Sweetness in the belly by Camilla Gibb

Author:Camilla Gibb [Camilla Gibb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Roman
ISBN: 9780385660181
Published: 2006-02-14T08:00:00+00:00

the book of lies

Several different chapters being recited simultaneously produced a blissful blur of holy words that echoed throughout the city: my students reciting while Sufis sat in shrines and recited the ninety-nine names of God, and holy men like Sheikh Jami recounted Hadiths and imams sat in mosques and spoke to God and qadis filled their courtrooms with words of holy law and muezzins flooded the sky with their invitations.

With the aid of the booklets, my older students could address their own weaknesses, working on the chapters they knew least well. I tapped a stick against the wall, encouraging them to keep a measured and consistent pace. At the madrasas the teachers used a whip, which they lashed against the floor and, not infrequently, across the palms and backs of their students.

When the older children had managed to repeat an entire chapter as a group, without interruption, without falter or hesitation, I’d tap them into the next. With the younger students, more guidance was required. They would listen and repeat each line of a verse. I would correct their pronunciation, offer a line to jog their memories when they began to falter, encourage them to sway from side to side and find the rhythm of each verse in their bodies. She hadn’t gone beyond the first chapter, but Bortucan served as a metronome for the others.

Once the eldest six could recite the entire first third of the Qur’an together, we deemed it time for a celebration. Nouria and I invited the students’ parents over one Friday morning. Gishta made a huge tray of sweets and provided milk and sugar for tea. All the children were instructed to wear their very best clothes, even though for some of them this simply meant a laundered version of the clothes they wore every day.

The six children stood in a row facing east, Fathi and Anwar among them. I wore the traditional dress Gishta had had made for me and stood before them and recited the first line of a randomly selected chapter from the first third of the book. They repeated that line and then carried on through the rest of the chapter without me. I then turned the pages of the book and read out the first line of another chapter.

The parents stood stone still, mesmerized.

“Do they know which chapters you are going to select?” asked one father just as I was poised to choose a third.

“No. Here.” I held out the book to him. “You choose.”

He approached hesitantly and looked at the book over my shoulder. I turned the pages for him and invited him to tell me where to stop.

“Yes, there, there is good,” he said.

“Please, go ahead,” I encouraged him, nodding at the expectant children.

He cleared his throat and sang the first line of the third chapter. He had a beautiful voice, but the page before us showed the beginning of chapter five.

As the children finished the chapter, he burst into applause. More than one mother cried, and Nouria’s expression was one of rapture, as if she had never before been this close to God.

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