #SacredAndStruggle #BangsamoroNarratives #MindaReflections #HalalWordsFromTheMargins
[MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Mansoor L. Limba, PhD in International Relations and Shari‘ah Counselor-at-Law (SCL), is a publisher-writer, university professor, vlogger, chess trainer, and translator (from Persian into English and Filipino) with tens of written and translation works to his credit on such subjects as international politics, history, political philosophy, intra-faith and interfaith relations, cultural heritage, Islamic finance, jurisprudence (fiqh), theology (‘ilm al-kalam), Qur’anic sciences and exegesis (tafsir), hadith, ethics, and mysticism. He can be reached at mlimba@diplomats.com and www.youtube.com/@WayfaringWithMansoor, and his books can be purchased at www.elzistyle.com and www.amazon.com/author/mansoorlimba.]
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