And so the Night of Power has arrived, Laylat al-Qadr (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laylat_al-Qadr). The first verses of the Quran were revealed within these last 10 nights; given to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) by Allah (swt). Many mosques around the world complete the recitation of the Book within this time during the extra night prayers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taraweeh). And talk about spirituality, phew!
Imagine for yourself going
through a whole day of fasting and prayer then breaking fast at which time your
non-functioning brain pretty much wants to stop working altogether. You just want to lie down and stop
moving. Instead you have to do the final
evening prayer which you somehow manage to squeeze out, or at least that’s how
it is for me. I’m fairly certain far
more divine individuals than me don’t try to quite rush it, they take their
time and wring out every ounce of usefulness from the prayer. Me? I
do the ‘user lite’ version. Actually it
wasn’t always like that.
Back in the day, your girl (that’s
me) used to be a Sunday school teacher.
Get off the floor and quit laughing please. I’ll have you know I was pretty good, the
kindergarteners I was responsible for loved me and it was completely voluntary,
starting off as a fluke for nefarious reasons to be sure. My girlfriend, who I had met at school, and I
decided that we wanted to get more ‘involved’ in the community. What did this mean? Were we that socially conscious at the age of
16 and 14 respectively? Um…no. We wanted to do what most girls our age
wanted to do…meet boys. And since
meeting American boys were pretty much unworkable for us, we decided that we
needed to loiter at the mosque more.
That was the beginning of a long
love affair (with the mosque). The love
of the children and the joy of teaching took us back every Sunday, something we
did for years. Once I became involved in
the mosque, my family quickly followed suit and soon enough instead of praying
Taraweeh at home, we would join the congregation. Back then during my childhood Ramadan fell during
the winter months (remember the Islamic calendar runs for 11 months) and even
though the benefits of this was shorter fasting days, it also meant freezing
cold weather, ice, snow, etc…
My mother was pretty firm that we
should go regardless of the climate, and I mean adamant, hence even if we ‘fell
asleep’ after breaking fast (of course out of pure exhaustion…but not really,
for the most part we didn’t want to go out in the crappy weather) she would
take a cattle prod (no not really, her glares were more than enough) to poke us
into motion. And off we went bundled up
in our heaviest coasts and our clunkiest boots.
One never knew after 2 hours of praying what one would be greeted by
outside. On a few occasions it was a
blanket of ice, on others there was snow gracing windshields.
The Night of Power though was
exciting. We would get specially dressed
well ahead of time, having made plans to meet up with friends at the mosque so
we could “pray” together. Now why did I
put that particular word in quotes?
Because even though we did pray, the fact was back then when the mosque was
still at its infancy, the view from the women’s section into the men’s was
direct, or at least half of it was. We
younger girls would ‘conveniently’ find the only space to stand to pray in the
area which was open so we could check out the guys. Yup, that’s what we did. I admit it.
I’m calling myself out. I won’t
call out any of my other friends, because y’all know who you are. Let me tell you what though, made Taraweeh
almost fun! Many eons later my mom told
me with a knowing smile that she knew exactly what we girls were up to and
thought it funny and normal.
Once at the mosque parents would
separate from kids and the rest of the night was spent in a crush of humanity
all trying to beg forgiveness to Allah (swt) for their transgressions and ask
him for his benevolence. Back then I
barely heard the dua (the prayer) that we made, far too wrapped up in flirting
or talking about boys. But as age has
settled in, the words of the Imam started to sink in, mean something, and
become powerful.
Tonight I stayed up,
praying. Sitting on the prayer mat
crying. I had logged into the mosque to
pray along and at the end when the Imam launched into the dua, there wasn’t a
dry eye in the house. One could hear the
sobbing reverberating from all corners of the gigantic room. My mother who was there in person confirmed
it was exceptionally emotional. As the
Imam spoke, asking for forgiveness and benevolence from the Almighty, his voice
broke around the words regarding the conflict in Palestine. No, it wasn’t about Muslim’s dying, although
we all knew that there was a vast majority who instead of buying Eid clothes
were being buried instead, the message was about human suffering, the tragedy
that was unfolding. The tears were for
all of humanity.
Anyhow, I pray that everyone’s
prayers have been heard and that Allah (swt) is listening, particularly for the
peace of those who are suffering around the world.
Anyhow…Happy Ramadaning.
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