Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11

* * *

Self-Controlled

The colorfully dressed doorman opened the gates before we even reached them.

The Chen residence did not resemble any home I had ever seen. Calling it a house seemed absurd. It was a walled compound of white stone and dark wood, with curved roofs layered one behind another like overlapping wings. Red lanterns hung beneath the eaves despite the daylight, and narrow streams of water crossed the inner courtyards beneath little carved bridges. Bamboo rustled softly in the winter breeze.

I slowed, taking it all in. It was like something I might have conjured in a dream.

Haaris, walking beside me, whispered proudly, “Big, right?”

Indeed. “What does Master Chen do for a living?”I whispered.

“He owns a foundry that makes weapons.” replied softly.

Servants moved everywhere, silent and efficient. One swept fallen leaves from the stone paths with a long reed broom. Another carried folded linens across the courtyard. Two men unloaded crates from a wagon near a side gate while a woman directed them sharply.

Something unsettled me immediately. After a few moments, I realized that no one here was comfortable. No one laughed or joked as Haaris and I did when we worked. Everyone was carefully self-controlled, as if they thought they were being watched at every moment.

I felt the absence of my dao acutely. Not that I thought I would need it here. But ever since I’d left it wrapped in cloth beneath the wagon seat in the stable yard, I’d been worried about it. What if someone stole it? It was a gift from my father – the only thing I had from him.

Before we entered the inner residence, an elderly servant approached and bowed stiffly, saying, “I will take your coats and travel packs, honored guests.”

We all handed over our bundles, including my travel pack containing the gifts I had bought in the marketplace. The old servant stacked everything carefully into a lacquered cart beside the entrance, then wheeled the cart away through a side doorway.

A servant girl in pale green robes then led us through a covered walkway into the main receiving hall.

The room was enormous. Dark beams crossed the high ceiling overhead. Silk wall hangings embroidered with Quranic calligraphy hung between painted landscape screens. One scroll depicted mountains rising above misty forests, with tiny travelers crossing a bridge far below. Another showed a river crowded with merchant barges beneath wheeling birds.

Tall porcelain vases stood in carved wooden alcoves, painted in deep blue with scenes of scholars, horses and flowering trees. A bronze incense burner shaped like a crane released thin trails of scented smoke into the air, giving the place a sweet and musky scent. Low tables of carved rosewood stood beside cushioned chairs lacquered black and gold.

Strangely, while I admired the beauty of this place, I was not intimidated. My clothes were new and clean. I had nothing to be ashamed of. And I had seen my father put wealthy merchants on their knees in the highway at the point of a sword before robbing them. They wore fine clothes, but they wept and begged like anyone else. A few wet themselves. I think my father had enjoyed humiliating them. As for me, I had merely felt embarrassed for them.

Furthermore, Zihan Ma had taught me that one of the meanings of laa ilaha il-Allah was that all men were equal before Allah, regardless of caste, color or clothing. Only their – what was the word? Taqwa. Only their taqwa differentiated them.

As a result, I never thought that the wealthy were better than me. Nor was I better than them. People were people. They were either honest or dishonest, kind or cruel. They were street thugs like the men who had tried to rob me – or indeed like my father, who I had no illusions about – or honorable men like Zihan Ma. I had never met the emperor of our land, nor would I, but I knew he was either a good man or a bad one, no matter what trappings of wealth surrounded him, and I knew he could not be a better man than my uncle.

Come Closer

At the far end of the hall sat an elderly woman in layered robes of soft blue silk. A pale gray scarf covered her hair. Beside her sat a thin older man with narrow shoulders and sharp features. His beard was trimmed short and precise. He wore a white robe of fine linen with silver embroidery, and jade rings gleamed on his fingers as he sipped from a porcelain tea cup.

Zihan Ma bowed respectfully toward the older man. “Master Chen.”

“Ma.” The man inclined his head slightly.

His eyes shifted toward me.

“This,” Lee Ayi said carefully, “is Darius Lee.”

I bowed deeply. “As-salamu alaykum Nai Nai and Master Chen.”

His eyes narrowed. “Were you taught to greet the women first?”

Before I could answer, Nai Nai smiled gently and said, “Come closer so I may see you.”

Haaris and I both went to her. Haaris hugged her, then I did. Her hands were warm and soft as she touched my face lightly, studying me with moist eyes. “You have your father’s eyes,” she murmured.

Master Chen snorted quietly into his tea. “An unfortunate inheritance.”

The room fell silent.

Lee Ayi crossed the room quickly and knelt beside her mother, taking both her hands. The warmth between them was immediate and genuine.

“We brought gifts for your birthday,” Lee Ayi said. She opened her bundle and carefully removed a folded silk shawl embroidered with tiny silver flowers. I had seen her making it over the last few weeks, but had not known it was for her mother.

Nai Nai touched the fabric reverently. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

Haaris eagerly produced a folded note written in his uneven handwriting. “Mine too!”

Nai Nai laughed softly and accepted it at once. “A letter?”

“A birthday note,” Haaris said proudly. “Baba helped me shape some characters.”

She opened it immediately, smiling as she read.

Then everyone looked at me.

I suddenly felt awkward. My own letter, though heartfelt, seemed childish now compared to the grandeur of this house. Still, I handed it to her. Nai Nai unfolded it slowly and read it in silence. I had written:

I am very happy to meet you, Nai Nai. My father had good qualities and bad, but I am sure that whatever good he possessed came from you. Whatever has befallen me in life, it brought me here to meet you. That is a barakah. I wish you a happy birthday and many to come.

When she finished, she pressed the paper briefly against her chest. “Thank you, Darius,” she said softly. “I will treasure it.” Her sincerity was real, and it moved me.

“Could you not even buy a gift for your grandmother?” Chen sneered. “A paltry letter? That’s fine for Haaris, but you are a young man.”

Nai Nai lowered her hands slowly. “Husband…”

“I merely speak the truth.” His gaze remained fixed on me. “Yong Lee was a troublesome boy long before drink rotted what remained of his judgment. No doubt this child is the same.”

I lifted my chin and met his gaze. I spoke calmly. “My father was more than that.”

Chen set down his tea cup abruptly, the tea spilling onto the porcelain dish beneath it.

Lee Ayi spoke softly. “Master Chen, Darius has traveled far. Let us welcome him peacefully.”

“Peacefully?” Master Chen replied. “Was Yong peaceful? I seem to recall gambling, fighting, drinking and theft following him from one province to the next like stray dogs.”

Haaris shifted uncomfortably beside me.

Zihan Ma’s expression remained calm, but I noticed his jaw tighten slightly.

Lee Ayi had told me to remain silent, but I would not keep my mouth shut while my father was reviled. I would never forget him coming home from prison, finding me half-starved, and weeping as he embraced me. That moment was engraved on my heart.

“My father,” I said, perhaps a little too loudly, “joined the army to fight the invaders. He died in defense of his country. What could be more honorable?”

Servants entered carrying tea for the rest of us, along with trays of candied fruits and little sesame pastries arranged in perfect rows.

Master Chen took a pastry, and Haaris followed suit. I thought Chen might insult or berate me, but instead he spoke softly: “There is a saying. When the roots are crooked, the branches grow twisted.”

Nai Nai touched her husband’s hand with one finger. “I beg you. Let us have no more of this.” It was the voice of someone pleading for a small mercy she was not certain would be granted.

Master Chen finally looked away from me and sipped his tea.

The Accusation

“We must pray Asr,” Zihan Ma said. “It is getting late.”

One by one we performed wudu’ in a large bathing room with a skylight and a live bamboo tree in a pot. Master Chen then led us to a dedicated prayer room. There he led us in salat. He could not kneel, so he sat in a chair as he prayed. When lifting his head from ruku’, he said, “Sami Allah lamaw zhamidu.” The salam at the end was similarly garbled.  No one corrected him, of course.

After prayer we returned to the sitting room. Now Haaris and I did indeed remain silent as the adults spoke of the war, refugees, the farm, and other things. Master Chen’s armaments business was booming. There was no warmth in these conversations. In the time that it took to drink a single cup of tea, Zihan Ma rose.

“It was wonderful to see you both,” he said. “We must leave. We have a long trip ahead and we do not want to be on the road late at night. It’s not safe.”

“You must stay,” Nai Nai protested. “We have plenty of room. Please, for my sake.”

“We cannot,” Zihan Ma replied firmly. “The cows must be milked in the morning, and the gate opened for the farm hands.”

I knew this was not strictly true. The foreman had the key to the gate, and the men could milk the cows, feed the chickens and let the donkeys out. But I too wanted to be away from this oppressive place, and I was worried about Far Away. I wanted to hear his protesting meow when I picked him up and nuzzled him. I even missed Bao Bao, for her kindness toward Far Away had warmed me to her.

Master Chen gave a derisive laugh. “Cows.”

I wanted to say, “Didn’t you put milk in your tea?” But I held my tongue. I did not like this man at all.

The elderly servant wheeled the cart back in, and we picked up our packs and bags. Good byes were said, and final embraces given. Nai Nai hugged me with her thin arms, and I gave her a half-hearted embrace in return. She was my grandmother, and I would like to say that I loved her, but I did not know her.

A female servant opened the door for us and bowed. As we were about to leave, the elderly male servant leaned in toward Master Chen and whispered something in his ear.

“Wait,” Master Chen said. “I am told that certain items have gone missing. A pair of gold bracelets.”

Zihan Ma frowned. “That’s unfortunate. May Allah return them to you. As I said, we must be going.”

“You misunderstand,” Master Chen said sharply. He pointed at me with one rigid arm. “The boy has stolen them. He was seen taking them.”

For a moment I thought I had misheard him.

Zihan Ma said, “That is impossible. He was with us the entire time.”

“He was gone a long time when he went to make wudu. Let him open his pack.”

Zihan Ma’s jaw tightened. “This is unacceptable. Darius is my apprentice, and works hard on the farm. He’s a good boy. You have no cause to suspect him.”

“His father was a thief,” Chen said flatly. He turned to me. “Isn’t that true?” His eyes held a cunning gleam, and I felt the first stirrings of unease in my stomach. Something strange was going on here.

“Yes,” I said honestly. “Though he changed in the last year of his life.”

“And you?” Chen asked, a thin smile on his lips. “Did you steal?”

I considered. I would not dishonor Zihan Ma by lying. My reply was truthful: “When my father was in prison, and I was alone on the farm, I stole food from neighboring farms to survive. A few potatoes here, a cabbage there. Only that.”

At that, Zihan Ma shot me a troubled glance. He had not known that about me.

“You see?” Chen declared triumphantly. “Once a thief, always a thief.”

Zihan Ma began to protest, but I waved him off. “It’s okay, Uncle,” I said. “I have no objection to opening my pack.”

I set the pack down on the floor, untied the strings, and opened the top flap. Inside were the few items I had brought from home: a towel, a spare shirt, and the sabha Zihan Ma had given me. On top sat the three cloth-wrapped gifts I had bought in the marketplace.

Chen’s eyes narrowed. “Take everything out.”

The room had gone utterly silent.

I frowned slightly but obeyed. First I removed the wrapped gifts and set them carefully beside the pack. Then the towel. Then the shirt and the sabha.

Something metallic glimmered at the very bottom of the pack.

For a moment my mind refused to understand what I was seeing.

Then I reached down slowly and picked them up.

Two gold bracelets rested in my palm.

* * *

Come back next week for Part 13 – The Long, Dark Road

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

Related:

As Light As Birdsong: A Ramadan Story

Kill The Courier – Hiding In Plain Sight

The post Far Away [Part 12] – Accused appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

“Auntie Aisha Answers: The Tween Muslim’s Ultimate Guide to Growing Up” by Shaykha Aisha Hussain Rasheed is an absolutely fantastic resource unlike any other books out there on the Muslim market. 

This book is for tweens and teens, written in a genuinely age-appropriate way, and covers a wide range of topics that are so necessary for young Muslims to be exposed to (that they often aren’t). From information about puberty (the physical and emotional bits), to understanding diversity and disabilities, to a spiritual understanding of healthy boundaries and what that looks like both religiously and in friendships/ relationships, to big emotions like anxiety and grief… Auntie Aisha really does give amazing answers! 

This book is also not just for girls; the content applies equally to both genders, and also covers male issues with regards to puberty and more.

Shaykha Aisha’s expertise as both a scholar and someone who understands the right way to bring up sensitive issues with kids really shines through this book. 

Buy your copy here: https://bookshop.rabata.org/products/auntie-aisha-answers-the-muslim-tween-s-ultimate-guide-to-growing-up 

Muslimah Mukallaf: A Muslimah’s Guide to Puberty, Faith, & Personal Care by Jenna bint Hakeem

I’m always on the lookout for solid resources for kids that discuss puberty and related matters from an Islamic perspective, in an age-appropriate way. When the author Jenna bint Hakeem offered me a copy of her book “Muslimah Mukallaf: A Muslimah’s Guide to Puberty, Faith, & Personal Care,” I was intrigued… but also skeptical at first (I feel a type of way about most self-published books!). 

I’m happy to say that this book far exceeded my expectations. The author does a fantastic job doing everything from discussing the biological and Islamic aspects of puberty, how to properly take care of one’s hygiene (down to a detailed shower routine!), understanding emotional changes and managing them, and even tackling heavy topics like sexual abuse, porn, mental health, and more. There’s even an entire section on skincare and haircare!

I really appreciated that she also spent time talking about spirituality in an age-appropriate way, connecting it to the journey of growing up as a young Muslimah. I was impressed that she mentioned the fiqhi opinion of touching the mus’haf while menstruating (albeit this is a minority opinion) and also reminds readers to be respectful of elders who have the other opinion.

A couple of caveats: I wish she’d clarified in an intro about what fiqhi approach she is using. There were also a couple tiny things that could have been included or elaborated on. I would like to see a proper publisher reprint this with necessary improvements around typesetting and an editor.

As always, parents should read before giving to their kids, and be open to discussing differences of opinion and sensitive topics.

Buy yours here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/muslimah-mukallaf-jenna-bint-hakeem 

“The Muslim Girl’s Pocket Guide to Growing Up” by Yasmin El-Husari

This book is exactly what it says it is: a pocket-sized booklet that reassures Muslim girls that everything they’re going through is totally normal! From acne to greasy hair (and hijabs!), periods and vaginal discharge, a brief primer on how and when to do ghusl, and even how to do a bra fitting, this little book packs in a lot of information. 

It is quite concise, so there’s not tons of detail in terms of fiqh, and unfortunately no sourcing provided or mention of which madhab/ fiqh opinions the author is sharing regarding maximum/ minimum days of menses. 

However, this book really is fantastic and laid out in a simple, easy-to-understand, age-appropriate way for girls 9 and up.

Buy yours here: https://www.amazon.ca/Muslim-Girls-Pocket-Guide-Growing 

My First Period by Nur Khairunnisa Iskandar

My mom and I teach a girls puberty workshop, but we’re always on the lookout for good books on the subject – and we finally stumbled on one of the best ones so far! 

This book does make it clear that it’s based on the Shafi’i madh’hab, so fiqh details are oriented accordingly. There are also random bits that are more culturally contextual e.g. a page on how common abandoning babies is in Malaysia (which I did NOT expect).

I’m very impressed with how much content this book covers, from the process of puberty to self-care to how babies are made to the (basic) fiqh of haydh. I’d say this book covers about 85-90% of what we cover in our workshop. I did have a couple mild quibbles (like calling female ejaculation ‘semen’) but by and large this is really well written, age appropriate, and visually great to navigate for younger readers.

I have no idea where international readers can purchase this from, but it is available for sale in Malaysia! Buy here: https://mphonline.com/products/my-first-period

What books do you recommend on this topic? And more importantly, what books on puberty are there for Muslim boys?

Related:

Muslimah’s Guide to Puberty: How to talk to your daughter about Adolescence

My Dear Muslim Son

The post From the MuslimMatters Bookshelf: Puberty Books for Girls appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

He transformed a people whose lives revolved around lineage, tribal honor, and material competition into a community whose identity revolved around the speech of Allah ﷻ. The Quran was not an accessory in Madinah or peripheral to their lives. The Quran played a central and pivotal role in every single aspect of their existence. It shaped and informed their beliefs, how they prayed, how they gave, how they forgave, how they thought, how they governed, how they dealt with hardship, and how they defined success. Divine revelation shaped their worldview, character, conduct, and behavior. 

The Many Dimensions of a Quran Centered Life 

This transformation was not incidental—it was intentional. The Prophet ﷺ, through his teachings and his lived example, established a culture of learning, reciting, memorizing, teaching, and reflecting upon the Quran. He continuously highlighted its virtues, its blessings, its rewards, and its unparalleled value.

He ﷺ said: “The best among you are those who learn the Qur’an and teach it.” This statement redefines status and greatness. In a world that measures superiority through wealth, influence, and visibility, the Prophet ﷺ anchored excellence to engagement with revelation. The most noble person in this ummah is not the most affluent, nor the most eloquent, nor the most influential—but the one most deeply connected to the Book of Allah ; learning it and transmitting it.

In another narration, he ﷺ said: “Whoever recites a letter from the Book of Allah will have a good deed, and a good deed is multiplied by ten. I’m not saying that alif-lām-mīm is one letter. Rather alif is a letter, lām is a letter, and mīm is a letter.” This reveals something profound about the generosity of Allah ﷻ. Even at the most foundational level—the articulation of individual letters—the believer is rewarded abundantly. Every sound uttered from the Quran carries eternal weight. This is divine speech, and engaging with it is never insignificant.

The Prophet ﷺ did not limit our understanding of the Quran to reward alone. He connected it to ultimate salvation. He ﷺ said: “Recite the Quran, for it will come as an intercessor for its companion on the Day of Judgment.” The Quran will not remain silent on that Day. It will advocate for the one who kept it close—who lived with it, struggled with it, and returned to it consistently. It will testify on behalf of its companion.

He ﷺ also emphasized the communal dimension of Quranic engagement: “No people gather in one of the houses of Allah, reciting the Book of Allah and teaching it to one another, except that tranquility descends upon them, mercy envelops them, the angels surround them, and Allah mentions them to those who are with Him.” This narration describes layers of divine response to a simple gathering centered on the Quran. Sakīnah descends, raḥmah envelops, Angels surround, and Allah ﷻ mentions that gathering in the highest assembly. The masjid, when animated by the Quran, becomes a space where heaven touches earth.

Through these teachings, the Prophet ﷺ created a living culture in Madinah. Some narrations mention that during the time of tahajjud, the streets of Madinah would resonate with the recitation of the Quran. Homes were illuminated not merely with lamps, but with revelation. The city itself pulsed with divine speech.

This culture was not born from obligation alone—it was born from love. The Companions understood that love for the Quran was a reflection of love for Allah ﷻ and His Messenger ﷺ. ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd said: “Whoever wishes to know whether they truly love Allah and His Messenger, let them reflect: if they love the Quran, then they truly love Allah and His Messenger.” This is a deeply theological reality. The Quran is the speech of Allah ﷻ. Love for speech reflects love for the Speaker. If the heart inclines naturally toward the Quran—longing to recite it, understand it, and live by it—then that is a sign of a heart inclined toward Allah ﷻ.

For the companions, the Quran was more valuable than material wealth. When ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb saw camels loaded with gold, silver, and other material goods from Iraq, he was reminded of Allah’s Words: “Say: In the grace of Allah and in His mercy—let them rejoice. That is better than what they amass.” He explained that the true grace and mercy of Allah is the Quran—not accumulated wealth. Wealth is what people amass, while revelation is what transforms. This reframing is essential for us today. We live in a culture obsessed with accumulation—wealth, credentials, followers, achievements. Yet the Quran calls us to rejoice in something higher: divine guidance.

The Companions’ lives reflected this prioritization. Al-Awzāʿī رحمه الله mentioned that they excelled in five matters: adhering to the community, following the Sunnah, populating the masājid, reciting the Quran, and striving in the path of Allah . These were not isolated acts—they were interconnected dimensions of a Quran-centered life.

ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān said: “If our hearts were pure, they would never be satiated from the speech of our Lord.” It is reported that his muṣḥaf was worn from frequent recitation—its pages bearing witness to his devotion.

One of the most powerful demonstrations of the Quran’s transformative force is seen in the incident of al-Ifk. When Abū Bakr , wounded by betrayal, resolved to cut off support from Miṣṭaḥ, Allah ﷻ revealed: “Let them pardon and forgive. Do you not love that Allah should forgive you?” His response was immediate: “Yes, by Allah, I love that Allah should forgive me.” And he resumed his support.

This is tadabbur embodied. The Quran did not remain abstract—it entered his wounded heart and elevated it. It redirected his deeply personal pain into forgiveness. 

Asmāʾ described the companions as people whose eyes shed tears and whose skin trembled when reciting the Quran. The Quran shaped both their inner and outer states—producing awe, humility, softness, and tears. When Allah ﷻ revealed: “Who will lend to Allah a goodly loan…” Abū al-Daḥdāḥ responded not with admiration, but with action—giving away his garden in pursuit of Allah’s Promise. They understood that when Allah ﷻ speaks, He is to be responded to—not merely admired.

The Prophet ﷺ did not simply leave behind a text. He left behind a living model of how to build a Quran-centered life and society—hearts that trembled at its warnings, softened at its mercy, sacrificed at its call, forgave at its instruction, and rejoiced in its guidance. Our responsibility is to revive that culture—within ourselves, within our homes, and within our communities.

And for many of our young Muslims today, one of the most critical arenas for this revival is the university campus.

Building a Culture of Quran on Campus: Practical Steps

Reviving a Quran-centered culture does not begin with grand programs—it begins with consistent, intentional acts that shape hearts and environments. For students seeking to cultivate this culture on campus, consider the following:

1. Establish consistent Quran gatherings

Even if small, begin with a weekly circle dedicated to recitation and reflection. Consistency is more transformative than scale. The goal is not attendance—it is anchoring hearts.

2. Prioritize reflection (tadabbur), not just recitation

Create space to discuss meanings, themes, and personal takeaways. Ask: What is Allah ﷻ saying to us through these āyāt? Move from reading the Quran to being read by it.

3. Normalize Quran in shared spaces

Let the Quran be visible and audible—before meetings, after prayers, in moments of pause. Culture is built through repetition.

4. Connect the Quran to lived realities

Address stress, identity, purpose, relationships, and struggles through the lens of the Quran. Show that the Quran is not distant—it is deeply relevant.

5. Build leadership rooted in revelation

Encourage student leaders to frame decisions, priorities, and conflicts through Quranic guidance. A Quran-centered leadership produces a Quran-centered community.

6. Pair knowledge with action

Every gathering should lead to something practical—an act of charity, forgiveness, service, or personal change. The Quran was revealed to be lived.

7. Cultivate love, not just discipline

Remind one another of the virtues, rewards, and beauty of the Quran. A culture sustained by love endures far longer than one driven by obligation alone.

8. Begin with yourself

The most powerful daʿwah is personal transformation. Let your own relationship with the Quran be sincere, visible, and consistent. Hearts are moved by authenticity.

Reviving a Quran-centered culture is not beyond us. It begins the same way it began in Madinah—with individuals who choose to return to the Book of Allah ﷻ, consistently, sincerely, and collectively.

May Allah ﷻ make us from the people of the Quran—those who are His special people and His chosen ones. May He make the Qur’an the spring of our hearts, the light of our chests, the remover of our anxieties, and the guide of our decisions.

Related:

– The Art of Tadabbur: Enriching Our Relationship With The Quran

– From The Chaplain’s Desk: The Power Of Dua

The post From The Chaplain’s Desk: From Madinah To Our Campuses, Reviving A Quran-Centered Culture appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10

* * *

Preparing for the Journey

The next day was consumed by work.

Zihan Ma wanted the farm put in order before we left, so Haaris and I labored from dawn until nearly sunset. We repaired a loose section of fence near the north pasture, hauled water, split wood, cleaned the barn and replenished the feed bins. We cut and soaked fodder for the animals, mixing it with bean mash in great steaming buckets while the donkeys brayed impatiently nearby. The weather had turned colder still, and our breath hung white in the air.

Far Away spent most of the day asleep, but by afternoon he had begun moving about the house on his own. His splinted leg forced him into an awkward hobbling gait, and several times I moved instinctively to pick him up, but he glared at me with such offense that I relented.

Bao-Bao shadowed him everywhere.

The old cat behaved as though Far Away were some wounded soldier under her authority. She followed him from room to room, occasionally stopping to lick the fur around his ears or inspect his bandages with grave seriousness. Once I caught Bao-Bao cuffing him lightly on the head after he tried to jump onto a stool and failed.

I laughed despite myself.

“You see?” Haaris said smugly. “Bao-Bao likes him.”

“I think she thinks he’s her long-lost brother or something.”

“That too.”

Far Away eventually settled beside the stove and fell asleep again, while Bao-Bao curled protectively beside him like a guardian spirit.

That evening, after Maghreb, I sat alone in my room looking unhappily at my belongings. I owned very little: my blanket, travel pack, dao and spear, work clothes and the softer set of clothes I wore around the house or to sleep. I had nothing suitable for Jum’ah in a masjid, or a visit to family.

I imagined myself standing among wealthy merchants and educated men dressed like a scarecrow from a muddy farm. The thought filled me with embarrassment.

A while later there came a knock at the doorframe. Zihan Ma entered carrying a folded bundle.

“I nearly forgot,” he said.

He handed the bundle to me. Inside was a new suit of clothing: dark blue trousers, a long tunic of thick but soft cloth, and a black outer vest with careful stitching along the edges. Beneath the clothing lay a pair of sturdy black shoes. The clothes were beautiful and much nicer than anything I’d ever owned.

I stared at them. “For me?”

“Who else?” Zihan Ma said mildly. “You cannot attend Jum’ah looking like a farm hand.”

My throat tightened unexpectedly. “Thank you,” I managed.

He nodded once and left without further words.

The Road North

We departed before sunrise on Jum’ah. I wore my clothing and shoes, the Muslim kufi cap Zihan Ma had given me, and the dhikr beads around my neck. I felt natty and pleased with myself, and happy to be going on this trip. A thread of worry worked its way through my gut – what would happen if we encountered my mother’s family? – but I waved my hand to dismiss these thoughts.

Still, I strapped my dao across my back. It was not only the threat of my mother’s family that worried me. Whatever Zihan Ma believed about violence, the roads were no longer safe. The memory of the six intruders had not left me. Life had repeatedly taught me an important lesson: that there were people out there who saw other human beings as nothing more than prey. I would not be caught unprepared.

The wagon creaked softly as we loaded our things. Lee Ayi packed food for the journey while Haaris secured blankets and water gourds. I strapped my dao across my back before climbing aboard. I also brought my travel pack and a few of the gold coins I’d brought with me to my aunt’s house. I had of course passed through Starling once before – for that, I’d learned, was the name of the city to the south where I’d been assaulted and where Zihan Ma’s sister lived. It had seemed chaotic and overwhelming back then. But at the time it was my first glimpse of a big city, and I was wounded and feverish. Maybe it was actually a nice place. There might be things to buy. I wanted to get something for Haaris in particular. I knew I’d been cold toward him lately, and I needed to make up for it.

Zihan Ma and Lee Ayi sat on the front seat of the wagon, and Haaris and I behind them. As I settled myself, I caught Zihan Ma looking at the dao. Not a glance, but a long, solemn stare. He said nothing, however, and that somehow felt heavier than disapproval.

The wagon rolled out through the gate and onto the main road. Frost silvered the fields. The morning air smelled of damp earth and smoke from distant cookfires.

At the crossroads the wagon turned north.

“Wait,” I said. “We’re not going to Starling?”

“No,” Lee Ayi replied from beside me. “We’re going to Deep Harbor.”

I sat up straighter. “Deep Harbor?”

“My mother lives there,” she explained. “It’s her birthday.”

My stomach tightened slightly at the mention of my grandmother. I had almost forgotten she existed.

The Vendor

We breakfasted on steamed vegetable buns and pickled cabbage as the donkeys ambled along and the wagon rumbled over the dirt road. Fog lay over the fields and road like the breath of an ice-dragon, and I pulled my tunic tight. All the farms we passed had high walls – many of which looked newly constructed – and had either heavy gates, or guarded entrances. Some sold their farm products at roadside stands.

We passed through a small village. and the air brought the scent of roasted chestnuts. Haaris pleaded for some. Relenting with exaggerated reluctance, Zihan Ma dismounted to haggle with a vendor selling a variety of roasted nuts heated in an iron pan over hot coals.

I dismounted to stretch my legs. The vendor, a thin man with a mustache, weighed the nuts on a scale, then scooped them into a paper wrapper, moving quickly with practiced hands.

The vendor cheated my uncle. I saw it with my own eyes. My father had taught me many kinds of scams and tricks, not necessarily to employ them, but to be aware. I bit my upper lip, wrestling with the question of whether to say something, but as it turned out it wasn’t necessary, for Zihan Ma stopped the vendor with an upheld hand.

“Your scale is rigged,” he said mildly. “You charge for a full measure, yet give less.”

The vendor spread his hands innocently. “Impossible, honored uncle.”

Zihan Ma reached into a coat pocket and came out with a small iron disk. “This,” he said, “is a half-jin measure.” He dropped it on the scale, and I watched as the needle on the scale settled on half a jin plus two liang.

The vendor’s face reddened, and he shot a glance at a burly man who stood nearby.

Zihan Ma followed the man’s gaze. “Your boss doesn’t know. You’re pocketing the difference.”

The vendor formed prayer hands and bowed deeply to Zihan Ma. “Please do not say anything, honored uncle. I beg you. I have a family…” He went on like this.

Ignoring him, Zihan Ma called out to the boss and informed him of what was happening.

The boss crossed his arms and set his jaw. “Why should I believe you? Maybe you’re the cheater. This man has worked for me for two years.”

“Believe as you wish,” Zihan Ma said calmly. “It’s your loss.”

He was about to turn to leave, accepting the loss of a few copper coins. I could not accept that. It wasn’t the loss of the coins, but that someone might question the honor of this great man, the best man I had ever known. I pointed to the mustachioed vendor.

“Right front pocket,” I said. “He used a magnet to rig the scale.”

Looking skeptical, the boss slipped a hand into his employee’s pocket and found the magnet I knew was there.

As the boss seized the vendor and began to shout at him, Zihan Ma turned away. A little further down the road, he bought a bag of carrots. Back on the wagon, Lee Ayi, Haaris and I ate our chestnuts in silence as Zihan Ma fed the carrots to the donkeys.

The nuts were salty and rich. I kept licking my fingers for the salt. The vendor might have been a thief, but he cooked good nuts. The scene that had transpired with the vendor did not bother me. I had seen and been through much worse. But Zihan Ma was quiet, and seemed troubled.

Dishonesty

Donkeys fed, we continued on our way. After a while, Zihan Ma looked back at me and asked, “How did you know about the magnet?”

I gave a slight shrug. “My father taught me to ignore people’s words and watch their hands.”

He nodded slowly. “That’s good advice. What did you think of the chestnut vendor?”

Something told me that I was on unsteady ground. Zihan Ma rarely asked casual questions. I weighed my words. “Cheating is wrong.”

“I agree,” my uncle said. “Dishonesty troubles me greatly.”

“Yeah,” Haaris said. “That guy was a crook.”

“Dishonesty among family,” Zihan Ma went on, “is the worst of all, for the closer the relationship, the worse the hurt.”

My uncle glanced back at me, where I sat on the back bench with Haaris. Looking forward again, he said, “If two people practiced martial arts every Friday on my farm, I would likely hear of it. Farmworkers speak. Especially when they are curious.”

Neither Lee Ayi nor I answered. My throat was tight as I swallowed.

“And,” Zihann Ma went on, “if I found part of the far field trampled repeatedly, with familiar footprints in the soil, and if I saw a boy returning late at night carrying a dao…” He shrugged lightly. “I might make certain guesses.”

“Forgive me,” Lee Ayi blurted out. She dropped to her knees in the wagon and pressed her forehead to Zihan Ma’s knees as he drove. Her arms hugged his legs. “Husband, I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

Haaris’s face showed alarm. “What happened? What is it?”

Zihan Ma looked genuinely distressed. “Jade, sit in your place. This is not seemly.”

“No,” she said miserably. “I deceived you.”

He gently took her one arm and lifted her back to her seat.

“You are my wife, not my servant,” he said softly. “Enough.”

I wanted to apologize too. The words gathered in my chest, but would not come out. The truth was ugly and tangled: I was sorry for deceiving him, but not for training.

At last I lowered my eyes and said quietly, “I will do better.”

Zihan Ma turned his head to study me for a long moment, and I could not tell if he was satisfied or saddened.

“What are you guys talking about?” Haaris demanded again.

When nobody spoke, I answered him. “Your mom and I were practicing martial arts.”

He sat back with a puzzled frown. “Oh. That’s all?” After a moment, he added, “My mom knows martial arts?”

“All of us Lees do, apparently.” Though my words were dry, something inside me felt heavy. I had been called a liar without the word ever being spoken aloud, and worse still, it was true.

Yet what else could I have done? The dao, the training, the movement of my body through forms and strikes – these things felt less like choices and more like a current carrying me somewhere I could neither understand nor resist.

Sadaqah

For the rest of the drive, my thoughts were jumbled. I didn’t know how to feel. On the one hand, I was scared that Zihan Ma’s opinion of me was souring. I didn’t know what that might mean for my future. On the other hand, I was relieved that the truth was out. At least I didn’t have to pretend anymore.

As we approached the city, I encountered a world I had not seen before. Refugees crowded the roadsides. Some lived beneath crude shelters made of sticks and cloth. Others huddled beneath wagons or slept in ditches wrapped in blankets so thin they scarcely deserved the name. Children watched the road with hollow eyes.

“I had no idea it was this bad,” Lee Ayi said.

“It’s worse in Starling ,” Zihan Ma muttered. “The refugees are coming from the south in great waves.”

Barefoot people trudged along the road with their packs on their backs. Women carried crying babies. An old man with one arm stood beside the road holding out a bowl without speaking. At one point we passed a woman crouched beside a tiny cookfire, boiling common weeds in a small blackened pot while two little girls sat beside her silently, too tired even to cry.

“Stop please,” I said suddenly.

Zihan Ma pulled gently on the reins.

I climbed down from the wagon and retrieved one of the wrapped food bundles Lee Ayi had prepared for the journey. The woman looked up at me uncertainly as I approached.

“For you,” I said awkwardly, offering the food.

One of the little girls stared at the bundle with enormous eyes. The sight of her struck me unexpectedly hard. I remembered another little girl, offering me a sweet treat on a stick while I was wounded and alone in the streets of Starling. I remembered her kindness, small as it had been, and how much it had mattered. Now it was my turn.

The woman accepted the food with trembling hands. “May the ancestors reward you,” she whispered.

Though I did not believe as she did, I said, “Thank you. May Allah make it easy.”

When I climbed back into the wagon, Lee Ayi rubbed my shoulder affectionately.

Zihan Ma smiled faintly. “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ taught that every bone in the body must give charity each day. Today Darius has given his sadaqah before the rest of us. He has set a good example.”

With some of the heaviness inside me lightened, I lowered my eyes awkwardly while Haaris grinned at me proudly.

Deep Harbor

As the sun arrived at its zenith, Deep Harbor appeared.

I had never seen a city so large. Gray walls rose high above the surrounding land, their watchtowers crowned with curved roofs. Beyond them I glimpsed tiled buildings packed together like scales upon a fish. But what struck me most was the river. It was enormous.

I had seen streams, ponds and irrigation channels all my life, but this moving expanse of water seemed like a living thing. Barges floated upon it carrying cargo beneath tall square sails. Smaller boats darted between them like water insects. Hundreds of birds wheeled overhead crying harshly. The air smelled of wet wood, fish, mud, smoke and river water.

I stared openly.

Haaris laughed. “You’ve never seen a real river before.”

“No,” I admitted.

The roads thickened with traffic as we approached the city: merchants, ox carts, laborers, mounted officials, wandering monks, and refugees pressed together in uneasy currents. I noticed that many people carried weapons, from spears to daggers, and a few swords.

The city gates stood open, guarded by weary soldiers carrying spears and wearing armor.

Inside was noise. Vendors shouted from crowded stalls. Metal clanged. Wheels rattled over stone. Steam and smoke drifted through the narrow streets carrying the smells of frying oil, fish, dung, incense and humanity packed too tightly together.

I turned constantly, trying to absorb everything at once.

“There,” Haaris said proudly, pointing ahead.

The masjid stood in the distance among the crowded streets like a place from another world, its twin minarets reaching for the sky.

Before we entered the masjid district, Zihan Ma pulled the wagon into a riverside stable yard thick with the smells of hay, manure and mud. Stable hands shouted, and a bell rang from a nearby ship where dozens of men unloaded crates onto a wooden pier. In the stable, many horses and donkeys were housed, some calmly eating, and others – not used to the city – were nervous, with ears swiveling. Our donkeys were a bit anxious, but Haaris stroked their faces and whispered in their ears, and they calmed down.

“You will not be able to enter the masjid with the dao,” my uncle whispered to me. “Conceal it in the wagon, under your blanket.”

I chewed my upper lip, thinking. The idea of leaving my weapon unguarded was abhorrent. But what choice did I have? I did as Zihan Ma said. He paid the stable keeper, and we proceeded on foot to the masjid.

I craned my neck, trying to take it all in. The towering structure was easily the largest I had ever seen. Its architecture resembled the surrounding Chinese buildings, with sweeping tiled roofs and carved beams, yet Arabic calligraphy adorned the entrance in flowing black strokes, and the minarets seemed to pierce the sky. Hui men streamed through guarded gates wearing robes, caps and turbans, speaking in a dozen accents and dialects, while women in hijab entered from a separate gate.

A Resolution at Jum’ah

Lee Ayi bade us all goodbye and entered through the women’s gate.

The adhan began. I had heard Zihan Ma call the adhan many times at the farm, and had learned to call it myself. But this was different. The muadhin’s voice rose high above the noise of the city, echoing against walls and rooftops until it seemed to fill the entire district.

I followed Zihan Ma and Haaris through the courtyard and into the prayer hall. The room was immense. Sunlight filtered through latticed windows onto thick carpets over polished wooden floors. Hundreds of men sat cross-legged, rich and poor alike. I saw merchants in fine silk beside laborers with patched sleeves. Old men leaning on canes. Young boys scarcely older than Haaris.

The khutbah was about the meaning of success in Islam. The Imam said that we insisted on measuring success in material terms, but in Islam that was meaningless. Rather, success was defined as nearness to Allah, sincerity with all people, righteousness in public and in private, and compassion in the home.

It was interesting, but maybe over my head. And I was distracted by the spectacle. When the prayer began, a thousand people stood shoulder to shoulder, and a hush fell over the assembly. I understood in that moment what it meant to belong to something greater than myself.

I resolved in that moment that I would try to be the man Zihan Ma wanted me to be. I would put away the sword and take up the acupuncture needles, the sewing thread, and the herbs. I would strive to be the best healer I could be, under his tutelage. It was a great opportunity to be more than I had been raised to be, more than my father had been. I would be a fool not to take it.

When the prayer ended, the worshippers flowed gradually back into the streets of Deep Harbor. The noise of the city returned all at once, as if someone had lifted a curtain. Vendors shouted, gulls wheeled overhead, and somewhere nearby a man hammered metal with steady ringing sounds.

Gifts

The streets near the river were crowded almost beyond belief. We passed spice merchants, tea houses, fishmongers, butchers and wandering peddlers carrying entire shops suspended from shoulder poles. Barges drifted along the river beside us while laborers shouted and unloaded crates by hand.

“Listen carefully,” Lee Ayi said as we walked. “My mother’s name is Safiya Bai. You will address her as Nai Nai.”

I nodded.

“My stepfather is Su Chen. You should call him Master Chen.”

Something in her tone made me glance sideways at her.

“He is… particular,” she said carefully.

“That means he’s mean,” Haaris translated helpfully.

“Haaris.”

“What? It’s true.”

Lee Ayi sighed. “Master Chen values manners very highly. Be polite. Speak little. Don’t argue with him.”

“I don’t argue with people.”

Haaris snorted so loudly that a passing merchant looked over. “You are arguing about arguing.”

“I am not.”

“Also you argued with me yesterday about whether crows can understand insults.”

“You were being silly.”

Haaris burst into laughter while even Lee Ayi smiled faintly.

We stopped beside a food stall where an old Hui man was pulling noodles by hand. He stretched and folded the dough so quickly I could hardly keep track of his hands. The noodles were dropped into boiling broth along with sliced lamb, greens and oil bright with chili.

We bought four steaming bowls and stood eating beside the man’s stall while gulls cried overhead. It was the best noodle soup I had ever tasted.

Nearby another vendor sold skewers coated in sesame and honey. Zihan Ma bought one each for Haaris and me.

As we continued through the marketplace, I found myself studying the stalls carefully. There were things here I had never imagined: tiny carved animals made of jade, lacquered boxes, clocks worked by water, silver rings, embroidered slippers, fishing lures with feathered hooks, paper lanterns painted like flowers.

At one stall I stopped short.

The merchant sold knives.

Not fighting knives. Folding knives, utility blades, skinning knives and carving tools. One particular knife caught my eye. It was compact and sturdy, with a polished wooden handle and a locking brass ring.

It was perfect for Haaris. I imagined buying it for him as a gift, and the delight on his face. Then I imagined Zihan Ma’s disapproving expression, and moved on.

A few stalls later I found an old man selling whistles carved in the shapes of birds. Some were painted brightly, others plain polished wood. When blown, they produced trilling calls remarkably similar to real birdsong. I remembered Haaris trying to learn to whistle through a blade of grass.

I picked up a swallow-shaped whistle carved from dark cedar. “I’ll take this one,” I said. The merchant wrapped it carefully in cloth.

It was the first time in my life I had ever bought a gift for someone. I was surprised by the warm, happy feeling in my chest. I found that I was smiling as I imagined how excited Haaris would be. I loved this feeling, and decided that I would buy gifts for the others as well. Maybe… maybe Zihan Ma would not be disappointed in me anymore if I got him something nice. My smile slipped for a moment as these sad thoughts intruded, but I continued shopping.

Farther along I found something for myself: a soft leather money belt worn beneath the clothing, with a hidden inner compartment stitched cleverly into the lining. I examined the stitching carefully before buying it. No one looking at it would guess it concealed anything valuable. That alone made me trust it.

At another stall I found a beautiful medical needle set housed in a slim bamboo case alongside fine silk thread. The needles were more delicate than the ones we used at the farm.

“This is excellent steel,” the merchant insisted. “Made in the western provinces.”

I bought it for Zihan Ma and dropped it into my travel pack.

“What’s that?” Haaris asked, craning his neck.

“You’ll see.”

“Come, Darius,” Zihan Ma said. “It’s time to go.”

“One minute!” Hastily I began studying the nearby stalls. My gaze landed on a table covered in combs, pins and ornaments. Some were wooden, and others were fashioned from shell or polished bone. One comb caught my attention. It was simple but elegant, carved from dark wood with tiny inlaid flowers of mother-of-pearl near the handle. I picked it up.

Lee Ayi’s hair was almost always tied back hurriedly for work. I realized suddenly that I had never seen her own anything decorative at all.

“That one,” I said.

The vendor smiled knowingly.

I smiled to myself, thinking of how much fun it would be to give these gifts to my new family. I would surprise them when we returned home. It would be exciting!

We moved away from the river, and the homes around us improved, becoming large, with high walls and ornate gates. We stopped in front of a grand home – a palace to my eyes – with a colorfully dressed guard at the gate.

Lee Ayi regarded me solemnly. “This is Master Chen’s house. Remember what I told you. Do not speak unless spoken to.”

Something in her tone put me on edge, and I felt my warm, cozy feeling disappear.

* * *

Read Part 12 – Accused

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

Related:

As Light As Birdsong: A Ramadan Story

Kill The Courier – Hiding In Plain Sight

The post Far Away [Part 11] – Deep Harbor appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

His recent conversation with Shehzad Ghias was useful, though not in the way his admirers imagined. It did not reveal Ghamidi as a subtle political thinker. It revealed the limits of a mind that mistakes abstraction for depth, defeatism for realism, and imperial common sense for divine law. The interview was less political analysis than metaphysical HR training for colonized Muslims: accept the hierarchy, avoid disruption, rebuild quietly, and please do not inconvenience the powerful.

Ghamidi repeatedly invokes “the laws of the world,” as though geopolitics were governed by the moral equivalent of gravity rather than by sanctions, coups, occupations, assassinations, military bases, puppet monarchies, and the American rules-based order — that elegant phrase meaning: rules for you, exemptions for us. His abstraction is not innocent. It performs a function. By dissolving empire into “worldly laws,” it removes perpetrators from the scene. There is no Washington, no Tel Aviv, no Riyadh, no Rawalpindi; only “reality,” descending upon Muslims like bad weather.

This is why his politics so often arrive pre-defanged. He speaks endlessly of consequences when Muslims resist, but rarely with the same urgency about the consequences of occupation, siege, colonial plunder, or state terror. The oppressed are advised to calculate carefully. The oppressor is treated as a geological fact. Israel bombs, America sanctions, generals disappear civilians, monarchs fund devastation — and Ghamidi clears his throat to ask whether the victims have properly assessed the balance of forces.

This is not realism. It is selective realism. A realism that becomes exquisitely rigorous only when the weak contemplate resistance, and strangely poetic when the powerful commit crimes.

His treatment of Iran is especially revealing. To say that Iran “accepted Israel” before the revolution and therefore had no conflict worth mentioning is to confuse the tranquillity of a client regime with peace. The Shah’s Iran was not a neutral paradise rudely interrupted by religious zealots. It was a Western-backed police state, sustained through repression at home and alignment with imperial power abroad. Its “stability” was the stability of a boot pressed firmly on the neck of society. Apparently, if the boot is polished in Washington, some people mistake it for civilization.

Ghamidi’s framework cannot process anti-colonial agency because it has no serious place for colonialism. Muslims, we are told, declined because they failed in knowledge and collective morality. Convenient. Colonial violence becomes background noise. Coups become footnotes. Sanctions become weather. Occupation becomes context. The Global South’s long encounter with European and American savagery disappears into a sermon about civilizational failure. One half-expects the next lecture to explain that Algeria’s colonized masses should have improved their study habits.

His claim that Muslims made no meaningful contribution to knowledge in five centuries is not analysis; it is civilizational self-flagellation dressed as sobriety. It is the sort of sweeping claim that sounds profound only until one remembers that entire peoples cannot be reduced to empire charts and Nobel-counting anxieties. Muslim societies have produced scientists, poets, jurists, engineers, philosophers, revolutionaries, artists, and intellectuals under conditions ranging from colonial devastation to authoritarian suffocation. But Ghamidi’s point is not historical accuracy. It is disciplinary pedagogy: Muslims must first be humiliated before they can be pacified.

This is the deeper pattern. Ghamidi’s political theology consistently turns moral attention away from structures of domination and toward the supposed recklessness of those who resist them. Palestine is not first a story of settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, siege, and apartheid; it becomes a case study in poor strategic planning. Kashmir is not first about occupation and militarized humiliation; it becomes another lesson in imprudence. Iran is not first a target of decades of pressure, encirclement, sabotage, and demonization; it becomes a cautionary tale about revolutionary excess.

How tidy. How civilized. How useful.

The most revealing feature of this worldview is its coldness. It has the temperature of a policy memo. One may disagree with resistance movements, criticize their methods, question their judgment, or even condemn particular actions. But to speak of Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Kashmir, or Afghanistan with the emotional range of a risk consultant is morally obscene. Babies are buried under rubble, families are erased, prisoners are tortured, societies are starved — and the “moderate” scholar arrives to remind everyone that capacity matters.

Capacity does matter. Strategy matters. Consequences matter. Only fools deny this. But strategy without solidarity is not wisdom; it is cowardice with footnotes. Prudence that never confronts power becomes collaboration by temperament. And a theology that instructs the oppressed to survive indefinitely while never developing a serious doctrine of resistance is not prophetic restraint. It is spiritualized submission.

This is why Ghamidi’s post-9/11 career matters. He emerged as the ideal Muslim reformer for an age of imperial war: urbane, textual, anti-militant, reassuring to liberal elites, and always ready to distinguish good Muslims from dangerous ones. Under Musharraf’s “enlightened moderation,” this posture helped provide theological furniture for a state aligned with America’s war on terror. Today, in a Pakistan suffocating under military authoritarianism, the same logic mutates easily into suspicion toward mass dissent, especially when dissent threatens the uniformed guardians of national captivity.

The journey is not accidental. The “moderate Muslim” demanded by empire was never merely someone who rejected extremism. He was someone who would define extremism so broadly that resistance itself became suspect. Someone who would police Muslim anger more energetically than imperial violence. Someone who would turn “khawarij” into a portable category useful against whoever disturbed the approved order.

Ghamidi’s admirers will insist this is unfair. He is consistent, they will say. Indeed, he is. That is precisely the problem. His consistency lies in his refusal to center the mustad‘afeen — the oppressed of the earth — as the starting point of political theology. He begins instead from order, stability, capacity, and consequence. These are not trivial concerns. But when they become supreme, justice is demoted to an aspiration for better times. The oppressed are told to wait until they are strong enough to deserve liberation.

History, inconveniently, was not made by people who waited for perfect conditions. Anti-colonial struggle has always involved risk, miscalculation, sacrifice, tragedy, and impossible choices. It has also involved imagination — the very thing absent from Ghamidi’s politics. His world is governed by fixed hierarchies masquerading as divine method. The powerful act. The weak endure. The scholar explains.

And yet the world is changing. Empire is not omnipotent. Zionism is not invincible. Muslim rulers are not identical with Muslim peoples. The Global South is not a classroom of defeated children awaiting instruction from cautious clerics. It is a historical force, wounded but not extinguished, betrayed but not silent.

Ghamidi’s tragedy is not that he counsels prudence. Prudence is necessary. His tragedy is that his prudence has curdled into political quietism, and his quietism into a theology of obedience. He has mistaken the command to avoid suicide for a command to avoid confrontation. He has confused moral seriousness with strategic paralysis. He has turned moderation into a velvet leash.

In the end, the question is not whether Muslims should be reckless. They should not. The question is whether Muslim political thought must be reduced to advising the oppressed to behave better under domination. Ghamidi’s answer, beneath all the elegance, appears to be yes.

Empire could not have asked for a better sermon.

[Disclaimer: this article reflects the views of the author, and not necessarily those of MuslimMatters; a non-profit organization that welcomes editorials with diverse political perspectives.]

Related:

– Op-Ed: From Pakistan To Gaza – Why Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan Terrifies Power And Zionism

– Op-Ed: Bitterness Prolonged – A Short History Of The Somaliland Dispute

The post Op-Ed: Javed Ghamidi And The Theology Of Managed Defeat appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Misogyny vs Murder

The statement was widely condemned for its callousness and ignorance. As it should be, as society ought at minimum to know murder is typically barbaric. But his remark matters for another interesting reason (beyond general indictment of the U.S. pundit class). The proposition, stated plainly, is the title of this essay. Why is conformity to nonconforming liberal sexual norms marshaled as the primary freedom for women? Also, who does it serve, and why must that framing not be allowed to stand? Women, vulnerable populations, may be detained, dispossessed, starved, bombed, torpedoed, and girls massacred in what is now being scrutinized as the fault of AI or out-of-date target data⁴, but should a society already bearing the brunt of this fail the cherry-picked test of gender modernity, this renders them civilizationally disqualifying. It is one of the little witticisms of contemporary media morality that misogyny and homophobia are graver offenses than murder.

We usually object by pointing to their hypocrisy, and defend by pointing to women’s autonomy and choice. Most objectors to sentiments like the one Schlapp professed, explain that we, as subjects of and in the West, have little standing to lecture others about progress while backing war. Additionally, conservative deployment of sexual freedom here is especially revealing. The freedoms they prescribe for Iranian women are ones they enjoy privately yet legislate against publicly in the U.S. – extramarital affairs, sexual libertinism, Grindr scandals, to name a few – suggesting that what’s exported is a useful ideological instrument and fantasy. 

Or, as I remember watching a clip of a comedian professing a species of glib progressive banter that, given enough time without being carpet-bombed (note the passive term – these questions seldom indict the doer’s worldview), Gazans might eventually “get to gay.”⁵ His line of defense for Palestine, good intentions aside, was poor anthropology of satisfactory pacing towards a liberal metropole. But can we go further and look at the epistemic framework? Why the primarily sexual nature of (Muslim) women’s freedom? How is this tenable, given the unspeakable scale of destruction wrought, and pointedly in a post-Epstein revelation?

The Cost-Effectiveness of Women’s Liberation

Part of the answer does lie in modern public political reason. It is very good at recognizing freedoms that can be cast as private acts, such as those of dress, self-expression, intimacy, etc., because they are litigated at relatively low cost. Public reason is far less good at recognizing freedoms that depend on collective provisions. Think of housing security, public transport, and healthcare, all of which require institutions and political economy (in sum, a bikini does not require land reform). This does not mean liberalism does not care for material conditions.⁶ But dominant contemporary discourse (including media, NGOs, rights discourse, and elite politics) privileges negatively conceived, low-cost liberties. One can therefore be passionately and outwardly exhibiting a desire for women’s liberation, while remaining entirely indifferent to (or supportive of) sanctions, bombardment, austerity, social collapse, the entire gamut of terrible things, and this is an internally consistent position.

We may intuitively know this, but remain hesitant to cross the line beyond calling it a hypocrisy into naming this libidinal economy of humiliation for what it is. No amount of disclaimers as to the true nature of the Shari’a or wrongful politics in the implementation of it, the excellence of Iranian women graduates, or describing the follies of the West – having arrived early to its current enthusiasms now reserving the right to discipline others for exhibiting traits it itself shed recently – will suffice, if we simply stop here.

The larger problem is that Muslim societies are described through a particular lens where time, place, class, institutions, strategy, and state interest are thinned out or disappear altogether⁷. Processes that could and would elsewhere be located alongside state formation and regional competition/conflict, militarization, or without deep interrogation into doctrine, even when, yes, that language is religious (I’ve previously written about Buddhist nationalism and the ongoing Rohingya ethnic cleansing, for example), are instead read as an indictment of a single theological civilizational body⁸. Veiling has acquired density now more than its reality, to which we can register anxieties about Islam⁹. It is made to do too much explanatory work. 

The Muslim Woman and the Libidinal Economy

I do not deny that norms governing women’s dress intersect with legal status, mobility, employment, or family structure. But it is not a proxy for them. It is a shorthand that should be refused, because it replaces concrete inquiry into state power and policy. The consequence is that liberation is displaced from the level of political economy to that of sexual life. Emancipation now is articulated as an exit from the most distinguishing religious norms, producing endless overreach in the process, leading to a severe contraction of the emancipatory horizon. Sovereignty, redistribution, peace, social provisions, the gamut of just things, recede while obscuring the perpetual war machine and its horrific consequences.

Fewer groups have been more burdened by this arrangement than the Muslim woman. She is a woman under compulsion, regardless of all else, one we can violently displace to modernity by becoming a woman in circulation. 

Thus, the expanding sexual market within the libidinal economy. Sex sells, nakedness sells. I don’t need to go down the route of conspiracy to speak plainly of pragmatic expansionary logic and its churn for fresh material (explicit comments on X about pornography and Iranian women, and some diaspora women’s own deployment of sexualized self-presentation on social media, are testimonies to this). The sexual market is a behemoth we (certainly I) do not quite grasp the magnitude of. For example, the global pornography industry generates an estimated tens of billions annually. Advertising, tourism, and surveillance capital all make the question of who profits from the expanded circulation of sex an urgent political-economic one; meanwhile, we Americans have yet to contend with the full enormity of the Epstein files.

Libidinal economies leave untouched those structures that rendered women in these regions precarious in the first place and, in fact, find them conducive to the project of expanding the sexual marketplace. Secular modernity finds the publicly naked body as the body least governed by transcendent authority or any communal or divine norms¹⁰. Consider the overbloated and heedless makeup and fashion and influencer realms, lingerie-style dresses masquerading as harmless trends.

Consider pornography production company BangBros launching “Tour of Booty”: a staged fantasy series consisting of videos shot on cameras mounted on the rifles of American soldiers on tour in the Middle East and Afghanistan. (For your own sake, do not look this up.) This is the same company that “pitched the idea of Mia Khalifa wearing the hijab to ‘play up the idea that she was “the pretty Persian girl gone bad”.¹¹’” Another production company created a Hijab Hookup series¹², describing its premise: “When growing up in a conservative and traditional culture, you must suppress your deepest desires. The Middle Eastern babes of Hijab Hookup know way too well how hard it is to keep their sexual urges silent, and they are finally ready to let their inhibitions run free! With the help of the right man, these hijabi ladies can’t wait to experience what the rigid cultural rules have withheld from them.”¹³ The unveiled, sexually available body is the body most fully converted into circulating sexual capital. Religious discipline of any kind, whether or not from the Islamic standpoint is correct, is irrelevant, as they all appear as an obstruction to this circulation. 

This is why defending Muslim women by using the language of choice or pointing to the wisdom of modesty will not work because this framework does not want an answer about veiling; it wants it to displace every other question.

Zionism, the Sexual Marketplace, and the Munitions Industry

One of the ways Israel and Zionist supporters consolidate Western legitimacy is to position themselves as guardians of a sexual modernity that the Muslim world has not yet attained. The effect is that the expansion of the sexual marketplace and the expansion of the security state become mutually reinforcing projects. For example, a small number of ultra-wealthy donors have often had outsized influence on pro-Israel advocacy and U.S. policy discourse. As I write this (on March 23, 2026), headlines announce that Leonid Radvinsky, the owner of OnlyFans, has passed away, after a career profiting from pornography by “first buil[ding] a shady business as a teenager in which he operated websites that claimed to lead users to porn content involving underage children or bestiality.”¹⁴ He and his wife reportedly pledged $11 million to AIPAC in 2024.¹⁵

The current war with Iran, like its predecessors, recycles the same discourse. What the Shari’a dictates of women and how that has played out in Iran’s socio-politico-historical evolution, what Iranian women are doing or what abuses they face is irrelevant; the U.S. and Israel have already decided a priori that they are sexually deficient and in need. The marketplace, as it turns out, expands in one direction, and the munitions follow. 

The public may have condemned Schlapp’s statement, but it remains a reality that U.S. and Israeli aggression is violently proselytizing so long as it can still imagine itself as delivering women into modernity. So much so that a justification of murder by an audit of gender and sexual mores is respectable enough to conjure some attempt at serious response.

A serious account of liberation would ask what the endpoint is, not whether a woman is visibly “modern.” It would recognize that war rearranges gendered life in ways that peacetime morality and those living in peace scarcely understand, and determine whether they possess durable access to the necessaries of life. Until that confusion is cleared, the world will continue to be instructed, with great moral urgency, that the worst fate imaginable is to be insufficiently promiscuous in one’s intimacies, even while one is buried under rubble.

Related:

– Hijab And Niqab In North America: Politics, Identity, And Media Representation

– From Sri Lanka – The Niqab Ban and The Politics of Distraction

The post Why Liberation Is Sexual(ized) – The Forces Driving The Unquenchable Thirst To Emancipate Muslim Women appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

The independent study, carried out by the University of Manitoba’s law professor Michelle Gallant and published in spring 2026, criticized the Canadian Revenue Agency for having adopted discriminatory practices and a dragnet approach of “over-inclusion” in its selection of Muslim charities such as the Muslim Association. “Any anointing of the notion that associations — connections — indicates terrorist abuse risks overidentification and the attraction of ‘guilt’ by association,” she found.

The Muslim Association had taken the revenue agency to the Ontario Superior Court to stop the revenue agency’s audit, claiming that it violated the principles of freedom of religion and equality. Professor Gallant’s report indicated that biases had led to the revenue agency’s targeting the Muslim Association on dubious grounds of terrorist links. This process first became mainstreamed twenty years ago during the peak of the “War on Terror”, particularly under the rightwing regime of Stephen Harper (2006-15). In this context, the revenue agency’s Review and Analysis division linked the charity to nebulous insinuations of foreign political links and terrorism finance.

Among other things, Gallant recommended that the agency familiarize itself with religions and cultures such as Islam and provide periodic recommendations of which associations to avoid. ““I think,” she said in an interview, “that if the charities directorate was a little more forthcoming in educating, specifically — don’t interact, don’t be doing things here, we’re suspicious about these things — then charities can make a choice, right?”

The Muslim Association, whose network of schools, charities, and social services service over 150 thousand people, welcomed the findings. Its president for strategy, Sharaf Sharafeldin, said, ““This independent academic review, which confirms there were no links to terrorism financing or extremism, is significant because it reinforces the Ontario Superior Court’s concerns regarding the CRA’s findings and brings meaningful closure to Canadians, particularly the Canadian Muslim community.”

In a statement, the charity said, “The findings are significant not only for MAC, but for the broader Muslim charitable sector in Canada and the CRA. Muslim charities play an important role in Canadian society through education, community services, and humanitarian work. 

MAC remains committed to working constructively with regulators and policymakers to support oversight processes that are fair, evidence-based, and consistent with fundamental freedoms, including freedom of religion and association. MAC will continue serving Canadian families and communities through education, community programming, and faith-based services across Canada.”

Related:

Targeting Niqabis: The Canadian Citizenship Niqab Ban

The post MAC And The CRA: Report Cites Discrimination In Probe Of Canadian Muslim Charity appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Long’s story appeared in the San Francisco News in 1958, at a moment when Muslim life in Northern California was still small enough to be overlooked and yet already rooted enough to sustain institutions, ritual life, and families. Her father had come from Yugoslavia, her mother from Italy. At 15, she said, she declared in the presence of Muslims that she had decided to become one. The paper described her as one of the first native San Franciscans to do so. Whether or not that claim can now be verified in full, the article had noticed something real: Islam was not only arriving through immigrants, but also drawing in Americans born around it.

The same newspaper account preserves a different scene. Bay Area Muslims had gathered to mark the feast associated with the pilgrimage to Mecca. The men prayed in the front room, facing the Kaaba. Behind them, about 50 women knelt on the wooden floor, their heads covered. Among them was Long, praying in what the paper called a “becoming blue sack dress” with a silk scarf tied under her chin. Nearby was a small American-born girl, Lila DeCaprio, watching the women closely and beginning to imitate them.

It is a striking image: Long, a convert who had first encountered Islam through the witness of others, now praying beside a child growing up within Muslim life in America. Lila’s father, Dr. Joseph DeCaprio, had converted to Islam six years before in Japan and married Lila’s mother, Menira, a native of Siberia. When the imam gave the sign, Long touched the floor with her head and recited with the others, “There is but one God and Mohammed is his prophet.” Little Lila then followed her example, saying the few Arabic words she knew: Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim, in the name of God, most gracious, most merciful. In that room in San Francisco, Islam was not only being embraced. It was being handed on.

What survives of early American Muslim history is often fragmentary: a newspaper feature here, a photograph there, a few quoted lines that carry more than the reporter may have realized. But sometimes a fragment is enough to reveal an entire moral world. In Azara Long’s case, the world that emerges is one of immigrant hospitality, serious conversion, women at prayer, children learning by imitation, and an Islamic Center in San Francisco already anchoring a community.

Long herself understood Islam as more than a private conviction. In 1959, the San Francisco News reported that she had for some time dreamed of going to the Middle East, living for a while in an all-Muslim community, and sending her two teenage children to an Islamic school for a year or so. Soon, the paper said, that dream would come true. She was preparing to leave for New York, board an Egyptian liner, and spend time in Cairo. The article quoted the president of the Islamic Center of San Francisco, Mohamedali Mirdad, announcing her departure with a striking phrase: “San Francisco’s loss is Cairo’s gain.”

That line is memorable not only for its warmth but for what it reveals. This was a community with enough coherence to feel the temporary loss of one of its own. Long was not described as a passing curiosity. She was a charter member of the Islamic Center and had served as its secretary for 2 years. The girl who had first encountered Islam in a Lebanese-owned linen shop at 15 had grown into a woman helping build Muslim institutional life in California. Her story belonged not only to conversion, but to commitment.

The same article placed her beside Mirdad, whose own life opened another window into this early Muslim world. Whereas Long was presented as one of the first native San Franciscans to become Muslim, Mirdad was described as one of the few Muslims born in Mecca during the annual Hajj pilgrimage. He had spent years in San Francisco conducting an import-export business while dreaming of seeing family again in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and India. Even in the compressed language of a newspaper feature, one can glimpse the range of this community: a San Francisco-born convert of Yugoslav and Italian parentage, a child raised in Muslim practice in California, a physician who had embraced Islam when he married in Japan, and an immigrant leader whose life linked the Bay Area to Mecca, Cairo, and the wider Indian Ocean world.

The beginnings of this story are ordinary. Long did not describe herself as having been won over by spectacle or by some public campaign. She became interested in Islam because, as a child, she spent time in the shop of a Lebanese couple and came to know something of their religion there. That detail matters.

These fragments from San Francisco suggest a quieter truth: sometimes Islam is encountered through steadiness, familiarity, and the kind of character that makes a young person want to ask deeper questions.

There is something especially moving in the way the two surviving articles place Long in relation to others. In one, she is a convert remembering where her journey began. In the other, she is a woman at prayer beside little Lila, modeling a gesture of devotion that the child then imitates. The papers do not tell us everything that followed. They do not tell us whether Long remained abroad for as long as she hoped, or what became of her later life. But they preserve enough to show a chain of transmission: hospitality received, faith embraced, community served, example given.

To remember stories like this is not only to correct the historical record. It is also to recover something about how Muslim life in America has often grown: not always through grand institutions or dramatic public attention, but through storefronts, friendships, family prayer, women teaching by example, and communities patient enough to welcome those who were still learning. In Azara Long’s story, the path into Islam begins with curiosity, deepens into conviction, and matures into service.

Azara Long’s life reaches us only in fragments. Even so, those fragments are enough. They let us see an early Muslim San Francisco in miniature: immigrant and native-born, local and transnational, devout and ordinary. They show Islam not as interruption, but as presence.

And they remind us that long before many Americans thought to ask whether Islam belonged here, Muslims were already here — praying, teaching, welcoming, and helping others imagine a life within the faith.

Related:

– A Convert’s Story

– Podcast: How NOT to Talk to New Muslims | Shaykh Abdullah Oduro

The post When Azara Long Found Islam In A San Francisco Linen Shop : A Story From America’s Muslim History appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Now in her sixties, Andrabi has spent her life in Islamic activism and calling for the end of India’s occupation of Kashmir, which has lasted since the late 1940s and never honoured a promised referendum on the region’s status. Having already spent years in prison earlier in life for her activism, Andrabi’s latest sentence amounts to what her son, Ahmed bin-Qasim, refers to as an effective death sentence.

Ironically even this sentence, by Chanderjit Singh, dismissed a longstanding accusation of the Indian state against Andrabi: that her Dukhtaran organization is the women’s wing of the militant Hizbul-Mujahideen group, which India has banned for “terrorism”. Yet, more troublingly, his case for the harsh sentencing rested on Andrabi’s supposedly radical ideology and in particular her call for Iqamat-i Din, or establishment of the faith. The concept of establishment of faith is a mainstream one in Islam, and one that has been echoed by any number of Muslim thinkers, including Indian Muslim scholars. In practice, this means that the sentence against Andrabi and her two co-defendants – the similarly aged Nahida Nasreen and the disabled Sofi Fahmida – rests on the vilification of a mainstream Islamic concept: this in a country whose Muslim populace is the single largest religious minority in any state worldwide.

Control through Communalism

The ruling also means that both of Ahmed’s parents are imprisoned on questionable charges. In February 1993, Ahmed’s father Qasim Faktoo, another activist, was jailed for the alleged murder of Kashmiri syndicalist Hriday-Nath Wanchoo despite considerable irregularities in the prosecution.

Ironically Wanchoo had also been a Kashmiri dissident, albeit a leftist who advocated for workers. In fact shortly before his murder both he and Faktoo’s wife Andrabi had been “shadow ministers” in an exile “cabinet” set up by the veteran Kashmiri independence activist Amanullah Khan in the early 1990s; there was no plausible motive for the allegations against Faktoo. However, the Indian state has long accused Kashmir’s Muslims, and Islamic activists in particular, of antagonism toward the region’s Hindu minority and thus framed its crackdown as a protection of Kashmiri Hindus.

During the occupation’s bloodiest years in the early 1990s, the Indian state evicted Kashmiri Pandit Hindus – an ancient elite class – from the region supposedly for their own protection, only to round on Kashmir’s Muslim majority with exceptional brutality including frequent killings, rapes, and expulsions. The portrayal of Kashmir’s Muslims and its Islamic movement as an intolerant tinderbox has scant historical basis, but served to make a virtue of a brutal state crackdown. Accusing a Muslim activist of murdering his Hindu colleague fitted neatly into this paradigm, whereby the Indian state relied on communal division to maintain and justify its occupation, portraying mainstream Islamic views such as Iqamat-i Din as a threat to non-Muslims with no attempt at proof.

Double Standards

This securitized double-standard with Islam has long since extended beyond Kashmir and affected millions of Indian Muslims, particularly under the far-right Hindutva regime of Narendra Modi that has a long record of institutionalizing hostility toward Islam and Muslims. As the independent Kashmir Times noted, the vilification of Iqamat-i Din  also stands in a stark contrast to a 1995 court decision from which, ironically, Hindutva itself benefited. In that case, magistrate Jagdish Verma ruled that Hindutva was not merely a political faction but a societal trend within Hinduism. Here, no such charity is afforded to Islam and concepts such as Iqamat-i Din. In contrast to Muslim and Hindu dissidents in Kashmir, the Indian state has not only tolerated Hindutva but come repeatedly under its control, more so than ever over the past dozen years, despite a demonstrated and established record of violent communalism of the sort never displayed by “terrorists” in Kashmir, let alone civilian activists like Dukhtaran.

The situation in Indian-occupied Kashmir has been particularly galling for decades, and the 2019 annexation of the region by Modi’s regime only served to stifle dissent. However, the flimsy basis on which an Islamic activist in Kashmir can be targeted is another milestone in a persecution that is extending beyond the occupation into the lives and thoughts of Muslims of the Indian mainland: a people who are increasingly disenfranchised from their homeland.

Related:

[Book Review] Hostile Homelands: Drawing Parallels Between Hindutva And Zionism In Historical and Present Day Context

The post Daughter Of Which Nation? The Persecution Of Asiya Andrabi And India’s Crackdown On Muslims appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9

* * *

A Figure in the Moonlight

The small figure walked unsteadily up the center of the path, not sticking to the shadows, but walking openly in the moonlight. It was a cat, there was no doubt of that. It was large for a cat, with a long frame, but very thin. It walked with a limp, and looked like it might collapse at any moment. There was something about its gait and the way it moved its head, seeking something – I did not know what – that made my breath come ragged and thin. My mouth compressed into a line and my chest began to quiver.

Water spilled down my cheeks. Tears, turned nearly into ice by the late autumn wind. I was crying without knowing why. What was wrong with me?

I took a few steps toward the cat and it froze. I took a few more steps, and the cat let out a plaintive, beseeching meow.

I fell to my hands and knees. I tried to speak but my mouth turned down and a sob escaped. I gathered my breath and whispered, “Far Away?”

The cat came to me as quickly as it could, limping. When it reached me it collapsed in front of me. I reached out a tentative hand. It could not be Far Away. He had run into the forest far from here, and disappeared. That had been over a year ago. It could not be him.

Far Away had been a striped orange tabby. This cat had stripes as well, but in the moonlight everything was black and white. I felt the cat’s chest. Its fur was cold and rough, but it was breathing. Far Away had carried a long scar on the side of his neck, from some battle that occurred before he came to me. I slipped my fingers into this cat’s fur, feeling for the scar, and found it.

I slid one hand down the cat’s thin body. I could feel its ribs, and other scars that were unfamiliar to me. This made me doubt once again. I felt warm wetness on my hand. I brought my hand to my nose and sniffed. It was blood. This cat had an open wound somewhere. I reached out and touched the cat’s tail. Far Away had a kink in the middle of his tail, as if it had been broken and healed badly. You couldn’t see it, but you could feel it. I moved my hand slowly down this cat’s tail, squeezing slightly. Halfway down, I encountered the kink.

It’s My Cat

Something broke inside me, as if my skeleton had been made of thin sticks held together with resin, and the whole flimsy structure had just fallen apart. I began to cry. I scooped the cat into my arms – he was so light – and clutched him to my chest. He was so cold that it seeped into me even through my tunic. My forehead lay in the dirt of the path.

I sobbed as I never had before. It was a wordless wail, sounds breaking out of me like water from a river that had overrun its banks. Incredibly, I could feel Far Away purring against my chest. His claws dug into me rhythmically as he kneaded his paws. Tears poured from me like hot rain. My mouth pressed into the road, my shoulders shook, and I tasted dirt.

I heard the door of the house bang open. Footsteps ran to me.

“Darius?” Lee Ayi’s voice was panicked. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

I lifted my face to her, my expression twisted into a rictus, my cheeks frigid with tears. “It’s my caaaaaaaaaat,” I wailed. “It’s my cat! It’s Far Awaaaaaay.” I dropped my head back into the dirt and sobbed.

Far Away had followed me. He had tracked me somehow. I had left him behind in a strange place, without protection, friendship or food. I had abandoned my only friend. Yet he’d followed me across hundreds of leagues, fighting and starving, suffering who knew what injuries and pain, to find me. No one had ever done that for me. No one had ever cared that much, not even my father.

Where was my father? Why couldn’t he love me enough to stay alive?

I felt hands on me, checking me for wounds perhaps. People were speaking to me.

In that moment, kneeling there, it was not memories of my father that came to me, or even of Far Away, but of my mother. I remembered every sweet song she had sung to me – if not the words, then the feeling of warm, protective love. The way I danced on the dirt floor when she played the flute. The way she fell silent when Father came home, afraid of his drunken temper. I used to run outside and hide in the broken down barn.

I remembered my mother praying. I had completely forgotten that. It was something she did quietly and privately, and only when Father was asleep or away. She stood in the corner, whispering, bowing and prostrating. It was salat, I knew now. She had been a faithful Muslim.

I remembered my mother struggling to breathe before she died, her chest rising and falling like a torn bellows, a sound like a kitten’s soft meow coming from her lungs. I laid my head on her chest, clutching her waist as if she were my lifeline in a stormy sea. Her last words returned to me: “I will always love you, I will always be proud of you, even when you one day forget my face, even when the blows of life strike you down. I will love you from wherever I am. That’s why you will always get back up.”

I had forgotten those words until right now.

Treatment

I felt Zihan Ma’s strong hands trying to pull me up by my arms. At the same time a pair of small arms encircled my back, and I heard Haaris crying. He didn’t even know what was happening. He was crying for me.

Zihan Ma heaved and pulled me up to a standing position. I turned away from him, clutching Far Away tighter against my chest.

“Let me see him,” Zihan Ma said.

“No!” I jerked back, twisting away. “You can’t take him away!”

My voice broke on the last word. I staggered a step, nearly losing my footing, then righted myself, holding the cat as if someone might tear him from me.

Lee Ayi came to me at once. She did not reach for the cat. Instead she placed her hand gently against my cheek, her thumb brushing away the wetness there.

“Darius,” she said softly. “No one is taking him. Zihan Ma only wants to help.”

I looked from her to my uncle. He stood still, watching me. His eyes were sleepy and his hair rumpled, but his expression was steady and patient. The panic drained out of me all at once, leaving me hollow and ashamed. I swallowed hard, drew in a shaky breath, and straightened.

“No,” I said, more quietly. “I will do it.” I had been Zihan Ma’s apprentice for many months now. I knew what to do. I turned without waiting for an answer and walked into the house, cradling Far Away as carefully as I could. My hands trembled, but I forced them to be steady.

In the treatment room I put a towel down and laid him gently on the table, supporting his body so that the injured leg did not bear any weight. Zihan Ma entered behind me and lit the lantern, adjusting the wick until the light grew strong and clear. The familiar sweet smell of herbs and oil filled the room.

I moved automatically, as I had seen my uncle do so many times. Cloth, basin, water, needles, thread, poultices. My hands knew where everything was before I had fully thought of it. From a small jar I took a pinch of crushed herbs and mixed them with a little water, stirring it into a thin, bitter liquid. I drew it up into a narrow bamboo dropper and knelt beside the table. This was a sedative that would make Far Away drowsy, and numb his pain so I could work on him. I made sure to adjust the amounts downward, using far less than I would for a human.

“Easy,” I murmured, cradling Far Away’s head in my palm. I touched the dropper to the side of his mouth and let a few drops fall in. He resisted weakly at first, turning his head, but I held him gently, waiting for him to swallow before giving him more. I did not force it. A little, then a pause. Another drop. I stroked his throat with my thumb until he swallowed again.

“You will feel better soon,” I told him. “You found me, you big dummy. You’re home now, I will take care of you.” Saying these words almost made me start crying again, but I was in healing mode now, and I pushed those feelings away.

Zihan Ma instructed Lee Ayi to boil some water, then he began gathering ingredients. I knew he was making an herbal paste to apply to the wound, to reduce heat and eliminate toxins.

I dipped the cloth into the basin and wrung it out, then began to wash Far Away. I could not find the wound until I first took care of the dirt, dried blood and matted fur. I worked slowly, pausing whenever his body tensed, giving him a moment to settle before continuing. He flinched once, then stilled, his body weak beneath my hands.

“Do not rush,” Zihan Ma instructed. “Let him breathe.”

“Yes sir,” I muttered, and adjusted my pace.

Lee Ayi returned with a pot of boiled water. “What cat is it?” she whispered. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s Far Away,” Haaris replied. “The cat that ran away on the journey here.” He knew my story better than anyone, from the countless hours we’d spent chatting as we worked and played.

“How is that possible? SubhanAllah.”

“Quiet,” Zihan Ma commanded. “Let him concentrate.”

I found the wound. It was not large, but it was deep enough, the edges ragged and inflamed. I felt my chest tighten, but I pushed it aside.

I poured a thin stream of the purified water over the wound, letting it run rather than pressing, watching the blood wash away in diluted streaks. Then I took a smaller cloth and cleaned it carefully. When Far Away tensed, I stopped, resting my hand lightly against him until he settled again.

“Good,” Zihan Ma said. “Now look closely. Is it clean?”

I leaned in, squinting in the lantern light.

“Yes.”

“Then close it.”

I hesitated only a moment before I took up the needle. I had watched this done many times. I had practiced on scraps of leather, on pieces of cloth. Never like this.

I set the first stitch. Too shallow.

“Deeper,” Zihan Ma said.

I nodded, adjusted, and placed the next one properly. Then another. And another. My breathing slowed as I fell into the work, the world narrowing to the needle, the thread, the edges of the wound drawing together.

A Life Saved

As I worked I was aware of Zihan Ma watching. He had seen the dao on my back. He had seen me outside, at that hour, with a blade.

He was an intelligent man. He would have drawn his own conclusions. I did not know what they were. Perhaps he thought I had been wandering. Or looking for trouble. Or worse. Whatever he believed, I knew this much: he would not approve. Yet he said nothing. He was a professional. This was a time for treatment.

I knew, though, that there would be a reckoning, and I feared what he might do.

When the stitching was done, Zihan Ma handed me a small pot of crushed herbs. I applied the medicine, pressing it carefully into the wound, then bound it with clean cloth.

I turned my attention to Far Away’s leg, examining it carefully, running my fingers along the bone. The cat twitched but did not cry out.

“Not broken cleanly,” Zihan Ma said. “A fracture. But it will not bear weight.”

I nodded and began to prepare the splint from two small lengths of wood, wrapped in cloth. I set them along the leg and bound them in place, firm but not tight. I checked it once, twice, adjusting until it sat correctly.

When I finished, I stood back.

For a moment I simply looked at Far Away. He looked smaller somehow, lying there on the table, wrapped and still, but breathing. He was alive. My cat was alive. In my mind, I echoed my aunt: “SubhanAllah. Alhamdulillah. Allahu Akbar. La ilaha il-Allah.”

I turned to Zihan Ma, waiting for the stern words I knew would come. The rebuke, the anger, and maybe even exile. My heart felt unmoored in my chest. Please, I thought. Please do not send me away. I cannot take that right now. What would I do with Far Away ?

I said nothing, but my gaze said it all.

My uncle studied the cat, then me. His gaze lingered for a moment, thoughtful, unreadable.

“Wrap him in a blanket,” he said at last. “And go to bed. Your cat needs to rest and heal.”

“I will take him with me,” I said.

He hesitated. “Very well,” he said finally. “But be careful.”

I gathered Far Away into my arms once more. Lee Ayi stepped aside to let me pass, her hand brushing my shoulder. Haaris stood watching, his eyes wide and shining.

I went to my room and lay down, placing Far Away beside me. I rested only the fingers of one hand on his side, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing.

I expected sleep to be troubled. I expected nightmares – I don’t know why. Instead, sleep came over me like cool water in summer, soft and complete, and I slept as I had not slept in a long time, like a man who, if his sins had not been forgiven, had at least been given a reprieve.

A Reckoning

We prayed Fajr. When we were done I started to rise, but Zihan Ma asked me to stay, so I settled back down with a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. We sat in silence as Lee Ayi went to begin her work in the kitchen, and Haaris went out to care for the animals.

The room grew very still after they left. The faint light of dawn crept in through the window, turning the walls a pale gray.

Zihan Ma did not look at me immediately. He sat with his hands resting on his knees, his gaze lowered, as if considering how to begin.

“At what hour did you go out last night?” he asked at last.

My throat tightened. “Late,” I said. “After everyone was asleep.”

“And why?”

There was no anger in his voice. That made it worse.

I hesitated, and in that hesitation I felt the weight of all the possible answers pressing on me. I could say I had heard something. I could say I had gone to relieve myself. I could say anything. But each lie seemed smaller than the truth.

“I was training,” I said.

The words fell into the space between us and seemed to settle there.

“With the dao?”

“Yes.”

He nodded once, slowly, as if confirming something to himself. “For how long have you been doing this?”

“Not long,” I said. Then, after a pause, “I go out some nights.”

He was silent again. When he finally looked at me, his gaze was steady, not angry, but searching.

“You have been studying medicine with me,” he said. “You have shown skill and care.”

I swallowed but said nothing.

“And yet,” he continued, “you go out into the night with a blade, practicing to harm.”

“To protect,” I said quickly, before I could stop myself.

His eyes sharpened slightly. “Protection is not separate from harm.”

I lowered my gaze.

“For many years,” he said, more quietly now, “I have treated wounds made by men who believed they were protecting something. Their homes. Their honor. Their pride.” He shook his head faintly. “The body does not know the difference.”

The words settled heavily on me.

He drew in a breath, then let it out slowly. “You stand at a crossroads,” he said. “Whether you see it or not. A man may devote himself to healing, or to violence. The two do not walk together.”

My hands had begun to tremble. I pressed them against my thighs to still them.

He looked at me fully now.

“Tell me the truth,” he said. “If I were to ask you to give this up – your training, your weapons – would you?”

The question struck me like a blow, and for a moment I could not speak. Images rose unbidden in my mind: the feel of the dao in my hand, the clean arc of a strike, the certainty of movement. Then Far Away, broken and bleeding in the dirt. Then my own hands, steady and sure, saving Far Away’s life. My talent with the dao would not have saved him. But my medicine did.

My chest tightened.

“Yes,” I said.

The word came out too quickly. Even as I spoke it, something inside me recoiled. A sharp, restrictive pain, like a belt being pulled much too tight.

Zihan Ma did not respond at once. He watched me, his gaze lingering not on my face, but on my hands.

“Very well,” he said at last. “Attend to your work.”

A Day’s Work

I rose, put on my boots and went out to join Haaris. But I was confused. Zihan Ma had said, “If I were to ask…” But he had not actually asked, had he? Or was it implied?

The day’s work distracted me from such thoughts. Haaris and I went out to the fields as usual, the frost still clinging in patches where the sun had not yet touched. We milked the cows, fed the animals and put the donkeys out to graze. We cut fodder, hauled water, checked the fences along the ditch. My body moved through the tasks with ease now. I had learned the rhythms of the farm, and my hands knew what to do without thought. But my mind was elsewhere.

Every so often I would excuse myself and go inside to check on Far Away. At midday I found him awake. He was too weak to stand, so I fed him by hand, giving him a mixture of ground organ meat and vegetables that Lee Ayi had kindly prepared.

We chopped firewood. I kept glancing back toward the house.

Haaris noticed. “He’ll be fine,” he said, pushing a bundle of cut hay toward the trough. “You did a good job. I’m proud of you.”

I smiled. “Thanks.”

“What were you doing outside so late anyway?”

“I, um, I heard him meowing.” Yes, I lied to Haaris. He didn’t need to know.

We finished the work more quickly than usual. As soon as we were done, I wiped my hands on my trousers and headed back toward the house.

“Where are you going?” Haaris called after me.

“To check on him.”

“You just checked on him!”

I did not answer.

Inside, the house was warm again. The smell of broth lingered faintly in the air. I went straight to my room. Far Away had gone back to sleep. He lay where I had left him, though he lifted his head when I entered, blinking slowly.

I knelt beside him and examined the bandage. There was a small seep of blood, but nothing alarming. I prepared a damp cloth and cleaned around the wound, speaking to him quietly as I worked. “You silly beast,” I said. “You big dummy. Walking all this way. I hope it was worth it.” What I really wanted to do was beg his forgiveness, but I didn’t have the heart to say the words.

He purred, a faint, uneven sound. I gave him water, and left him to rest.

Reliving the Past

This became my pattern over the next few days. Work, then back to Far Away. Study, then back again. Even when I sat with Zihan Ma during his treatments, I found my thoughts drifting, wondering if the cat had shifted, if he had tried to stand, if the splint had held.

At night I did not go out to train. I could not risk angering Zihan Ma. This was my home. I could not lose it. The dao remained beneath my mattress. I knew it was there. I felt its presence as one feels a heavy purse in a pocket.

Though I’d slept well that first night when Far Away arrived, after that I found myself lying awake in bed, my hands and feet twitching as I ran through fighting movements in my mind. When I trained for real, I performed Five Animals forms and improvised new movements. But when I trained in my mind like this, I found myself drawn to the real fights I’d been in. I relived the life-or-death battle I’d had with the robbers: parry the knife attack and stab the man in the throat. Dodge the other one’s blow and open his belly.

When I replayed the attack in the street, I changed it. Instead of being distracted by the constable, I focused. Instead of being fooled by the feinted kick, I sidestepped the kick while simultaneously driving the point of my spear into the thug’s throat.

Each time I mentally reviewed these fights, I reacted sooner, moved faster. I almost wished I could go back in time and redeem myself.

Not surprisingly, the abstinence from training did not last. On the fourth night I could not restrain myself any longer. I needed the movement, I hungered for it. I rose from bed late at night, when everyone was asleep, and practiced in my room, in my bare feet, running through traditional Five Animal forms as well as my own improvised techniques. I knew I was disobeying Zihan Ma’s wishes, and I felt ashamed. But I couldn’t help myself.

The night after that, I had barely risen to my feet when I had an intuition, then saw the faint glow of light moving across the floor just beyond the doorway. Footsteps, soft and careful. They paused. I tiptoed to my bed and got under the covers just before the door opened partway and Zihan Ma peeked in. He was checking to make sure I had not gone out.

My eyes were open a fraction. I did not move, and kept my breathing slow and even.

After that I could no longer risk it. I stayed in bed, and it was good that I did, because on some nights a shadow passed the doorway, or a board gave a slight creak. I sensed a quiet presence, listening, confirming. This did not make me feel safe. It made something tighten inside me, a small, hard knot of anger, for Zihan Ma did not trust me.

For all the talk of me being welcome here, being Haaris’s brother, this wasn’t my home. At that moment, I felt that I had no one, nothing, except Far Away. Maybe that was extreme, but I had my father’s pride, and I still didn’t fully trust the idea of a loving, caring family. It was foreign to me. What I knew and understood was rejection and abuse.

Those nights, I lay there in the darkness, my hand resting on Far Away, and stared at the ceiling until my eyes burned. Beside me, the cat shifted slightly, pressing closer into my side, his warmth steady and unquestioning. I closed my eyes and forced myself to sleep.

Tension

In my medicinal studies I continued to learn about the chi meridians and the effects of the many pressure points. When patients came, Zihan Ma sometimes allowed me to place the needles. In Islamic studies I began studying the asbab an-nuzool – the historical events behind the revelation of specific Quran surahs and ayahs. There was an unspoken tension between myself and Zihan Ma. I felt myself slowly pulling away from him emotionally, as if I were building a suit of armor that fit me like an invisible second skin.

One afternoon as I was tending to Far Away, Haaris came into the room and stood watching me as I changed the bandage.

“You’re always with him now,” he complained.

“He’s injured.”

“So?” Haaris spread his hands. “Baba will take care of him.”

“I’m his healer,” I said, not looking up. “I have to keep an eye on him.”

Haaris made a face, half annoyed, half hurt. “You used to play with me.”

“I still do.”

“When?” he demanded.

I tied off the cloth and sat back. “When there’s time.”

“There’s always time,” he muttered.

I looked at him then. His expression softened a little, but the edge remained. “I’m busy,” I said.

He nodded, but it was a stiff, unsatisfied nod. After a moment he turned and left. I watched him go, then turned back to Far Away, adjusting the bandage once more though it did not need it.

When Thursday arrived, Zihan Ma surprised me. Still sitting on the floor after Fajr, he said, “Make sure today that all the tools are put away at the end of the day. Water the animals well and leave extra feed for them. Stack the firewood under the overhang, so it doesn’t get rained on. Make sure Far Away and Bao-bao-Bao-bao have plenty of food and water as well. Make a cushion for Far Away on the floor, in case he gets up. And check with your aunt to see if there’s any work she needs you to do.”

Haaris looked at his father with a grin. “Is he -?”

“Yes. Darius, you are coming with us to Jum’ah tomorrow. Your auntie Lee as well.”

My mouth fell open. What about my mother’s family, who would supposedly kill me if they knew I existed? And who would watch the farm while we were gone? But I asked no questions. I broke into a wide, excited smile. I was going to Jum’ah for the first time! I would meet other Muslims, see the inside of a masjid, and maybe even eat some city treats. It would be a good day for sure.

* * *

Read Part 11 – Deep Harbor

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

Related:

As Light As Birdsong: A Ramadan Story

Kill The Courier – Hiding In Plain Sight

The post Far Away [Part 10] – Lost And Found appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.