Imagery

In a story so short, images and symbols must be chosen carefully and used efficiently if the story's themes are to be presented clearly. In "The Train from Rhodesia," the train itself is the most overt symbol. The train comes from Rhodesia, a privileged British colony in South Africa, and thus symbolizes British colonialism. "Creaking, jerking, jostling, gasping, the train filled the station," Gordimer describes it, thus imparting a view that British domination resembles a huge, mechanical, unhealthy, and overbearing beast. The train only stops briefly and few people get on or off, further symbolizing the indifference and lack of understanding inherent in British imperialism. The train moves along "the single, straight track," emphasizing the "tunnel vision" of the dominant power. The old man and his impoverished neighbors are incidental; the train is merely passing through on its way to another British outpost. As it leaves, it "cast the station like a skin," an image that imparts the idea that the village was something to be rid of, unwanted and unneeded.

In contrast to the mechanical, manufactured symbol of the train to represent the whites, the

Africans of the small village are identified with images of nature. The villagers are surrounded by "sand, that lapped all around, from sky to sky, cast little rhythmical cups of shadow," and which closes over the barefoot children's feet. Furthermore, the stationmaster's wife is identified with a sheep's carcass that is hanging over the veranda. This, also, is a symbol of nature, even though it negatively connotes their position in society as nothing more than pieces of meat. Nevertheless, these images reveal that the villagers are an organic part of the environment. When Gordimer describes the old man's feet "splaying the sand," she brings to mind a tradition in African art in which exaggeratedly large feet symbolize a connection with the land and the generations of those who have cultivated it. She contrasts this organic connection with the sterile, compartmentalized separation of the British who sit "behind glass, drinking beer, two by two, on either side of a uniform railway vase with its pale dead flower." Sand connects the old man, the station-master and his children to each other, but the British have no symbol to connect themselves to one another beyond the loud, lumbering train that "heaved and bumped back against itself." When sand is used as an image for the young woman, however, it symbolizes the shame she feels, which "sounded in her ears like the sound of sand, pouring."

There's no existence if there's no beginning its just like an analogy of cause and effect. God claims that He is the beginning, so He is the first cause and the effect is the creation. He is self existence and self sustaining entity.

Answer

Its quite simply the nature of the human mind not understand the concept of everlasting being, and eternity etc. Consider the human life, it "starts" somewhere and "ends" somewhere. This has shaped human thinking form the very beginning. The human brain, which uses less than 10% and is regarded as "intelligent" cannot fully comprehend the concept of eternal being. We may be the most intelligent of creation, but that in itself tell's you why we cannot understand, we are "created", God "exists".

First I ask you, can you count (do you know how to count)?

I give an example of numbers.

If we take the number zero (0) as the middle.

under the zero (0), it goes from 0 to -1 to -2 to ENDLESS,

do you know the begin under the zero? (or you can say the last (negatif) number under the zero)

and from zero (0) to above it goes from number 1 to 2 to ENDLESS.

conclusion: numbers have NO BEGINNING and NO END, just like Allah swt.

[Quran 57:3] He is the First and the Last, the Evident and the Hidden: and He has full knowledge of all things.

yes and just like god/Allah numbers don't exist they are a man made creation!

THE SCIENTIFIC ANSWER

Actually this common question always gets it backwards. It would make more sense to ask: "How can something exist that has a beginning?" Things which exist are made of matter. Things can change in form but can not come into or go out of existence - the matter remains. You can form bricks from mud, then houses from bricks, and in time the house will again return to mud, but the matter involved did not have any "beginning" and can have no "end."

Anything and everything in the universe, whether a solar system, an electric toaster, or a Baptist Church is comprised of matter which was re-combined to form a toaster (or whatever) from always existing matter. If the Church burns down, the matter still exists (and fertilizes the soil).

When you freeze water into ice, the ice was not "created" from nothing - the matter just changed form. In the context of the matter of which things are made, nothing which exists had a beginning. The Universe is a sum total of all existants and all of the matter these existants are made of. The Universe did not have a "beginning," but like water and ice, it changes forms and arrangements of matter over time.

But if Nature and Natural Law are too boring for you, by all means create a God and say he did it all.