of spiritual retreat in mosque during last days of Ramadan
A full glossary appears on page 319.
Asterisked speech in italics denotes that it is dialect; unasterisked speech in the same dialogue denotes reversion to English.
to the Author of all
In which the Archangel Jibreel gathers the Recording Angels and Protecting Angels and instructs them of their charge; and they mark the fate of the soul in the Preserved Tablet; and make the mi’raj to his world.
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Read! In the name of your Lord, who created, created from a clot, and assigned each soul Receivers, to record in truth; and from these no thought is hidden, no scornful word unheard, and from whose Pens naught shall go unwrit.
And at the fiat of Jibreel, we gathered in the lowest sphere within the compass of a grain. And a thousand angels brought down the Preserved Tablet wherein all is decreed.
Read! said the Ruh, and stretched thousandfold Wings bounding the geometry of our world around a drop of sea.
And I saw archangel Israfil flicker into a trumpet-blowing messenger in gorgeous flowing green and turban, and his lips poised to blow for Judgement Day. And heavyclouded Mikael with his angel hosts who would drive the wind and rain and sea before them.
Read! That your Lord who knows the fall of a sparrow’s egg is content to hear the Accounts from the Recorders of the Right and Left Hand; and these, from the tangle of human motives, assign each deed to good and bad. And given to you, Roquib, precedence over Atid of the Left Hand, that you may allot tenfold or seven hundredfold merits to a completed good deed. And Allah is Merciful, All-Knowing.
How many Angels assemble at the blast? Protectors and Scribes for every soul ever born.
Some mystics imagine our world so well that in their minds it assumes a shape. But this shape has no top or bottom, it is not coloured, it has no weight. Truly our substance is infinitely stiff, infinitely pliant. We vibrate as one with no delay and no wave motion. Nevertheless the blast of Israfil’s horn disturbs a boat on a calm lake.
And given each soul two Followers, front and rear, to ward off evil. And these are with him from the womb—And the Protectors Hamza and Alif, the Protectors emerge from the waves.
An Angel is a fine and wonderful thing, almost amphibian between being and not being; as elastic deformation, or variation of pressure or electrical or magnetic intensity, or temperature. The water does not move forward, only the shape of the wave. And the boat oscillates up and down.
And we gazed on the Preserved Tablet.
There in a lambent lake of calligraphy the last of his words shine in the skinless surface—the filamental floaters of a life trembling, trembling in the Eye of the Creator.
Ah, what can describe the Preserved Tablet wherein the Book is writ?
Some see a hundred stark woods against a grey sky, each instant shuttling aspen, ash, and elms; with only a rumble of autumn wind against the flash of branches. Some see ten thousand bells of jellyfish, pulsing with luciferin blue and pink, and look through streams of tendrils, and plankton and arthropods twitching in the solid sea.
These unformed signs, the unformed signs before alif was formed.
The Archangel dips a Wing in the skinless surface of the Book.
And we descry the creature’s face in the lake. There in his eyes it is we who are holding him down, our shadows wobbling in skeins of light, as he drowns in a scumstained bath. The water yammering in his ears. Then our shapes explode in shards. And his life flashes before him...
And we thought: If he is dying, who is this old man and boy?
Rifle and ammunition slung from shoulder and hips, scraping down the mountain track, a box wrapped in jute strapped to the back of the old farmer. And a scrawny pale horse or donkey weighed down with a crate. Lines drawn in dust in the old man’s face, who is not as old as he looks, and the strippling the same...
... the boy against the pack animal, salwar kameezes flapping as knees buckle on the ruts. The man’s eyes fixed on the path, passing words with his son as they clamber down. The track flushing down into a white road bounded by ridges.
(And each Night of Decree, when the year is revealed for the soul, we watch this vision of his end.)
We dive into the Book of Naseeb.
We dive into a lake of kelp. As far as we look the canopy sways with the surge, full of gaps and full of lights. Pregnant with all past and future. Blue rockfish and kelp blades flash blank surfaces. Bristleworm, scud and eelgrass deform into signs...
Read!
... When their mother came in, Arif gets up and turns to the wall.
... A dog smeared in excrement and blood runs down the street on three legs, looking back at him, beseeching.
... The creature goes to stay with his mother after youth detention. Every memory of her, she’s looking over her shoulder while he hurries after.
... They wheel around and smash an umbrella in his face. He runs home crying and cupping the blood in his hands. His father took him to the hospital and says, You want injection? The nurse has to stitch up the boy’s face without anaesthetic.
... The boy sprang up and into the sack and bounded from the others; but the headmaster stopped the race, for his sack has a hole.
His life flits by as sea cucumber and bat star...
And here, his first page!—a boy of ten in oversized Rambo T-shirt playing with other hazel-eyed children outside the white-walled house. On the flat roof the big girls play badminton, bunches of iron supports sprouting around them. And he’s trying to get the kids in kurtas to play dusty football between gates that drape buntings and banners as if expecting the next wedding party.
Abba and Chacha, moustached and paunched in their kurtas, and his brother Arif get into the minivan with darkened windows.
He runs crying Baba! Chacha!, hanging on the door handle as it edges out. His father barking rebuke; Chacha, ever indulgent, lets him in.
And in the minivan they
