Defying Jihad

by Esther Ahmad

  I heard the Lord’s voice again: I will increase her pain, and she will call on me herself. Then she will be healed. This disease is to glorify my name.

  †

  It was easy to change the way I spoke to my mother. I no longer felt the need to defend myself against her or to avoid all but essential contact with her. I saw her not as someone who was persecuting me but as a fellow traveler soon to be invited onto the path of God’s great adventure.

  I asked her again and again if I could pray for her. I didn’t mind when she shouted at me to leave or pushed me away. I just wanted her to know I was ready to pray for her, ready to believe that God would heal her and that his name would be glorified as a result.

  She showed no sign of backing down, but her beatings slowed a little in both their frequency and their force. I wondered whether this was a sign that God was at work within her, but I knew there was another explanation to consider as well. She had been told by the doctor that the problem with her heart was rapidly getting worse and that her health would continue to deteriorate. Without any female surgeons in the city, both she and my father continued to refuse an operation. The longer she lived with her condition, the worse she became.

  We were out shopping one day when my mother collapsed on the sidewalk beside me. One moment she was looking at fruit, and the next she lay twisted on the ground, surrounded by fallen mangoes.

  I forgot all about the miracle I had been praying for and knelt beside her, desperate to do what I could to help. Her hands grabbed at my dupatta, and when she’d pulled me close enough to her face for me to hear her faint, rasping voice, she spoke. “You pray.”

  A bunch of people gathered around and helped me move her off to the side. I sat there as her head rested limply in my lap, her eyes wide. I’d never seen her so scared.

  “Lord, you said that she would ask for healing herself, and she has done just that. So please heal my mother.” She shut her eyes as I continued to pray. “Jesus, I bring her under your cross. I cover her with your holy blood. Whatever sickness is inside her body, remove it in your mighty name, Jesus.”

  For a while we sat there like that, my mother lying in the dirt and the name of Jesus fresh on my lips while the rest of Pakistan went about its business around us. It seemed like the most normal thing in the world.

  When I noticed that her face had relaxed and her breathing had calmed, I told her I wanted to call home and get my father to pick her up.

  She opened her eyes and stared straight at me. “I have no pain,” she said. “I’m ready to go straight to the hospital.”

  My father and brother came and drove us to the same building where I’d visited John so many times before. As I waited in the corridor while the doctor and nurses examined her, I felt an odd mixture of emotions. I wasn’t sure what was happening with my mother’s health, and I wondered how God would answer my prayer. At the same time, I was nervous that I might see John again, afraid that in the midst of all the chaos, he might somehow get found out and end up in trouble. Even so, part of me was desperate to walk up to the second floor and see him again. Months had passed since we last saw each other, and I had so much to tell him.

  “It’s a miracle,” the doctor said as he stood beside my mother in the open doorway. “There’s nothing wrong with her heart at all!”

  My father rejoiced and my brother hugged my mother while silent prayers of joy exploded within me. The only person who was not smiling or cheering was my mother. She stood still, her eyes fixed on the floor.

  Later that night, when the house had cleared of guests and noise, I heard a soft knock on my door. My mother came in and sat on my bed, looking at her hands. She said nothing for a long time.

  “I had such a strange experience when you started praying,” she said. “I saw fire.”

  I desperately wanted to tell her that fire was a Christian concept—to share about Moses and the burning bush and the disciples on the day of Pentecost. I wanted to tell her that there could be only one possible explanation for her dramatic healing. I wanted to tell her everything about Jesus and the time I’d fasted and prayed and how he had promised to heal her. But I knew I couldn’t. Not yet, anyway. So I just stared at her hands too and waited for the moment to pass.

  Finally she found the words she wanted to speak. “I heard the sound of a stone falling down. Then the pain vanished. That’s why I wanted to go straight to the hospital. I knew that my problem was gone. I just wanted proof.”

  “You know who healed you, don’t you?”

  She said nothing, just stared at her hands.

  Before I could ask the question a second time, she stood up and left.

  [10] Matthew 5:10-12.

  [11] Exodus 20:12.

  [12] Ephesians 6:1.

  [13] Romans 8:18.

  17

  That day in the market was not the first time I’d seen Jesus heal someone. It wasn’t even the first time I had seen him heal my mother.

  It happened over a decade earlier, before I started at the madrassa. I walked in after school one day and noticed that something was out of place. On the shelf in the hall that held my trophies, certificates, and A-grade tests was an additional item that had not been there when I left in the morning. There on the shelf, between my first debate trophy and a report card on which my teacher praised me for being the most diligent pupil in the school, was a single piece of paper, carefully folded.

  I was on the verge of asking my mother about it when curiosity took over. I opened the paper, fold by fold, until it was bigger than my hand. Just two words were written on it in Arabic script: Jesu Shafi.

  The names were vaguely familiar, but the pairing struck me as odd. I knew that Shafi was an Arabic name that could mean a number of things. Mediator. Truthful. Healer. Jesu I was less familiar with. Wasn’t that the name some people called Isa, one of the prophets? But why put them together? And why was it on my trophy shelf?

  I went in search of my mother, waving the paper above my head. Before I could say anything, she gasped and closed her eyes.

  “Zakhira! Why did you open it?”

  “It was on my shelf.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “Yes. It says—”

  “Don’t!” she shouted. “The mullah said we must not read it if we want it to work. Fold it up and put it back.”

  She sat down, clutching her jaw. It struck me that she looked old and tired.

  I sat beside her, leaning my head on her shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Ami.”

  “It’s not your fault, Zakhira. I have a toothache and I couldn’t sleep last night, so I went to the mosque and asked one of the mullahs for help. He gave me the paper and told me not to open it but to wear it around my neck. I was waiting to go to the market to ask the cobbler to sew it into a leather pouch for me.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Will it not work now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  When my father came home and heard what had happened, he took us all to the mosque right away. It was the first time I could remember going to the mosque with my father, and as we waited in a corridor, I sat silent and still, happy for the covering my veil provided.

  The mullah listened carefully as my father explained what had happened. Then he asked my mother if she had read the paper.

  “No,” she said.

  “And did you read it?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” I said, too quietly at first. At my father’s prodding, I spoke a little louder. “Yes! I read it.”

  To my surprise, the mullah was not angry. He simply looked at me, waved his hand, and told my father that I was still young and not yet mature, so there was no problem. “You can still use it,” he said to my mother. “But keep it close to you.”

  †

  I had not thought about the incident for years—not until I became a Christian and was able to look at the Qur’an through new eyes. The more of this book I read, the more I understood that the prophet written about as Isa and known the world o
ver as Jesus was a healer. It was to Jesus, the Son of God, that the mullah had turned for help. And it was Jesus who had delivered rapid and complete healing of my mother’s toothache soon after I read the note.

  Ever since my mother had started beating me, I’d been desperate to remind her of the episode. When my mother was healed of her heart condition, I was confident the opportunity would soon arise.

  The trouble was, once she was healed, she went quiet on me. For days she avoided all but the most basic of conversations with me. When I went to sit beside her, she would get up and move away. I was glad that the violence had stopped, but I longed to talk with her. I wanted to hear all about what had happened when I prayed, to know what kinds of questions she was asking. I wanted to talk to her about Jesus and share some of my journey with her.

  Instead, she locked me out. Whatever was going on inside her, she did not want to share it with me.

  It took three weeks for my mother to break the silence. I was alone in my room one evening, praying on the floor. She came in without knocking, quietly closed the door behind her, and sat on my bed. After wanting to talk for so long, I found myself struggling to find the words to start.

  She spoke first. “Your brother is sick,” she said. “His leg is infected, and the doctor says that if the infection reaches the bone, they will have to amputate.”

  The news came as a shock. I knew he’d been laid up in bed for a while, but I had no idea what the problem was or that the outlook was so serious. I felt bad for having been so caught up in my own thoughts that I hadn’t wondered what was going on with everyone else in the house.

  All at once a thought cast a shadow across my mind. Maybe the reason for my mother’s silence was not that she was in the middle of a crisis of faith or that she was thinking about Jesus. Maybe she was in denial about the miraculous healing and would never talk about what had happened.

  “I want you to pray for your brother,” she said.

  I wanted to shout, “Yes!” and run into his room at that very moment. But different words came out of my mouth—ones I hadn’t planned on saying. “Do you really believe that Jesus can hear my prayers?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you believe that Jesus can heal?”

  “Yes,” she said, tears filling her eyes. “The last time you prayed, my problem went away. If you pray now, I believe Jesus will heal him.”

  “Ami, if we both believe that Jesus can heal, why don’t we both pray?”

  The tears flowed fast. Between sobs, she gulped great lungfuls of air. It took several minutes before she was able to speak again.

  “Will Jesus hear me? Even though I beat you? Won’t he be angry?”

  “No,” I said. “Every day he’s waiting for you. His arms are always open.”

  She wiped her face and looked up. “I will pray with you.”

  I took my Holy Bible from its hiding place and opened it to Matthew 18, where Jesus promises that if two of his followers agree about anything and ask for it, our Father in heaven will answer that prayer.

  I went to the kitchen for some mustard oil. My mother looked confused when I showed it to her, but she followed me to my brother’s room and listened as I prayed.

  “Lord Jesus, this is no longer oil but your blood that was shed to heal our pain and our diseases and to remove our sins. It is sufficient for this wound, and it is better than any medicine or ointment in this world.”

  I handed the bottle over to her and told her to apply it to the wound while my brother slept, saying the same prayer I had said.

  By the next morning, my brother’s wound had started to shrink. She continued praying and rubbing. Within a week, the wound had healed completely and my brother was well.

  †

  “I have seen two miracles happen before my own eyes,” my mother said when we were working in the garden one morning. “But I’m confused. If Jesus Christ is true and there really is healing power in his name, why did Allah send Hazrat Muhammad as the greatest prophet among all prophets? Why should the Bible, which tells about the lives of the prophets like Moses and Jesus, be abolished? And why did Allah send Hazrat Muhammad with the Qur’an to show us the right way?”

  I stopped digging. “The books in the Bible are not abolished. The Qur’an confirms that those books are true.”

  “That’s not what the clerics teach. They say that the books in the Bible aren’t permitted.”

  “What should you trust more: the words of the Qur’an or the words of a cleric? According to your faith, the Qur’an is from Allah. Any cleric is human, just like you or me. And we all make mistakes, don’t we?”

  She nodded.

  “If you really believe in the Qur’an, I will show you what’s written in it. Wait here.” I ran inside to find my Qur’an, its pages covered with highlighter marks, its spine cracked from study. I told her which passages to look up to find out how the Qur’an describes Jesus—as the son of the virgin Mary, as one who performed miracles nobody else could perform, as the man who could raise the dead—and as she read each one, I asked her to read not just the original Arabic but also the Urdu translations printed on the side.

  I dug my fingers into the soil as she read, thinking about the ways the clerics had blinded my mother, just as they’d done to almost every other Muslim I knew. They discouraged people from reading in anything other than Arabic, and they so often appealed to the emotions of hatred and fear. Too few Muslims knew that the Qur’an has plenty to say about Jesus. If they would just read with their own eyes, they would see that Islam offers no guarantees about life after death.

  My mother was quiet when she finished reading. Just then my brother called from the house, putting an end to our discussion. I desperately needed wisdom and knowledge in order to answer her questions, and for the rest of the day this Scripture repeated in my head: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”[14]

  Two days later, I had my answer. As I was looking through a collection of Islamic books my father owned, I found one I knew would help. I invited my mother to sit with me in my room and reminded her of her question about why Muhammad is above all prophets.

  “Listen to this,” I said, opening up the book Dua Ganjul Arsh.

  There is no creature or entity worthy of worship except for Allah,

  Adam, who was the chosen of Allah,

  There is no creature or entity worthy of worship except for Allah,

  Nuh [Noah], the saved of Allah,

  There is no creature or entity worthy of worship except for Allah,

  Ibrahim [Abraham], the friend of Allah,

  There is no creature or entity worthy of worship except for Allah,

  Ismail [Ishmael], the sacrificed of Allah,

  There is no creature or entity worthy of worship except for Allah,

  Musa [Moses], the one who spoke to Allah,

  There is no creature or entity worthy of worship except for Allah,

  Dawud [David], the successor of Allah (on his earth),

  There is no creature or entity worthy of worship except for Allah,

  Isa (Jesus), the Spirit of Allah,

  There is no creature or entity worthy of worship except for Allah,

  Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.

  “Tell me honestly—did you hear anything that says Muhammad is chief?”

  “No.”

  I opened my Qur’an, turning to the verse John had shown me the day I first met him in the lab: “I’m no new thing among the messengers [of Allah], nor know I what will be done with me or with you. I do but follow that which is inspired in me, and I am but a plain Warner.”

  I let the words rest in the air awhile, remembering the impact they’d had on me when I first read them. “Muhammad is just a simple messenger—nothing more than that. He doesn’t even know what will happen on the day of judgment. But look at the Holy Bible, and you’ll see that Jesus is confident when he promises ete
rnal life even after death.”

  I showed her John 11:25 and read the words of Jesus: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.”

  “Do you see what all this means? God was fully in Isa—in Jesus. That’s the reason Jesus can talk about the future with confidence—because he is fully God. He is God in human flesh, and he is still at work today.”

  “Yes,” she said, staring at nothing in particular. I was desperate to say more, just like I was desperate for her to have the same revelation about Jesus that I’d had. But whatever was going on within my mother, it was not up to me to control. I watched her eyebrows furrow before she abruptly stood up and left.

  †

  Our conversation about Jesus spread out over many weeks. It was like a game of chess, where the players consider each move carefully before laying a finger on their pieces. Though I was desperate to have my mother give her life over to Jesus as I had done, I knew I could not rush her. I vowed to be as patient with her as John had been with me. In the days between our discussions, I did what I was sure John had done: I prayed.

  When she finally came to my room one night, I’d been asleep for hours. The air was a little cold, and I listened as she whispered her thoughts about Jesus.

  “I know there is power in the name of Jesus,” she said. “Even his name written on a scrap of paper was enough to heal me of my toothache.”

  I reached out and touched her arm. “I remember that too,” I said. “I didn’t know whether you remembered it.”

  She smiled. “I’ve hardly thought about anything else for the last few weeks.” She shivered a little in the cold, and I offered her a blanket. She waved it away. Silence returned to the room.

  “Zakhira-jan, how can I become a Christian?”

  A thousand candles ignited within me. I could feel both of our tears on our cheeks as I hugged her.

  “You start by saying that you’re sorry. Repeat after me: ‘I know that I have done wrong. Please forgive me, and forgive my sins.’”