No Shiva for the Shaheed

(for ריקי  and  منذر)

The omen came to him in a splinter of wonder in the second rakaah of the morning prayer, when the imam read aloud, "And you'll be tested with fear and hunger and losses upon losses," and he wondered how. Munther wondered if the Universe would care enough to test him, and if he would know what it meant and how it would make things better for anyone to go through such a test. 

And it didn't take long for him to find out. That day was going to be quipped "the deadliest" by the media. Though it came to him quietly through a phone call.

It took twenty-seven deaths to answer his wonderment. Twenty-seven. A whole family of three generations. Munther's family had been calling them every day since the war broke, begging the ones in danger to leave town, at least until the calm returns.

• His aunt had laughed, "I ain't got nowhere to go." 
• His cousin had said, "I ain't got nowhere to go without mama and my husband and children." 
• Whereas the husband said, "I ain't got nowhere to go without mama and my wife and kids."

And so all of them stayed home that morning. Holding on to each other. As the walls trembled, then shook, then fell around them in dazzling light and calls of morning prayer, on that Ramadhan morning.

The same time when the man endowed with the strength to bear ill-omens wondered quietly in his prayer how he would be tested with loss upon loss. 

***

There is no shiva for the shaheed.

Death of the innocent is martyrdom; rewarded only with Union of loved ones. There is no mourning for such a glory: When the loving men and women and children hold on to what they do best as family. There is no grief for bearers of goodness and love and honor. To mourn their passing would insult their sacrifice, no matter how sore Alhamdulillah is passed in a voice choking with grief. 

His voice shook anyway. He did his job as son and bearer of omens and passed the news to his parents. And their lips quivered as they too heralded the news to neighbours and friends and strangers, with cakes and sweetmeats. "Celebrate with us, our family is in Glory."

And because they did not allow it to show in more than quivering voices and silent tears, the strength of stifled grief multiplied across the realms, shaking every hearer and witness. The angels heard it, and passed their blessings. The demons heard it, and were silenced in defeat. The humans heard it, and repeated their story, over and again, until it reached everyone whom they knew. "Twenty-seven members remained as family until the day they died. They held on to each other that morning. There is no shiva for the shaheed..."

***

And it reached her, the girl on the other side of the war.

It reached her in a moment of quiet after the alarm in the kibbutz set off. She snuggled in her chair, trying to read her book, fuming over the argument she had with her father about their vacation abroad. 

She had heard it earlier, but was only aware of it then, in the hush after the alarm and consummate darkness, in the comfort and safety of a sturdy shelter, among her bickering kin and brightly charged gadgets. She didn't wonder though; for it took her awareness with the force of so many quivering voices and silent tears, wave upon wave, washing her with clarity. "That there is no shiva for the shaheed..."

She wept. Alone and brave and true. Confusing her family, lamenting their common frailty. Cursing the war. As far as she was concerned, the war had ended inside of her. As choices would go, this is her lifelong shiva.

As far as heralds of omens went, he had done his job in passing on this story across the realms. He had done it truly enough to grow its own wings and reverberate across the realms, until it reached her, the girl on the other side of the war. Neither would again question how the Lord would test them with fear and hunger and loss, and then still celebrate His glory. 

--------------

* Shiva (Judaism): Week-long mourning period for close family.

The Sitarists

It was at first the father, of course. Always the father. His name rang far and wide enough to have reached my tone-deaf ears. But it wasn't one of his recordings that attracted me. It was just his last name on a woman near my age. The youngest heiress of a terrible legacy. And I wondered how she had managed it so well without destroying herself, and even actually making some good out of it.

Then I read the name of her sister, whom I've been directed to attend a while back. (It's another story, but it's for another post, and it includes a research on Alto voices. It's a good story. But for later.)

The discovery that the two artists were actually half-sisters, sharers of a legacy, made me understand. It's the same reason why the older Jackson siblings, the Williams sisters, the Kardashian sisters, survived their terrible inheritance too: They shared its weight on each other's shoulders. Or else there was a black sheep.

Coming back to the sitarist family. Yes, it's them I'm talking about. If you’ve figured it out by now, then see if your thoughts about them reflect mine. Especially if you're firstborn too.

You see, the sisters didn't live together; they weren't raised together or even in the same country. So much that they followed different paths and languages of soul. Diversity in such an intimate circle allowed for renewable interest to keep them - the sisters as well as their father – amicable towards each other.

What more, they weren't the legendary sitarist’s only children. There was a boy, a firstborn. And how his story broke my heart.

---

Let's go back a generation. Somewhere around the time when the father (always the father) wasn't that big a legend, but was almost there. The thing with sitar, it can never really reach its fullest capacity there without the sturdy support from the tabla. And if you've ever seen a sitar performance, you would see the enviable comradeship between a sitar player and his tablaist.

Since this particular sitarist had seen it in his stars that he was going to be great bear the terrible bondages of fame and wealth, the tablaist, who was much older and more bruised with wisdom, sought to protect his friend and main provider. If the young sitar player messed up, the tablaist would be screwed too, right?

So the Tablaist trained his favourite daughter harder. He didn't care how hard he beat her every time she missed a note, she had to perfect her sitar taalim. She had to get it right to impress the shining sitar player with the weakness for her kind. And if the sitarist saw her worthy, she could secure her entire family's income for the rest of their marriage.

Or so her father thought.

In return, the daughter felt like how a modern sacrificial sheep would. There was no more love for her when the father trained her. There was no more love for the sitar. There was no more love for each other. But she did as a good, God-fearing daughter should, she obeyed. She went through her marriage with her father's chosen. She played her job as the bleeping family sheep. She, too, had sisters in mind whom she wanted to spare from such a burden.

The thing with burden is that it tends to grow heavier the longer you carried it. Soon or later, you no longer have the energy to look ahead of you, and your vision (for future and self and step) narrows. You no longer walk with certainty. Your knees become so weak that a gust of wind could shake you and the burden upon you, shake you both until you lose your strength and balance and give in to the welcoming zift beneath you.

That's what happened to the gifted daughter who became the family's sacrificial sheep, the famous sitar player's wife, the sharer and giver of a terrible legacy.

She had a boy. And the boy with the famous mother and legendary father was doomed from the start without having a say about his fate and destiny.

And it's not that he didn't try to please them both. Oh he did try hard and clumsy. Yet no matter how hard he tried, he was firstborn; his parents' first beating bag and blueprint draft. All of their megalomaniac disappointments were vented and burdened on him. And he bore that terrible burden until he couldn't. And when he couldn't, he dropped the burden over his head, along with his life, his drive, his hopes. He died in his fifties, much sooner than his own famous parents, disillusioned and embarrassed with his criminally underachieving self.

---

All the while I listened to their music, I heard these stories behind every one of them. Nothing so beautiful could have come forth from chronic, vulgar joy and ecstasy.

I was studying the roots of my own desperate mediocrity. Why I'll never break records in creating anything well-enough or even half-assed decent.  That I have never been hungry enough, never been out of my wits to survive and hold on. There was always a helping hand for a pretty girl. A steady flow of cheat-codes to take credit from.

---

It's a relative happy ending for the rest of the sitarist family, by the way. The eldest son's heartbreak and departure created an all-too-clear and intimate evidence for the famous parents to look to their elders and say, "See we did as you bid, and it didn't work. So can we quit this and move on and just be happy again, please?"

The Famous Sitarist, now more famous than ever especially since he got the Western Beatle ears on him, got to travel far and farther. Until he met the lady whom he liked best in that country and marked his achievement in her, far away from his Tablaist's influence. And bore a daughter who would later take her father's legacy, without the burden of his shame, to grounds so high in lands they sought and despised, together and apart, as a family.

The other daughter? Oh, she came after he came home, of course. The mega sitarist came home after all, redid his past and did very well with this last baby girl. It was her, whose name I remembered and followed until I got this whole story about the sitar family. It was her who kept her father, in name and legacy and practice, until the very last: The family’s final draft.

The Cyclist

They weren't ready for her, so they ignored her. She showed up uninvited, unannounced. And she followed their bikes in the simple calm that biking had always offered them. None of them were ready to address her as they maneuvered their bikes on the long and wide roads. Health might be expensive, but it’s there for anyone who dares pay for it.

At first, she lagged far behind. On the first week, long after they had arrived and were chatting around the finish line, she finally caught up with them. She didn't stop or even look at them. She swished past their spot, to where a car was waiting for her. She packed her gear and got into the car. They thought it was just a one time thing. But she showed up again the next week. And the weeks after that. Sometimes she even arrived on the meeting spot before any of them did, ready in gear and warmed up. She might have biked there from where she lived, they guessed. Alone. Her cycling outfit was like a hiked-up thobe. When she got off the bike, the hem slid down into a modest baltu, or ladies' coat. She wore long leggings underneath, reaching to the edges of her shoes. She never met their eyes, and never spoke. All they heard was the steady sound of their breaths and the swishing zift.

 

Naturally, the road had always been theirs. Men drove and walked in that country by default, as the women had no access to such mobility lest under some generous allowance by one of the men. So when they saw her doing exactly what they publicly promoted while at the same time demanding what was unnaturally hers, they couldn't make up their minds.

They thought if they kept ignoring her, the silent embarrassment will eventually force her to quit. Heck, the force of their routine was enough to edge some of the men out. Week by week, they kept up their masculine speed. Week by week, she gained on them. Until she came to a steady pace averaging theirs and began to take some advantage of their drafting. Still keeping their distance, and she unimposing, they cycled in a smooth paceline.

One day one of them was driving to work and saw her cycling alone. On her back was a huge backpack, clearly loaded to increase weight and add resistance. The mountain bike's gears were set at the heaviest. That's how, he understood, she had finally learned to catch speed with them. It was stupid but it worked. She trained even when they weren't around.

They didn’t talk about her until it was too late and comfortably safe to talk. And when they did, it was in uncertain whispers. The ice did not break until their chivalry was tested. But when the ice broke it broke in huge blocks.

 

They were cycling along their usual route. They knew that she was behind them but within the last cyclist's hindsight. Out of habit, the last cyclist looked back and saw that there was a car paralleling her stride. Its window rolled down, the man beside the driver reaching out a hand to touch her. He alarmed the one ahead of him. And they both slowed down to her side, creating a double barrier between her and the troublesome car. The cyclists slowly enlarged the space between them until the car was pushed to the farthest lane of the road, the male cyclists in the second and third, and she on the lane by the sidewalk.

Eventually the car left off. The two cyclists stayed near her in paceline until they reached the finish line. When they reached the end of the route, she packed her gears and left. But the ice broke behind her. The two cyclists were questioned. The first time is always the loudest. Some blamed her for the trouble she might cause them. The others remembered that she was there for the same reasons as they.

 

Sometimes, when things were good, it got awesome. But even when things weren’t so good, they biked anyway. As far as the bike took them, as long as the weather and their bodies allowed them. Between their legs was the saddle. Under their legs the black zift. Above them, the indifferent endlessness.

 

I won't tell you what people thought and said. That’s all going to pass and it’s been repeated many times over. I’m just going to say that someone mentioned something somewhere. The whispers rustled across the medias. How society reacted you might as well imagine.

The pressure of attention on them increased. Of course it caused ripples of discussions. And ripples turned into waves. And waves into tsunamis. And nobody would argue when the force becomes that huge. Not when things are still too physically comfortable to necessitate counter change.

And publicity backfired on their cause. They were hashtagged. More women bought bicycles and cycled around town. And the authorities became more and more attentive. Like the driving thing, the women were arrested and were given the choice to either sign pledges for public misdemeanor or stay in jail.

 

One of the good things about change is that it doesn’t happen so often, because when it does it’s irrevocable. One day the conservative member stopped his bike in front of hers. She broke and slipped off saddle. Her eyes and feet fixed on the ground, her back straightened. He shook her off her bike. She fell on the pavement. He started kicking her bike. His fellow riders came back and restrained him. Nobody touched her, but the leader pulled the bike away from his teammate’s violent kicks and propped it up.

"What…?"

"There is a place for women and it's not here."

"The road belongs to all."  

"Aib."

There. Some of the cyclists changed route. Some didn't come back at all. The ones who kept biking were the ones who couldn’t ignore her anymore.

After a particularly hard session, the leader went to the waiting car, as she was still catching up behind. She didn’t take long, but by the time she reached her car, the leader was already screaming at the top of his voice.

Nobody remembered what he actually said or if it was even worth screaming. It might have been stupid but it worked and they never saw her again. Though they never lost sight of her. Every time a woman spoke plainly or held her tongue untimely. Every time they looked at their placid, obese women at home. Every time they confronted their private opinions, the opinions that even they don't dare to say to themselves in secret. Every time they heard of a woman's plight for a walk, a drive, or glimpse of the setting sun that they took for granted every day.

They kept looking behind them and thought they might see her again. They wondered if they could have done things differently. They wondered if she might have been their chance to fortify the change they had wished for and if they should have been less afraid and bit more brave.

Whenever they saw a woman compete or perform in public, they wondered if she might have been their chance to prove what sort of men they were made of in private.

---

*Zift: Asphalt **Aib: Shame (Ar.)

Guardians

I fall in love every time I write a new story. It is one of my terrible writing habits. And it is one heck of a potent source of power.

Love that is as profit-oriented as that can never be consumed. It has to be a zipless fuck. A fuckless love. Because fucking is too messy. Nowadays, the cost is always too high. The young ones might not understand this, but every fuck costs lots of risks and hail marys. And the older we are, the less risks we want to spend our time on hail-marying.

Yes, grown ups want to fuck too. Very badly. It shows in our gestures and grins and disgustingly intimate conversations. But we can't afford it. We can't afford everything else that comes along the choice to fuck.

Being older meant that we come a baggageful of plans. We did not plan on having these plans; they just sprouted and imposed themselves on us. Every day. For instance, he believes that if he was good enough, God will unite him with his wife, rest her soul, in the afterlife. I believed that if I kept my legs closed, I could write about the experience in a public blog and not suffer through the misery of not posting for another day. That was the plan.

Unfortunately, our plans came with a set of habits. A set of habits that we stuck with. We sure did stick with them. We cursed through every moment that brought such ridiculously fuckless plans and habits. But we did.

***

Like everything else that turns out with plans, this too surprised us. Mostly because we didn't plan on making a habit of being friends for such a long time. Relationships just happen on their own too. You don't get an internet identity because you wanted to end up in a foreign place twelve years later, at the airport asking the only friend left for you in the world (whom you have met as that foresaid internet identity) if he would like to hang out with you for a day.

You do not spend years living in an exotic country because you want to develop an insatiable taste for tomatoes available only in his dusty kitchen, either.

And you definitely did not learn an intellectual language to lose this argument: "I'm a greasy man. Detergent removes grease! What's wrong with you, woman?"

No. Things just happened. That's the way the world works: Plans and habits form whether or not you want to fuck. And every time we do something in the world, planned or incidental, we can only hope that it is going to return to us kindly. We can only hope that we are braced with enough habits to bear through massive tests of character with residues of our identity in tact.

We spent a whole day alone together in the privacy of his home, in our shorts and t-shirts, and separate beds. Through our meals and giggles, we kept our eyes lowered. The subject laid itself on our eyelids so heavily that we only sighed and cut more tomatoes when silence wrung between us for too long.

And besides, we, the older ones, have developed habits so strict that they come to us in crude, undeniable forms. They came to me fully-armored, whispering angrily, from the moment I laid foot in that house until the airport gates closed behind me in the next morning: "Who are you? You don't belong here. Leaveleaveleaveleave..."

***

I feel like I’m breaking new rules every time I write. I promised I would not exploit my private life. I promised I would not divulge on sex. I promised a lot of things to guard my writing voice.

I've broken most of them by the end of this post. Soon I won't have anymore rules left to write with, and I'll need to make up new rules. Or a new habit. I don't know if I should care anymore. Things just happened. Even this post just happened to come on its own - Finally! - after a thousand rewrites.

I fell in love with him every time I rewrote this. I don’t mind that habit. I'm proud of him, and hope he will forgive me eventually for writing about us like this. About the rules we that we broke to test our friendship. And to test the plans that we have duly observed. And the habits that served and protected our identity.

Maybe some of these broken rules have some truth in my writings, and strum words that reverberate with someone’s tune.

Sanctum Breach

"Do you love me? I don't love you. Sorry."

For honest credibility's sake, they had to look in each other's eyes when they said it. They repeated it to each other for the longest time. Once a year, at least. They wagered that they were going to be the last people on earth to repeat that sentence, and they would still not love each other.

So for the longest time, they were also the last people on earth, because everyone else had died from that disease called love. Everybody else got married and suffered all kinds of heartache. Had children who made their hearts ache. And loved their friends and parents and suffered so many heart attacks.

As if the love for one's self could suffice. As if the more they loved the more was got. This was worse, people who loved, they loved all the more because they knew it was non-refundable. The value was in its finality. Once you have loved someone, they had every power to destroy you, at least all the parts that you have reserved for allowing them to live in your heart.

And there was the kind of heartache from every kind of love. Love of food, love of country, god, ideas...oh the foolishness of man! If only they could love themselves a little better. If only they weren't so narcissistic to think that their simpering seeds and obnoxious offspring, springing from every imaginable place in germinal hyperactivity, spreading all over Earth like warts, was enough.

If only they could realize how deeply loved they are, each and every one of them, instead of posing like heroic saviors for every cause on Earth. That even Earth does not care for them. And the Universe is none the wiser with or without their love.

Which is why our hero and heroine never loved. And they have lived so long because they never loved. And soon after there was nobody left alive on Earth, they kept pushing it and to see where it might lead them. And to see who was going to mouth at the throes of death that same longing of recognition. Because love remembers. And even though they have loved nobody, a lot of people have loved them. And those who loved them have also been loved and remembered by a lot more others. And that was why, at the very end, when they were the last people who lived on Earth, the memories of everyone who have died loving someone or something was passed onto them, because the living's job was to remember.

(Even if there were people around them, they didn't see the others. They couldn't. The selfish are blessed with chronic unawareness.)

And so, the two most selfish people on Earth met every now and then just to reaffirm to each other of their lack of love for one another. And one day they met with the knowledge that they were dying. Their grey eyes aged and cold from watching all the people who have died for love. Indeed, they were the last people on Earth because they never loved.

They were the richest, because they never wanted, hence they never shopped superfluously. Also because they had the whole world divided between them and nobody to show it off to. Who'd want any more? What more could they have asked? They were the very healthy and fit because they had all the attention on their own biceps and abs. Smart and serious and sunny. There was nobody else beside them.

And they have kept it on for mere spite.

Then came that day, when they were tired, and it was the last winter of their lives. (They knew it. Selfish people always knew that they're at the edge of the world and everything is in superlatives every year.)

The fire was low and smoke was high. They held each other for warmth. By a mere look at first. Then broken sentences. "Do you remember when...? Not even if he...Do you think...?" A brush of skin. Then all three together: Look and skin and sentence. And then the fire got high and smoke low and a clarity passed between them. Something old and remembered and have filled the lives of so many and ended the lives of everyone. Something that was as sudden as it was undeniably real. Touchable. Theory. Fact. True. All. True.

And they didn't need to say it. Everything had already been said. And all that will be said has been said many times over. And saying it a hundred million times again shall not change a streak of paint or a micro digit of the millionth nth.

Inevitable as death.

“I love you.”

“I do I do  I do  I do  I do...”

Once they said it, they couldn't stop themselves anymore. A look became a stare. A touch became an embrace. And so on and so forth. And love grew, grew, grew within them. Choking their organs and blood flow, making them stupid and sick and slothful. They quickly grew wrinkled and excitable and unreasonable.

Then everything lit up around them. And everybody came back to life and cheered for them in a ghostly wedding and attended their graduate and graded and guarded parties and funerals. Everybody was there. Since they started loving each other they had to love everybody else too.

Once they said it, they couldn't stop themselves anymore. They loved everybody with obedience. They loved everybody with obligation. The more they loved, the less they remembered. Soon they forgot who they were. Soon everyone became somebody else's copy.

Once they said it, they couldn't stop themselves anymore. Until Somebody New came into the family. Then they either became like that Somebody New, or the other way around. Eventually everybody who loved somebody had to love everybody and everything that everybody did.

Once they said it, they couldn't stop themselves anymore. One love demanded his entire bands and tribes involved in that one love too.  They loved everybody because they had to. Because from this body he took money every month. From that body they were born. On the shoulder of one of those bodies their bodies were going to be raised. And so on and so forth until they had to love everyone and everyone loved everybody and that was that.

Hence, like when everyone else who have died before them, they too died out of love. Out of too much love. And everything more than just love. And everything that love brought along in a suitcase or a contract or a diseases or a set of children and series of hopes.

Love that lit their world. Love that ruined them. Love that made their ruin bearable. Love that made their unbearable ruin repeatable many times over. Till the end of time. Forever and always.

Chevy's Home

Chevy loved to travel. He visited many towns, villages and countries. None satisfied his wanderlust. There was peculiar joy in arriving at a foreign place, in starting his days with newness and surprise.

“I am a traveler,” said he, “the road is my abode.”

One day, traversing a dark forest, Chevy met an old man by the road. The man was hurt, and the cart beside him broken. Chevy pitied the old man and offered his open hands.

At first, Chevy thought that he was going to help only as far as getting the cart rolling again in the dusty road. But he saw that the old man’s injury did not allow that independence. So Chevy pulled the cart until they reached the old man's house.

There, Chevy was taken aback. 

“You live alone, old man?”

“It's home.”

“And your family?”

“War.”

There was nothing else to ask. Chevy could not leave the old man to his devices that night. Besides, dusk had fallen and Chevy did not mind having shelter for the night. He could restart his journey in the morning.

Before dawn, loud clangs interrupted Chevy's sleep. He thought that the unfamiliar bed was crumbling beneath him.

In the squinting darkness, Chevy saw the old man crouched by the stove, holding his arm with fumes of coffee and wretchedness splattered around him.

Chevy rose and cleaned the mess. Then he made breakfast, opened the windows, swept the floor, loaded the cart, pulled it to the market, sold the goods, and pulled it back with the tiny old man in its tub.

There were not a lot of words exchanged between them. Their silence gleamed with the gladness of a day well-spent. The sore in their bodies laid their minds with deep, satisfied hush. A hush that lulled their uninterrupted sleep.

In the next morning, Chevy rose when he heard the water poured into the kettle. Immediately, he took over the tasks as he did in the day before. Breakfast, airing, sweeping, loading, going, selling, returning, and sleep again. Better than the day before, with familiarity growing on his muscles. Every day thus. Every day thus for a while.

Sometimes it took him by surprise, his longing for travel. It usually visited in the hours of doubt, between rest and movement. And he soothed it with the thought that he could ask for leave tomorrow morning. Or he could as soon as he was sure that the old man’s arm was well again.

Besides, said Chevy to himself every morning, it is not the worst feeling in the world to know where you’re going to meet dusk and rest. Albeit ordinary, he was surprised to find pleasure in the fluency of everydayness.

One morning, Chevy rose to see the old man standing strong and upright. The kettle steady in his wrinkly hand as he poured coffee into their cups. The grace of old age filled his eyes  with friendly question.

To which Chevy replied with his usual smile. By airing the hut and loading the cart. By starting their day like the day before, and many days after. Breakfast, market and bed.

Breakfast, market and bed.

Breakfast, market and bed.

And that was well.

The Good Sleeper

 

It was time to go. Abdullah son of Amr had spent all the hospitality due to him with that curiosity gnawing at him worse than it had three days before.

Three days in vigil. Three days of paying the snottiest attention that politeness allowed him to stretch. All for what? To be impressed by his own obtuseness?

***

It started last week, when the Prophet and his companions were at the mosque, and the Prophet said, “A future resident of Heaven shall be amongst us.” And this man, Abdullah's soon-to-be subject of obsession, walked in. He was an Ansari dressed in common garment, his face shone with remnants of ablution, and he offered the most ordinary prayer under the gaze of the least ordinary figures of al-Islam EVER.

If that was not curious, imagine hearing it repeated for three days straight. “That man is going to Heaven,” insisted the Prophet.

For wearing common garments? Abdullah had thought. What, Heaven is as easy as a stroll in the mosque, now?

***

On another day, the Prophet mentioned that a man's destiny, whether he was going to Heaven or Hell, was apparent in his daily conduct. If a man were going to Heaven, you would feel the centered calm surrounding their movements. Likewise, if he were going to Hell, you would smell the sulfuric singe. And neither just for a little bit.

Based on that, Abdullah started his close surveillance on Ansari by asking for shelter in his house, using an imagined terrible disagreement with his father, the Islamic Army Commander Amr son of al-‘As, as cause for homelessness.

So far, none of this was extraordinary. In those days, it was trendy for the natives of al-Medina to lend refuge for the Muhajireen from Mecca, the Ansari welcomed Abdullah in his residence.

***

That was how Abdullah became the guest who snooped on his host.

Oblivious to snoopiness, the Ansari offered ordinary prayers, held an ordinary job, ate and slept on regular schedules. Save for mumbling the Lord's name when he turned in his sleep, the Ansari seemed to spend exactly the amount of nothing to present him with the airs of someone who would make it as market’s gossip. Much less psychic ecstasies.

Hence, shredding whatever was left of his dignity, Abdullah spread his cards: He told his host of the real reason why he spent three days in his house. How the Prophet Prophesized thrice where the Ansari was going next. Moreover, that Abdullah had missed all the signs that made his host so special to receive tidings of Heaven.

(Or Hell, by the way.)

***

On the record, there is no mention on how the Ansari reacted. Probably because he reacted the way people of his kind do: As explosively merry as a brick wall.

Funny isn’t it? People who are going to Heaven do not really care about tidings. Wherever they might end up in this life or the next, they would stick to their habits anyway. They would faithfully carry out their work quietly, with nothing more, nothing less or besides.

***

The Ansari might have shrugged at Abdullah's confessions; or even reddened at the thought that he was the trending topic among the folks of Medina. Then explained himself eloquently in biblical silence.

Giving up, Abdullah said his thanks and asked for leave. The good Ansari, with the reluctance of a good host failing to satisfy his guest, almost gave his leave when it crossed his mind to say the biggest secret kept amongst Heaven’s Residents To-Be.

"I sleep well."

"Sorry?"

"I sleep well. When I go to bed, I take no jealousy, grudge, or ill will towards God or His creation with me. That's all."

Indeed that was everything. To sleep well was to give up the world in return for respite. To build enough faith to plunge to the abyss of mindlessness. To have enough faith that there shall be a worthwhile tomorrow to wake up to.

(And, in case there wasn’t any tomorrows left, to have the courage to go to bed anyway and know that even that was alright too.)

It seemed so little! Banally unheralded heroism! Yet name an uneasy, undone and unimpressed soul who is capable of such a feat. To sleep well in a world of constant chaos and it was offered to all, but who would care? To surrender in the perfect calm of a small-death was possible for all, but who would dare?

And Abdullah smiled; his defeat was fair. "Aye, it’s what none of us would bear."

Pentecost

In all fairness, she didn't ask them to come and hold a cryfest with her.

Actually, Abu Bakr and Umar visited Umm Ayman to relieve their own grief and longing for the Prophet, following something that he used to do.

Repetition of habit is a way of remembrance, isn't it?

So when she started weeping, the companions reminded her that the prophet was in a better place.

She nodded between sobs, muttering "I know, I know. That knowledge brings me greater relief than anything else in my loss." Then shook her head, " It's the end of the revelations, the voice of God through the Prophet that made my grief linger."

It was that, the sense of irrevocable endings, that made the two companions weep with the Prophet’s old nurse.

***

Then they heard it.

Shy at first, barely nudging its presence between their sobs, but they heard it, nevertheless. Its clarity and calm decisiveness contrasted their emotional shambles, and brought them upright with urgent attention.

“You have work to do.”

Suddenly the room was crowded with generations of future and past ghosts. The ghosts of the people who have died to uphold their practice. The ghosts of fore-children who were going to miss out on the Prophet’s teachings had it not been grounded into the living. Today.

If most of the ummah remembered how it felt to have a prophet amongst them, how, then, would the unborn remember? 

If it was bothering the woman who knew the Prophet the longest, it surely would have bothered the rest of the ummah. 

And they each only had a life time to spend. And it was going to be one worth spending; because they knew how it felt to be at loss, to grieve. To swing between love and hate, darkness and light.

***

On taking leave from Umm Ayman, they wondered between them, “Did you hear it?”

“In the pause between sobs? Yes, indeed.”

“What do you think it was?”

“The same voice that guides the bees and mountains and stars. The same voice that our Prophet sought in his nights of solitude and devotion. The same voice that, we might as well hope, would guide us and our children through the darkness.”

Umar’s voice deepened, “The weak might confuse other voices with…”

“That’s what we need to work on, isn’t it? Straighten the lines and set the foundations. As long as the ummah sticks to those, we can hope for the best in the voices that they will hear, when they find themselves in moments of calm respite. That is all that any teacher can hope for from the unknown.”

Inspiration

It was one of his better days. The house was turned inside out in preparation for festivity. Someone was getting married. The air was crisp and friendly. And the Master had actually allowed more than a crack of smile to pass his lips.

It was definitely a good day. The girls felt it. The servants too. The Master's delight touched everyone. He had been down under for too long, ever since the revelations went on hiatus. And for today at least, the veil of despair thinned and the household bustled with relief.

She took courage in these promising signs. Might that crack of smile widen into laughter? Or last a while after? Why can't it reach and reverberate to his heart? Albeit its thinness and brevity, might it not hold him with hope until the rest of him follows afloat?

When the domestic rush lulled and they found each other alone, she approached him. The hush was so sudden that he could have heard her thoughts. He felt it too, that slight lift of air in his surrounding. The kind that settles deliberately to let a woman ask her man what she had already known but needed to hear again.

"What are you thinking?"

And he held her in his gaze a while, feeling the weight of a fine-hammered woe hang between them with calm despair.

"How lucky, how happy we have been, Madam."

She tilted her head slightly, listening into what he was not saying. He dropped his gaze, blushing at her attentiveness.

"I mean, look at us, and at all that we have. The past messengers - their messages carried an air of urgency. There was a desperate necessity in their work. Moses had to save the Israelites. Jesus was the epitome of miracles. David, Solomon, Lot, Jonah, Job...they all had an important message to pass on. What business do I have with messages? A poor, illiterate orphan, who just got unbelievably lucky by marrying you."

He paused to indulge in a husband's pride, drinking in her feminine reaction to his words. The intimacy did not last; it quickly soaked with guilt. And despair clouded his eyes again.

"Do I really have anything to say to the people, Madam? What, the few nursery verses would do the job, you think? It has been so long since the last time I felt that Presence, I might not even recognize its arrival again.” His voice rose a pitch, “Maybe there isn't anything left to say or do and we should all just be happy!”

The mistress did not answer. Her gaze broke and drifted towards the house. The servants sweeping out the dust. The morning light breaking forenoon. And she heard him sigh.

“Why can't we just not care?”

"Because you knew how it felt like," she said. "Because you knew exactly how it felt to be poor and orphaned and lost. You would not let it pass under your watch as long as you can help it. You would have adopted every orphan, given every traveler a hint of direction, and fed every mouth from your own plate. Because you know how it feels to be forsaken."

He shook his head and shifted uneasily on his feet. He was about to go under again. She chased his despair.

“And if that is all that you can do,” she said, “then do it. Do it every day. Maybe that is your message and what you’re supposed to convey. If God and the angels and every man on earth forsook you, then you don't forsake your own calling.”

And that was how the long pause in the revelations ceased. How the Forenoon was inspired. How the work revealed itself over and over again. By being grateful about what is good in life, and helping where one can.

Every forenoon, ‘till Kingdom come.

Ecstasy

"Cover me, Madam. Cover me. Cover me."

His wife spread her blanket and her arms around him. And held him. Tight into her bosom. No questions asked. Until his fever abated and his words flowed.

Then he told her that he might have seen a demon. But it was not a common demon, he would have known that by now. This Being had an uncommon, eternal grace. And that it held and spoke to him in words that jolted his sanity.

"You told him that?" She smiled, amused that her husband, despite his fears, managed to reply thrice that he could not read.

"It's the truth, isn't it? I can count, ride a camel and sell at profit. I can do a lot of things, but I can't read. Why should I admit otherwise?"

Her smile broadened, "What else?"

Then, he said, the being held and filled him with endlessness. Like something inside him, his very soul was torn and whitewashed with infinity. He thought that it was never going to end, or that it was only for a minute. And that he was losing his mind.

And she laughed. And he thought she was mocking him, but her laughter rang with kindness.

"Darling, if it's any news to you, then it is that you would be the last of all people to be cursed with insanity. Come, let's ask for counsel. I don't think that you would take my word for it, but I'd rather take this as good omen."

*

One the way back from the counselor, he asked her and his voice heavy with grief. "Do you still think it's a good omen?"

And she offered him her brightest smiles yet, "What, that you have got your life's purpose defined for you? You realize that men your age are usually struggling with middle-age crises, while you just got promoted. What's not good about that?"

He halted, and tightened his hold on her hand and searched her eyes. The longing crushed them both. "It will cost us everything we have ever had and known. Every. Thing."

"Then,” said the good wife, “It's a good thing that we do have that much to give."

Al-Farouq

“Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.”

― George MacDonald

A man was obliged to pay a certain sum of denarius in Zakat, in the early days of Al-Islam. It was only about 2.5% of his wealth, but it still seemed like a huge amount when 2.5% is multiplied by 100, 1000, 10'000 dinars.

He asked the Prophet's Companion Fulan, wondering if he might be allowed discounts. The Companion told him that his due was actually more than the calculated amount. Then he asked another Companion. And another. The last one threw his hands in the air, "THERE IS NO ANSWER GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!  Go seek the Caliph's advice."

He found the Caliph Umar bin Al-Khattab at his usual hour to receive audience. The Caliph listened quietly as the man recited the history of his Zakat problems, the discontent that in all the learned men he met, none had given him a satisfactory answer to what duty he was due, and that as subject of his judicial territory, Caliph's word would be the last.

The Caliph emphatically rephrased the man's words, "Ye have went to this, this and that Companion asking them the same question concerning Zakat and none of the answers have satisfied ye?"

"Yes, and it is only in desperation that I seek justice from al-Farouk (The sword drawn between right and wrong)."

The Caliph's face brightened, then started towards the private part of his house, saying "Ruwaydan. Ruwaydan."

Wait a minute. Wait a little.

The man beamed with hopefulness. Al-Farouk has a solution. And from the looks of things, the man was going to get the silver bullet to all of his Zakat issues.

The Caliph resurfaced from inside the house with his famous sword, unsheathed and drawn, in his hand. He said, "Ye have questioned God's rights in yer wealth. Ye have questioned the counsel of learned men. Ye shall not question either evermore, once the sword speaketh its word."

And the sword swung. And the head rolled off. And the Farouk delivered its unquestioning duty as servant of God and man.

A.

1.

"Can't you lunch here?" My mother shifted uncomfortably. "It seems safer."

I shook my head. In her honor, we have already had lunch with mother yesterday and I was craving for a hookah, something that no proper Southeastern domestic household could properly serve.

Besides, what my mother never seems to understand, it is generally safer to be in public with a friend of the opposite sex than elsewhere.

When I got into his car, the loud smell of Albaik made me swoon. "I see you've done your shopping."

He grinned. "My mother demanded it when she knew that I was coming home tonight. Pardon the unpleasantness. I told her that it isn't healthy. It's only a short trip from here to the sweet smell of hookah."

2.

I tiptoed in my shoes. Every bit of femininity in me repulsed. "Are all bachelor pads normally as chaotic as yours?"

He heard the impatience in my voice, and laughed from under the struggling bed. Pulling himself from there, he shuffled about the room, picking up recognizable items and throwing them into an open bag.

It was out of necessity - by stupidly losing track of time - that we braved the mutual embarrassment of watching his underwear fly into the travel bag. The hookah had taken longer than we anticipated. He had not packed and it was getting late and the route was convenient from my house to the airport. And there was no way that he would leave me toasting by myself in the car with a pile of roasted birds as my only defense against circulating two-legged hounds.

"Try to be comfortable," he shuffled into the bathroom. "I won't be long."

3.

I sank into a sofa, forcing my vision toward the only window in the room. Evening was falling, for as far as I could guess. The windows in Saudi were always curtained, glazed, tinted and tightly shut. Whatever happens within a private territory remains there for all eternity. For better or for worse.

I tightened my abaya around me, not wanting to touch it with anything traumatizing or dead. The room smelled masculine, but not unpleasant. I have known this man for a long time. And I remembered that he was an observing Muslim, which made it safe to bet on the level of his disciplined cleanliness and, if I may, his efficient packing.

The shuffling had stopped. A zipper groaned and I heard him call. "Would you like a drink?"

4.

He stood in front of an open fridge, holding a sweating glass of clear liquid. His travel bag curled neatly and shut. His eyes constantly scanning the room. I guzzled the water, remarked on the rosy aftertaste and, replacing the empty glass, asked if he were ready to go.

He gave me one hard look, then quickly dropped it to study the lines in his hands. Then he started shuffling again. He closed the fridge, picked up his bag, checked his travel documents, took a final scan and lead both of us out of the room.

"I hope we haven't forgotten anything."

5.

When we got into the car, the smell of 200-riyals worth of unventilated Albaik over-powered us with thoughts of our mothers, separate dinners, and a 20000 lb. bird to catch. Only food as unhealthy and delicious as Albaik could raise that much guilt and pleasure at a sniff.

Rolling down the window at my side, it came to me with sad relief how the car's windows were untinted. After a few deep breaths, I felt the strain that made him pack so hurriedly melt. "What just happened?"

And his gaze held me long and steady. "Nothing you can't blog about."