Story for My Mother: Lindu

When I was young, growing up in a village we did experience earthquake, very rarely. Even then it was normally Indonesian earthquake that we felt. My late father explained to me that deep underground, there is a big animal kind of being, it is asleep all the time, waiting for the day at the end of time, when it will get up and move about. That will be the end of time, Qiamat. When this animal moves, the earth surface will also move, the mountains and hills will fly like cloud. Earthquake or lindu (earthquake in Javanese language) happened because the animal moves a little bit in its sleep. You see, before the end of time, God forbids this animal from moving even a little bit, and God assigned angels to take care of this animal, ie the angel’s duty is to forbid this animal from moving one bit.
But from time to time, this animal sneezed and move in its sleep. Hence the earthquakes. If you think this earthquakes are bad and terrifying, wait until the day of Qiamat, the End of Time. That day the mountains, hills, and trees will fly like dust and feather. You will regret that never believe in the End of Days. Your repentance that day will be useless. Your regret of your past misdeeds and mischief will not be accepted by God Almighty.
Now before you start jumping up and down and say that the continents of the earth is floating on molten hot rocks, continental drift and the subduction of the edge of tectonic plates that cause earthquakes, yeah I know that.
I suppose if you think of it, we wouldn’t know how the earth would behave, and as we know that the continents are moving like cloud, creating pressure at the subduction zone. What if there is an increased activity at the centre of the earth? The molten part flow faster, which would cause the continents drift faster. And then earthquakes occur frequently to release the build up pressure. Can we predict earthquakes? No.
Everything that has happened and will happen is already written in the Loh Mahfuz.
75. And there is nothing hidden in the heaven and the earth, but is in a Clear Book (i.e. Al-Lauh Al-Mahfûz).