Prayer

It was dark, and my ears were ringing. I moved slowly, very slowly, a lot slower than I needed to move. I couldn’t breathe. When I gasped, water rushed down my throat and nostrils and choked me. I kicked and thrashed—and woke up sinking.

I leapt out of the water, which only rose to my knees. Under bright skies, I keeled over and dry heaved as my reflection stared back at me. I was naked, with my flabby, hairy, brown folds exposed.

Yet there was no need for privacy here. Nobody was around.

Fields of clouds patched up the sky, and the lights of a sunset poured through despite the lack of a sun. They lit the water, which stretched infinitely. No beaches, no people, no buildings, no mountains. It was like hotel art, void and empty. Odorless, too.

Then there came a shattering bang! I ducked back into the waters, which splashed and foamed. After a long silence, I popped my head out, gasping for air. Now though, the air reeked of smoke… and diesel?

I didn’t know where the bang came from, so I ran aimlessly, my feet tiredly leaping out and splashing back in. The ground wasn’t made of rocks or mud but rather flat stone. I searched for landmarks or people. But everything everywhere looked the same.

As if from nowhere, a figure spilled out of the horizon. I halted. I shouted, Who are you?! I watched them with a cowardly keenness, panting. The person wasn’t moving. Desperate for explanations, I ran towards them. The closer I got to them, the wider their shoulders grew and the taller they became. But when I got close enough, I saw that they were not a person at all.

I gaped at the throne. It was golden and of massive proportions. Seven steps surrounded it on all sides, and they plateaued into the water. On either side of the throne, two stunted, washed out pillars stood, and lionizing engravings covered its legs. In its lap sat a flattened pillow, and soot stretched across its red velvet back.

Hello! I shouted. Who’s there?!

A bright light ensnared my eyes. It burned through my eye-sockets until it split into broken lines—like a shattered windshield. A glimpse of a hilly country, of the sunset, minarets, parapets, clotheslines, satellite dishes, and water tanks—of the steering wheel spinning freely, of the sloping road way down below us. Someone in the backseat. Calls to prayer.

I was crying when I came to, and I didn't know why.

The water splashed around me as I took one tedious step after another towards the throne, until I tripped on something and fell. I kicked and slapped away at the thing, bursting in and out of the water as I escaped. In a frenzy, I climbed up the seven steps.

The thing didn’t follow me. It was bobbing in place. I squinted at it, struggling to trace its longboat of an outline, and gasped at the sight of one remaining limb: an arm. But it was as lanky as a shriveled tree branch—as was the rest of its humanoid body. Its head resembled a raisin, and its long hair fanned out across the water’s surface like kelp.

I was craving a closer look at the creature’s face. Carefully, on all fours, I crawled down the steps and approached the edge. But I couldn’t make its features. Whatever it was—whoever it was—it was unresponsive anyway. Hello, I said. Hello! Who are you? I waved at it. I begged for it to speak.

I got into the water and pulled it closer by the hair. Its porcelain skin bloomed with patches of swampy green. It had no genitals, no nipples, no nostrils, and no mouth, and I was reminded of thousands of people I’d never met when I looked at its face. The eyes, open and calm, couldn’t settle on a color, and the wrinkles of age unceasingly slithered along its forehead and cheeks. It looked as if it also had facial hair. But that facial hair altogether vanished or changed into different colors, shapes, and lengths when I squinted at different spots on its face.

It’s dead, I said, feeling the strange power of the word. Dead, I barked. The word cleaved open my chest. Dead. Dead. Dead! I continued shouting it more. Even as my throat ached and grew sore, I kept on shouting the word, crying it out. It was shaking awake the remnants of a voice.

No, it wasn’t a voice, but a rattle… a death rattle from a tiny body in the backseat. I was holding him in the backseat. He was heaving, shaking. His eyes, wide, terrified, were devouring mine. He clung to me with everything he had. Even with his blood he clung to me; it was dying the white cotton of my shirt. My son and I were suspended within the pickup’s clouds of smoke. They isolated us from everything else, from all that which would hardly matter to me again.

Kamal, I whispered, stroking his hair like I’d done countless times after his bedwetting nightmares. It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re just falling asleep. Baba, habibi, don’t be scared. Hush, now, hush. I’ll be there when you wake up. But go to sleep now, please.

Remembering how I got here, I grabbed the creature—the lord—by his skinny shoulders and gently shook him. Wake up, I whispered softly, lifting his shriveled head out of the water. Wake up, my lord. Wake up, please. He couldn’t be dead. My lord, I said, louder, wake up. Wake up, my lord. Wake up! I was shaking him aggressively. And I was shouting at him now. Just wake up please!

I dragged him by his hair towards the throne, heaving as I climbed up the first few steps. Grabbing more fistfuls of his hair, I pulled with all I had, then lurched backwards from the jolt of his head breaking free. It flew up in the air and landed by the foot of the throne. His ever-changing eyes stared back at me without expression.

Heaving, curling into a ball, I waited for the shriek of an ear-bursting horn, for the skies to fill with enormous birds carrying firestone, for squalls of wind to raise the water and flood the world, for the earth below to split open. I screamed so deeply I could’ve coughed out blood. But nothing came. Nothing changed. Drenched in sweat, I slowly let go of myself. I stood up and looked in every direction as far as I could. Truly, no one was coming for me. Staring up at the burning clouds, I wept. The tears streamed down my cheeks and dripped away. He couldn’t be dead.

I needed answers.

Oh Kamal, I needed answers.

You arrived prematurely, nearly weightless, and you were wheezing from a congested heart. After the operation, the doctor invited me out to the hospital’s cafeteria. Smoking a cigarette, sipping on burnt coffee, he advised me to conceive of another child, one who’d blunt the inevitable grief. It’s written, he said. The people there struggled to pull me off him. I drove to the mosque, enraged.

How I’d prayed and prayed and prayed. I was out praying when for the first time your toothless gums smiled. I was out praying when, the first time you crawled, you crawled backwards and looked so confused. I was praying when your mother took you to the doctors and their eyes popped out as they ogled at how chubby you’d grown. I only prayed more fervently after that. My prayers were helping you heal. I was out praying when you jumped and jumped in a clothing store, squealing about the firefighter overalls, the ones I cried into at dawn for months after you passed away.

I blew your first candle, then you blew the ones for your second birthday, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. You grew into a little prince whom I was supposed to take to prayer, to educate in the proper ways. But you loved your cartoons, superheroes, coloring books, legos, blankets and gummies and milk and biscuits and mama’s voice too much to want to leave home five times a day. You forced me to drag you out. I had to haul you on my shoulders every time. You were born a delicate thing, and I needed to teach you how to express gratitude that you’d stayed.

I’m so sorry, baba, habibi. You didn’t want to come with me to prayer that night. I wish I didn’t get so angry with you for making me late. I wish I didn’t press down so hard on the gas. I wish I didn’t yell at you to shut up. I wish I was the one who died if it meant that you would have been the one who stayed.

But rest assured, baba, habibi, because all I did after we buried you was continue to pray. Even after your mama and my family deserted me, I prayed. My business sank, but that didn’t matter to me as much as praying for your soul did. So I prayed. My health drained away from grief, and what little consolation I received, I received it when I prayed. I prayed because I believed in the lord’s wisdom. He took you away from me for a reason. He took the rest of his blessings away for a reason, too. I didn’t understand his reasons. But it didn’t matter. My duty to you, your soul, was to stick to my faith.

Yet, without you, my life only kept on crumbling, habibi, and it crumbled to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore. Walking out of the mosque one starless night, I heard my heartbeats, and they sounded so hollow. I realized that I couldn't hold out for answers until after death. And how I was missing you! So I got in the pickup and drove. No headlights and no seatbelt. There was a sharp turn overlooking hills of evergreen oak, carob, and wild pistachio trees. I didn’t steer.

Suicide. I thought I’d end up burning over and over in hell, my skin charring, falling, remerging, burning again. There, I was going to beg the lord to let me see you, and beg him for an explanation. And if, because of my suicide, he was going to ignore my pleas, I was going to burn all the same. And I deserved to burn.

Except, here I was now, standing in shallow, uncharted waters—no answers, no redemption, and certainly no lord to see. The lord was dead. Dead, I shouted. Dead?! I rushed towards his head and picked it up. I stared into his eyes, for a long, long time… And the truth struck me at last.

I keeled from laughter, still holding this shriveled head. I laughed until I couldn’t laugh any more. Then, I swung the head around and around, like a rosary, before letting it go. It arced its way up towards the fiery clouds, catching the light in its hair and eyes, before splashing into the water.

That being was not the lord, and the lord was not dead! If all this time, the lord was dead, then what would explain Kamal’s death? Where had my prayers gone then? Who received them? No, the lord was not dead. There was absolutely no way that he was dead. I rushed into the mosque after your birth for a reason, Kamal. I prayed for you so much during these first few terrible months of your life. And the lord looked down on our family with mercy in his eyes. And the lord blessed us. That was why you survived. How then, how—just how—could it be that the lord, all this time, was dead? Impossible, I said. Impossible!

I waded through the waters under the unchanging sunset sky for days, searching for him, for answers. Every now and then, I imagined that I’d eventually come upon a grand palace, lush gardens, or maybe even a stretch of ruins. I imagined how I’d spread my arms wide or prostrate into the waters when I saw him. And I tried to but couldn’t imagine how happy I’d be when he would share with me his reasons, let me see you, and allow us to reunite, to live in eternal peace.

Oh, Kamal, I couldn’t wait to hold you in my arms.