Engraved Light

From degeneracy to remembrance at 3am

I walked into the casino at 2:47am.

The lights were harsh. The faces harsher. People hunched over slot machines, glassy-eyed and expressionless. Chips clinked, buttons clicked, cards flipped. And yet—no one looked alive. They weren’t playing to win. They were playing not to feel empty.

Outside, men were collapsed against the walls—crack pipes in hand, heads bowed. One stared blankly at the revolving doors. Another mumbled into the night, mid-delusion. The only difference between inside and out? Central heating and security. The condition of the soul was the same.

That night had already been on a slow descent. Bar, then club, then casino. Each place louder, darker, more numb. A spiral—degeneracy to degeneracy. The illusion of fun barely disguising the reality of decay.

At one point, I asked a staff member if they had any halal food. He chuckled without looking up:

“This whole building is haraam.”

And somehow, that was the most honest sentence of the night.

Then came a moment that quietly pierced through the night. A kind-looking elderly woman sat beside me at the blackjack table. Kind eyes, grandmotherly warmth. She smiled and asked if I was new. I told her I don’t gamble—I was just watching. She blinked in surprise.

“You don’t gamble?” she repeated, gently bewildered.

“Then… why are you here?”

Her tone wasn’t judgmental. It was innocent. But it hit harder than any rebuke. Because I didn’t have a good answer.

And I would be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted.

The lights, the laughter, the illusion of thrill- it pulls at something ancient inside you. The same thing that makes you want to taste what you shouldn’t, just to feel like something’s happening. That maybe tonight will be different. That maybe you’ll win something- money, attention, desire, validation.

But that’s the lie.

I wasn’t alone. I came with someone people admire- high-performing, magnetic, socially powerful. His “aura” is something others swear by. But when a more famous man walked in, that aura collapsed. He turned his face away. Couldn’t hold his gaze.

It was the quiet shame of someone who knows he’s not proud of where he is.

Later, he turned to me and said:

“You’ve got to live more. Drink, sleep around. Enjoy yourself.”

He didn’t say it to liberate me- he said it to reassure himself. He needed me to gamble and drink so that he wouldn’t feel alone in his choices.

When people know deep down that something is wrong, they need others to do it too—to make the darkness feel normal.

That was the moment I realised what this night truly revealed:

How easily a human being can reduce himself to a beast.

Chasing dopamine, moment to moment, like a rat in a lab or a wolf at scent. No higher aim, no inner compass- just the next hit. We mock animals for being led by instinct, but how many of us choose to be led by less?

But it is a choice.

We were not created to be enslaved by appetite. We were created to master it. And in that moment, amidst the noise and the numbness, a verse came to mind- not memorised, but remembered:

“Truly, it is in the remembrance of Allah that hearts find peace.” (Qur’an 13:28)

Not in chips.

Not in drinks.

Not in strangers’ arms.

Peace was never meant to be hunted like a high. It was meant to be returned to- through stillness, through prayer, through knowing who you are when no one is watching.

So I left. I said nothing. No lecture. No judgment. Just clarity.

The night hadn’t just shown me what sin looked like.

It had shown me what I didn’t want to become.

And outside, in the cold air, I felt something that no casino could ever sell me:

Freedom.