by Esther Ahmad
†
My mother had her own plan to make sure I stayed true to following Allah. She told me that I needed to pray more.
“This life is temporary, Zakhira-jan,” she said, using an Urdu term of endearment. I stood beside her in the kitchen as we peeled the garlic and washed the lentils. “We need to prepare ourselves for the next life. When you die, the first question the angel will ask is—”
“Are you a Muslim?” I knew the script well enough already.
“That’s correct. And what will the angel ask next?”
“Did you offer your prayers?”
“Yes. And then you’ll have to recite them. Hell will last longer for those whose voices are mute, and heaven will come sooner for those who know all five of the daily prayers. If you don’t know them when you’re alive, how are you going to remember them when you’re dead?”
We repeated some version of this conversation every week, and eventually the message sank in. Between my mother’s counsel and Anwar’s advice, my questions faded and my anger was snuffed out. I put the white dress in the back of my closet and devoted myself to being a good Muslim.
I pursued my religious obligations with the same fervor I had used in my science classes. In addition to praying the usual five times a day, I decided to offer three more daily prayers. I started at 3:30 a.m., knowing that these early-morning prayers brought with them extra rewards.
When my mother’s health allowed, she joined me, but more often I was alone. I didn’t mind at all. It felt good to know that everybody else was sleeping while I was bowing to Allah in prayer, earning my eternal reward. When I was in school and the clock approached 10:00 a.m., I would excuse myself and walk alone to the prayer room. No one else was ever there. In a school of more than two thousand students, I was the only one who was this dedicated.
At home my father would often take my brother to the mosque to pray, leaving us females at home. I would stand in front of my sisters and lead the prayers. Nobody complained or questioned my right to do so. I wasn’t the oldest, but I was the most devoted of my siblings, and it seemed only right that I would lead.
Even though I had given up questioning Allah about things like science and the infidels, I still tried to view my religion from a logical perspective. One day I would have to face judgment for my life, and I figured that if five daily prayers were good, surely eight daily prayers were better. I convinced myself that all these extra prayers were a way of tipping the scales in my favor.
But there was one question that haunted me day and night: Were my prayers enough? As hard as I tried, I couldn’t be sure I could do enough to secure my place in heaven.
The question burrowed deep inside, echoing endlessly within my mind. This unease set me on edge, leaking into me like oil in a lake. I did my best to ignore it, trying to pray more diligently and recite the Qur’an more regularly.
Some days, though, this struggle to secure my own salvation seemed beyond me. And I didn’t know where to turn for help.
6
The first time I heard about jihad, something within me soared. Yes, I thought. This is the way I must live.
I was at home attending a daras when the mullah shared a simple story.
“After Uthman embraced Islam, he married the Prophet’s second daughter and later became the third caliph of Islam. This cost him dearly. His relatives were enraged, and they tortured him, leaving Uthman no choice but to leave behind his wealth and flee the land. Years passed, and Uthman regained his former prosperity. But instead of hoarding his riches in the anticipation of future troubles, he gave generously. More than once, he spent a great portion of his resources on the welfare of Muslims, and when some poor refugees approached him and asked for help, he gave away most of the wheat from his stores, although merchants were willing to pay great sums for the grain. When asked why he had done this, Uthman replied, ‘I will get a greater reward from Allah.’ In time he came to be known as Al Ghani, which means ‘generous.’ We are all called to take up the jihad against poverty. Allah himself smiles on those who do.”
Something moved within me when I heard his words. I had known about Uthman Al Ghani all my life, and I’d seen generosity on display in my father’s actions. But somehow I had never thought of poverty as something we Muslims had to struggle against. I knew generosity was good, but until that moment, I had not realized just how important it was. If I embraced generosity with the same passion as Uthman Al Ghani, I believed that I, too, might receive a great reward in heaven.
I wasted no time. I began by giving all my pocket money to local widows and orphans, and after a few weeks of doing that, I was hungry for more. I decided to take the expensive gold jewelry my father had bought me and sell every last piece of it. Every rupee went to a local widow.
My parents were proud, but their joy had a limited effect on me. While their blessing was a good thing here on earth, what I really wanted was the assurance that my future in heaven was secure. My mother’s smile and my father’s stiff nod of approval were no match for the fear within me.
†
Though our street was full of upper middle-class families like mine, the neighborhood was diverse. I only had to walk a few blocks to find beggars and street sweepers, and there was a knot of children from poor backgrounds who spent their days playing in the streets when they weren’t working at home. Many of these children were orphans, and all of them were too poor to pay the registration fee and buy the notebooks and pencils required to go to school.
Most people ignored these children. But I could not. The more time I spent with them, the more pity I felt for them. I had known them all by name for years, ever since I joined the state school and fought my way through a mountain of homework every day. I would sit outside on the flat roof of our home with an open book on my lap when I wanted a break. The children would stand beside me, asking what I was reading and pointing out any letters they recognized.
When my mother heard about my interactions with these children, she told me that it reminded her of her own childhood. She had wanted to go to school, but her father refused. So every day when her brothers returned home with their books and sat down to study, she would sit beside them, pestering them with questions. She did not stop until she learned to read.
This gave me an idea. I thought about asking my father for assistance, but I knew he saw little value in education and would not have any interest in my educating the poor. Anwar, however, was more than happy to help. He arranged for a box of textbooks, notebooks, and pencils to be delivered from the madrassa. As soon as the materials arrived, I informed the children that if they wanted to study, I would meet them in the courtyard in front of my house every day after I finished school.
I was careful to call it tutoring rather than school. I did not want to give my father reason to shut it down, and I also knew I could not offer the children all the education they needed. Calling it school would raise its profile, raise their hopes, and put too much pressure on me. It was better to keep things simple.
The sessions were basic. Each day we would meet for thirty minutes and work through two pages of either math and English or science and Urdu. I made sure we all broke to pray when the sun was starting to set, and if any of my eight students were late, I would adopt the sternest expression I could manage, tap my wooden ruler on my hand, and warn them not to be late again. They never were.
†
“What’s the best thing you have? Give it to Allah.”
Those words from the lips of the mullah were the only ones I heard on a particular Friday afternoon. As soon as he uttered them, my mind latched on to the memory of the day I gave away my gold. I counted down the minutes until I was able to leave the daras, head upstairs, and open my closet. I pushed aside all the dresses that were hanging up and grabbed the one I wanted—the white dress with the intricate embroidery I had spent so much time making. It was beautiful, and I’d been saving it for the day when I finally got my mother to agree that I could wear it.
It was the best thing I had.
I took the dress straight to the home of one of the children I taught. My student’s mother was a widow with five daughters and one son, and they were poorer than most. My father bought them lentils and oil from time to time and so did other people in the neighborhood, so the mother was used to receiving charity. But when I told her that I was giving it to her daughter, she refused.
“It’s too much,” she said. “Everybody knows how hard you worked on that dress. Your mother often talks about it with pride. I can’t let you give it away.”
After more urging on my part, she accepted the dress, and I returned home feeling good. My mother smiled when I told her what I had done, and she agreed that surely Allah had seen me.
As I lay in bed that night, I remembered the day I’d given away my gold jewelry, and I slipped into an idle fantasy about receiving a better dress in return for the one I had given away. I knew it was foolish, but I couldn’t help feeling excited as I got up the next morning and opened my closet. Would I find that I had been rewarded again? Might there be a beautiful white wedding dress, just like the ones I had seen in magazines, waiting for me?
There wasn’t, of course, and I spent the rest of the day feeling disappointed—partly with Allah, but mainly with myself. How could I have let myself become distracted by such a childish fantasy?
If I were being completely honest with myself, I would have to admit there was another reason for my increase in generosity. Some months earlier, my father had announced that it was time for me to get married. Neither of my older sisters had attended high school, and both were married when they were still sixteen. As far as my father was concerned, seventeen was far too old for me to be single.
The pressure was on. If I had any hope that my father wouldn’t marry me off to some random man who tried to impress him, I needed to be the perfect daughter. If I failed, he would see me as just another problem to be solved as quickly as possible by marrying me off.
I had to make him proud, and to do that, I needed to be the most devout, studious, and generous girl in the city. He already knew I was generous, but that was not enough. He barely paid me any attention, so how was I going to convince him of my other attributes? How could I change his mind if his eyes rarely ever fell on me?
My sky had two moons: the fear of eternal damnation and the fear of losing what little control I had over my earthly life. These twin struggles became the two dominant forces in my life. Yet to my dismay, the harder I strived, the worse I felt.
7
I was still a child when I first saw my father beat my mother. Patches of skin were visible through his wispy beard, which meant he hadn’t been with the militants for long. But it took only a few weeks of indoctrination for him to change. Gone was the man who wore Western pants and snuck out to the movies. Gone, too, was the man who allowed his wife to berate him in front of his children.
In his place was a man who stood holding a glass in one hand and my mother’s neck in the other. His face was twisted in rage, and flecks of spit were flying out of his mouth. I don’t remember what he was shouting about or how the argument began. But I remember pressing against my sisters as we looked out from the kitchen, watching the events unfold in the hallway. I remember the sound the glass made as he brought it down on the side of her head, how its violence and its volume surprised me. And I remember the noise my mother made as she fell to the floor, as if all the life were leaving her body through that tiny whimper.
The next day, after my mother returned from the hospital, I saw that the hair above her ear had been shaved, and her skin was swollen and stitched. From that time forward, things changed at home. My parents’ arguments flared more readily, although they often ended just as quickly when my father reminded my mother what would happen if she didn’t back down. Sometimes, though, no matter how loudly and desperately she pleaded, his fingers still reached for her throat.
Perhaps I was too young to see it, or maybe I was blind to the truth, but at the time I never made the connection between my father’s conversion to militant Islam and the increase in violence in our home. I was unaware of the way the group spread their poison, of how they encouraged my father to embrace his power to lead and rule his family the way a “true” Muslim man should. To my mind, the pain and fear he introduced to our house had nothing to do with his faith. It was simply the way things were.
And that is why, the second time I heard a mullah stand up in the daras and teach about jihad, I did not associate it with violence and fear. Though it wasn’t as exciting as the day I gave away my gold jewelry, once again I accepted everything I heard. But now the stakes were even higher. Jihad was not just a matter of how you lived. It was about way more than that. Yes, I thought. This is the way I must die.
†
I could tell from the number of shoes lined up outside the meeting room that the daras was well attended that Friday afternoon. I took up my usual place beside my mother in the screened-off area and listened as a mullah I had never heard before began to preach.
“This world is your examination hall,” he said. “If you pass in this hall, you will have everlasting life. If you pass here, then on the day of judgment you will go to heaven. If you fail, you will go to hell. Every time you face something you think you can’t do, remember this truth. Your actions are being recorded and will be remembered on the day of your death.”
I remembered my dream from years earlier, the one in which an angel dragged me to hell. I knew all about our deeds being recorded and counted for or against us on the day of our death. But the idea of the world as our examination hall was entirely new to me. It stuck in my chest like a fish bone.
“When we die, what awaits us is the pain of the grave.” I knew all about that, too. My mother had often spoken of the way our graves will stretch and pull, crushing and straining us within them. I’d always shivered at the thought.
“But not everybody will face the grave. Those who die for Allah will avoid hell entirely. Anyone who gives their life in jihad will go straight to heaven, straight to paradise. We should all embrace the struggle for that life rather than this one. Brothers and sisters, I tell you that this life is only temporary. Everyone has to die sometime.”
†
At first I’d thought of jihad simply as a struggle against poverty. The tools I used in the fight against injustice were my gifts of jewelry and my lovely white dress, and my devotion to educating children who were too poor to attend school. But I knew this was not enough. I had been sensing this for months.
My unease started soon after I gave away the dress. I was still upset about the whole episode—partly with Allah but mainly with myself—when my mother told me that the next daras would not be held at our house.
“Why not?”
“Auntie Selma has asked that we meet at her house.”
We had been meeting for weekly gatherings in our home for years, and a special bond had grown between the hundred or so people who attended. Having spent so much time learning about the Qur’an together, encouraging each other to become better Muslims, we had become like family. We helped each other when times were hard and celebrated when times were good. Whenever one of our members had something significant to announce, we often relocated the daras to their home.
Auntie Selma was not an aunt by blood or marriage, but she was special to everyone in the neighborhood. Her husband and three sons were good Muslims—always generous, kind, and devout.
“Has one of her sons gotten engaged?”
“Perhaps,” my mother said. “She said she wants all of us to dress up and share a feast.”
When Friday finally came, I was excited and decided not to stage another fashion battle with my mother. I gladly chose a dress I knew she liked. We walked the short distance to Auntie Selma’s house as a family, my father and brother striding ahead, my mother, sisters, and me following respectfully behind.
Auntie Selma directed the women to one room as her eldest son invited
the men into another. “Welcome,” she said to the women once we were all inside and the door was closed. She was holding a large photograph of her husband, and suddenly it struck me that months had passed since I’d last seen him.
“My husband has been martyred.” Her voice was strong, and her eyes swept the room as she spoke. “It was his wish that his eldest son should be sent to fight. So next week, I will send him for jihad. You must all pray that he doesn’t become fearful and return home, and that when he goes, he fulfills his father’s wish. Pray that he will become a martyr too.”
The room instantly filled with cries about the greatness of Allah. Auntie Selma stood and smiled as she acknowledged the women’s exclamations. Before long we were eating sweets and fragrant rice and drinking cool sodas. The women were buzzing from conversation to conversation. I sat quietly and watched, knowing that this was a place for mothers, not children.
After we returned home, I tried to speak with my mother about this news, quizzing her about where Auntie Selma’s husband’s jihad had taken place and how he had died. But my mother told me she knew nothing more than what Auntie Selma had said.
Her words did not satisfy my curiosity, and she knew it.
“We might never know how or where he died,” she explained to me later that evening. “But we do know for sure that he is a hero. What he did is an example to us all.”
8
A few weeks after we heard about the martyrdom, the daras once more relocated to Auntie Selma’s house. Again she greeted the women and girls, and again she held a photograph. This time it was her eldest son—the same one who had escorted the men to a different room last time.
“Allah be praised!” she said, her face aglow. “My eldest son went for jihad. He, too, has been martyred. It is just as his father wished.”
