Mansfield by Rain
Islam February 3rd, 2008
The choir loft has been painted milky green, and the walls are trimmed with jade. Two feet beneath the balcony, a floor has been erected from arch to arch. It is carpeted with the color of grass. Here and there, lines of tape course diagonally across the floor. Marwa comes to me to read Qur’an. My wrist shakes uncontrollably: small bones flutter under layers of black.
She hands me the mushaf. Its cover is gold on green. It is familiar in my hands. An identical copy came with my classroom. She has opened it to a Sura that I do not recognize. I sound out its title. Al Mutaffifin. We sit knee to knee on the carpet, and in the hissing-sweet voice of a person losing her baby teeth, she reads.
I keep pace with my eyes. “Kalla inna kitaba al-abrari lafee AAilliyyeena.” The deeds of the righteous are written down. Marwa stops at ayah 18. “Actually, that’s all we know,” she says. I smile, ready to tell her how proud I am when a brother from the front row begins the call to prayer. The syllables stretch long; they sink, and they rise. God is greater, God is greater. I hug Marwa and whisper to her. “You are amazing, mama. I am proud of you.”
A thin line of women shuffles into place beside us. Marwa runs away, replaced by her big sister. Naima, the religion teacher, sits on my other side. “Are you feeling better now?” she asks. I try to whiten my eyes. “Yes, thank you.” She blushes a little, and rubs her hand along my back. “We’re sorry,” she says. “We were laughing because of the picture of Hamza that you had open on your desktop, not at you. I don’t know if that’s why….” her voice trails off.
Great tiered windows stand bare before a leaden sky. Ahead of us, the men draw in. A little boy kneels against his father’s side. I think of telling Naima that it wasn’t the laughter which hurt. It was their manners. After thirteen years, my heart is still homesick for my culture. Allah, forgive me. I don’t want to be here, where you have written that I should be. Ya Allah, send me home.
My mouth aches. I measure the musalah with my eyes. It is built in a former church, way up near the ceiling, in a space normally reserved for air. In its marriage of Catholicism and Islam, it reminds me of my heart. There are perhaps 12 men, 9 women, 4 children. The imam, Brother Sofiane, stands up and begins to pray. I do not recognize his dua. There are words I know, like bid’ah, hamd, rabb, siraata, Musa. I feel close to understanding the rest. I lean forward to listen.
After two minutes, he switches to English. “All innovations to our faith are wrong,” he begins. “There is no adding nor taking away.” Naima shifts her weight from her feet to her side. We are so close that I feel her muscles stretch. “There are people who die before they ever live.”
“There are people who move through the world in their physical bodies, long after their hearts have died. There are people like animals, who care only about eating and drinking. There are people who do as the beasts do, who cannot laugh, believe, or love.”
“In other words, there are people who have no impact. And yet, among our history, we know of people whose impacts have far outlasted their physical selves. Our prophet Muhammad, sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam, is alive today. His impact stretches on. When we speak of him, we use the present tense. This is what I mean by life.”
“The question is, how do you make an impact?” He takes me in with his eyes. So often I wonder about impact. It is a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, as Pamuk says, which drives me to write. I want my impact to outlive me. I want my words to touch hearts after my hands are gone. Sofiane seems to know. “You have an impact by committing yourself to the path in service of the one idea, the one thing, you believe in.” He does not say what this one thing should be. There is, in his lack of specificity, an acknowledgment of the individuality of our paths. “You have an impact when you sacrifice everything.”
“For the person who has committed himself or herself to a path, there are certain obstacles which may arise. There are things which cause us to hesitate, to lessen the strength of our impact. If you are going to sacrifice everything, you should know about these obstacles. You must recognize them, if you are to press on.”
The musalah is silent. Now and then a brother enters from the door near the qebla; he takes his place silently, walking face down, as if loathe to be noticed. The children who are present are silent. No one runs or laughs or cries. The creak of trees blackened by rain divides the afternoon.
“The first obstacle concerns the fruits of your labor. You may find, through your sacrifice, that you underestimate the length of your path. Indeed, our paths are infinite. We attach your hopes to swift reward. We expect immediate impact. We forget that making a change to the world takes a long, long time.”
He puts his hands in his pockets. In his coloring, he is like me: pale eyes, dark hair, tallowy skin. It is inexplicably comforting to be addressed by a member of the Ulema in whom I can see my physical reflection. I want to feel that my appearance is normal. I do not want to always look like the outsider. “Hazrat Habab, it is reported in a sahih hadith collected by Bukhari, was once asked about the difficulties that he had faced during his life. By way of offering a response, he pulled up his shirt, and showed his interrogator his back.”
“There were holes. He had been tortured with burning rocks, over which he was dragged, until the flesh on his shoulders and spine baked away. His scars were deep and terrible.” Naima shivers next to me. I wonder if Marwa is listening, and if she is afraid. “The Prophet Muhammad, sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam, used to turn red in the face when he was angry. When he heard of Habab’s performance, he blushed. He called Habab to him. ‘Be patient, Habab,’ he told his companion. ‘Have you forgotten that before your time, there were tribes of men who buried their believers in earth up to their necks, and then left them to die? Have you forgotten that there have been tribes who split men in two with their swords? Have you forgotten that many other people are worse off than you are?’
“Within Habab’s lifetime, Islam had spread across the Peninsula. The fruits of his labor came, and were greater than he had expected — but first, he had to wait.” My heart pangs at this. I think of Kafka, who died before he was considered great. I wonder if it is vanity, comparing myself to him. I wonder at the status of my proposals. Do they wait on someone’s desk? Have they already been binned? Will they ever tell me? Will I ever know? In Sofiane’s words, I hear advice. It is not worth stopping on my path to care.
“A chief cause of failing to make an impact is giving up because your reward has not yet come.” My feet have fallen asleep. I want to move without anyone knowing. “The next obstacle that may greet you is feeling outnumbered, like a stranger, alone.”
It is one of the miracles of the Holy Qur’an that when one opens it to a given page, one always finds a personal aspect to the message there given. Hearing Sofiane speak now, I feel the same privacy. “When Islam began, when the Ummah was born, the Muslims were as strangers. ‘Islam began as something strange, and it shall return to being something strange, so give glad tidings to the strangers,’ Prophet Muhammad said. If you feel like a stranger now, that is good. It is a sign that you are on your own path.”
“Remember Prophet Musa, alayhi salaam. Firaun gathered 70000 magicians before him, with the intention of proving Musa to be no better than an enchanter. The magicians threw down their staffs, and by means of illusion caused them to appear to wiggle like snakes. Then Prophet Musa threw down his staff. With the grace of Allah, it was transformed. It became a real snake, and quickly, it gobbled up all of the magicians’ sticks.” I see Yul Brenner as Firaun, and am struck then by the continuity between the Christian version of the story, and Islam’s completion. I have never heard this story from an Islamic perspective. I am glad that what I have learned already is complemented, not replaced.
“Prophet Musa was surely outnumbered. He was a stranger, and he was alone. But when Allah’s miracle shone through him, he showed others the path to Islam. So powerful was Allah’s sign, that even the magicians converted. They knew full well that the remainder of their path on earth would last less than twenty four hours. Still they sensed that it was better to offer themselves to God and to die than to continue in the service of Firaun. Through his position as an outsider, Prophet Musa had a great impact. As a stranger, he brought change.”
Then I remember Pierre, old and black, who told me about light. “The rest of the body needs the eyes,” he told me. “You do not fit in. You will not fit in. But you are light. You recognize light. Because of you, other people can see.” In Brother Sofiane’s words, I hear the same message delivered to my heart. I try to reconcile my strangeness with my current vocation. At school we do not want the children to feel like outsiders. Our traditions are almost understated because they are cast as so familiar. We present Muslim culture to our students as if it were the most normal thing in the world. And yet, we live in America. Here, when contrasted with the majority, our traditions are indeed strange. I wonder if my students will be angry when they find themselves on the periphery. I wonder if they will be disappointed with me.
My mind has wandered while Brother Sofiane begins his last point. “Finally,” he says, “you might feel jealous of other people’s resources. You might look around you, and you might be overwhelmed by what you don’t have. You might feel it unfair that you must so keenly struggle when the others around you seem to enjoy such ease. This happens to us in Islamic schools.” I reflect on my bank account, on my ailing car, on weighing of the price of meat against the price of gasoline. I feel the hunger in my stomach of weeks of letting transportation win. Yes, I feel jealous.
Brother Sofiane is tranquil. “Do you forget,” he asks, “that Allah multiplies the value of our deeds by ten, by twenty, by one hundred? In the balance, it is not our material wealth which fills the scales. There are people who make six figures. There are people who make much more money than we do. But you might be surprised to find that your quality of life is better than theirs. You might forget, when you sacrifice, the magnification of blessings.”
“Remember the Ansar. They came to Prophet Muhammad jealous and complaining. ‘Why do you give money and camels to the other tribes, but you give nothing to us? Our lives are impoverished. Where is our reward?’ Prophet Muhammad, sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam, admonished them. “Surely the reward I have given to the other tribes is much less than the reward that you will have. They have been given material things, camels and money, because this is all that they have earned. But you, oh Ansar, your reward will be great. You have been here, with the Muslims, since the beginning of the migration. You have been honored.’”
Sofiane pauses to bring his point home. My heart spins like a pocket watch. “We wonder, as Islamic school teachers, why we sacrifice everything.” His voices rises. For a moment, there is almost anger in his tone. “If you want to leave and make a lot of money, if this is what your heart tells you to do, then go. Then this is not the right place for you.” My cheeks burn.
He softens his voice. “But if you stay, you will be building the future of our religion. Without teachers, there will be no next generation of Muslims. If you stay, this will be your reward: you will see our Islam carried on.” He slows down. The khutba is coming to an end. “I do not say this to make you feel good, I say it because it is true. Being a teacher is following the example of Prophet Muhammad.”
He stops, and his voice drops to almost a whisper. The dua marking the end of the sermon begins. He holds up one finger while he prays. There is little I understand in the prayer. He asks for peace upon Prophet Muhammad, and upon Prophet Ibrahim. He asks for peace in our hearts. He recites from the Qur’an words concerning patience. At last, we smooth our faces and stand.
It is time for communal prayer. There are precious few Surah which I recognize upon their recitation. It is one of my weaknesses as a Muslim that my knowledge of the Qur’an is still so shallow. At school, I am learning a new Surah, with my students. In my heart, I speak to Sofiane. “Brother, would you please read Surat al Ala as today’s short sura?” I want my feeling of connectedness to stay with me through the end of the prayer. I cover my heart with my palms as we begin.
We sing “Ameen” at the end of Surah Al-Fatiha. Brother Sofiane briefly pauses. Then his voice picks up, ringing.
Sabbihi isma rabbika al-aAAla
Allathee khalaqa fasawwa
Waallathee qaddara fahada
Waallathee akhraja almarAAa
FajaAAalahu ghuthaan ahwa.
It is the Surah my heart asked for. I stand and listen and pray, and in the recitation, I sense my reward. I am finally beginning to understand.
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Salam Anna,
I am slowly beginning to realize the importance of identity. I scoffed at it for a long time - enjoying life in different cultures made me think I was immune to such issues. In retrospect, I lacked the courage and foresight to look within and track the changes to which I was slowly submitting myself.
Just as it takes courage to walk an infrequently-tread path, it takes courage to keep a pulse on one’s changing self, and even more courage to pace that pulse. What strikes me about your struggle with identity is precisely this: the wisdom and patience with which you negotiate your emotions.
If it helps any, understand that each of us struggle with identity. I’m brown, have studied the Qu’ran since I was young, and have been blessed with a Muslim upbringing. Yet I negotiate with myself over the length of my facial hair, my comfort level with being surrounded by those more pious than I, and my guilt over the sense of freedom I get when hanging out with non-Muslim friends. You strike me as having a piercing clarity that many of us work towards. This clarity, insh’Allah, will carry you through.
On a different note: it’s a little sad each time one of your posts comes to an end. SubhanAllah.
February 4th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Anna,
I’m wondering if you know of the Catholic monastery in Syria called Deir Mar Musa. An article about it can be found at http://www.companysj.com/v213/wilderness.htm. The monks, nuns and lay collaborators of this monastery take, in addition to more standard vows, a vow to love Islam. I just wondered if in your travels (when you scrape together the money to travel again) if this community might be a good place for you to connect with as you work out your own path. Besides, I’m very curious about the place and wonder if it really is as good as it sounds. But I can’t travel. So I want you to go there and write beautifully about whatever you find so that I can read it.
Bless you,
Priscilla
February 5th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Assalamu Alaikum, sister Anna.
In my own path, I found the teachings of this Sheikh to be extremely beneficial. May you also find it so.
http://shadhiliteachings.com/pub/lessons_jan98_v2.php
February 7th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
as-salam alaykum,
your post reminded me of this hadith of our Prophet, on him be peace:
“The one who is proficient in the recitation of the Qur’an will be with the honorable and obedient scribes (angels) and he who recites the Qur’an and finds it difficult to recite, doing his best to recite it in the best way possible, will have a double reward.’
(as narrated by `Aisha and recorded in Bukhari and Muslim)
June 4th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Assalamu alaikum Anna,
Another wonderful piece. As usual I have a hankering to sit closer, see deeper, hear more of you.
The poise and reserve you have is so dignified and attractive!
I LOVE the expression you used to describe how we end prayer: “At last, we smooth our faces and stand.” It has opened up a new meaning to the act for me.
You are fortunate and Guided for immersing yourself in your path. And for having the courage to follow a path that is difficult and more lonely than most of us have the guts to follow.
January 19th, 2010 at 8:55 pm
I couldn’t agree more great stuff here.
March 12th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Can I cancel the order within thirty days if I decide to not keep it?