few months ago, my younger son Christopher fell desperately ill. For several weeks he was on the verge of death.
Desperate, I fell on my knees to pray. But to which God? In what language?
I was born in a small, close-knit, Muslim community that had flourished for two centuries on the coast of East Africa. At five, my mother divorced my dad, upped camp and emigrated to England, hauling me with her. She couldn’t take care of me, so I was farmed out to an Anglican English working class family. My father remained in Africa. His job with the national airline allowed me free tickets to commute to Africa.
Between five and twenty years old, I sojourned with him in Africa for the summer months. My daily joy was coming home of an early evening, after participating in a hectic soccer match. I would bathe then stand stock-still, wrapped in a towel, as my father squeezed my chin with one hand while his other combed my hair. Dirty soccer kit was replaced by long, light-grey trousers and an open-necked plain white, short-sleeved shirt. We would walk along the palm-fringed harbour to our mosque, arriving half-an-hour before the service. The large, glassless, filigreed windows, their wooden shutters wide open to let in the sublime sea breeze, brought a sense of peace and tranquility as we listened to women singing ginans (ancient hymns), while we murmured in accompaniment. Our prayers were in Arabic, gleaned from the Koran.
Remembering those times, it seems the whole ritual of bathing, wearing clean and simple clothes, the vista and whiff of the deep blue ocean we passed on our way to Jamat Khana, all became a component of our daily prayer. One which, after emigrating to escape the constant purges instigated by the government, I never found again.
Entering the safe and secure heart of my English family there was never any interest in religion. It was only through cubs and scouts that I was introduced to Sunday church parades and the joy of singing hymns.
At twenty-five, I emigrated to Canada and met the love of my life, a Filipina immersed in Roman Catholicism. After much heated argument, we decided our kids would become Catholics.
As Christopher fought for his life, the question rose again of how to address my God, having abandoned worshipping for decades.
Without the ritual of bathing, dressing, and walking beside the ocean, my mind throbbed with the pull of worldly affairs. I could gain no peace to pray.
I began with “Bismillah al-Rahman-al Rahim” (In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful), Arabic words that started my boyhood prayers at the mosque. It continued with an Anglican prayer, then Latin incantations on behalf of my Catholic son.
One week ran into the next. Day by day, slowly but surely, Christopher regained his strength and life. My prayers became regular: at the beginning of the day- I always wake up at 4 am, a time most favoured for prayer by my Ismaili Muslims, and at 7 pm, when I retired for the day- another auspicious time to pray in my erstwhile Muslim community. Despite the mishmash of multi-religious catch phrases, I somehow found the tranquility lost since my childhood sojourns in Africa.
Alas, once Christopher recovered, my communion with the Gods once again petered out into oblivion, the whole of my mind focusing on the day that had passed and the tasks awaiting me in the morning.
