Free Children of Dust by Ali Eteraz Page B

branch to branch using just my tail wouldn’t make up for the fact that I would be ugly, hairy, and loud. Besides, there was something strange about the punishment. It wasn’t like the other divine punishments: floods, storms of sulfur, civilizations flipped upside down. Monkey-making seemed to be designed solely for amusement and mockery, things I hadn’t associated with Allah. The possibility that Allah was a naughty boy in heaven who rolled around in the clouds making people into animals made me nervous. I came to fear God, but not just that: I became wary of Him as one does of a bully.
    Only a few weeks into our study, it was revealed that Qari Adil was using the lessons as an occasion to flirt with Ammi, by writing love letters to her. When Ammi told Pops, the house visits stopped and Mawdudi’s books were put away.
     
    T here were a few other books besides the Quran that evoked respect in my household. The foremost among these was an old leather-bound volume of Muhammad Iqbal’s collection of poems, called Baang-e-Dra (“Call of the Caravan”). Pops often sat around on the veranda bellowing the first verse from the most famous poem:
    Ya rabb dil e Muslim ko
    woh zinda tamanna de
    jo qalb ko garma de
    jo ruh ko tarpa de!
    O Almighty, give to the Muslim
    that spark of vitality
    which enflames the heart
    which enlivens the soul!
    Ammi also held Iqbal in great esteem, but for different reasons. She was impressed by his piety. “Iqbal recited zikr thirty million times in his life. You can’t go wrong if you do the same.”
    “What invocation did he recite?”
    “The durood .”
    “All of it?”
    “Yes,” she said. “Allahumma sallay ala Muhammad wa ala aal-e-Muhammad kma sallayta wa ala aal-e-Ibrahim innaka hameedun majeed.”
    “That’s long!”
    “Read that thirty million times and you can become the next Iqbal, the founder of a Muslim nation. Don’t you remember how you were taken to Mecca and had your heart rubbed upon the Ka’ba?”
    “How could I forget?” I’d heard that story a hundred times.
    The other household book was one I read was in English; it was called The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History , by Michael Hart. We owned it for one simple reason: the Holy Prophet was number one.
    Hart explained his reasoning as follows: “My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world’s most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels.”
    I took great pride in the fact that someone from the West—a leader of science and education—recognized the Prophet Muhammad’s influence.
    The third book we had was a children’s book in Urdu called Lives of the Prophets . This book explained that while every messenger of God before Muhammad had brought earlier versions of Islam, with Muhammad that religion reached its culmination. Lives of the Prophets contained the story of Adam and Havva’s fall from the Garden; the story of Nuh’s wife seeing the water in her oven and warning Nuh about the Flood so he could launch his ark; the story of Ibrahim destroying thetown’s idols when he was just a child; the story of Musa challenging the Pharaoh’s wizards by casting his staff on the ground and having it turn into a cobra; the story of Yunus, who was eaten by a whale; Yusuf, who rose from a prisoner of the Pharaoh to one of his officials; and Isa, born to a virgin mother. I liked reading this book before I went to sleep.
    One night the stars were out as we prepared to sleep on the roof. I had forgotten Lives downstairs. I couldn’t get to sleep without it, but I was too scared to go get it in the dark. So I turned to Ammi.
    “Tell me a story,” I pleaded.
    “About what?”
    “Tell me a Prophet story.”
    “Pick a Prophet.”
    “All 124,000 of them,” I suggested, smiling in the dark.
    “How about just one?” she countered, fluffing her