A smile on the lips of a mosque..
His father wanted to reward me, so I said to him: Thank you, Engineer. I took my reward a long time ago, and before he finished being amazed, I said to him: Did you know that every time I see a single Muslim, he turns to this direction because of me or He opened his Qur’an with me...or walked one path with me whenever I felt that I did not come to this world in vain...and that I owned this world. The sturdy, practical man in his seventies was astonished, then he said: I mean something else... When did you get the reward? I told him since 1983... the day we found out the way to the mosque. Then I muttered in my secret... What are you going to give me, man?... Debris and peels! ..God created us to give, man.. We abandoned the gains of trade and all the joys of life in exchange for this view.. This is today’s story, as my friend told it from south of Cairo.. That huge, gigantic city that swallows everything, is difficult to defeat, and resists every usurper. And arrogant, so you tear him apart...that city in which I have the most beautiful and wonderful memories...and in an area that is closest to the desert in terms of distance and breadth, its streets are still dirt, so that when the wind blows, you imagine that it is raining bags of garbage, mosquitoes, flies, and flying insects, so you close your window and squat down, waiting for the end. This brutal attack and the acrid smell of dirt... He said: It was a Friday that I went to the mosque. For the afternoon prayer on the first day of Ramadan, I had a small bottle of mineral water, a bottle of orange juice that I made myself, the size of a water bottle, an Arabic coffee thermos, and several beautiful Medina dates, which were enough for me and the mosque workers and the imam, even though they had a sumptuous breakfast from the factory owner, but they were waiting for these dates and this coffee every day. One day... I prayed the afternoon prayer and sat in the luxurious back chair, as it was reserved for the factory owner and no one else sat in it... to wait for the sunset prayer, then the evening prayer, then the night prayer, which was a full portion, despite the endowment’s warnings, as the factory owner has his privacy with the state and he is a generous man... then I return to my home. My place of residence, which is a room and a hall allocated to me by the factory owner, and there is a company worker who passes by me every day and cleans it for me. I do not ask him for anything else, as I serve myself, so may God reward him well.... The extended period of time was like the afternoon prayer, during which I prepare my needs in the morning. When I returned to the mosque...it was one of the most wonderful times of my life. It was paradise itself. I did not seek to get to know the workers of the mosque, nor the imam, nor some of the Tablighi sheikhs who came individually, timidly. The eldest of them was a venerable sheikh in his nineties, and he had a nine-year-old child with him. I thought it was his grandson, but the child called out to him one time. Oh father... the old man has exhausted him with orders and requests to organize the boxes he has, empty some of the bags filled with food and fruits, re-furnish the place, and move the Qur’an stand and some of the books he has with him, even though he has never read anything from them, and the child is very amused and carries out without discussion or even words, moving energetically and spontaneously. .. Then the child disappears for a while and other children from outside the mosque come with him. They enter quickly and spread the mosque around, running and moving, then they check all the coolers, feel the coldness of the water, fill plastic cups, then empty them, then fill them in preparation for breakfast, which is very slow for them, but the old man was watching me, wanting to start a conversation that had not been completed. never ? He was amazed at that strange, strange person sitting in the chair designated for the factory owner and not speaking to anyone. After the middle of the holy month, a young man I knew entered us. He was handsome and graceful, with a smiling face and that mysterious sparkle in his eyes, and inside him was that thing that we did not know. He turned to me directly. He thought I was his father. He was the son of the factory owner. He had attended a training course for me in character building and another course in sales management, and his comments showed his intelligence. Even his gestures were smart, fun, full of love and life. He did not make you forget him. It was as if he was surprised when he did not find me. His father... with a smile and great politeness said hello and asked the worker to turn on the air conditioner, not just the fans. He ordered him to turn it on as long as I was in the mosque... (the manager...) sat... did not move... I could feel him... his mind was working. His intelligence sometimes prompted his steps...and sometimes he discussed and debated with him...and fought with him, and defeated him and crushed him, but his soul refused the pride that he had learned in America...(He was his father's third son, and no one would refuse him a request, and he befriended girls, football players, artists, and others...) But he was different. You feel that it is close.. After a while, he said to me, “When will it end?” I told him, “I am under your command.” He said, “It is God’s command.” Then he remained silent with a sharp, scrutinizing look. After a third of an hour, laughing, he said to me, “Do you read Surat Al-Baqarah?” .. Because it is long and you can finish it in Morocco.. And before I speak, I repeat (I am at your command)... He did not wait for an answer, then he took a Qur’an and read a little, then left.... The next day he came a quarter of an hour early.. and he sat in the same session with the same elegance. He was wearing a luxurious, smoky suit, one worn by stars and businessmen, and a luxurious watch and a wonderful perfume. He might be going to a wedding or an evening party, but he sat on a plastic chair next to me and did not care about his suit or his attire. He took his Qur’an, read a little, and left. On the third day, he came a quarter of an hour early. Another time, as if he wanted to know the time of my presence, he was wearing a luxurious sports suit that he wore while going to the tennis courts at the Maadi Club. Then he was gone for several days, then he appeared in an elegant white Moroccan robe and waited next to me on the plastic chair. When the time for supplication came, he said, “Can you raise your voice in supplication?” My supplication in Ramadan usually takes a quarter of an hour before sunset. It begins with praising and praising God and praying for the Messenger, then supplicating for myself, then my father, my mother, my brother, my sister, my nephew, and my niece, may God have mercy on them, who died in my life, then the rest of the dead from my wombs, then for my beloved wife and children, for each of them a supplication: The student may succeed, the absent person may return, the sick person may recover, and may God guide them and make them among the people of obedience and the people of the Qur’an...then to my friends by name.. Yes, I have a few friends who pray for them by name and for their children every night, even if some of them separate and I no longer see them, even if they do not ask me, this is their right over me. Of course, I changed the supplication a little, and I mentioned the previous ones in general, and I prayed for things that suit our situation, he and I... such as returning to God and staying away from sin, and for God to accept us, for we have sought refuge in Him, and we have no one but Him, and His servants are many except us, and that we are weak, so He strengthens our weakness in His satisfaction, and that we are in need of Him, and He is self-sufficient and that He gives us. From His full treasuries and His amazing gifts... And that He treats us with His mercy, compassion, tenderness, and benevolence, not with His justice... And that He shows us the path of truth as truth and grants us to follow it, and the path of falsehood as false, He grants us to avoid it, and that He makes faith beloved to us and adorns it in our hearts, and that He grants us His love and the love of the righteous, and that we loved our Master the Prophet with a great love. Shaghaf reigned over us. Our hearts and that He would grant us the following of our Prophet, the knowledge of His path, and give us with His noble hand a drink after which we would never feel thirsty. We cried like we had never cried before... He cried silently, then with joy, then with wailing. I used to cry once out of emotion, sometimes because of his crying, once in joy, and once to remember the beginnings... What? The most beautiful is the serenity of the beginning. How beautiful it is to see that serenity on deserving faces.. Yes, there are faces with whom we tried and failed due to their focused nature and the lack of help from their parents or God’s dissatisfaction with them or because the time has not yet come for them to return... Let us know that God is the only guide, but it is upon us to convey the message. .. .. This young man was truly loved by God.. So the display of faith touched the passions of his heart.. So he began to pray at that time with the same determination he had at work and more. Then we learned together to recite the Qur’an.. His travels in Europe ended and he headed toward Mecca and Medina.. and his relationships with artists and football players ended. He became the poor, the people who worked with him, and the employers like him. He became a person whom God loved...and his father loved him, as all natural fathers and mothers want that for their children.. He became a different, positive, clean person who carried the concerns of his father and brothers after they had carried his concerns.. I do not think that this friend of ours changed because of the man of reporting. And his four companions and their grandchildren. Nor because of the sheikh of the mosque who is afraid to speak as if we were spies on him or as if he were from another planet... or as if the Minister of Endowments had closed his mouth, sight and hearing... nor because of his father’s chair, which resembles the chair of the Resurrection of Ertugrul with its arrows and scepter, nor because of me... for everything I did when he came. I smile at him and pray for him in secret, with an almost movement from his father’s chair, as if I were telling him to go ahead before he quickly sat down on the ground opposite me, his face bright as life... in the name of the gap, like the dewy morning... It is the love of the mosque, and the mosque is enough to rearrange your life, your ribs, your heart, and your conscience.. The mosque that we lost, so we lost.. The mosque that my friend Adel called me to tell me that he enjoyed the mosque that restored his balance as if he had risen from a steam bath in which all the pores of his body had opened and his fatigue had disappeared with him..
Written by Ali Al-Sayyar
