INTO D.C.

A man of middle years spoke of his dream, saying:
I dreamed the child of a young Muslim widow had been ill and hospitalized in Florida.  Instead of being returned to her mother, the child had been taken to the White House by federal agents.  The child was bait.  Going to the White House to retrieve her was a trap, and we all knew it, but we all had to go nonetheless.  I traveled with the child’s mother, aunt and grandmother.  We arrived at night, and stayed outside, watching the building until just before dawn.  Then White House staff, who’d known we were there all along, came out to greet us.  They took us inside and offered us breakfast.  They made it clear how much information they had about us by catering to our individual preferences in food.  But after breakfast, the cordial manners were dropped.  We were arrested.

Next I saw us all in a large, bare gymnasium-like room in the White House.  The four of us were now wearing atrocious orange prison jumpsuits.  A group of guards or police or agents—about fifteen of them—burst into the room and began beating us.  With fists, with clubs.  We fought back, but we couldn’t win.  They brought in hoses, and the force of the water pressure drove us back into the wall.  There was no purpose to the arrest or violence other than the enjoyment they got out of intimidating us.  And who knows, perhaps we would have confessed to something, named someone—it didn’t really matter.  It was all just an exercise to them.

Finally, I saw us dressed in our own clothes once more.  We were going to be released.  At the moment, though, the four of us were sitting on the floor of a small, otherwise empty room.  We had not broken.  We had not confessed to fictitious crimes, or betrayed innocent and unsuspecting friends.  The others felt the strength of their faith in Allah.  I felt it too, but it was overshadowed as I looked at the floor and saw we were sitting against an outside wall of the White House.  At its base where the wall and floor met, there was a crack perhaps an inch high and seven inches long.  You could see outside, see the people on the street very clearly from there.  And then I felt that I had failed my test.  My true test was not just to stand up to brutality, it was that I should have screamed. We all should have screamed loud enough, long enough so that the people on the street could hear us, could know and begin to talk about it–that inside this pristine building, something was very wrong.

I woke up then and thought about the ayats in Quran that mention cowardice.  That a coward’s place is in Hell because no one can protect you from death.  Death is from Allah and who can protect you from Allah?  You either believe, or you do not believe.  And I thought–Allah is showing me a different kind of cowardice–the cowardice of keeping silent–and it is just as wrong.

THE GUIDE

 

We have indeed sent down signs that make things manifest: And Allah guides whom He wills to a way that is straight.  (Quran 24:46)

I spoke to a young man who said only this: 
On the street I saw a woman who was so beautiful I stopped breathing.  I just stood and stared.  She was fully covered in a khimar and long, loose, flowing dress.  She was beautiful, elegant, graceful.  I followed her without ever realizing I was doing so.  I just wanted to look at her.  I didn’t try to speak to her, didn’t think to speak to her.  My thoughts didn’t go that far.  I just looked. Looked and followed.
 She went into a building so I did too.  I lost sight of her though; and then I realized what I’d done, and I stopped and looked around. There were only men.  No women around at all, except I caught a glimpse of one or two through a doorway, but none of them were the one I’d seen before.  I was confused.
 I spoke to one of the men and asked what the place was.  He said it was a masjid.  I just looked at him, so he began to explain.  That was how I first learned about Islam.  And now I am Muslim.  I have a wife, kids. I never saw that woman again.  I guess she was only my guide.

An Empty Shell

A man spoke of his dream. He said:

I was walking with my wife down a street in the city. There was no one else around. The area we were in was an abandoned neighborhood of old, brick buildings. There were many old-fashioned little shops and storefronts with apartments above them for the shop owners and other tenants. My wife and I reached the corner where another of these derelict shops stood. It had been a prime location in its day, with large plate glass windows facing both streets of the corner on which it stood. The windows had long ago been broken out. Shards and slivers of glass were still scattered on the floor inside where the overturned, broken remains of a few dark, wooden furnishings lie amid the dirt and crumbled plaster from walls which had once been painted in various shades of brown. Some wires still dangled overhead, the only remains of fixtures long since spirited away.

The Cemetery

 

A man said, “We would speak of dreams”.  This is what he said:
When I a new Muslim, I was fascinated by the knowledge that the dead are punished in their graves for their sins–their screams unheard by the living.

An Opening

 

Another woman told me this:
I did not see it.  It was a small space.  The smallest of spaces.  No more than a quarter of an inch between my knee and that of the woman sitting next to me on the floor in the upper level of the Haram.  And so far in the back we could not even see the railing that overlooked the Kaaba below us in the center.

An Empty Sky

And We have made the heavens as a canopy well guarded: Yet do they turn away from the Signs which these things point to! (Quran 21:32)

A man spoke to me, saying:

I was beset by bills and responsibilities to my family which I could not fulfill.  I lost my job, my house.  We were all piled into my brother’s small place. 

The Warrior

O you who believe! Seek help with patient perseverance and prayer; for Allah is with those who patiently persevere. (Quran 2:153)

I spoke to a man who said some thought of him as a war hero, and what he said was this:

When I was young, I made salat everyday.  I went far away to the war.  I fought the enemy.  I hid from the enemy.  I chased the enemy.  I killed the enemy.  I killed my salat.  I left the enemy behind and returned home and found salat was not dead; it had just returned home before me.  It was waiting for me.  There was also a young, fertile woman who gave me 6 sons in 10 years.  Everyday of that time I made salat.