by BINA SHAH
Mashal and I always say our prayers, but today we are making a special petition to God for a favourable performance on the final and an honourable grade for the semester. So far God has been kind to both of us, and we calculate our GPAs nightly, over boxes of Domino’s pizza and cigarettes. Anything higher than a 3.5 is good enough for me, but Mashal is not satisfied unless the numbers hit the 3.8 range. She writes down her GPA in a notebook; I am happy to keep it somewhere in my head, forgotten until the next night’s session where we eat even more pizza and smoke more cigarettes and talk about things that make us happy and sad at the same time.
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MUSLIM PRAYER ROOM
Sacred space – please remove your shoes!
Last week there was a college professor who came in here, to meditate, she said, but she forgot to take off her shoes, so I suppose that’s why the sign is up there now. Mashal and I already know what to do here; it’s familiar territory to us, one small room of home in a whole country that’s sometimes terrifying and foreign. We take off our shoes and slot them into the shoe rack at the end of the room, then we take out our dupattas from our backpacks and arrange them on our heads. We turn towards the east and begin to pray nafils for our exams. Mashal used to say she felt bad asking God for help with something so trivial when there’s war and starvation in the world, but I told her that God wants us to become successful students so that we can change the world and make it more favourable for Muslims everywhere, so she no longer feels guilty.
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As Mashal and I bow and kneel, kneel and bow, and then lower ourselves to the ground for the final salaam, I can’t help but hold up my hands in wonder, and say to God, in a lowered voice, Look, I’m here, in America, and no stupid terrorists or George Bush have been able to stop me. All praise is due to you, Allah, the Sustainer of all the worlds, please bless both the one I’m in and take me back safely to the one that I came from. Ameen.
Dawn for more
(thanks to Salim Amersi)