Sawm Quotes

I wanted what most people wanted—love, companionship. I wanted someone to touch. I wanted someone to touch me back. I wanted someone to laugh with, someone who would laugh with me, laugh at me. I wanted someone who looked and sawme . Not my power, not my position. I wanted someone to say my name. To call out, “Merit,” when it was time to go, or when we arrived. Someone who wanted to say to someone else, with pride, “I’m here with her. With Merit.” I wanted all those things. Indivisibly. But I didn’t want them from Morgan.

The overarching message of Boqol Sawm was that this life is temporary. If you lived outside the dictates of the Prophet you would burn in hell for the duration of your real life, the afterlife. But if you lived righteously, Allah would reward you in paradise. And men in particular would receive special blessings if they became warriors for Allah.

She wasn’t all over me because of some bad-boy fetish or because she wanted to be arm candy for Eastside’s resident badass. For the first time in my life, someone looked at me and saw…me.

His name meant “He Who Fasts for a Hundred Days,” and in person he more than lived up to his name. He was so thin that he looked like skin stretched over bone. While Sister Aziza wore the hijab, Boqol Sawm wore a Saudi robe, a bit short, so that it showed his bony ankles.

I thought that perhaps Boqol Sawm was translating the Quran poorly: Surely Allah could not have said that men should beat their wives when they were disobedient? Surely a woman’s statement in court should be worth the same as a man’s? I told myself, “None of these people understands that the real Quran is about true equality. The Quran is higher and better than these men.” I bought my own English edition of the Quran and read it so I could understand it better. But I found that everything Boqol Sawm had said was in there. Women should obey their husbands. Women were worth half a man. Infidels should be killed. I talked to Sister Aziza, and she confirmed it. Women are emotionally stronger than men, she said. They can endure more, so they are tested more. Husbands may punish their wives—not for small infractions, like being late, but for major infractions, like being provocative to other men. This is just, because of the overwhelming sexual power of women. I asked, “What if the man provokes other women?” Sister Aziza said, “In an Islamic society, that’s impossible.” Furthermore,

With each day, each hour and every moment of life, no matter how small, I realize that I have found a way of bringing me straight to the one person that I would give everything for… to you. I am living in a dream, in a dream I don’t want to awake from.

Pilgrimage: to journey to a sacred place. Pilgrim: a traveller or wanderer, a stranger in a foreign place. Crusaders: pilgrims with swords who attempted to conquer the Middle East. Hajj: the journey to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam. Shahadah, Salat, Zakat, Sawm, Hajj. Pleasant, perhaps, to say that I am a pilgrim, but looking at it, counting the swirl of white as the devout move round the sacred stone in Mecca, watching the fans scream at the movie premiere, listening to the old men sitting on their benches by the sea who report that everything changes, and that’s okay… fuck me who isn’t a fucking pilgrim anyway?