Gardens of Water (77 page)

In the name of God, the infinitely Compassionate and Merciful.

Ruler on the Day of Reckoning.

You alone do we worship, and You alone do we ask for help.

Guide us on the straight path,

the path of those who have received your grace;

not the path of those who have brought down wrath, nor of those

who wander astray.

smail got lost and stumbled through the words, quietly whispering out a gibberish that was an approximation of the prayer. Sinan repeated the lines until
smail said each one correctly, and he thanked God for giving
smail back his voice.

Repeating
God is great,
Sinan dropped his arms to his side as he bent at the waist. He tried to keep his back perfectly parallel to the ground, and to help this he rested his hands on his knees.
Holy is my Lord, the Magnificent.

Suspecting something, he glanced at
smail. The boy’s arms dangled loosely and his back curved like a cat stretching after a long sleep. He pressed his palm against
smail’s back, flattening it out. “There,” he said. “It’s not supposed to be easy.”

Holy is my Lord, the Magnificent,
the boy repeated, breathing dramatically hard.

Sinan raised his shoulders, letting his arms fall to his sides.

God listens to him who praises Him.

He heard a shuffling sound behind him, the movement of shopping bags against cotton shorts. He tried to put it out of his mind and concentrate, but his head filled with the exclamations of people spinning in place to take in the sight of the dome, the excited voices of women touching beautiful cold tiles.

Our Lord, to You is due all praise.

God is great.

He sat on his feet and
smail did the same, both of them placing their palms on top of their knees. The voices grew louder and phrases in English bounced around the dome, echoed across the walls, hung in the cool air and settled in the carpet.

A deep breath and Sinan touched his forehead to the soft carpet, and held himself there for a moment with his palms next to his cheeks.

Glory to my Lord, the Most High.

A flash and the click of a camera shutter. Something was said in English followed by another flash.

Then Sinan briefly forgot what came next. When he opened his eyes he found
smail staring back, waiting to follow. Being caught in this momentary lapse only extended it and he felt a pang of embarrassment; a good Muslim should be unaffected by such small things, his concentration focused only on God.

“Bend down,” Sinan said too forcefully.

smail’s eyes widened and he did it immediately.

Sinan again pressed his forehead to the carpet, the cool scent of the pile filling his nostrils.

More flashes burst from the tourists’ cameras.

Allahu Akbar.

Sitting up, he leaned his weight on his twisted ankle and raised his right foot so that the top faced the mihrab. He paused, closed his eyes, and tried to get the quiet back, tried to open himself up like a door through which God could visit, but the anger had already risen in him and it was growing like sharp thorns in his stomach.

All greetings, blessings and

good acts are from You, my Lord.

The tour group shuffled around the mosque, gazing at columns, leaning down to rub their fingers through the carpet, even walking up to the minbar to gape at the carved staircase. Sinan, ready to explode, focused hard not on the voices of these strangers, not on his own voice, and not even on his thoughts of God or the Prophet, but on the voice of his son.
smail’s voice was like a young bird learning a song, missing certain notes, but trying and straining and trying again.

Peace be unto us, and unto

The righteous servants of

God.

Silence floated back to him.

O God, bless our Muhammad

and the people of Muhammad;

As you have blessed Abraham

and the people of Abraham.

He opened his eyes and the silence he had achieved retreated into the dome like pigeons startled into flight.

He glanced over his right shoulder, above the top of
smail’s black hair, toward an unseen angel recording his good deeds, and said,
Peace and blessings of God be unto you.
He looked over his left shoulder toward the unseen angel recording his wrongful deeds, but when he did he was presented with a man in a tank top, his exposed skin like blank paper, his hands lifting a camera with the lens pointed directly at him. Sinan forced himself to look straight into the lens, right through the focusing mechanics of that eye, and into the eye behind the lens, the one of a man as soft and vulnerable and full of sin as any man, as he himself even.