Earlier this morning, waking up:
"If i don't read ayatulkursi before falling asleep, I have bad dreams" - [Z]
Chococoffee (as E would say, "there's nothing like a cup of warm brown liquid to help you start your day.") and some barakabread later, the detanglement is still continuing, the tenderhooks falling loose with a gasp and a sigh. I remember the shadows across the alleyways in the wee hours, i remember wondering if it was normal for two children under the age of eight to be out at that time of morning alone, holding hands as they walked on, one verbally abusing the other--and then i remember Z's scratchy morning voice being "eaten alive by mosquitoes" as my eyes opened to meet my light went on in the Fajr air--but afterwards? My body was motionless but my dreams were constructed in metahistory, they took people I know and places I know and flung them around at 'the zephyr's request'--not the glory-dreams one has when one goes to sleep in MuhyidDin, but bizarre constructions and reconstructions. Germany declared war and the Italians declare peace, the nations of the world against an Englisch exam, T and books lining shelves and leaning against an ice cream counter, asking one if she awoke C for Fajr, and throughout a gleaming flicker of consciousness ending in pitchforks and--but C isn't even Muslim? And neither are you--why am i leaning against an ice cream counter?
And then I look up and my cup of warm brown liquid has been drained and my hair bursts in all directions, and I need to pack this room up and move it to RuknedDin this afternoon. "May GOD help you in this task," Z tells me, before going to take a shower. It is somewhat like excavating the ruins of Drumheller, without the dinosaur bones, or the earth of the Temple Mount, without the Jews and Christians.
Next time I'll read ayatulkursi.
--
Finished the 'aqeedah book did with J. So proud i actually finished something, and it was a class muchly enjoyed. Last couple of months here--how much more can I squeeze in.
and then our exile
Sunday, June 12, 2005 at 2:59 a.m.
basit said...
here, some definitions.
barakabread - when you go to events in some mosques (eg. mawlids or dhikr sessions or public classes), some places nice people hand out bread and candy which is by implication baraka-ified. the barakabread here wasn't mine, a roommate went to the jazariyyah class the rest of us cheerfully slept through. but i was eating it.
muhyiddin - mosque in saulihiyyah qadeemah. where ibn 'arabi's buried. i used to sometimes fall asleep there when waiting for kh2 to arrive, and would always have big dreams.
drumheller - http://www.dinosaurvalley.com/
temple mount - http://www.templemountfaithful.org/ and http://templemount.com/
ayatu'l-kursi - http://www.sufism.org/society/salaat/ayats/kursi.html
'aqeedah - credal belief. God and prophets and wonders and so on.
~
said...
Oh, good stuff, I was just about to ask if barakabread was the same as Wonder Bread. (I remember hearing of a boy who put Miracle Whip on his Wonder Bread.)
And your definition reminds me of one particular night we spent driving through Sri Lankan vegetation, paddy fields, and towns. I think we were going to Hambatota, but my memory is a deceitful back-stabbing traitor, so maybe we were actually going to Kalmunai. Or even Gampola. But I think it was Hambatota.
Anyway, along the way we stopped in a town whose name I can't remember to visit one of my dad's old teachers. (At his house I met an 8-year-old who I promptly decided I was going to marry. Problem is, he had a nigh identical twin who I did not like as much. That made for an uncomfortable triangle. Also, neither of deigned to speak to me. Or even look at me.) On the way to this teacher's house we passed a mosque out of which flowed a veritable flood of children. Interestingly enough, all the kids, and I mean all of them, were wearing either scarves or caps, as the gender may be. It looked too late in the night to be madrassah time, so I was confused. And they were all holding clear plastic bags containing cooked white rice. Apparently, every week the mosque gives out food and everyone flocks to get their share of free food. (Sounds like the mosque here during Iftars.) Come to think of it, it might have been Friday. Then again, I never kept track of the days so I don't know. It could have been Satursday for all I know.
There was supposed to be a quota of one bag per person, but I saw one boy wheel by on his bike and he had about 5 bags hanging off his handlebars. They gleamed in the inky darkness. I smelled corruption, or maybe bullying. Which amounts to the same thing.
I can't believe I'm here, and not there. Can't believe that I can't even use the word "here" now and mean it. That "there" is two days flying away.
~
basit said...
and pre-emptive sense of loss. i had something like this before i left Canada, but i did not know what it was i was plunging into.
mosque-food. barakabread here, barakarice there. "here", "there".
how long were you "there"--two months or so, yes? i went to go check the mail at the embassy here, and they made me wait for about half an hour--was reading a magazine article about "canadian beneficence in asia" (paraphrase), and much of it was about the fine wonders the great country has achieved in the poor tsunami-hit countries.
you can tell stories now, about how exotic life is, how foreign and removed, and people will nod their heads and act interested (and maybe actually "be" "interested") and say 'oh, really? what was that like?', and they will not understand that it is life that is just life that is life, different but life that is the same, or they will ask the single short questions like "what was one thing you weren't expecting" or "what do (sri lankans)(syrians)(sicilians)(anyone) do for such-and-such"...and if you are not prepared to talk to them to break through the question and give a complete picture all it can be is single short answers.
i can see that coming in two months. it will make me sick if i do not become fake (more fake). suffer them gladly.
we used to have wonder bread in pakistan too. it was wonder-ous.
why that specific 8-year-old?
~
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