Kamran Hamid Bhat
Pride, indolence, envy, shame—that is my palette, my choice of colours. With them I have drawn the portrait of the devil until he has become a scabby, legless, mangy figure. If I look long enough, I can see some faint outlines of the artist beneath the dark glaze. And so, I press my palette of vices to my lips and walk towards my pyre, where I draw the last portrait—that of myself.
Yes, eyes heavy, eyes open only half against that same weariness, I found my mind returning to the two of them.
I do not know why, but prayer and the worship of God have always been difficult for me since I was a child. I might not have been able to count the months that passed before I had a chance to pray on a Friday—and that was with great effort. It has been a while recently, however; something in me has taken hold, thank God.
Only a few days ago, my sister told me that it is hypocrisy to pray all day, only to lie behind the fatigue of the day, behind the fog on my eyes, when the Isha prayer comes—not by mistake, but deliberately, over and over.
Now, however, when I hear the Isha Azaan, my conscience, attuned to me, gives me no peace. Even before I could make a decision, I was already preparing for my Wudhu (ablution). I was already in the washroom taking my Wudhu, as if I had made the decision first. As in all things in our lives, our own will is not always wholly our own.
That evening, I arrived at the mosque where the worshippers were still awaiting the time of Isha. That is neither here nor there—I do not know if there were any minutes left or if I had come early. I quietly sat in the last row, close to the outside door.
The night was almost holy, with a soft rain outside. As always when it rained, the power was out; only the lights in the mosque had a persistent, tenacious glow. My village outside was like a ruined, abandoned kingdom—alone, silent, and empty.
There were two people I did not recognise in the front row—perhaps travellers. A small boy, and a man whose age was somewhere between the end of youth and the beginning of old age; no doubt, the boy’s father. I think, out of some decorum of the mosque, the father had concealed a small packet of chips in his shalwar kameez.
But the child, so carefully, so quietly, kept slipping his little hand into his father’s left pocket and taking out the chips, one at a time, and placing them in his mouth, as if, if caught, his father would bring down some punishment too great to bear.
I watched, silent. I could not look away. Every time he wanted his eyes to connect with mine, I would avert my gaze rapidly and softly, as if to say, “I saw nothing. All I saw was nothing.”
The only thing a man can imagine as a monstrous sin is corrected quietly, and he sees someone else commit a small sin, and he is ordinarily forgiven.
I could not have imagined who these people were or what the ultimate punchline of my article would be. But some things are not written and not said. When that is the case, a man who can only see the monstrosity of his sin is silently corrected by seeing another man’s small sin go quietly, calmly, and ordinarily away.
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