He began to repeat the commentary to her the way he had heard it until he suggested, "So you see that some of the jinn listened to the Qur'an and believed in it; perhaps the ones living in our house are some of these Muslim jinn. Otherwise, why have they spared us all this time?"
The woman replied rather uneasily, "Perhaps they are, but it’s possible some others are mixed in with them. So it would be best for us not to repeat their names".
"There’s nothing to fear in repeating the word. That’s what our teacher said".
His mother stared at him critically and said, "The teacher doesn't know everything".
"Even if the name is in a sacred verse?"
Confronted by his question she felt upset but found herself forced to respond, "The word of our Lord is a blessing in its entirety".
Kamal was satisfied and continued with his account of the commentary: "Our shaykh also says their bodies are made of fire!"
Her anxiety became extreme. She implored God’s protection and invoked His name a number of times.
Kamal continued talking: "I asked the shaykh if the Muslims among them would enter paradise. He said, 'Yes.' I also asked him how they could, if their bodies are made of fire. He replied sharply that God can do anything".
"May His might be exalted".
He gazed at her with concern and then asked, "If we meet them in paradise, won't their fire burn us?"
The woman smiled and said confidently and devoutly, "There is no harm or fear there".
The boy’s eyes wandered dreamily. Then he changed the course of the conversation suddenly by asking, "Will we see God in the next world with our eyes?"
His mother answered with the same confidence and devotion, "This is true. There can be no doubt of it".
Yearnings showed in his dreamy glance like rays of light shining through the darkness. He asked himself when he would see God. In what form would He appear? Abruptly shifting topics once more, he asked his mother, "Is my father afraid of God?"
She was astonished and said incredulously, "What a strange question! Son, your father is a pious man, a believer who fears his Lord".
Perplexed, he shook his head and said in a subdued voice, "I can't imagine my father being afraid of anything".
His mother shouted in censure: "May god forgive you… God forgive you".
He apologized for what he had said with a tender smile. Then he invited her to memorize the new sura. They proceeded to recite it together, verse by verse, and repeat it. When they thought they had accomplished as much as they could, the boy rose to go to his bedroom.
She stayed with him until he had slipped under the covers of his little bed. Placing her hand on his forehead, she recited the Throne Verse from the Qur'an about God’s all-encompassing, watchful care (2:255). She leaned over and kissed his cheek. He put his arms around her neck and gave her a long kiss that came from the depths of his small heart.
She always had trouble getting away from him when she said good night. He would use every trick he knew to keep her beside him for the longest time possible, even if he did not get her to stay till he fell asleep in her arms. He had found that the best way to attain his goal was to ask her to recite, when she finished the Throne Verse, a second and a third verse with her hand on his head. If he perceived she was excusing herself with a smile, he would implore her to continue, citing his fear of being alone in the room or the bad dreams he would have unless there was a lengthy recitation of sacred verses. He might go so far in trying to retain her as to pretend to be sick. He found nothing wrong in these stratagems. He was certain that they did not even compensate for a sacred right which had been violated in the most atrocious way the day he was unjustly and forcibly separated from his mother and brought to this solitary bed in his brother’s room.
How often he remembered with sorrow the time not so far distant when he and his mother shared a bed. He would fall asleep, his head resting on her arm, while she filled his ear with the sound of her gentle voice recounting stories of the prophets and saints. He would be asleep before his father returned from his night out and wake only after the man had risen to bathe. He would not see anyone else with his mother. The world belonged to him and he had no rival. Then a blind decree that made no sense had separated them. He had looked to her to see what impact his banishment had made on her.
How startled he had been by her encouragement, which, implied that she agreed with the decision. She had congratulated him, saying, "Now you've become a man. You have a right to a bed of your own". Who said it would make him happy to become a man or that he craved a bed of his own? Although he had soaked his first private pillow with his tears and warned his mother he would never forgive her so long as he lived, he had never dared slip back into his former bed. He knew that behind that treacherous, tyrannical action crouched his father’s unalterable will. How sad he had been. The dregs of sorrow embittered his dreams. How furious he had been with his mother, not just because it was impossible for him to be furious at his father but because she was the last person he thought would disappoint his hopes. She knew, though, how to appease him and gradually cheer him up.
At first she took care not to leave him until sleep made off with him. She would tell him, "We haven't been separated the way you claim. Don't you see that we're together? We'll stay together always. Nothing but sleep will separate us. It did that even when we were in one bed".
Now the sorrow had sunk below the surface of his emotions. He had accepted his new life, although he would not allow her to leave until he had used up all his tricks to make her stay the longest possible time. He held her hand as avidly as a child grasping his toy when other children are trying to snatch it away. She kept on reciting verses from the Qur'an with a hand on his head until sleep took him by surprise.
She bade him good night with a tender smile and went to the next room. She opened the door gently and looked toward the blurred shape of the bed on the right. She asked softly, "Are you both asleep?"
She could hear Khadija’s voice reply, "How can I fall asleep when Miss Aisha’s snoring fills the room?"
Then Aisha’s voice was heard, protesting sleepily, "No one has ever heard me snore. She keeps me awake with her constant chatter".
Their mother said critically, "Have you forgotten my advice to cease your banter when it’s time to go to sleep?"
She closed the door again and went to the study. She knocked on the door gently. Then she opened it and poked her head in to ask with a smile, "Do you need anything, sir?"
Fahmy raised his head from the book and thanked her, his face aglow with a charming smile. She closed the door and crossed the sitting room to the outer hall, before climbing the stairs to the top floor, where her husband’s bedroom was. The Qur'an verses she was reciting preceded her.
12
When Yasin left the house he naturally knew where he was going, since he went there every evening. He appeared, however, to have no idea where he was heading. He was always like this when walking in the street. He went along slowly in a friendly, complaisant manner. He strutted vainly and proudly, as though never forgetting for a moment his enormous body, his face radiating vitality and manliness, his elegant garments that received more than their fair share of attention, the fly whisk with its ivory handle that never left his hand winter or summer, and his tall fez tilted to the right so it almost touched his eyebrows.