The Bread of Angels: A Journey to Love and Faith

by Stephanie Saldaña

  I have monitored the Baron’s slow decline since regular programming halted, cutting him off from his lifeline of Lebanese women in short skirts and high heels, shaking their hips in music videos and competing on game shows. It rather resembles my post-Mark descent into depression. Initially the Baron simply stopped taking his afternoon walks, opting to remain at home and stare at the repetitive television shows. Then he quit bothering to change into his clothes from Milano at all. I knew things were bad when yesterday I caught him resorting to the Hezbollah television station, the only station left with non-Hariri programming. When the female newscaster appeared on-screen with her entire body covered in black clothing and her hair hidden beneath a scarf, he groaned.

  “Why?” he asked the television. “Why?”

  Now, when I enter the courtyard at noon, I find him already reeking of whiskey and cigarettes, wearing green sweatpants and plastic house sandals, stirring a pot of noodles on a portable stove. He looks like a train wreck.

  “How’s life, Grandpa?” I ask him cheerfully. He shoots me a sarcastic glance.

  “Like shit, Stefanito,” he answers. “Life is just like shit.”

  20.

  I’VE BEEN STUDYING with the Sheikha for several weeks. So far we’ve been progressing through the text slowly, like two gardeners nimbly carving our way through the forest, stopping at each blade of grass. At this rate, we’ll finish reading the Quran in Arabic in another ten years.

  “I know that you only have a few months left in Damascus,” she mentions somewhat coyly today during our lesson. “Do you have any requests for what we might focus on this week?”

  Yes, yes, and yes. Ever since the Spiritual Exercises, when Mary appeared to me out of the stones of the desert, I’ve wanted to know about the Virgin Mary in Islam.

  “Maryam al-Adra,” I tell her.

  She smiles. “I thought that you might suggest that.”

  She reaches over the table, guiding my hand gently until it falls on Maryam, the nineteenth chapter in the Quran, named after the Virgin Mary.

  “Even the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, does not have a chapter named after him,” she tells me. “Even the prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, does not have his own chapter. Mary is extremely precious to us. There is a debate in Islam as to whether or not Mary herself is a prophet. In fact there is a hadith of the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, which says that Mary will be the first of us to enter paradise at the end of the world.”

  She begins reciting the story by heart and I echo her, the two of us summoning Mary into the room to sit between us.

  Bismallah al-Rahman al-Raheem

  Once, there lived a woman from the family of Imran who was unable to bear children. One afternoon, she went off to pray alone. She asked God, “Oh, you who hear and know all things, if you will give me a child, then I will offer that child for the rest of his life to your service.” She became pregnant, and when the time came for her to give birth, she discovered that she had delivered a girl. “Oh God!” she said. “I have delivered a girl and not a boy!”

  “I know what you have delivered,” God responded, “and I shall name her Mary and protect her and her descendants from Satan.”

  Mary grew in purity and beauty. She dedicated her life to praying in the temple, and she knew no man. God watched over her, and took care of her, and gave her fruits out of season.

  One day, when Mary was alone in a place in the east, God sent an angel to her in the form of a man.

  Mary was frightened. “I seek refuge in the Compassionate,” she called out.

  The angel answered, “I am a messenger from God, sent to announce the gift of a holy son. Oh Mary! God has blessed you with a Word from him named the Messiah Jesus, son of Mary.”

  Mary responded, “How can I give birth to a child, when I have known no man?”

  The angel answered, “That is how it is, for God creates what he wills, he can simply say Be! And it will be.”

  Mary became pregnant. So she left the city for a faraway place and waited. Her labor pains hit her so strongly that she collapsed beneath a palm tree and cried out, “Why did I not die before this, that I would have been forgotten and out of sight?”

  But he called out from beneath her, “Be not afraid! For God has sent from beneath you a source of water. So shake the tree trunk, and he will make new dates fall on you from the tree. Eat, and drink, that your eye can rejoice, and if you see any man, do not speak to him.”

  So Mary gave birth to Jesus.

  WHEN SHE FINISHES RECITING THE VERSES, we both sit there silently, listening to the last words hanging in the air. “It’s beautiful,” I finally say.

  “It’s one of the chapters Muslims memorize the most often. For us, our mother Mary, peace be upon her, is the model of female piety. She is also a rebel in her society who risked losing everything in order to follow her destiny. She never married, and no one would have believed her if she told them about her meeting with the angel. Still, she had faith, even when she did not understand what was being asked of her life. That is what allows her to leave everything and to walk off alone, without food or water, waiting to give birth to a child.”

  Months ago, just before I fled Damascus to spend a month in the monastery, a young Muslim had told me solemnly, “You are taking the journey of the Virgin Mary in Islam, who goes off alone for many days, to take a fast from speaking, and to wait.”

  21.

  NOW I AM ALONE IN MY ROOM, the curtains drawn so that my Christian neighbors won’t gawk at me studying the Quran. I read Mary’s story again, with all of the depth and attention I had given to the Gospel of Matthew during the Spiritual Exercises, pausing and meditating on every word. I close my eyes, taking deep breaths, waiting. Now I am in two places at once: in my bedroom in Damascus and high on that mountaintop in the desert, waiting for Mary to appear.

  “Come back,” I whisper.

  I wait in the silence. Then, she is here. So young, with her pale, moon-shaped face, her hair tucked quietly beneath a white scarf, her frightened eyes looking out at me. She is just a girl, thirteen, maybe fourteen, too young to face angels in her room. She is my age when my grandfather was murdered, the first truly awful year of my life.

  She walks out into the desert in silence, the long path extending in front of her, drawn forward by the memory of the voice of an angel. Her stomach cramps with hunger, each step an effort, her feet making small imprints in the dust. Around her there is nothing—just scrub bush, the odd yellow flowers collecting bees, and the wide desert hills extending all the way past the horizon. The vast and unending silence, unfolding in front of her feet, and the intense desert sun, casting its terrible white light.

  She had told no one that she was leaving. They would not have let her go alone. She senses that this is one journey in her life in which she must be solitary, that no one else can take her forward, save for that voice speaking to her heart. In her belly, she feels another life, stirring. She will keep walking until a voice tells her that the journey is over, that she can rest.

  She walks for hours, stopping only when she sees the date tree alongside the path, with its broad leaves making small gray patterns on the rocks. She doesn’t stop for the shade, but because she is on the edge of falling and needs something to hold on to.

  She falls too soon, stumbling over a stone and then collapsing onto the path, seeing the entire world lost in that falling: her mother, her home, that quiet room of hers that had once held the body of an angel. Any hope of one day falling in love. Rose bushes, and the familiar voices of other people, walking in the street at night. In that moment, they are gone forever.

  Then the baby begins pushing at her insides, and there is no one’s hand to hold on to.

  “Why did I not die before this?” She is weeping now. “Why not be invisible and out of sight?” When really she is thinking about another life, the life she might have been given, not here, alone in this place, hungry, thirsty, and waiting.

  A vo
ice comes. She turns, listening. It belongs to no one, but she hears it as the sum of all who have ever called to her in her life.

  It whispers from beneath her, “Be not afraid.” She looks down to see a stream of water, slowly moving through her hands.

  I READ MARY’S STORY so many times that I begin to memorize it: Mary, collapsing beneath that tree, wishing that she had never been born. I examine each word, then each letter, beginning with the mysterious Arabic letters that open the chapter on Mary, Kahf, Ha Ye Ain Sod, one letter after another, like sounds knocking on a door and begging it to open. It all seems so familiar to me. I could almost believe that I was born with this story written inside of me and am now only waiting to understand the words.

  Most Muslims believe that the Quran is eternal, that it always existed but was only revealed over time. Just as they believe that our lives are maktoob, written, but it takes a lifetime to understand them. This does not mean that we have no say in our lives—for the famous Islamic saying insists that prayer can change destiny, that we small humans can enter into an exchange with God. Yet it means that in prayer, as in destiny, we are wading through divine material greater than ourselves.

  The Sheikha has memorized every single word of the Quran, so that I sometimes feel that she contains it. Often when she discovers a new meaning of a word in the Quran, I have a sense that her entire interior self is slightly shifting, like a plate moving beneath the ocean of her being. For her, reading is not just about who she is, but is also about who she will become. I know that as I am a Christian she has elevated me above her students, because I am also her teacher, just as she is mine. I know different ways of seeing words. We are each teaching the other a new way of reading.

  Every time I confront two different versions of a story, in the end I ask myself, What is the story that I want to contain? For the early monks believed that there is no such thing as a story—we each meet the text, and who we are and the text together create a unique event. We change for it and it changes for us, the act of reading becoming an essential way of transforming ourselves. We can only bring to the text what is inside of ourselves—even if the story is a story of death, if we contain life, we will find life.

  For me, the Virgin Mary of the Quran does not replace the Annunciation story of Mary from the Gospels but narrates the voyage within Mary’s own heart. There is, after all, nothing easy about saying yes to an angel. It changes everything. I had never been convinced that life for Mary continued on, undisturbed, until she arrived at Bethlehem. The Quran tells us something else, that she was so frightened and lonely that she left everything behind to walk in the desert, until she collapsed, wanting to die. That is the story I have lived. That long, excruciating battle back to life. That journey through the desert that is entirely solitary, no matter how many other people I encounter on the path. That moment when everything felt so lost that I sank onto the ground of my own heart, wishing that I had never been born. Yes, that is what had been missing from the story I have known until now—the recognition of falling down, the moment when everything is lost forever.

  Then, after this small death, the child arrives. I can see her, holding the child to her breast, skin against skin, keeping the infant against her body to remind her that this moment is real. Amazed that such an incredible gift could come now, so soon after falling down. The Virgin Mary in Islam, who is by any other name a desert contemplative, a young hermit who never marries, who gives her entire life to prayer and God. Who collapses beneath that tree, before she receives the bread of angels.

  22.

  March

  TODAY IT IS MARY’S VOICE finally leading me back to Mar Musa, that quiet Yes she whispered to the angel, the promise of her fidelity, calling her into the desert alone. I pack my Arabic Bible and a change of clothes, and after a long ride out into the desert, I reach the valley beneath the monastery, that vast expanse of bare red stone. This time the stairs don’t feel so daunting—I am almost grateful for them, for the chance to slowly climb above the troubled earth.

  I begin ascending, one step after another, no longer laboring under the effort as I once did. It feels strange to come back again. I have dreaded it. I am one who runs away. Yet now I am climbing back to God. It isn’t easy to keep this long-postponed date in the desert, to sit across from an empty space and admit to God with all candor: Clearly something went a bit haywire between us, but I still love you, and I am fairly certain that you still love me. I know I’m not the easiest person to live with, but I would really like to try to work it out.

  I arrive at the summit after half an hour to find Frédéric scrambling back and forth with his small pot of tea, trying to welcome the swarms of Christians seeking relief from the political crisis. When he sees me, he sighs in relief, loping over and kissing my two cheeks.

  “Hey Stéphanie,” he says, softly, and it makes me shy to hear my name, the way he says it, so very French. He looks oddly happy to see me.

  “Where’s Paolo?” I ask.

  “He’s in Europe for the month.”

  “So you’ve been in charge here since the crisis?”

  “That’s right.”

  I can’t imagine. The country is literally falling apart at the seams.

  “I know. It’s a little bit crazy. Are you staying for a few days?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’m glad.”

  It feels just like coming home again, to this house in the sky with its familiar tables and chairs, the kitchen with its cupboards full of plates and spoons, the monastic bell siphoning off the day and holding everything in place. I am just settling in, climbing the stairs to gather my bedsheets for the evening, when the phone rings.

  One of the workers runs out to meet me. “Stephanie?”

  “Yes?”

  “The phone is for you.”

  That is decidedly odd. Why would someone call me here? “Who is it?”

  “It’s the secret police. They want to talk to you.”

  I can’t believe it. After all of this time in Damascus without a follow-up visit, Mr. X has tracked me down, and here, in the middle of the desert of all places. With the rest of the country collapsing into chaos, why do they possibly care that I am here?

  “What do they want?” I scream. Right there in the middle of the monastery.

  “They just want to talk to you.”

  “How do they even know that I am here?”

  The worker shrugs, somewhat helpless. “They just know.”

  “And why do they want to talk to me?”

  “They want to know what you are doing here.”

  I grab on to the side of the stair railing, lean back, and I yell, “Tell them I came to the monastery to PRAY! Did they ever think of that? To PRAY! Is that so hard to believe?”

  The worker looks at me with astonished eyes. He then rushes off, explaining to Mr. X that I am slightly high-strung but mean the country no harm. But for the rest of the afternoon, each time the workers pass me, they open their eyes into wide saucers and shout like lunatics: “I just want to pray!” And then they burst into laughter.

  But it’s true. I just want to pray. Now that I have shouted that fact from the rooftops of a monastery for all of the visitors and goats and angels to hear, I am quite certain. I am ready to truly pray again, at last, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let anyone, even Mr. X himself, attempt to stop me, short of dragging me down from the mountain by force.

  I set up my books and fold my clothes in my room and walk out to the desert for the first real time since the Spiritual Exercises, finding the narrow indent in the mountain and climbing, my feet catching in the almost invisible path until I slowly lift myself high above everything—above the valley floor, the monastery, and, most of all, the life I have left behind. I have no illusions anymore that I can change the world completely—that some prayer I whisper today will mend the brokenness of the city in which I live, that I can make the dead walk again. I just want silence. I want God to come into that silence. I
want an invisible hand to reach through the air and hold me for a while.

  I wait and let all of the noise of my life in Damascus swell to the surface, the faces of each of my neighbors with their red, bruised eyes. I watch the face of the political dissident who had confided to me earlier that week, I am just waiting to be in a car accident. Maybe they will kill me, just like that. The journalist who told me in a restaurant, Sometimes there is no alternative to war. War is better than standing still forever. The crazed cabdriver who sped through traffic and shouted, Your country can bomb my country for all I care. There’s nothing left for me here! They wash over me, and instead of explaining them away I sit with all of them, on the top of that mountain, with them and the dozens of others I know who are not like them, who just want to keep waking up in the world that they know.

  “Hello, my loved ones,” I whisper. I stay with them a long time, until they fade into the horizon.

  I return to the monastery to find Dima alone in the courtyard, drinking a glass of tea. She is wearing her long monastic robes, the black scarf of a formal novice hanging loosely on her shoulders. It is striking to see her. I remember distinctly when I first met her that I could not get my head around the fact that she wanted to be a nun. She was just so full of joy. She didn’t look like she could sit through a rosary, much less the stations of the cross. Sin and redemption didn’t seem to be subjects she would obsess over. And this tiny monastery in the mountains didn’t feel large enough to contain her. She danced and clapped and twirled to the music at the end of the Mass, caught smokes with the workers in the afternoon between chores, and wore sweatpants whenever she was not confined to the robes of the novitiate. While Frédéric fasted, she delighted in Arabic pastries brought by the guests. As she was from the city of Homs, the butt of Syrian jokes, she often joined in the fun by telling jokes about her hometown to the visitors. I could barely look at her without imagining dozens of nuns singing in Sound of Music unison: How do you solve a problem like Dima?