The Breath of God

by Jeffrey Small

  “Jigme!” a voice called from behind them.

  Grant spun on his heels.

  A broad grin broke out on Jigme’s face. “Razi!”

  A man who appeared to be a few years older than Jigme but younger than Grant embraced the monk. The man was dressed all in white—cotton pants and a long-sleeved shirt—with the exception of a black knit cap over his head. He smiled behind a neatly groomed mustache and beard, black like the hair that peeked out from under his cap.

  “Kristin and Grant, please allow me to introduce you to my new friend, Jamil Razifar. He gave me a tour of the monument a few days ago.”

  Days ago? Grant thought.

  “Good to see you again, my friend,” Razi said. “So my tour didn’t drive you away?”

  “Quite the opposite. I enjoyed it so much, I returned with my friends.”

  Razi held out a hand to Grant. He spoke in a fast, clipped English with a distinct Indian accent. “Pleased to meet you, friends of Jigme.” He then gave a courteous bow to Kristin, who returned it.

  “Are you a tour guide?” she asked.

  He laughed. “Not officially. Just a student—studying to be a mullah one day. As a student of Islam in India”—he gestured to the monument before them—“I often enjoy visiting one of our most spectacular architectural accomplishments.”

  “Do you have a minute to walk with us?” Jigme asked.

  Grant tried to catch Kristin’s eye. Sightseeing? They needed to hear Kinley’s message about the texts. But she gazed at Razi with an anticipatory expression, as if she’d come halfway around the world just for this tour.

  Then an idea interrupted Grant’s impatience. He looked at the two men standing before him and realized that they were three students of religion: Christianity, Buddhism, and now Islam. Peculiar coincidence. Although he knew that for Kinley there were no coincidences.

  Razi guided them to the left side of the building’s arched entrance, where he rested his hand on the stone. “The marble is called Makrana, one of the hardest and least porous, which is why the building has remained in such good condition for so many centuries. The inlay work you see consists of fourteen types of semiprecious stones such as coral, onyx, malachite. The stones are only three or four millimeters thick, and yet the workmanship is so detailed, you will not see any gaps or seams between the stones and the marble.”

  “The Islamic script around the arches, it’s from the Koran like on the main gate?” Kristin asked.

  Razi nodded. “The text on the building describes the damnation that awaits those who do not follow the will of Allah, as well as detailing the paradise that the faithful will experience.”

  “Isn’t it true that the Koran is the collected visions of Muhammad?” Jigme asked. Grant glanced at his friend. Jigme knows this to be true, he thought. He had the distinct feeling that this encounter had been planned. But why?

  Razi nodded. “The Prophet lived about five hundred years after Jesus. Unlike the Bible, which is the collected writings of many authors over many centuries, the Koran was a series of visions that came to Muhammad in bits and pieces over a twenty-three-year period. Many of its stories and themes overlap with the Bible. We Muslims see the Koran as completing the trilogy that began with the Old and New Testaments—the culmination of Allah’s word as spoken through Muhammad.”

  “So do Muslims view Muhammad like Christians view Jesus?” Jigme asked.

  Grant leaned against the cool marble wall of the Taj, resting his aching leg. We really don’t have time for this, he thought. Jigme was delaying telling them about Kinley and the texts for a reason. The doubts began to creep back into his mind again.

  “Not exactly.” Razi traced the black Arabic script in the wall with a finger. “Muhammad was never deified like Jesus was. He was considered to be God’s spokesman, but not an incarnation of God himself. We consider Muhammad to be the last and greatest in a long line of prophets that began with Adam and continued through Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.”

  “Wait,” Kristin said. “My Old Testament knowledge is pretty fuzzy, but wasn’t Muhammad actually related to Abraham?”

  Grant pushed himself away from the building and began to walk along the wall, hoping that his movement might encourage the others. But as much as he wanted to steer the conversation back to the Issa texts, he couldn’t resist responding, “When Abraham and his wife Sarah were unable to conceive a son, Abraham took a second wife, Hagar, with whom he had a son named Ishmael. Later Sarah had Isaac. According to Jewish scripture, Hagar was a concubine, and thus Ishmael was not a rightful heir to Abraham.”

  “But we Muslims,” Razi interjected, “see Ishmael as Abraham’s firstborn. Sarah didn’t like the idea of wife number two hanging around with the competing son, so she convinced Abraham to exile them from the tribe. According to the Koran, Hagar and Ishmael traveled to the town that would become Mecca in Arabia.”

  Grant completed the thought, “So we have the descendants of Abraham’s son Isaac becoming the Jews, while the descendants of his son Ishmael, including Muhammad, became the Muslims in Arabia.”

  “That puts the whole Arab-Israeli conflict in perspective, doesn’t it?” Kristin said. “But how does Jesus fit into the picture?”

  “The Koran speaks of Jesus’ birth from a virgin,” Razi said, “and so many Muslims see Jesus as a creation of God, just as Adam was, but they reject his deification as being an idolatrous creation of man. Instead they see Jesus as a great prophet, the teacher who brought us the Golden Rule, for example.”

  “‘There is no god but Allah,’” Grant said, watching Razi expectantly. The reasoned manner in which this Muslim scholar presented his knowledge impressed him.

  “Yes!” Razi clapped his hands together. “In Arabic the prayer is ‘La ilaha ila Allah.’”

  Then Grant remembered something. He had difficulty controlling the excitement in his voice. “Isn’t Jesus known as Isa in the Koran?” And with one s like in Kinley’s riddle, he added to himself.

  “Indeed.” A sly smile spread across the man’s face, as if he understood the implications of the question.

  Who was this Muslim?

  Tim watched him apprehensively, following the group as they circumambulated the monument. Tim was careful to keep his distance, while pretending to be interested in the marble castle in front of him. From their interactions, Tim guessed that before tonight Matthews and Misaki hadn’t known the man, whom Tim immediately identified as a Muslim from his dress and beard. The monk must have brought some muscle with him. How appropriate, he thought, to bring another heathen into their plot to confuse the world. His hand slid absentmindedly into his right pocket. He twirled one of the EpiPens between his fingers.

  Had the monk already communicated to his friends the hiding place of the books? While he could use his cell phone to follow Matthews to the texts, he wanted to get there first. He couldn’t risk the chance that they might slip out of his grasp or that Matthews would photograph them again before Tim could control the situation. Tim had seen the smug attitude Matthews had taken with the reverend the night of the debate. His blood ran hot at the memory. But Reverend Brady had triumphed in the end, shown him for the liar he was. Now it was Tim’s responsibility to flush away this poison for good.

  After he rounded the monument’s southeast corner, Tim paused. He saw no sign of his targets anywhere on the plaza.

  Maybe, he thought, they’ve descended the stairwell to the ground level. Hurrying to the front of the marble plaza, he shielded his eyes from the lights blazing up from the ground twenty feet below.

  Damn!

  As he scanned the pathways along the reflecting pools, he began to rub his forearms. How could he have let them out of his sight for even a few seconds?

  He turned to run around the edge of the plaza, when a shape at the front of the monument caught his eye. Sitting on the ground in the shadow of the entrance into the Taj Mahal was Kristin Misaki, unlacing her hiking shoes. He instantly understood his mistake. W
hen he rounded the building’s corner, he hadn’t anticipated their bending over to remove their shoes before entering the building.

  Tim walked to about twenty paces from the monument’s entrance. When Misaki leaned forward on the balls of her feet to stand, Tim studied her welldefined calf muscles partially exposed from her jeans. He remembered the night when he’d stood inches over her bed. He waited for the stirring in his loins to begin, but again nothing happened. He examined her more intensely. Then a thought occurred to him: Maybe she is also a part of God’s plan for my redemption.

  Distracted by his thoughts, Tim didn’t notice her turn her head in his direction.

  When he scanned up the length of her body, his eyes met hers. He almost stumbled backward from the force of her glare. Tim quickly looked upward at the illuminated marble above her head. Walking sideways, he pretended to follow the black Arabic text surrounding the opening arch. His sweat turned cold. The force of her stare continued to pummel him. He tried to appear nonchalant, but he knew he’d been caught.

  CHAPTER 29

  AGRA, INDIA

  “WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?” Grant called when Kristin walked into the dim inner chamber of the Taj Mahal.

  “My boots. And then some creepy perv was staring at me.”

  “Well, I can’t fault him for that,” he said, earning a slap to his shoulder.

  Proceeding further into the dim light of the mausoleum, Grant strained to see the details of the walls around them. The interior had no electric lights. As his eyes adjusted, Grant noticed that the main chamber was an octagon. An arch accented each of the eight walls, which were decorated with the same intricate pietra dura inlaid stonework as the exterior.

  The glare from several flashlights glinted off the semiprecious stones embedded in the walls. Grant noticed that the green vines climbing the walls bloomed into various multicolored flowers. In a country with as many destitute people as India, he was surprised that millions of dollars in gems could remain in the walls of a building for so many centuries.

  “Exquisite, isn’t it?” Razi said. “See that flower there?”

  Grant followed Razi’s finger to the wall beside them. “The one with all the petals?”

  “Sixty-four to be exact. The national flower of India. Do you know the species?”

  “A lotus,” Kristin said. She ran her fingers along the semiprecious stones as if she were reading Braille.

  Jigme approached the wall. “The Buddha is often depicted as sitting on lotus petals. The lotus can grow in the most stagnant of waters, yet no matter how muddy the conditions, the flowers themselves rise above the dirty water, producing beautifully pure blossoms.”

  “So there’s hope for us yet,” Grant said. He noticed that Kristin didn’t react to his comment but instead gazed intently at the jeweled flower.

  Her voice was barely audible. “So ... peaceful.”

  The young Muslim said to Kristin, “Islam.”

  “What about it?” Grant asked, when Kristin didn’t immediately respond.

  “The literal meaning of the word Islam is ‘peace,’” Razi said. “Not peace in the sense of world peace, but in the sense of an inner peace that comes from surrendering your life to Allah. That is the main thrust of Muhammad’s teaching, as well as the invitation of the script embedded in the walls outside this monument.”

  “Similarly,” Jigme added, “the word Buddhism is from the root word budh, which means ‘awakening.’ The Buddha also taught his followers to awaken themselves by surrendering to the present moment, so that they could free themselves of dukkha and find everlasting peace.”

  Grant drummed his fingers on his chin. Meeting Razi was no longer nagging at him. He was convinced that the young Muslim was there to teach him some sort of lesson. “Kinley explained to me that ‘the Buddha’ was not another name for Siddhartha but a title that meant ‘the Awakened One,’” he said.

  “Razi,” Jigme said, “please tell my friends what you explained to me earlier: how Muhammad first began receiving the visions that became the Koran.”

  “As a young man,” Razi said, leading them along the interior wall in a clockwise direction, “Muhammad began visiting a cave on Mount Hira, just outside Mecca, when he needed to escape from the duties of his life. He would sometimes stay up all night praying to Allah to guide him. Late one evening as he lay on the ground deep in prayer, he was visited by the angel Gabriel, who told him that his mission would be to speak to the people about Allah.”

  “Curious,” Jigme said. “The Buddha, just before he reached enlightenment and began his ministry, sat beneath the Bodhi tree, meditating day and night. Instead of an angel, he was visited by the Evil One who sought to distract him from his path with threats of violence and offers of lust. The Buddha continued his course, deep in meditation, and then he reached enlightenment.”

  A light flicked on in Grant’s head. He spoke with his hands as quickly as with his mouth. “Around the age of thirty, Jesus, after his baptism by John and before beginning his ministry, went alone into the desert and sat in deep prayer for forty days and nights. The Gospel of Luke describes him being tempted by Satan, and just like the Buddha, he resisted.” His hands dropped to his side. “In fact, this practice of retreating by himself to pray intensely characterized his entire ministry. In the garden of Gethsemane on the night of his betrayal by Judas, Jesus sat in deep prayer again, while his disciples slept.”

  Kristin stared at Jigme. “So what you’re trying to tell us is that Muhammad, Jesus, and the Buddha each experienced a spiritual awakening through their practices of deep meditation?”

  The true implication of the message contained in the Issa texts suddenly became much clearer to Grant. Jesus had studied meditation during his travels through India. Then another realization hit him. Moses had also had a similar experience. The Jewish prophet spent forty days and nights on the top of Mount Sinai experiencing a vision of God that resulted in the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments.

  “But certainly,” Grant said, “you’re not suggesting that Muhammad also traveled to India?”

  Jigme shook his head. “Why must religion be a history lesson? How the Buddha, Jesus, or Muhammad learned these techniques is irrelevant. Why not focus on what their common experiences teach us about our own lives?”

  Grant leaned toward the monk. “But we can’t ignore their actual histories. How can we truly evaluate their teachings without stripping away the myths created around these men by their later followers?” He felt his pulse beating in his neck. By trivializing history, his monk friend was coming close to the path Reverend Brady advocated—the path of closing one’s eyes to facts. That was why finding the Issa texts was so critical. Sure, he had personal reasons, but this journey was so much bigger than him. It was also about those who were held hostage by the misinformation of people like ... well, like my father, he admitted to himself.

  “Understanding is a fine goal,” Jigme said, “but it is not enough. If all you do is seek with your mind for knowledge, you will never be satisfied.”

  “Are you advocating ignorance as the solution to our problems?” Grant asked.

  “No,” Razi interjected. “Jigme and I only ask you to go beyond mere intellectual understanding of these men’s teachings. What the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad experienced is available to you as well.”

  “How is that?”

  Jigme replied, “Have you not been practicing what Kinley taught you?”

  Grant averted his eyes. When he was stuck in his bed in Bhutan, he found the various meditations Kinley taught to be relaxing at times, but since he’d returned, too many things had happened to him. He didn’t have time to sit around and watch his breath or pay attention to the directions of his thoughts.

  Jigme placed a hand on his arm. “The truth you seek is not a lesson you can learn, it is one you must experience.”

  “But—,” Grant began.

  “Oh my!” Razi exclaimed, checking his watch in a manner Grant thought to be a little
too obvious. “How late it has become. I should be leaving.” He nodded to Jigme. “And I know you three have other business to conduct.”

  Other business? Grant wondered. Did Razi know the real reason they were there?

  After they shook hands all around, Razi turned to leave. Before he exited into the artificial light of the plaza outside, he called over his shoulder to Jigme, “And please, give my regards to Kinley. You have a special teacher.”

  Tim watched the Muslim leave the interior of the Taj Mahal alone. The man stepped into his sandals, but instead of walking toward Tim and down the stairs, the Muslim began to stroll around the exterior of the building another time. He craned his neck at the walls above him, and his lips moved subtly, as if reciting a private prayer.

  Tim waited for the others to exit. Concealed in shadow, he sat with his back against the minaret on the southeast corner, where he could observe the monument’s entrance. To one of the lazy guards who infrequently patrolled the area, he would appear as a weary tourist enjoying the view of the Tai Mahal silhouetted against the black sky.

  “Razi knows Kinley?” Grant asked.

  “Speaking of Kinley,” Jigme said, as if Grant had made a statement rather than ask a question, “I suppose the two of you are anxious to hear his message?”

  “I thought you’d never bring it up,” Kristin said, smiling.

  Jigme lowered his voice and nodded toward the multicolored lotus blossom inset in the wall. “Grant, do you remember the stories of the Buddha’s birth?”

  Grant studied the stone flower. “As a newborn, Siddhartha walked outside, and lotus flowers bloomed on the ground at his feet.”

  “Very good,” Jigme whispered. “Now you are close to discovering the next stop on your journey.”

  “We have to go to the Buddha’s birthplace?” Grant asked. “Isn’t that in Nepal?” Then another question occurred to him: What journey?

  “Is it the birth of the man that is significant or the birth of a movement?” Jigme responded.