Ameer Malik

Qiyama

Excerpt

Remember Ali. On Laylat al-Qadr, in the year 1437 after Hijra—which occurred on a midsummer night in the year of our Lord 2016—he was not kneeling in the mosque as he had done in years past, but instead lying on his back on the grassy hill, his right arm propped up at his side, a joint between his fingers, a plastic bowl and towel nearby to collect the ashes. On this Night of Divine Destiny, near the end of Ramadan, this night which signaled the dissolution of the barrier between Heaven and Earth, and the arrival of millions of angels eager to hear the prayers of the living, Ali gazed at the cloudless sky.

He noticed how quiet his surroundings were. The hour was late, and even then, this hill was far away from the roads and buildings of his town, one of the smaller towns in New Jersey. Ali could only hear his own breath, along with the rustling leaves. There were no chirping crickets, no hooting owls.

He thought he was alone on that hill, but he was not. And tonight was the first night of his new life. But it would be some time before he would learn any of these truths.

Right now, as he smoked, thoughts slid in and out of his mind: what was he doing? Was he trying to forget, and the drug was his way of wiping his mind? Or was he trying to remember something, something painful, and the joint was his balm? 

As is often the case with human hearts, it is never as simple as just one or the other.

Ali took a hit. Perhaps the joint in his hand served as a sign of his separation from the faith of his ancestors. It was proof, right there in front of him. There was nothing at all here to be uncertain about, right? Here was the joint in his hand. And good Muslims did not smoke on Laylat al-Qadr, right? So this meant he did not care about Islam, did not care about what it had once meant for him. He was now only interested in the so-called profane world, where he could submerge his head in a cloud of marijuana smoke to his heart’s content. 

Ali closed his eyes and imagined himself as the rebel in Plato’s academy. He was the troublemaker amongst the pupils, unconcerned with the profound claims his teacher made about the ideal world. Of course there was no world up there, a better world, of which the one right here was just a flawed replica. And even if there was something elsewhere, something better, this world was the only one he knew. If there was only one truth, it was that he had at least one life, of which seventeen years had already passed. He was done wasting it on fairy tales. He was done learning Arabic to study the Quran, done attending the morning sermons held by Sheikh Rahim. 

Ali could hear Ismail’s voice rebuking him, as Ismail had always done. “Come on, don’t say that. All of this does matter. It’s meaningful, you know?” Ismail always used to say that with a smile on his face. He had never once gotten angry with Ali.

Ismail had studied Arabic, attended the sermons, and more. He had done all that, he had done everything right, and where had that led him? Ismail was dead and buried now. This was the first Laylat al-Qadr he would not be spending in the mosque, either.

Ali opened his eyes and took another hit. No more of all that. No more wasting time. He was going to enjoy what was left.

The grass was so cold and wet under him. The stars were so bright. He felt so light, as if he were floating between the land and sky. With his foggy mind he imagined that, if the Earth were to tilt dramatically all of a sudden, and if gravity were to abandon its post, then he might fall into that vast, starry abyss, and descend forever. And he thought: would that be so bad? Might he even find something there?

He ran his left hand against the cold grass and dirt, plucked a blade and rubbed it between his fingers, to remind himself that he was still here. 

He could feel his heart beating faster, much faster than he had expected, but he did not understand why. Perhaps, part of him wondered, the drugs held a second purpose, beyond a mere rejection. They were an act of reluctant submission, borne of his begrudging faith—which was still alive somewhere inside him, he could feel it even now—that maybe, under the right circumstances, miracles could happen. Maybe the angels would be visible after just a little intoxication, enough to separate the mind from the physical world, if such a thing were possible. And if so, Ali wondered, what would they look like? Like shooting stars, maybe. Like trails of glistening light sliding from the sky. Ali scanned the few stars he could see, hoping to catch one falling, but could not find any.

Though he saw no angels yet, his heart remained uneasy. Something was happening, something that had not happened to him before whenever he smoked. Perhaps there was something particular about the marijuana and the occasion, he wondered. After all, he had once read that certain orders of Muslim mystics would smoke hashish in their rituals in an attempt to better grasp the Divine. Maybe the smoke around Ali could, for just one moment, cleanse his heart and mind, in much the same way as the fumes of the incense stick his grandma would gently wave around her house, sanctifying each room. He remembered that he had been such a young boy when he first saw his grandma carrying that thin stick, which looked like a long black toothpick, with a thin plume of smoke rising from it and swirling gently above. 

It was at the first Eid al-Fitr at his grandma’s house, years before Ali’s sister Laila was born. Ali was only four, and he was alone in the living room. He had been told to wait as the adults prepared in the kitchen. At that age, he was a well-behaved child. He could be trusted to be by himself for a little while. Even though he could not see the adults, Ali could hear all the commotion from the kitchen that doubled as the dining room: the footsteps, the chitchat, the clinking and clanking of pots and pans. He could smell the savory dishes being prepared, the curries, the biryani. 

Because his parents had been among the first to arrive in order to help with preparations, Ali had no other children to play with yet. He spent the time playing games in his mind. Noticing the geometric patterns on the fabric of the sofa he was sitting on, Ali traced the lines first with his eyes and then with his fingers, as if he were solving a maze. But this activity could only interest him for so long. Just when he was feeling bored, he saw his grandma enter, and he jumped with delight.

“Grandma!” At that age, he spoke Urdu with his family. He rushed to hug her, but stopped when he saw the stick of incense. It appeared to his four-year-old eyes to look just like a magic wand. He gasped. “Grandma, are you doing magic?”

She smiled. “Oh my dear Ali, no. This is not magic.”

“But why do you have a wand?”

She gently laughed in a way that Ali sensed even then was not the belittling laugh that adults sometimes laughed around children. There was genuine love, among the purest Ali had ever felt, in her laughter.

She said, “Oh Ali, this is no wand. It is an agarbatti.”

“What?”

Again, she laughed in a way that nourished Ali’s heart. Young Ali wished he could hear her laughter forever. 

“This is something that my grandma used to burn in her house, back home,” she said. “It gives off a very nice scent. And the smoke is supposed to clean away bad energy.”

Ali noticed the smell. It was sweet and rich, but not overpowering. He much preferred it to the cologne he had smelled at the store earlier that week, where his father had dragged him to get new clothes for Eid. That had scorched his nose. This did not.

About the Author

Ameer Malik is a Muslim Pakistani-American writer. He enjoys reading and writing multiple genres. His home genre is fiction.