I reach the mosque and the door is locked. I sit on the threshold, and rest my sleepy head against the shoe-rack. I think of Khusrau. Har shab manam fitada ba gird e sara’ay tu… Oh, the sweet wait outside God’s house. Tu paadshah e husni o! Khusrau gada’ay tu. And I, the willing beggar at His doorstep. When the doorkeeper comes, he is the face of God letting me into some secret.
The mosque in the morning, before the first breath the first footstep, is a secret. Not even light has touched it yet, so my eyes kiss that which has not yet become possible. I become that which is not yet possible. If there is a morning I floated free of worry—what will I become? will I become?—it was that dark morning, its rare hour in which I was in no rush for light. For I was the hearing through which God hears, the eyes through which God sees, the feet through which He walks.
But this God had to walk up to the women’s section. From there it saw the world assemble itself, the morning come into order. The hall filled with light, then people. Worshippers, one by one: surely that is how the world began. Worshippers arranging themselves in lines, more than I had imagined would be here this early. But it seemed they came everyday, I was new. Then the azaan, its thick ink upon the silence. The balm, always, in this context, of language. I prayed, sleepily. Then rested against a pillar, and slept. To sleep in mosques is a new, frequent, fervent desire. In that state of complete abandon and safety, I meet god in my subconscious. What He says to me I cannot twist or thwart or reshape by the aware, active mind; what He says to me will stay inside me, sealed. I trust the stuff of dreams. I trust only the stuff of dreams to be let into a room’s—a God’s—secrets.
This hall was built for the practice of zikr and sama. Where people swayed, chanted, whirled. Men, maybe women. I could imagine them, in my sleepiness, if I tried. So I tried. In my hand was a tasbih I was counting to help myself stay awake. Each bead the name of a person, whoever came to mind. At some point I awoke to the sound of another circle: a zikr, men’s voices, Allah Hu. Opened my eyes and saw the circle through the railing. It looked nothing like the sound. It looked everything like the sound. The sound began to take shape inside me. I used my breath to match the movement of theirs. This room, built for zikr. This room of the body. The exact dimensions of this square. The exact dimensions of the breath in a bid for God.