Leon Uris (20 page)

Reaching Jerusalem, Mohammed tethered el-Buraq to the Western Wall of the Temple of Herod and ascended to the Temple Mount. Here he discovered the great rock of Abraham’s sacrifice, which had also been the altar of the Hebrew Temple. Mohammed then leaped from the rock onto a ladder of light that led to paradise. The rock started to follow Mohammed, but Gabriel, who had flown to Jerusalem ahead of Mohammed, ordered the rock to stay put and the rock obeyed. Later, a great shrine was built over it, called the Dome of the Rock. Nearby, the Al Aksa Mosque was erected. Al Aksa means ‘the farthest place.’

El-Buraq was waiting for Mohammed when he got to heaven. Once again aboard the mount, Mohammed rode through the seven paradises of heaven. He met the patriarchs and the prophets of the Book and saw all the angels at prayer. He said that Moses was a fairly reddish-faced man and that Jesus was of average height and had a lot of freckles, as did Solomon.

Quickly gaining all the knowledge and wisdom of the saints, angels, and prophets, he was allowed a private audience with Allah and was the only man to ever see Allah unmasked. Mohammed and Allah spoke at length to define the various aspects of Islam. Allah wanted the people to pray to Him thirty-five times a day, but Mohammed argued Him into letting them pray a more practical five times daily. After his visit Mohammed returned to Mecca the same night.

The Koran has many other things besides punishments and rewards. It gives us instructions about fornication, adultery, disobedient peoples, alms, murder, corruption, insults, debtors, the pit, divorce, blame casting, dowries, persecution, fasting, the Day of the Burning, fighting, backsliding, backbiting, covetousness, gambling, infanticide, burying infants, heathenism, inheritance laws, how to sleep, menstruation, parental duties, wet-nursing, marital intercourse, oaths, dissension, orphans, eating in other’s houses, prayer times and requirements, the evil eye, ownership of horses, suckling, the scene of the judgment, prohibition of wine and alcohol, renegades, retaliations, satans, repentance, slanderers, treatment of slaves, widows’ wills, thievery, suspicion, usury, cunning, transgression, omens, diets and food laws, prayers of the evil, sexual abstinence, unscrupulous business practices, vanity, raising the dead, sexual dishonor, eunuchs, motherhood, regulations for keeping concubines, bloodclots, enemies, evil spirits, why Mohammed must be believed, vanquishing the Greeks, veiling the woman’s face, cattle, fraud, niggardliness, idolatry, Allah’s powers of imposing death, hypocrites, breaking bonds with kin, temptation, avarice, ritual washing, head shaving and other rules for pilgrims, fate of sinners, those who disbelieve, conspiracy, treatment of enemies and women refugees, lewdness, pregnant camels, slinkers, rain, perversity, plots and counterplots, world unity, and mercy.

Of course this only touches the vast number of other subjects the Koran instructs us on. Every house owned a Koran, but almost no one knew how to read it. Most people knew the required daily prayers and bits and pieces of the Book. The rest of it had to be taught by people like my Uncle Farouk because we have no formal clergy. Uncle Farouk didn’t seem to be too clear, but his sermons were accepted.

There were Five Pillars of Islam. The first pillar is the Moslem’s total submission to Allah. He must say, in all sincerity and belief that ‘There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His Prophet.’

He must pray five times a day after ritual ablution and do the prescribed genuflections, kneeling, and bowing to Mecca and prostrating himself. Many times during prayer the words ‘Allah akbar,’ ‘God is great,’ are recited.

The Moslem must pay a purification tax for almsgiving.

The Moslem must fast during Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and our holiest time, for that was when the Koran was sent down to direct our lives. During Ramadan the gates of heaven open and the angel Gabriel asks grace for everyone. Old people in particular pray very, very hard for forgiveness of their sins, since they will be the ones trying to get into paradise the soonest. Although it is never seen by human eyes, everyone knows that even the trees kneel toward Mecca during Ramadan.

We must fast during the daylight hours for the entire month. We tell day from night by a thread. If you can see a white thread, then it is night. If you can see black thread, then it is daytime.

Ramadan is when new clothing is purchased and everyone gets a haircut from Uncle Farouk and everyone takes a bath. Most of the daylight fasting hours are spent in the mosque, praying. In Tabah we allow women into the mosque, but only on one side, in the rear, and out of sight of the men. During these hours there is complete abstinence from food, drink, smoking, and, worst of all, from sex. Pregnant women, wet nurses, the very aged and ill, travelers, and small children are exempt from fasting by Allah’s grace.

Late in the daylight hours people can start going crazy. Najnun, the spirit that makes you crazy, is in its full glory during Ramadan. Men, weak from hunger, thirst, and the sun, flare into fighting at the slightest pretext. My father is very busy keeping order during Ramadan. It is forbidden to cheat by eating. If anyone is caught he and his family are ostracized until the next Ramadan.

The night meal can go on for hours. They gorge themselves until they become bloated and start vomiting. Just before the sun comes up a second meal is eaten, but people are so stuffed from the night meal the morning meal becomes an ordeal. Everyone is glad when Ramadan is over.

Most important to Moslems is the Sunna. Although the Sunna is not formally written down, it cannot be divorced from the Koran. It is an interpretation of the values of the Koran by experience and tradition. Those who believe in the Sunna are called Sunni Moslems.

Everyone in Tabah was a Sunni. The Sunnis make up most of the Islamic world.

The main Moslem group other than Sunnis are called Shi’ites. Shortly after Islam rose in the seventh century, the center of its power shifted from the Arabian desert to the cities. First Damascus became the center of Islam, then Baghdad, then Cairo, and much later, Istanbul. The caliphs, or leaders of the Islamic world, were no longer from Mecca or Medina but from the most powerful Islamic country at the moment.

The Shi’ites believed that the caliph, the leader of Islam, should always be a descendant of Mohammed and Caliph Ali. They beat themselves with whips to prove their devotion and looked for martyrdom and did other crazy things. The Shi’ites often hated the Sunnis more than they hated the infidels. They always started riots. Palestine didn’t have many Shi’ites, praise Allah, but there were plenty of them in Iran and they were hated, distrusted, and feared by us.

Once I got the courage to ask Mr. Salmi if the Shi’ites, Alawites, Druzes, and Kurds were really Moslems and he managed to mumble, ‘Well, just barely.’

The fifth and final pillar of Islam says that every Moslem must make the pilgrimage, or Haj, to Mecca once in his life. In Mecca there is a Black Stone in a shrine called the Ka’aba. This is the most sacred place in the world. It is said that our father, Abraham, whom we all know was a Moslem and not a Jew, gave the mission to his son, Ishmael, to found the Arab race. I am named after Ishmael, just as my father, Haj Ibrahim, is named after Abraham.

The Ka’aba had once been a pagan shrine but Mohammed changed all that after he got his message from Allah and when he got mad at the Jews. In the beginning all Moslems faced Jerusalem when they prayed. When Mohammed made the Ka’aba the center of Islam he ordered everyone to pray facing Mecca instead because the Jews had not accepted him.

The final thing I will say about Islam concerns jinn, which are very important to us. They are evil spirits capable of looking like an animal or a person and have supernatural influence. The Koran says that ‘We have created man from potter’s clay, of mud ground down; the jinn we created previously of fire of burning heat.’ The Sunna has taught us to fear jinn because once one of these spirits gets inside a person it can cause all the illnesses in man. Once a person is afflicted, nothing but the will of Allah can make that person well again.

All Moslems realize they have no control over their own lives and destinies. Illness, death, drought, pestilence, earthquakes, any disasters must be fatalistically accepted as the will of Allah. Only by being a believer, accepting Mohammed’s word, accepting Allah’s will, can we get into paradise. So life on this earth is really not to be enjoyed, but it merely makes us prove ourselves worthy of joining Mohammed forever in heaven.

I am a devout Moslem, but sometimes some things are hard to understand. If Allah is merciful and compassionate why is He so consumed with horrible punishments and why must Moslems be committed to a holy war to destroy other people who are nonbelievers? Why can’t Islam share the world with other people?

H
AGAR OFTEN COMPLAINED
that she dreaded the day her sons would marry and bring wives into our house because she didn’t want to share the kitchen with anyone. Haj Ibrahim changed all that when he took Ramiza as a second wife.

In the beginning we were very cold to Ramiza, particularly after my father banished my mother to the marketplace stalls. The only person in our house who seemed truly happy was Haj Ibrahim, but he was oblivious to our feelings. My mother’s humiliation had devastated her and made us very wary of our father.

Change toward Ramiza came slowly. She was so beautiful alongside my mother it made it even easier to hate her. At first we thought she was arrogant because she was so quiet. Little by little we realized that she was very shy and not terribly smart. Haj Ibrahim wondered aloud, from time to time, if the old Sheik Walid Azziz had duped him in selling him Ramiza. The chances were that Ramiza had never sat down with her father and had a conversation with him. The old sheik had no way of knowing if Ramiza was clever or stupid. He had so many daughters he scarcely knew all their names and the only criteria by which they were judged were their appearance, obedience, the preservation of their virginity, and the bride price they would bring.

Ramiza had lived as a nomad all her life. With so many women about to do the sheik’s bidding, a lazy girl could slip out of many duties. It became clear that Ramiza had not been sufficiently trained. She had a miserable time trying to fill in for my mother in the kitchen. We had many more kinds of foods and spices than the Bedouin and she botched most of the meals she prepared. Nada was the first to take pity on her. Although Nada was only ten, my mother had trained her well and she saved Ramiza from many a tongue-lashing from Haj Ibrahim.

After a few months Ramiza became pregnant and the first burst of my father’s ardor diminished rapidly. He yelled at her frequently and at times punctuated his displeasure by slapping her. Nada and I would often find her weeping softly in a corner of the kitchen and muttering her puzzlement.

When Ramiza’s room had been completed in the spring and a second bedstead installed, only then did he allow my mother to get off the floor and return to her bedroom.

Neither Ramiza nor my mother was giving him much sexual satisfaction and it angered him. However, he did return Oman to tend the stalls so he could get Hagar back into the kitchen; he gave her specific orders to teach Ramiza how to cook and take care of her duties properly.

When Hagar returned to her kitchen she scarcely spoke to Ramiza but admonished her constantly as ‘that dirty little Bedouin wart.’ Ramiza began to show her pregnancy and became sick in the mornings and whimpered constantly. Hagar slowly began to be humane to her. I think that their friendship truly started when both of them realized it was no great pleasure or honor to sleep with Haj Ibrahim and derogatory little remarks crept into their conversation about the crudeness of his lovemaking. Then the two women began sharing secrets as a mother to a daughter. I believe Ramiza liked Hagar better than she liked Haj Ibrahim. She clung to my mother’s skirts to keep from making mistakes and every now and then Hagar took the blame for something Ramiza had done wrong.

One day Hagar was midwifing. I was home from school with a fever and had tucked myself away in my favorite spot in the kitchen where I was out of everyone’s sight but still had enough light to read by. Ramiza was about seven months pregnant and huffing and puffing about. She finally grunted to a seat on the milking stool and listlessly pumped the churn, making cheese of goat’s milk.

Nada scratched herself unconsciously between her legs, a kind of scratch that would have brought a sharp slap and rebuke had Hagar been present.

‘Do you feel anything there?’ Ramiza asked.

‘Where?’

‘In your sacred place where you just scratched yourself.’

Nada quickly dropped her hands and her cheeks turned crimson.

‘Don’t worry,’ Ramiza said, ‘I won’t tell on you.’

Nada smiled gratefully.

‘Well, does it feel good?’ Ramiza asked again.

‘I don’t know. I think it feels good. Yes, I guess it does. I know it is forbidden. I must be more careful.’

‘You might as well go on feeling yourself as long as you like it,’ Ramiza said. ‘I suppose you must still have one.’

‘Still have what?’ Nada’s eyes widened with fear. ‘If you mean the membrane of honor, of course I still have it!’

‘No,’ Ramiza said. ‘The little button hidden beneath the membrane of honor. Do you still have it?’

‘Yes, I still have it,’ Nada said haltingly. ‘I have felt the button.’

‘Then you must enjoy it as long as they let you keep it.’

‘What do you mean? Won’t I always have it?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Ramiza said. ‘I shouldn’t have told you.’

‘Please, you must tell me ... please ... please.’

Ramiza stopped churning and bit her lip, but after looking at Nada’s pleading eyes, she knew she had to tell. ‘It must be a secret. If your parents knew I told you I would get a severe beating.’

‘I promise. May the Prophet burn me on the Day of the Fire.’

‘It is the pleasure button,’ Ramiza said. ‘Girls are not supposed to keep it.’

‘But why?’

‘Because, as long as you have the pleasure button, it makes you look at boys. One day you might even let a boy touch it and if you enjoy it you may not be able to control yourself. You could even let him break your membrane of honor.’