by Umm Zakiyyah
Then there was the preoccupation of Americans with issues like color and race. Until meeting Tamika, Zahra thought little of those things. Even attending public schools had not exposed her to the complexity of the topic. Tamika and Aminah seemed almost obsessed with making sure the world saw all colors as equal, and although Islam itself supported this notion, was it really necessary to have this point underlying all conversations about intercultural relations among Muslims? It was as if they saw racism in everything, and it was suffocating for Zahra, especially since the implications often accused her own culture of the crime, when Desi people themselves were victims of racism, in America and Kashmir.
“Did you intend to make it hard for Aminah?” he said, his eyes still reflecting the hurt that was beginning to pain Zahra.
Zahra was quiet momentarily. “You are making it hard for Aminah by making her believe something that is not true. She is different from us. She cannot be a part of our family.”
“You do not have a right to that decision.”
“Then if you want to marry her, marry her. You do not need to talk to me. You say Islam allows you to do it, even without the permission of your mother and father. So why are you seeking mine?”
Zahra felt the cruelty of her words, but she was losing patience with this issue. Part of her wanted to support Zaid’s desire to marry Aminah. There was something undeniably beautiful about following one’s heart, especially within the limits of Islam. She wanted to say she hoped the best for them. Because, really, she did. But she could not. There was too much at stake. What would her parents say if they found out she had supported him, even if only with words? They would think she was a part of this. It was difficult enough continuing to be Tamika’s and Aminah’s friend. That made her immediately suspect in her family’s view. But she would not cut them off. She really liked them as Muslim sisters, and she did not want to lose that. But she would not risk losing her status as a respectable daughter and niece in her family. That she was unwilling to do, even if it meant outwardly discouraging Zaid while supporting him in her heart. What else could she possibly do?
“I am not seeking your permission. I only wanted your support as my cousin and friend.”
The words affected her deeply, and she was reminded of how they had grown up together and were more like siblings than cousins. Her mother and his mother were sisters and their fathers were cousins. Zaid was like a brother and best friend to her, and she longed for that closeness they had from childhood through college. But what Zaid was asking from her, she could not give. Even if she had a choice, she would choose her family over him. If he wanted to marry Aminah, there was nothing at all wrong with that. But he could not expect her to be his support throughout this as she had been for trivial matters growing up. Besides, it was he who was putting the wall between them, making it impossible for her to do what he asked. His newfound Islamic identity inspired in him a strictness that put a distance between them, and this made her uncomfortable. He would not even look at her anymore. He kept his gaze down as he did with strange women at the masjid or in school. He would not sit next to her, or even near her, during family gatherings, and he no longer greeted her with a hug. Even their conversation tonight was strained, and she knew it was because he was uncomfortable talking to her alone, even though they were outside and not in a closed room. She imagined that one day he would not talk to her at all, and she dreaded that day.
“I am sorry,” she said, turning toward the door so she would not have to look him in the eye. “I cannot support you in this.” Without waiting for a reply, she went back inside and returned to the dining room where her sister and cousins were still talking. The way Rabia looked at her when she returned to the table told Zahra she would have to talk to her sister. She could not risk having her older sister think she had anything to do with Zaid’s relationship with Aminah Ali.
Chapter Ten
“Who is she?” Sarah demanded Sunday morning just thirty minutes after she had showered and dressed. She mustered a willed calmness that was somehow separate from herself, even as it enveloped her in the presence of her husband, whose eyes betrayed him even before his words. She held in her hand the layered papers of his cell phone bill, and his mouth had parted to speak but, apparently, found no words.
Sarah felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach, and her vision became blurred momentarily. His slightly widened eyes as he looked at the bill, his loss for words, and finally his sigh as he ran a hand over his head told Sarah that her suspicions were correct.
She wanted to be wrong. Oh, how much easier this would be if she were. But there was someone else. There was a woman on the other end of the strange phone number that was noted repeatedly on the bill. The airtime minutes listed on the papers were a deafening blow to Sarah’s already deflating comfort in herself, in her marriage. 43, 102, 31, 15, 216, 1, 0.32, 6, 125, 22, 10…
Everything began to come back to her, all the things that had been insignificant to her for the last five months. The nonchalance in their conversations, the sudden romantic surprises, the constant leaving the house after receiving a call on his cell. The “meetings” every weekend and sometimes weekday nights. Sitting in the driveway to finish a phone call before coming in from work.
“Who?”
“Sweetheart,” Ismael said, an awkward smile on his face, “calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down. Explain this.” She held up the bill in front of his face, and he calmly took it from her and set it on the nightstand without as much as looking at it. Meeting her gaze, he reached for Sarah’s hands but she pulled away.
“Sweetheart, please—”
“Don’t turn this around, Ismael.” She shook her head, feeling her calmness evaporate in the heat she felt building in her chest. “Talk to me.”
“Sweet—”
“Stop calling me that!”
The room grew quiet suddenly, a stunned silence. Even Sarah was shocked by her outburst. She had told herself she would remain calm, but she felt herself coming apart at the seams. And she didn’t recognize the woman who was emerging in her place. This was not Sarah Ali talking, but a girl she had known growing up. She thought she had permanently left her behind when she walked away from her home in April 1971 to marry Ishmael Morgan in a private ceremony attended by no one she knew. Sarah Adams was someone she never wanted to see again, let alone be again. Sarah had not expected her to show up twenty six years later during an argument with the man who had helped her leave Sarah Adams behind.
“Sweetheart,” Ismael said, and Sarah sensed the hesitation, and fear, in his voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I tried to talk to you about it a few weeks ago.”
Sarah sat on the edge of the bed and hung her head with one hand covering her face, too afraid to speak again right then. She was listening to her husband, but she wasn’t hearing him. This was not happening to her. The words were part of a dream, a nightmare, and soon she would wake up.
But she was awake, and he was going on and on about this girl, this stupid girl, and she wished he would shut up. She couldn’t take this right now, not now, not when everything inside her was already falling apart. She had just lost her son to Tamika, was about to lose Aminah to Zaid, and now she was losing her husband too. This was more than she could bear, more than anyone should bear.
She should have known. She should have expected this. She hadn’t been a good wife. She should have listened more, paid more attention to him. She should not have gotten complacent with her looks. She should have exercised and took care of her body like she had in youth. She should not have argued with him so much.
“—hope you can understand,” Ismael said, and Sarah had no idea what he had said before that.
When she didn’t respond, she felt the weight of her husband sitting on the bed, and a second later he put an arm around her.
“I love you, Sarah,” he said. “No one could ever make me as happy as you.”
His words pierce
d something inside her. She thought it was anger burrowing a hole in her heart, but when her eyes filled and her shoulders slouched, she knew it was hope. He pulled her to him and the side of her head fell against his shoulder just as the tears spilled from her eyes. He kept rubbing her arm, and she could smell the faint trace of cologne in the T-shirt he wore. This only made her cry more, and although part of her wanted to scream and yell at him, she could only savor the feel of strength in his arm as he stroked her and revel in the security she felt for having him to herself right then. She didn’t want to lose him, had never wanted to lose him. He had been her strength all these years. He had been her better side. What she would give to know what she had done wrong. Because now she only wanted him back, and all to herself, like it had always been.
Tamika thought about Dee as she listened to Sister Nusaybah talk about Allah’s wisdom in granting humans only a short time on earth. The Creator had made life short, and signs of its transience were all around for those who had eyes to see. The burst of life in the spring, the drying, colored leaves in the fall, and the naked, barren trees covered in snow and ice in winter. All were indicators that nothing could be taken for granted. Even the excruciating heat of summer was a reminder that there was a coolness of eternal life promised to those who bore with patience the heat of life on earth. Everything in life was a test. Money, beauty, children, even a husband or wife. None of these should take firm root in the heart as to inspire one to lose focus on the brevity of life itself. Nothing the human possessed was worth anything if not aiding him, or her, in drawing closer to Allah. Life was akin to sacrifice, and sometimes sacrifice was not physical, but of the heart. With children, one had to realize they did not belong to the parent, but to the Creator himself. They were but loans from Allah to test His servants on how they would fulfill, and pay, this significant trust. The same applied to one’s money, beauty, and marriage itself. Tamika found herself pondering the latter and wondered how, and if, she were fulfilling her trust.
Allah’s Ulooheeyah, the Creator’s sole right to worship on the earth, was a vast topic, Tamika was learning, that stretched far beyond prayer itself. It was the last of the three categories of Tawheed and it delineated the creation’s relationship with the Creator, the only one worthy of worship, and the only one worthy of one’s ultimate love, hope, and fear. Every word spoken from the lips, every movement of the limbs, and every action of the heart was, for the believer, a form of worship in this world. Prayer was the most evident form of worship, but it was not the only form. Worship was not limited to a formal recital and prostration before one’s God.
Allah created in all humans a fitrah, an in-born nature that recognized Him alone as their Lord. This fitrah endowed the human with worship as an innate trait. Thus, worship was not, in essence, a choice for the human, but a matter of fact. Pagans consciously worshipped an idol, animal, or human being. Believers consciously worshipped the Creator of the stone, animal, and human being. Each disbeliever believed his object of worship to be the manifestation of or means of closeness to the One true God. Some pagans even claimed monotheism if the object of worship was singular as opposed to plural, even as it was creation and not the Creator himself.
What was compelling about the nature of the human being was that, in reality, he had no choice. He had to worship something. This was the nature with which Allah created him. Even if a person’s disbelief in Allah alone was not manifested in the form of conscious worship, like idolaters with stone, or the Catholics and Christians with ordained saints and God’s prophets, he was still guilty of shirk, the gravest sin on the earth.
“Have you seen the one who takes as his god his own vain desires?” Nusaybah translated her recitation from the Qur’an.
Shirk was commonly defined as worshipping creation instead of or in addition to the Creator himself. Yet there were those who worshipped nothing, in fact had no religion at all. What of them?
Since an object of worship was not limited to what someone prostrated before in prayer or called on in times of duress, whatever was the ultimate determinant of right and wrong or good and bad for a person, was in fact his god. Because the Creator was the only One who had ultimate right to determine good from bad or right from wrong, a person was actually guilty of associating partners with Him if these definitions were concluded in lieu of The Judge himself.
SubhaanAllaah. Tamika had never before thought of atheists as idolaters. But, in essence, they were. Their god was not made from stone, but it was proverbially carved from the most vital piece of flesh in the human body, the heart. Their god was their heart. Whatever their hearts desired, they followed. Whatever they wanted, they did, unless they themselves had established a limit, a boundary drawn by none other than their own mind. Of course, they too had a fitrah, and much of what they counted as “common sense” laws in religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, were none other than their souls’ natural recognition of basic good and bad or right and wrong based on the fitrah that Allah had placed in humans before they walked the earth.
“Do not worship besides Allah that which cannot help or harm you,” Nusaybah recited.
She went on to recite the verse that so correctly reflected Tamika’s sentiments of worshipping Jesus as a Christian that Tamika found herself pondering the magnificent wisdom of Allah as He quoted the oft-repeated excuse of those guilty of shirk. “We only worship them so that they may bring us closer to God.”
How could one turn away from a religion like this? How could someone reject the pure, simplistic instruction to worship Allah alone, joining no partners with Him? How could someone not long for the eternal reward for worshipping Him promised to the believers in the Hereafter? How could anything in this world be worth being deprived of Allah’s Shade on the Day when there will be no shade but His? The Day when the sun will be but a mile or two from the earth, when its heat would drench humans in sweat, a soaking perspiration, leaving them as if submerged in a lake, its depth in direct proportion to one’s deeds upon the earth. Yet there will be those who drink from al-Hawd, a pond fed from the famous river al-Kawthar in Paradise, a pond about which the Prophet, peace be upon him, said, “Whoever will drink from it will never be thirsty.”
How could Tamika ever desire anything more than gazing upon the countenance of her Lord in the Hereafter? How could the paltry distractions of this world be worth denial of that most inimitable experience? A denial that, even next to the excruciating, infinite torment of the Hell Fire, will be the greatest cause of disappointment to one who died in disbelief. What a pleasure it would be to finally meet her Creator! Whatever He wanted from her, she would give. Whatever He asked from her, she would do. No, nothing in this world or in the heavens, or in the cavernous channels of her heart, was worth sacrificing eternal life in the pleasure of her Lord.
“The day We shall gather the righteous before the Most Gracious, like a band presented before a king for honors.”
The Day whose length was as if 50,000 years on the earth.
Was it worth it to sacrifice the menial 70, 100, or less years in this world only to stand, immersed in one’s sweat with the sun brought near, before The Judge, the King of the kings of earth? Was it worth it to think of family, friends, or even what the heart coveted when this was The Inevitable Reality that Allah conveyed to even our father Adam so long ago? The Inevitable Reality that Allah conveyed so eloquently in the Qur’an.
The Inevitable Reality
What is the Inevitable Reality?
And what can make you know
what The Inevitable Reality is?
Then when the Horn is blown with one blast
And the earth and the mountains are lifted
and leveled with one blow
Then on that Day, the Occurrence will occur
And the heaven will split open,
For that Day it is infirm
And the angels are at its edges
And there will bear the Throne of your Lord above them,
&nb
sp; That Day, eight (of them will bear it)
That Day you will be exhibited (for Judgment)
Not hidden among you is anything concealed
So as for he who is given his record in his right hand,
he will say, “Here is my record!
Indeed I was certain that I would be meeting my account.”
So he will be in a pleasant life
In an elevated garden
Its (fruit) to be picked hanging near
(They will be told), “Eat and drink in satisfaction
for what you put forth in the days past.”
But as for he who is given his record in his left hand,
he will say, “Oh, I wish I had not been given my record!
And had not known what is my account.
I wish my death had been the decisive one (with no life after it)
My wealth has not availed me
Gone from me is my authority (that I had on earth).”
So I swear by what you see
And what you do not see
Indeed it is the word
of a noble Messenger.
And it is not the word of a poet
Little do you believe
Nor the word of a soothsayer
Little do you remember
(It is)
A Revelation from the Lord of the worlds.
How was it even possible to disbelieve?
Khadijah’s eyes were still wet with tears as she entered her apartment and found that Omar had not yet returned from the masjid. She and Tamika had exchanged little conversation during their drive, their minds still on the powerful class that Umm Barakah had given. Khadijah knew Tamika was thinking of Dee, and Khadijah had been thinking of the last moments of Keiya’s life, a terrifying recollection that, ironically, led to the solace and hope she would find in Islam.