sees in a length of cloth its origin, its place of birth, the caravans' voyages?
-Hoda Barakat, The Tiller of Water
Here is something new. On Old State Road 37 near Bloomington, a placard at a construction site says "Coming soon: Dagom Gaden Tensung Ling Monastery." Khadra does a double take. She gets a mental image of Hubbard hobbling angrily across the street from a colony of tiny men in orange robes. But no, times have changed. Haven't they? As if to prove it, a car whizzes by her, its bumper sticker proclaiming "Visualize whirled peas."
Khadra arrives on the IU campus knee-deep in the golden Indiana day, time for duhr prayer. It has been transformed into Muslim Land for the weekend. Thousands of Muslims fill Assembly Hall, the great basketball stadium where the Hoosiers practice, turning the Big Ten bastion into a high-raftered mosque. Khadra enters the arena just as the imam calls the first "allahu akbar." She steps out of her cute strappy sandals and slips into a prayer line next to a woman whose petite body, a presence of bone and flesh under the fabric, brushes against her.
Several hundred Muslim foreheads touch the arena floor in unison, her own widow's-peaked one among them. Only a thin bedsheet between the forehead and the hardwood. Palm, palm, knee, knee, points of contact with the ground. Campus staffers in Go Big Red T-shirts watch the Muslims pray, their eyes widening when everyone goes down in prostration.
"Here is the way Muslims touch the ground," Khadra thinks in sajda. "Here is the way we shift our bodies daily, and alter our angle of looking." In prostration, you see the underbelly of things. Daddy longlegs moving carefully side to side. Old gum underneath a bleacher plank. Hems, sari edges, purse buckles beside your eye. Feet. Long bony toes of tall skinny women and little cushiony ones of short round women, the littlest toe barely there, tucked sideways shyly. In the rising posture, she looks down at her long tissuey skirt with its Mayan temple images in blue and bronze. Her mother's voice in her head tsk-tsks her bare feet. In response, she wriggles her stubby toes.
After the salam, Khadra decides she will try low camera angles. It is not the prayer she will photograph, not from the outside, but: what does the world look like from inside this prayer?
She helps fold the dormitory sheets that have served as prayer rugs. She picks up one end and someone picks up the other, a young woman who is perhaps Bosnian or East European, wearing a floral fcharpe. Khadra loves being in this forest of women in hijab, their khimars and saris and jilbabs and thobes and depattas fluttering and sweeping the floor and reaching out to everything. Compact Western clothing doesn't rustle, or float, or reach out to anything.
Khadra spots a familiar figure across the prayer hall. Stray red hairs are sticking out from under a calico prayer wrap. "Aunt Trish!" She is bent over someone in a wheelchair. She turns, pushing the wheelchair. It is Uncle Omar-Khadra gasps softly. She'd heard he had developed multiple sclerosis, but never dreamed it had gone this far so quickly. She remembers how he'd gone after Ramsey with a strap after catching him with Insaf Haqiqat when they were teens; he'd been powerful as an ox.
"Khadra Shamy?" Uncle Omar says through his big mustache. "I haven't seen you since you were this high! Where have you been hiding all these years?"
"Oh," she says brightly, "I'm in Philadelphia now."
"Why don't you have a baby in your hands and three more behind you?" he demands gruffly-winking.
"I-well-how are you?" Khadra says. "I was so sorry to hear-"
"It's stage three progressive," Aunt Trish explains. "He had to go to a wheelchair within a year of diagnosis." She is matter-of-fact about it, although he seems to slump at her words.
Khadra is about to add a word of condolence for Ramsey, but she doesn't have the heart to bring up another sorrow just then.
On her way to check in at the Union Hotel,
-Hoda Barakat, The Tiller of Water
Here is something new. On Old State Road 37 near Bloomington, a placard at a construction site says "Coming soon: Dagom Gaden Tensung Ling Monastery." Khadra does a double take. She gets a mental image of Hubbard hobbling angrily across the street from a colony of tiny men in orange robes. But no, times have changed. Haven't they? As if to prove it, a car whizzes by her, its bumper sticker proclaiming "Visualize whirled peas."
Khadra arrives on the IU campus knee-deep in the golden Indiana day, time for duhr prayer. It has been transformed into Muslim Land for the weekend. Thousands of Muslims fill Assembly Hall, the great basketball stadium where the Hoosiers practice, turning the Big Ten bastion into a high-raftered mosque. Khadra enters the arena just as the imam calls the first "allahu akbar." She steps out of her cute strappy sandals and slips into a prayer line next to a woman whose petite body, a presence of bone and flesh under the fabric, brushes against her.
Several hundred Muslim foreheads touch the arena floor in unison, her own widow's-peaked one among them. Only a thin bedsheet between the forehead and the hardwood. Palm, palm, knee, knee, points of contact with the ground. Campus staffers in Go Big Red T-shirts watch the Muslims pray, their eyes widening when everyone goes down in prostration.
"Here is the way Muslims touch the ground," Khadra thinks in sajda. "Here is the way we shift our bodies daily, and alter our angle of looking." In prostration, you see the underbelly of things. Daddy longlegs moving carefully side to side. Old gum underneath a bleacher plank. Hems, sari edges, purse buckles beside your eye. Feet. Long bony toes of tall skinny women and little cushiony ones of short round women, the littlest toe barely there, tucked sideways shyly. In the rising posture, she looks down at her long tissuey skirt with its Mayan temple images in blue and bronze. Her mother's voice in her head tsk-tsks her bare feet. In response, she wriggles her stubby toes.
After the salam, Khadra decides she will try low camera angles. It is not the prayer she will photograph, not from the outside, but: what does the world look like from inside this prayer?
She helps fold the dormitory sheets that have served as prayer rugs. She picks up one end and someone picks up the other, a young woman who is perhaps Bosnian or East European, wearing a floral fcharpe. Khadra loves being in this forest of women in hijab, their khimars and saris and jilbabs and thobes and depattas fluttering and sweeping the floor and reaching out to everything. Compact Western clothing doesn't rustle, or float, or reach out to anything.
Khadra spots a familiar figure across the prayer hall. Stray red hairs are sticking out from under a calico prayer wrap. "Aunt Trish!" She is bent over someone in a wheelchair. She turns, pushing the wheelchair. It is Uncle Omar-Khadra gasps softly. She'd heard he had developed multiple sclerosis, but never dreamed it had gone this far so quickly. She remembers how he'd gone after Ramsey with a strap after catching him with Insaf Haqiqat when they were teens; he'd been powerful as an ox.
"Khadra Shamy?" Uncle Omar says through his big mustache. "I haven't seen you since you were this high! Where have you been hiding all these years?"
"Oh," she says brightly, "I'm in Philadelphia now."
"Why don't you have a baby in your hands and three more behind you?" he demands gruffly-winking.
"I-well-how are you?" Khadra says. "I was so sorry to hear-"
"It's stage three progressive," Aunt Trish explains. "He had to go to a wheelchair within a year of diagnosis." She is matter-of-fact about it, although he seems to slump at her words.
Khadra is about to add a word of condolence for Ramsey, but she doesn't have the heart to bring up another sorrow just then.
On her way to check in at the Union Hotel,
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