The Twelfth Sun

ii♦ The Second Sun♦

The soles of her slippers dug into the sand now, getting between her toes. It slowed her down but urged her at the same time forward, as it did the men and women that walked beside her. They wore their garments humbly, loose dresses for both the men and women which covered their ankles all the way up to their necks and then higher up, around their heads. Their long garments dancing around them as the wind turned.

"Come, sister," Surrayah called now from ahead, laughter in her voice, a smile underneath her veil crinkling the edges of her eyes. The girl felt that perhaps she had heard her sister laugh for many years before she finally leveled her attention on the mosque again.

"We've arrived." Surrayah said, and her voice wanted to tell her a secret as they entered.

The first thing she noticed was the padded floors. Powdery, warm sand was replaced by cotton mats as her slippers fell off. Her feet welcomed the firmness of ground. The next was the lack of furniture, a vaccum of emptiness in a white expanse that echoed whispers, a whiteness that made the girl's unused eyes seek out more. The way one looks longingly at the moon, asking oneself; is this all there is? And the answer which whispers, ignored and forgotten. She swore she could see her own reflection staring back at her from the walls, she blinked and the reflection was gone. Loud sounds did not exist inside this holy house the same way it did in the markets, dampened by the cloud smooth carpets. The silence made the voices inside her head sound like screams.

A frantic heartbeat

A suffocated breath

The girl raised her lips to speak, the hanging head of the chandelier above them swayed, alerting the men and women around her who had already taken a seat around an old white bearded man. "I don't want to be here," she said, and the room fell silent.

Curious eyes met hers as she took a step back. Surrayah, who'd taken a seat with the rest of them rose. "Please, Allah's beloved, take a seat. Surrayah," the old white bearded man spoke. Her sister turned her head to meet his eyes. The girl took another step back.

"You came here for purity but all you see is fear" He said. And the girl asked, "Do you know me?" 

"Your sister has mentioned you." 

"She is not my sister." And she expected surprise, she expected punishment but he smiled and it was only then the voices stopped screaming. 

"The ummah is one body. When one of us is in pain, all of us are. Do you think God has left you here without protection, without safety, without someone to accompany you? The blood of family is thicker than the family of faith, yes you are right, we are not brother and sister, but are we not, in spirit, in value, but family still?" 

"You speak of God as if I know who that is."

"We are all born knowing God, you felt him just now as you entered, before fear grasped you. It is other people, the pain they bring, the callousness, the hardship they give. It is memory which makes us forget." 

"Forget?"

"Who we really are."

"She told me you could help me."

"I cannot, but you will stay. You will listen, perhaps God will choose to make you remember now, perhaps later, perhaps never. Whatever is best for you." 

"Why would not God answer my prayers?" 

"To protect you." 

"Why?"

He looks at her and nods her over, "Come. Sit."

The scent of green tea and moonlight. The girl, bambi legged, exhaling her knotted breath padded towards the half moon gathering. She was surprised to find the floor soft as a bed, she crossed her legs, tilting her ear as the holy man began to speak. 

":::"

Through her closed eyes she had entered a room between her mind and the universe. From somewhere far away the story had ended but she heard the holy bearded man coo like a dove on a lazy summer day. Reassuring, soft, tantalizing, bringing her back. 

Child, your tears have made an ocean of your life, yet water cannot drown, water cannot drown

Child, your tears hide the continents of memory. To remember is to be human. However painful, we have been created to unload it to God and not hold it within us, all alone. Once we were all one family.

Child, your tears turn your brown eyes blue

She opened her eyes as she felt Surrayahs small fingers wipe away her tears, in front of her, sitting in the middle of the gathering, the smiling holy man nodded, and his nod was a promise; God is here. 

It is in ones darkest moments, ones life truly begins. 

"What do you remember?"

"Nothing." The girl said. And continued, "But I think. I have learnt something." And she swallowed down her acidic spit, closing her shaking eyes, through the depths of hell, she smiled, and it did not lessen the pain and disparity, but it was a start. Wherever one goes, one always takes one with. "I must create some safety within myself... To tell myself its okay. Whatever I've forgotten. That its safe to remember now, that I'm strong enough to carry it."

"To let go." The holy man continued. 

"What?"

"To let go of it, not to carry it when it is not yours to carry. It is God's." And she did not understand but she nodded, thinking perhaps, one day she would. 

"May I stay here, tonight?" And Surrayah opened her mouth to protest, attached to her new sister when the holy man said, "It is normal to fall asleep after our night prayer, some of us never make it home. Of course, but up there, in the womens section, you'll have the covers to yourself." The men noddingly smiled to her as they passed to leave, the women patted her shoulder. Surrayah said, sulkingly, "I'll come by in the morning and we'll go eat."

The girl nodded and the emptiness of the mosque returned before the holy man climbed the skygrazing minaret calling out the call to prayer, and men and women gushed back in like waves, to stand in rows beside one another, "Close the rows!" The holy man called from the corner where she sat to watch, and they pressed their shoudlers and feet together, mimicking eachothers movements, prostrating their foreheads on the ground, lifting and bowing, lifting and bowing, as one body breathes, as one heart beats, the ripples of the drumming of ones life. Together. Until they exit and return, exit and return like wave currents washing in and out onto the beach of life, for the fifth time. By the time she woke up, it was already the morning prayer and she had slept peacefully, like the first sleep after birth and she had not been alone, once. Albeit strangely dreaming of the laughing king, and the biting cruelty reminding her of a boyish wound. 

It is with begruding head lift she answered to her name being called.