The Candle and the Flame

You can’t judge an entire population of a people by the actions of a select few. You can’t use your grief and your sorrow to justify your hate and your discrimination.

The desert has been a balm to all her hurts. This place with its emptiness and the promise of heat glimmering underneath the sand.

The desert sings of loss, always loss, and if you stand quiet with your eyes closed, it will grieve you too.

Death will not be denied, Fatima Ghazala. I cannot promise never to die, habibti. But before death, there is life. No matter how short our hours are or how swiftly time flees, there is life. And since there is life, habibti, let us live. Let us not squander even one second of it.

I wonder what you see in him," Fatima muses. "Apart from his excellent muezzin abilities, you mean?" Adila says. "The symmetry of his face moves me." Azizah sniffs.

Aren't you cold" Zulfikar shrugs off the plain black shawl he had around his shoulders and wraps it around Fatima Ghazala. "It smells like you," she says, drawing it close around her. "I didn't need that observation," Zulfikar mutters.

People, Firdaus told Fatima Ghazala, are afraid of death for two very different reasons. The first one is obvious: They do not know what, if anything, lies beyond the veil. That is a matter of faith. The second reason is also obvious: People are afraid of being forgotten. They live their lives carving themselves spaces in time and history only to be forgotten anyway. Even those who gain fame or notoriety fall victim to time; what people remember are not the individuals directly but as they were experienced by the people who knew them. A person's truth, a person's essence, fades with a person's death. That is simply the way of life.

... very soon, the city of Noor became the city of the displaced. People fleeing from terror, war, and persecution found houses in the empty buildings of the city and homes in one another. People who spoke different languages learned to understand one another. People of different faiths learned tolerance - and were sometimes taught it.

On a break, Fatima comments, "You got new books, baba." "Yes. I got them for you, actually. Since you scorn the classics..." "The classics are singular narratives focusing on those privileged enough to know how to read and write," Fatima retorts. "But surely you cannot deny the beauty of the rhetoric?" "I don't trust that beauty, baba," Fatima says, and directs her gaze at Firdaus. "You taught me not to trust that beauty." "Indeed I did. But I did not intend for you to eschew the great literary works in favor of - " "Works by the common people? These works may not have wondrous prose, baba, but the experiences they write about are theirs, which makes their stories so much better than those who live in guilded cages and write about the world outside. These writers don't have the luxury of ennui, you see.

On a break, Fatima comments, "You got new books, baba." "Yes. I got them for you, actually. Since you scorn the classics..." "The classics are singular narratives focusing on those privileged enough to know how to read and write," Fatima retorts. "But surely you cannot deny the beauty of the rhetoric?" "I don't trust that beauty, baba," Fatima says, and directs her gaze at Firdaus. "You taught me not to trust that beauty." "Indeed I did. But I did not intend for you to eschew the great literary works in favor of - " "Works by the common people? These works may not have wondrous prose, baba, but the experiences they write about are theirs, which makes their stories so much better than those who live in guilded cages and write about the world outside. These writers don't have the luxury of ennue, you see.

Life has embroidered all her experiences in the lines on her face. The wrinkles near her lips keep record of the smiles she gives generously while the lines on her forehead echo the worries she has battled. Deep grooves at the corners of her eyes lend weight to all the things she has seen in the years she has been alive - not that anyone is sure how many those are. However, thought time has aged her, it has yet to defeat her. Apples still bloom in her cheeks; her gaze is as bright and inquisitive as a child's.