Park Prayers

A string of banging noises erupted from across the street. It was so abrupt I could see people's topis falling off their heads. There was a moment of confusion and murmuring in the mosque before it started again, this time closer. At six years old, I assumed it was the normal Toronto construction that seemed to never stop, but the look on my sister's face told me it was something worse. The Imam gestured for everyone to stay where they were and slowly cracked opened the grand doors leading out of the mosque. The room was drowned in sounds of people yelling and stomping, followed by the desperate pleas from the Imam to keep it down until dhuhr was finished.

Through the crack in the door, I saw glimpses of people holding beautifully painted signs. I wondered where they had gotten the colourful paper and where I could get some for myself. The Imam stumbled back into the building as a crowd stampeded their way past him and into our mosque. Suddenly, there was a neon pink sign two feet in front of me and a large man beneath it telling my aunt to move. She didn't need to know perfect English to understand she should lift her long purple salwar kameez and shuffle out of his way.

My aunt shakily whispered something into my older sister Aroosa's ear. Aroosa nodded solemnly, scooped me up with one of her arms, and walked to the back door of the mosque. I wanted to tell her that I could walk myself, but when I looked back to see my aunt begging my eight-year-old sister to stay calm I decided to keep my mouth shut.

It was impossible to figure out what exactly the red-faced people were angry about. Every time a chant started to take shape, it was cut off by a different one coming from across the room. From what I could tell, they either wanted to go to 7/11 or thought we were all therapists. Whatever they wanted, they weren't going to stop until they got it.

Everyone in the mosque seemed aware of this fact. We arrived at the back wall and Aroosa put me down, making me promise I would hold her hand until she told me I could let go. I tightly gripped her hand and turned to see panicked Mussulman following behind us, trying to get to the back door. After that, it was just a blur of people and all I could register was Aroosa pulling me along inside the crowd. When the people cleared, I saw we were in the park across the street. My aunt ran up to us with my other sister, but she said nothing; what could she say?

Almost everyone from the mosque was in the park now, looking back at the building that had now been taken over by the thumping that was once on the other side of the street. The four of us were just as lost as everyone else as to what we should do when we heard the Imam call:

"Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar."

He repeated this four times, by which point everyone was facing southeast and putting down their mats for prayer, myself and my family included.

When the prayer ended and everybody stood up, fear was only a lingering memory as we looked at the now abandoned mosque, then made our way back to our cars. In my eyes, it wasn't the praying that provided people with a sense of calm, it was the sense of community. I never cared about going to the mosque, and I still don't find it that interesting; but I was fascinated by how in minutes, a fleeing crowd was turned into a peaceful congregation. I realized that it didn't matter whether we were in a mosque or the park across the street, as long as there were people there who made us feel like we were a part of something bigger together.