Thursday, October 5, 2023
𝗗𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗪𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝘆 (by Naomi Shihab Nye)
There was the method of kneeling,
a fine method, if you lived in a
country
where stones were smooth.
The women dreamed wistfully of
bleached courtyards,
hidden corners where knee fit rock.
Their prayers were weathered rib
bones,
small calcium words uttered in
sequence,
as if this shedding of syllables
could somehow
fuse them to the sky.
There were the men who had been
shepherds so long
they walked like sheep.
Under the olive trees, they raised
their arms—
Hear us! We have pain on earth!
We have so much pain there is no
place to store it!
But the olives bobbed peacefully
in fragrant buckets of vinegar and
thyme.
At night the men ate heartily, flat
bread and white cheese,
and were happy in spite of the pain,
because there was also happiness.
Some prized the pilgrimage,
wrapping themselves in new white
linen
to ride buses across miles of vacant
sand.
When they arrived at Mecca
they would circle the holy places,
on foot, many times,
they would bend to kiss the earth
and return, their lean faces housing
mystery.
While for certain cousins and
grandmothers
the pilgrimage occurred daily,
lugging water from the spring
or balancing the baskets of grapes.
These were the ones present at
births,
humming quietly to perspiring
mothers.
The ones stitching intricate
needlework into children’s dresses,
forgetting how easily children soil
clothes.
There were those who didn’t care
about praying.
The young ones. The ones who had been
to America.
They told the old ones, you are
wasting your time.
Time?—The old ones prayed for the
young ones.
They prayed for Allah to mend their
brains,
for the twig, the round moon,
to speak suddenly in a commanding
tone.
And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi
the fool,
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he
spoke with goats,
and was famous for his laugh.