janisar hussayn was a man of startling presence – not just because he was tall or broad-shouldered or striking in the way people sometimes are without trying but because he knew who he was. there was no second-guessing in his walk and no pretending in his speech. he had the charm of a boy who could talk his way out of trouble, and the conscience of a man who’d rather carry your weight than watch you fall. he moved through life with that kind of clarity: the kind that made you feel safe just standing next to him. those he loved came first. always. every decision, every risk. he lived to ease our load / not with grand gestures, but in the way he showed up, protected, loved, listened, held, provided even when he was barely holding himself together.

there was nothing flimsy about janisar. he had thick curls, deep dark eyes with long lashes, a beard that framed a smile both disarming and rare. he was impatient by nature, but never with the people he cared about. he could take corners at 120 and then slow to a crawl just to glance at you in the passenger seat. he was smart in the way street kids are smart: alert, intuitive, three steps ahead. he could read a room in seconds and win over anyone without effort, and yet he never weaponised that power. i might be biased because i love him with the ferocity of a billion blazing suns and because my heart rearranged itself around him but none of that makes this less true: janisar was good. not in the curated, performative sense but in the raw, anchored, earned sense. he was generous, attentive, fiercely loyal, impossibly kind. he had no tolerance for hypocrisy, for cowardice, for anything that smelled like self-pity, for cruelty disguised as authority. he didn’t mock and he didn’t judge, not at face value anyway. his measure of a man was how he treated people when no one was watching and by that measure, he stood taller than most. he didn’t need a degree to prove his worth – he was proof < his existence was his credential > not many (if anyone) got to see him in his fulness and so i will always hold it as one of the greatest mercies of my life that he chose me to witness his entire spectrum.

there’s no real way to summarise someone like him. he wasn’t a paragraph but a world, a compass, a map, a storm, a shelter; full of contradictions yet so utterly complete. there were layers to him that only revealed themselves through love, through trust, through patience, through time, through trial. the things he loved – laham mandi at 2 am, wild horses that mirrored his hunger for freedom, rear-engined cars, quiet open plains where the sky felt close enough to touch… everything about him was pure velocity / not just speed but direction. even his stillness had momentum. even his softness had weight. even now, months after his departure, i find myself remembering things he said / things he meant and realising they were truths i hadn’t grown into yet. that’s just the kind of man he was. not just present in a moment, but formative. someone who helped you become.

the most beautiful thing is: i now get to build the life in sujūd universe through the traces he left behind – from the muted palette of the logo to the structure of every feature, from the ui elements i pieced together to the code written by someone who came to believe in the purpose behind it. even the late night ideation sessions with my brother – the checklists, the sketches, the rewrites, the things i haven’t revealed yet – are shaped in the shadow of who he was, and who i’m still trying to become. none of it was accidental. the lis universe is being forged from the remnants of him, of us – a love left unfinished being elevated, a niyyah made with full sincerity, and the gravity of everything we were reaching toward building before time ran out.

i want to be clear: his story is not suspended in grief. it didn’t end just cos he’s gone on ahead to his place in barzakh. it continues here – through his family, through me, through life in sujūd (as it slowly takes form.) it lives in every every du’ā made for him and every mercy Allāh unfolded through him, in every act of sadaqah done with the hope that it might reach him, in the daily effort to become someone worthy of reunion. not out of nostalgia or denial but out of intention. the kind shaped by love, by sabr, by longing that refuses to decay. if there’s an ending i carry in my chest, it’s not here in this dunya but in the waiting and the long work of returning to Allāh with a heart refined enough to stand beside him again – by His mercy, in jannat al-firdaws.

life in sujūd isn’t just a project, it’s a path and my sadaqah jāriyah for him. and by walking it – by using what’s here to deepen your ṣalāh, reset your qalb, or make your way back – you become part of his scale. my hope, therefore is simple: that through him, others are pulled closer to the One. and if even one soul finds their return here, then this platform will have fulfilled what it was always meant to do: not grieve an "ending" but serve the return.