|
The Night of Power in 2023 comes on April 27th, and the sun rises and falls like it does on every other day. Tonight, however, is a night of prayer. A night for good deeds. A night where each blessing given, each verse read, each good deed done, gives the blessing of a thousand months.
The night is pleasant and balmy. A light spring rain fell earlier today, and the world seems somehow charged, as though electricity runs right underneath its skin. The air tastes of ozone, and the iftar's food tonight tastes better than it has any other night so far. The clouds have swept out of the sky, leaving the stars twinkling above, cast like diamonds across dark velvet.
Tonight is a night for prayer. Where do Aya's devoted footsteps lead her on this holiest of evenings?
Tonight, she made sure to come to the Mosque for Iftar and both the obligatory and optional prayers afterwards. In her heart, she carried supplications to be offered for health of family and friends, for peace in all nations knowing war, for the liberation of the oppressed, and for closeness to Allah. As always, she was dressed in a loose green dress and with her head covered. (edited)
Is any soul more prepared than that of the devout on a night like this? Later, someone might say 'ah, of course, this is the night it would happen.' But then again, it might have been any other night. Why this year, and not the years before this? Why this year, and not the years after this?
The Iftar is delicious -- afterwards, she will not be able to describe how delicious it was, but something about the way the dates and honey sat on her tongue, the sweetness of the fresh fruit and the way that berries popped between her teeth -- suffuses her with an understanding of the preciousness of this one life which Allah has granted her. Today, she rests with her family and friends and enjoys the cool, clear water, the way the breezes blow in from the open windows, stirred by the fans over head. Tomorrow, this might all be gone. The ephemeralness of it all wraps around her like a stole, but there are no words for it. It buzzes in her brain like a rainstorm about to break all through the meal.
Certainly, the prayers afterwards might be optional for some people, but for her, not so much. She settles herself on her rug. Her hands press to the floor. The ritual begins, this prayer which binds her not only to herself but to everyone around her. A hundred whispering voices and one clarion call, the leader's voice ringing out.
Men are never on this side of the Mosque, and the first time she lifts her head, turning it to one side, the flash of green which matches her own outfit, the turban, might startle her. She blinks, and six hundred wings spread from East to West, filling the room, and the man she thought she saw is gone. Instead, the mosque's roof and walls stretch and shift, and all the world is within it. She blinks again, and a pale woman in a white dress covers her masked face with both hands, weeping.
She blinks again, and there is no one. Only the other women, praying in unison, as she has done year after year after year.
If there was also something the experienced medium with the discernment to perceive the dead by sight also had plenty of preparation for, it was mysterious apparitions. Particularly in times of reverent focus. But even her exceptional composure has limits, and these sights were enough that she catches herself falling out of sync with the others. She manages to resume, and resolves to not let herself be distracted. (edited)
The voices chorus together, and it feels like -- seems like -- something itches at the edges of her hearing. It feels like someone has wrapped her brain in unbrushed wool, freshly-shorn, all covered with lanolin and prickly. Her brain feels like it's moving around inside her brain case, bouncing against her skull.
Her eyes close and open again -- blinks are automatic, autonomic -- and five hundred and ninety-eight wings stretch out, filling the space between East and West. One wing stretches up towards Heaven, and the other folds over his body, modestly concealing the sleek, almond colored muscles from the gaze of all. Everyone's prayers and all of their sincerely desires bubble up into crystal in the air, exploding around her in prismatic purity.
which is more precious
(the words are impressed on the air, embossed between herself and the towering angel, and somehow she knows, he is speaking to her)
a diamond or a pearl?
One of his wings moves, and for a second, she can see someone concealed behind it, as if he's protecting them. A vague shape. A blood-stained hem the color of a fawn trails against a calf's curve.
Aya had experienced her fair share of unusual sensations and sights in the past decade, in meditation to tame her ego and seek truth, but now she felt out of her depth as the wings stretch out. She seeks to steady herself, paying attention to her breaths in an attempt to find some mental grounding to hold onto. Whether she managed to or not, the question the angel asked takes whatever breath she feels she has.
Her mind races as she thinks to herself about what meaning the question held. Precious in what way? In moments, she considers symbolic meanings, scriptural meanings; she weighed economic and industrial value, historical value. The academic mind assembled its report, but Aya had always been taught to let the heart make the final verdict. She musters the most confident tone she can in the face of such a sight:
"A pearl."
The silence rings around her, and for a moment, the Lie creeps back in, whispering behind her like a thousand friends and acquaintances, all the faces turning back to her. She briefly sees them -- each one a mask with empty eyes -- before the massive figure reaches out and stretches a hand down towards her. A palm the size of a dinner table is held just in front of her kneeling form.
The angel's face is a man's face, and then a face she could never describe again if she were called upon to do so -- it is all the eyes, blinking in near-synchrony, a ripple, like a wave passing irregularly around a stadium, and between the eyes it is all the words, flickering in and out. All of the words, illuminated by the light from within an emerald, illuminated and inscribed by flame. Read: In the name of your Lord Who created curls between two perfect eyes large and dark and soulful as the eyes of a cow, and her heart pounds in her ears as the Arabic script gutters and shifts to Aramaic, to Hungarian, to Thai, to Swedish, and in that moment she can read all of them, understands the Mongolian as it spins past, Created man from a clot.
and why
(the words glitter in the air, struck into it with a hammer, ringing through her bones like a gong)
is that?
The faces turning back to her startle her for just that moment, but in this time and with what she sees, she knows there is nothing to fear. Faced with an angel, she remembers this is a sure sign that only the will of her maker is even possible, and His plans are best. While still awed by the sight of the angel, she tossed doubts aside and answered clearly, giving the simplest answer:
"A pearl can only be made by something that lives."
The angel continues to hold its palm down in front of her, as if waiting, and the tiniest curl upward of the corners of his mouth.
A pale hand closes on her arm, a pale hand connected to nothing. It could be a ghost's hand, but it is too solid. The white hand would look like chalk save that it's a little too grey. It tugs at her green sleeve, and another hand grips at her wrist.
yes, living child
the angel answers. the angel waits.
She looks around once more before she moves forward to the extended palm with conviction. A deep breath as she steps into the hand.
His hand grows smaller, or she grows larger. The world is dizzying and unreal. It folds and unfolds like chemical reactions, like the bonds of molecules dissolving and reforming. It's enough to make a person want to puke up the meal she just ate after fasting all day, and the fact that she doesn't is a small miracle all its own.
all things have their value, agrees the angel, who stands on a path paved with very small bones through an ossuary hallway. but what comes from life is valued most
His wings folding and unfolding curl themselves down smaller so they do not take up the entire path. Femurs and ribs arc up over her, and beyond them, crystalline stars cut into the velvet sky. She can see -- not quite -- but a little bit of someone on the other side of him. A soft rattle of bone on bone, shell on shell, stone on stone.
Ahead of them, a river runs slowly, as if the water isn't, but is instead plasma, or corn syrup.
here I leave you, Daughter, whispers Jibreel, with ultimate gentleness and perhaps a little regret. here I cannot walk.
The sky crackles, and in the distance, across the river, a single dark star crackles, illuminating something round and flat, a disc spinning beneath it, almost greasy in the thin light.
It is not the realm of Angels. Alas, you could have danced with us! His hand closes on her shoulder, and all six hundred eyes close at once.
The angel is gone, and she is ... alone?
The only thing that kept her until this point from saying "Masha'Allah", was the intensity of her awe through the experience being too great for a simple exclamation. But in the wake of Jibreel's departure, she finally spoke it. If his words that she could have danced with Angels had stung, her face didn't show it. Having seen an angel, she knew she could only be in the best place for her.
And her eyes studied what place that was. The river seems to immediately find recognition from her, even if the plasma forming it did not. Upon observing the path it is flowing, she begins to follow the river to see where it will lead, softly whispering supplications for protection and guidance as she sets forth.
When she walks, she hears whispers. Perhaps it is the green cloth of her dress, hushing against itself, or her feet upon the bones. As she walks, her footsteps seem to get heavier -- or perhaps they simply stick to the earth -- her feet seem to drag, to drag, to drag. Under her -- she was wearing slippers, wasn't she? -- bare feet, the small, round bones with their strange little cracks in them are cold as ice.
But yes, she hears something. Bone against bone? Stone against stone? Another set of footsteps?
The river flows slowly, and the crackling star and its spinning coin pulse in time with her heart hammering in her ears.
She minds this sound, turning her head to listen at one point. But she keeps walking, fighting to keep her feet moving as she seeks a place where she can cross the river, to go towards the star. As her feet drag on the bone, her pickiness to find a bridge or narrow crossing slackens and she's simply willing to settle for a place she might cross at all.
The turn of her head shows the slightest flutter of a shape -- how many shapes? -- so many shapes. Bodies? People. Yes. Someone is behind her. Someones are behind her.
Her feet drag on the small, small, small...
skulls
the tiny skulls with their little cracks across the top
And she comes to the river. The water looks so cold, the air grows colder. Her breath seems somehow obscene in the air's morbid stillness, sweet and fragrant as her every exhalation is, a cloud curling outward and carrying the scent of the dates and honey still lingering on her tongue.
No boat. No bridge. The air stings her skin; the temperature drops rapidly.
With someone behind her, and the star ahead, she looks at the river and feels the air. Once more she steels herself, remembering to trust that this will turn out alright, that there is a reason she is here.
She sucks in the chilly air through her nose and steps forward to cross the river, trusting that she can endure whatever trials she must.
She sinks most of the way into the water, up to her armpits, and then hands grasp at her arms again just before her chin touches the water. The words she hears from above are distant whispers, and she can't understand a syllable of them. As soon as her body sinks into the water, every bit of her body which touches the water doesn't exactly go numb, it just...
... she just... stops feeling it.
As if she can't remember how to feel it.
The sensation in her toes? Gone. Ankles? Gone. Knees? Thighs? She can't even feel her butt. It's just gone. She doesn't remember how to be hungry, or thirsty, and actually, if she just slipped out of those hands, she could just... go... under. Wouldn't that be nice? All she has to do is wiggle out of those hands... and she can take a little nap.
That thought, the siren's call of that 'little nap', tempted. After ten years of struggle since she nearly died on a college trip disrupted by senseless violence-- of being Plain and placing herself in the path of violence so many times, never sure how much peace her own blood could buy-- she would be but a stone if she wasn't feeling tempted to 'wiggle out' and sleep.
As alluring as it is, and though she knows it would be nice to take that nap, some stubborn part of her still holds on and tries to push on even without knowing how to feel if it is working or not. (edited)
She starts to sink again, trying to push herself onward, and then...
... and then...
... she will struggle to remember their faces, later. First, a woman's face, round as the moon and flat as the bed of a dried lake, her hair sleek and black as a crow's wing, drops into the water next to her. Her skin is white as chalk, her gentle eyes dark as ink, and she sinks under the water as she lifts Aya up, keeping her chin from dipping below the water's surface.
Somehow, she knows, the other woman is keeping her mouth from touching the water's surface.
As soon as the other woman's face disappears beneath the water, her eyes go blank, and the grip of her hands releases. The river flows slowly, but it flows, and Aya watches the woman's deerskin wrap skirt furl and unfurl around her legs as she sinks into the river's depths, carried away into some inky blackness.
An old man, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, takes her arms next, and he speaks syllables she cannot understand. A language she's never heard before. The beads on his braids are white with delicate traceries of purple -- a detail she will remember clearly for the rest of her life -- and he bears her up as her body refuses to move, as she cannot remember how to feel her body. It isn't just that she's numb, it's that she's lost all memory of how to move her arms, how to propel her legs. She starts to feel like she's choking, and
is she forgetting how to breathe?
The young man who takes her a few more steps across the river when the old man succumbs to the cold water, fading into nothingness in its depths, has a huge, ragged slash across his throat, and bloodstains poured down his elaborately and beautifully tattooed chest. (She will not remember the tattoos themselves later, but she knows they are beautiful.)
One after another, they carry her across. She has seen ghosts before, and she's seen coherent ghosts before, but these are spectacularly old ghosts, and she knows without being told that these ghosts are literally casting themselves into oblivion for her. Aya just knows.
At the end, it is a mother with a babe in a sling on her chest who pushes her the last three steps, who puts her on the bank. (They are all dead. There is blood on the sling. Do not look in the sling. Do not look in the sling.) As Aya chokes for air, finally remembering how to breathe, looking up winding, obsidian stairs towards the oily, glistening coin, the mother and child slip beneath the waves, and the last thing she sees are her savior's fingers slipping out of hers and into the water, her skin as pale and opalescent as pearl.
With the first breath on the bank of the river, she breathes deeply a gasp. The cold air stung less than the knowledge of the price paid by those dead who helped bound her through. As she steadied her breathing, she tried her best to commit to her eidetic memory what all she still could of them, to keep even the tiniest ember of their existence alive if only within her mind.
Soon, though, she tests her own memories of how to move the limbs with which she seeks to climb those obsidian stairs.
It takes forever. It takes no time at all. How long does she lie there? She has no conception. The air is still and her every breath still feels ... salacious, somehow, as if being alive is some kind of scandal here. Her brain clamors to hold on to every detail, but there are so many, it's like drinking from a fire hose.
When she can rise, the stairs loom over her. It's like being a toddler again, how big those stairs are compared to her, and her body aches from the cold, from the effort of it all. Her feet are bleeding, she knows -- when did she cut herself? She can't remember. But she climbs, crawling up the stairs, leaving bloody footprints behind her, literally and metaphorically, until she reaches the top of the tower, and a lead coin as tall as she is looms before her. Electricity pulses and buzzes above her, through her, around her, the incredible power of it.
All over the surface of the coin, a million scribbles. Countless names swim in and out of the Lead Coin's liquid-greasy surface. Mushrooms bloom from one spot on the coin's surface. And there is one small space, just at the center, exactly the right size, she knows -- one of the many things tonight she knows without knowing how she knows it -- exactly the right size for her name.
Aya musters all she has, and goes right to the coin. Before, an elegant and composed woman of cool intellect and graceful style who could hold a crowd's attention for lengths on pure charisma, now jerkily pushes with her hands and knees against the ground trying desperately to mark her name in the open space with no concern for image.
She was so driven to do this that, lacking any way to make use of an instrument of any kind, she would carve it into the lead itself with her fingernails if she had to. (edited)
Her fingernails dig into the lead, because that's all she's got to do this with, is her, is the whole her that she brought with herself.
The lead underneath her fingernails digs into her skin, and... paradoxically... she has never felt more alive than she does kneeling on her bleeding knees, breaking her fingernails on the soft lead, desperately scratching her name into its surface.
Her heart pounds in her ears, and there's a bright, solid pulse, and then a soft, welcoming darkness. Not the terrifying coldness of the river, but the warm, comforting blackness of a soft bed, a favorite blanket. It pulls her down into its companionable void, and she knows -- the way she knows so many things now -- that she will never see this place again.
She comes to on a concrete floor, soaked to the skin, covered in dirt and grime. A broken window near her lets in the first rays of the morning sun. She's barefoot, sore, her feet are bleeding, and she's missing two of the fingernails from her dominant hand. The others have... well. Something black underneath them, anyway.
As she comes to, she takes deep breaths and lets herself feel the sensations of her body for a moment. Upon opening her eyes and seeing the light, she tries to get a look around to figure out where she is and assess her own state.
|