Seeing his agitation, she realized how undone she herself had become since she arrived. She had fallen into spasms of resentment in front of her shaykh. Then shame. Then he pulled her back to love to rescue her. Then she just as quickly fell back into resentment again. Then anger at Mustafa. She gasped, “My God,” as she looked at herself. Forgetting the words of warning that Junayd had just said to her, she despaired. Why don’t you just leave? Uncle is being kind, no more. He’s put you in YingYue’s hands because he won’t be bothered with you. She wanted to throw up, and tasted bile in the back of her throat. She muttered under her breath, “You are nothing.”
Then she saw YingYue across the courtyard. She had been watching her and Mustafa deep in conversation the whole time. The girl looked like she was going to cry. Zaytuna’s gut warmed. She failed to repress a smile, wanting to spit the bile she’d been tasting in YingYue’s direction. Keeping an eye on the girl, she leaned close to Mustafa, whispering in his ear, “You’ll do better if you stay.” He nodded, leaning into her whisper, and Zaytuna watched YingYue’s misery with pleasure.
Suddenly she felt a sharp pain in her chest. She pressed her hand against her heart, looking down, feeling inexplicably as if she had been shot with an arrow. Looking up in a panic, she demanded of herself, What were you thinking? How could you be so cruel? She stood up in a rush, nearly losing her balance in the shame of it, and took a few steps towards where the women were lining up to pray. She saw a clear path to the reception hall and wanted to leave. What was the point in praying with such a filthy soul?
Someone placed a hand on her shoulder and she was rooted to the spot. The hand lifted, and just as suddenly she could move again. She turned to see Auntie Hakima. Zaytuna looked down into the old woman’s grey eyes and was gripped with fear.
Auntie Hakima said, “You’ll pray. Go, then, if you think you are so extraordinary as to be beyond God’s reach, but you are obligated to pray no matter what state you are in.”
Zaytuna nodded. Auntie Hakima had known everything. The conversation with Mustafa. The pleasure she took in YingYue’s suffering. How she had despaired. The shame was smothering. She struggled to breathe evenly as she followed the old woman dutifully to take a place in the last rows behind the men. When the prayer was finished, after giving her greetings to the angels on either side of her, but before Abu Muhammad had recited the supplication for them all, she rose and slipped out the front door into the darkening street.
The Third Day
Chapter Twelve
Mustafa woke long before the dawn prayer. He slept fitfully throughout the night, fearful that he would miss Tein at the police offices. It would be a long walk to the Round City. He’d have to be ready to explain himself to the Night Watchmen. If he were stopped, he would simply tell them the truth. He was going to pray the dawn prayer at al-Mansur’s mosque before consulting with police investigators on an important matter. They should believe me. He placed his scholar’s turban on his head. Yet the thought of what he was about to do stopped him in place and weakened him at the knees. It was bad enough that he was going to help bring to light evidence that would challenge powerful men, but the scholars and the police had no love between them. More often than not, the police were the ones inflicting the political will of the Caliph and his courtiers against them. Either the elite scholars or the police could ruin him before he had a reputation to be ruined. He put his hand against the wall of his room to steady himself.
As he stared at his bedroll, unmade in his haste to leave, his eyes were drawn to the small blanket hanging on his wall, made by his mother when he was still in her belly. It was like a patched Sufi cloak for a child but embroidered around every seam with vines and leaves. It hung low on the wall so he could see it easily when seated or lying on his side. He thought for a moment that he would sit down and look at it for a while to reorient himself. His mother, also named Zaytuna, was a strong woman if there ever was one. He missed her. May God protect her secret. He remained standing.
And what would his love say? His own Zaytuna would not think twice about her reputation in the pursuit of justice. But what reputation does she have to lose? He sighed, My own Zaytuna. She wasn’t his own anymore, maybe she never was. The loss of it hit him and made him want to sit again. He thought of her last night, urging him on to hold these men to account, and the girl, guilty or not, sitting in that prison. What could the Abu Burhans of this world do to him? Ruin his reputation as they did Ibn Salah’s son? They would have to lie to do it, but who would believe it? So he would be driven out of the circles of hadith and go back to being a potter. Zaytuna would be proud of him. He snuffed out his oil lamp, opened the door to his room onto the small courtyard he shared with four other families and walked out into the dark alleyway ahead.
Pulling his quilted robe close, he tightened the sash around his waist against the morning cold. He hurried along, keeping his eyes to the side roads around him. His coin purse was under his arm, slung across his body against his skin, under layers of clothes, where no thief in a hurry would be able to get it. There was a night watchman ahead of him with a torch casting eerie moving light and shadow onto the streets that was almost worse than the darkness itself. The watchman turned around and walked toward him. As the torchlight reached him, the man gave him a hard look. Mustafa greeted him, his voice catching. The watchman said nothing in return and Mustafa rushed past. A person here and there walked like him, pushing ahead, saying nothing.
The smell of baking bread hit him from the marketplace road and he realized how hungry he was. He scolded himself for not bringing some dates. It would be some time yet before the bread would be ready. He looked down the marketplace road toward the bakeries within. He thought of the wheat and barley loaves in every shape, some thin as paper, others round and thick, and still others pulled oblong with sharp twists at the corners. The bakers stacked them, one on top of the other, in great bins or on wide shelves, sometimes reaching as high as the ceiling of the shop. His stomach grumbled at not getting what it wanted. A watchman emerged from the market and yelled at him, “You! What are you doing!” Only then did he realize he’d stopped at the smell of the bread and was looking into the marketplace like some kind of fool.
He couldn’t think to answer and walked as quickly as he could without running toward the Basra Gate High Road. He looked behind him, the watchman’s torch was getting further behind. Mustafa slowed down and took a deep breath and saw the High Road opening up before him. Come sunrise, the wide thoroughfare would be thick with people walking or riding. Donkeys would part the crowds, pulling delivery carts or the wares of hawkers who sold door-to-door. Wealthy men would ride on horseback, their women in litters. Dung collectors with their carts were never far behind. But at this hour the road was nearly empty. He could see just one man ahead, pulling his cart himself, strapped in where the donkey should be. There were two guards on horseback in the distance, their staves raised high, riding toward the fortified city.
As he passed the road leading to the Sharqiyya Mosque, he heard the call to the night prayer coming down its wide avenue. At the rate he was walking, Mustafa hoped he would be early. He needed time to sit in peace in al-Mansur’s mosque before going to the police offices.
Finally he could see the Gate House. It was lit by great torches moving in the early morning breeze, their flames casting moving shadows onto the road ahead of him. Several men were standing along its bridge. Their arms were crossed and they were stomping their feet to stay warm while they waited for the guards to finish pulling the gates open for the day. He reached the bottom of the bridge and stopped. The acrid smell of the torches hit him and he was suddenly cold and trembling. He heard himself say aloud in a voice unlike him, “What is this? Are you afraid? Move. Now.” Nodding to himself, he stepped forward.
The guards were lashing open the great doors of the Gate House as he reached the top of the bridge. He called out, “Good morning!” and they grumbled their own greetings in return. Smiling gr
imly at them, he thought, I’d rather not be here either, my brothers. Then he heard the call to prayer coming from the great mosque at the centre of the Round City and took it as a slap, muttering, “God forgive me.”
In the dead of the morning, the call traveled further than it would in the din of the day. A repeater stood high in the Gate House sending the call out to nearby neighbourhoods. The mosques in those neighbourhoods would pick up that call, sending it on in turn to neighbourhoods further out, until the whole city resounded in the quiet of morning with these voices, some mellifluous, like angels singing, and others grating, like the sound of jagged metal dragging on rocks. “Hurry to the prayer! Hurry to salvation!” He heard the words as if they were coming from a voice within him and replied aloud, “Here I am God.”
People were coming up behind him as he stepped out of the Gate House onto the bridge crossing the first of the ramparts protecting the City. There were more than a dozen men behind him now, quickening their step in response to the call. The four Gates of the city would be open now. Men from neighbourhoods close to the city, and those who lived within its walls, would be making their way through the four main roads to al-Mansur’s mosque at its centre.
Mustafa hoped he’d have time first to collect himself before praying. His mother had watched over him as he did his ritual ablutions when he was little and learning to pray, making sure his ears were clean and the dirt was out from under his nails. Then she’d tug his clothes straight before letting him stand on the prayer rug. If he fidgeted during the prayer, she’d slap him on the back of his head afterward he finished, once knocking his cap off his head, scolding, “Do you know where you were, boy? You were standing before the Throne of God!”
Passing the smaller arched gates leading to the neighbourhoods nestled within the City walls, he saw a good number of men were coming out onto the torch lit road. Mustafa rubbed the back of his head as he looked on them with approval. Here at least were men who understood that prayer, and prayer in congregation, is better than sleep.
He slowed as he walked past the police offices, wondering which was Grave Crimes. He felt sick. Go pray. Go pray.
Finally, he passed the last gates before the gardens and to the green-domed mosque of al-Mansur at its centre. Men encircled the fountains outside the mosque, performing their ablutions. They cupped the flowing water to wash their hands, head, neck, arms, and bare feet, even in this cold. He stood waiting his turn. He finally found a spot among them, but had to stand sideways to get a hand into the bracing water. A man laughed with the first shock of it, saying to the one beside him, “The cold is early this year. There’ll be ice gathering before long.” Mustafa looked harshly at them for speaking while doing their ablutions. He said, “Alhamdulillah,” loud enough that they could hear the scolding for what it was. But he kept his eyes down, not wanting to face them after it, but at least there was no more chat.
He finished and gave up his space to another man, then found a spot in the ever-growing prayer lines in the main hall. Mustafa tugged his robe straight, and asked God to accept him and his prayer. He raised his hands and said, “Allahu akbar,” opening his two cycles of prayer in greeting to the mosque, but he couldn’t focus. With every movement he worried about getting involved in this case, then scolded himself for his fear of doing what was right. Afterwards, he sat back and began to recite God’s name, Allah, to himself, over and over, to centre himself. He exhaled slowly, “Aaaaa,” slowly, then inhaled, “llaaaaahhh.” The pain in his gut eased.
He looked around him, falling into admiration of the mosque, lit so exquisitely from oil lamps hanging from every archway. The building expanded over the years, mirroring the growth of the city itself. People came to the city of Baghdad from every quarter of the empire and the great mosque could not hold them all. There were grand mosques elsewhere in the city, but this one at the centre of the empire was the sign of its greatness. The caliphs’ palace had been here once, alongside the mosque, until they moved across the Tigris to fortified estates on the east side of the city. The abandoned palace had, little by little, been properly given over to the needs of the people. No matter what the caliphs did, no matter how they played politics with the scholars’ lives, the religion and this place belonged to the believers.
There were two great courtyards amidst the rows of archways. Over fifty carved teak columns held up its high roof, each column topped by glorious capitals. Where the yellow-brick walls were not covered by gypsum, there were tiles painted with the richest blue. Its ornately carved minbar on which the Imam stood to give the Friday sermon, could be matched by none in the world. Nor could its tiled mihrab, indicating the direction of Mecca, and its maqsura, guarding the Caliph so that he could pray out of view from the people be compared to any other. And where was there another mosque with a water clock keeping time for the prayers and the people?
The call came to stand in prayer. Men filled the mosque from column to column. No women. He knew Zaytuna would have something to say about that. But, he answered her imagined objection, it would be inadvisable for them to venture out in the dark to pray at the mosque. Why doesn’t she consider these practical matters before becoming incensed? He tugged at his robe again and prepared himself to stand before God, but all he could think about was the task ahead of him. He apologized to his mother as much as to God as he moved through the cycles of prayer.
Afterwards, he walked with the throngs of men in a hurry to get out of the mosque. He held his new robe close against himself to protect it from catching on the metal of scabbards he saw on men here and there. A man who had left the mosque ahead of him, went into one of the police offices.
A guard stood before the first door. The guard’s robe was stained and too thin for the cold of the morning; he was obviously wearing every bit of clothes he had in layers and only had a scrap of black cloth on his head for a turban. Mustafa felt the warmth of his own robe and the firmness of the well-wound cloth of his scholar’s turban on his head. He said a prayer for the man, then greeted him, “Assalamu alaykum, I’m here to see Ammar at-Tabbani of the Grave Crimes Section.”
The guard looked at his turban and didn’t even ask his name. “Walaykum assalam, Imam. He’s the one who walked in just ahead of you. That office down there. Four doors.” The guard paused, “Hold on, I’ll walk you there.” The guard sounded embarrassed, “I would have been at the prayer, too, but I can’t leave my post. I’ll make it up later.” He paused again, then asked, “Imam, do you think it is a sin?”
Mustafa bought some time by repeating his question, “Missing the prayer because you have to be at your post? They will not excuse you?”
The guard said, “No, I have asked. They will not permit me.”
He was unused to this despite it happening to him more and more. He’d counselled in his own neighbourhood, but he knew those people, and they knew him. They most often came to the right answer together. But now that he could afford the clothes that made him look the part, he often found himself in situations like this with nothing to say or, he feared, the wrong thing.
In his distress over the morning and surprise at the question, he could not remember how Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal would respond. It was not an excusable illness, but it was not out of laziness, and it was not his choice. Grasping, he said, he hoped, in a tone of voice that conveyed assurance, “The Prophet, alayhi salam, said, ‘Works are with their intentions’.” He thought for a second, then added, “You only need to look into your heart to know.”
The man stopped before the door and faced Mustafa. “My heart?”
Mustafa wished he had not said the second part. The man just wanted simple guidance. He wasn’t a scholar of the law, but these questions, they were answered by hadith scholars in the past. He was barely a hadith scholar himself. But these kinds of questions were answered by the aunts and uncles in the Sufi community. One does not need to be a legal scholar to share the wisdom of the Prophet with the people on matters such as these. It is not as if this is
a marriage contract or a detailed point on ritual law. He stopped himself. Perhaps it is a detailed point on ritual law?
He didn’t know what to say, then thought of his Uncle Abu al-Qasim. He was a legal scholar himself, but he would say these questions were not about the law, they were about people’s relationship with God and the people needed to be put at ease and pushed gently to do better, to become better human beings. Mustafa spoke again, more confidently now, “The Prophet said, ‘Consult your heart’. That which is right puts your soul at ease and makes the heart tranquil. Wrongdoing is when your soul wavers and your breast is uneasy, even if people have repeatedly given a legal opinion in favour of it.”
“Oh,” the guard said, his head down, “Then I am sinning. My heart is not easy.”
Mustafa closed his eyes for a moment in frustration. Why is this so hard? He took a breath. “I meant that the Prophet, alayhi salam, wanted us to cultivate a beautiful character within us so that we can rely on our heart’s compass rather than having to go to scholars for every little thing.”
“May God reward you,” the guard nodded. But by the look in his eyes and how he sounded, Mustafa knew it wasn’t the answer he wanted.
Mustafa gave up. “You did not sin, but you must ask again if you can be relieved to pray.”
The man smiled then, relief washing the worry from his face, and opened the door for him, indicating for Mustafa to fall back so that he could be introduced. Mustafa saw Tein sitting on the couch on the far side, leaning over, rubbing his eyes awake. The guard said, “Excuse me, Imam, I forgot to ask your name?”
“Mustafa ibn Zaytuna,” he paused, he wasn’t sure if he should say ‘al-Jarrari’ anymore since he was no longer a potter. Then he felt the loss of who he was for who he was becoming and consciously took the name for himself, saying with pride, “al-Jarrari.”
The Jealous Page 16
