13 Preface وَكُلَّ إِنسانٍ أَلزَمناهُ طائِرَهُ في عُنُقِهِ ۖ وَنُخرِجُ لَهُ يَومَ القِيامَةِ كِتابًا يَلقاهُ مَنشورًاYusuf AliEvery man?###s fate1 We have fastened on his own neck: On the Day of Judgment We shall bring out for him a scroll, which he will see spread open.2Fate: Ta'ir, literally a bird, hence an omen, an evil omen, fate. Cf. 36:19. The Arabs like the ancient Romans, sought to read the mysteries of human fate from the flight of birds. And many of us in our own day seek to read our future fortunes by similar superstitions. We read in the previous verse that there are Signs of God, but they are not meant to subserve the vulgar purpose of disclosing our future destiny in a worldly sense. They are meant for quite other purposes, as we have explained. Our real fate does not depend upon birds or omens or stars. It depends on our deeds, good or evil, and they hang round our necks, (see also n. 484). (R).These deeds, good or evil, will be embodied in a scroll which will be quite open to us in the light of the Day of Judgment, however much we may affect to be ignorant of it now or waste our energies in prying into mysteries that do not concern us.