Rabia woke up early in the morning. More than the need to go to the madrasa to say her prayers, it was the desire to pick up the fallen fruits from under the vatha tree that made her get up early. The other children were the same. They would always compete with one another to see who could arrive first and pick up the most fruits.
When she left at a run as usual, with a towel on her head and the Quran in her hand, Zohra’s voice stopped her. Standing at the doorstep, she asked, “Yes, Amma?”
“Did you purify yourself before you touched the Quran?”
“Yes, Amma,” Rabia replied and ran out onto the street.
There would be no one at the entrance to the mosque after the dawn prayers. Only Mothinar Bawa would be pottering around as usual, doing one chore or another. Rabia quite liked him. Every morning when she arrived, she would find him using an iron plate to pick up finely sifted sand and mixing water into it with a ladle. Rabia would go and kneel down beside him.
“What is this for, Mothinar Bawa?”
“I’ll tell you, girl. Wait.” He would hand her a mug and say, “Here. Go get some water in this.”
She would run off to get the water.
“Now tell me. What’s this for?” she would ask again.
He would scratch his beard lightly and say, “This? You children play with pots and pans, don’t you? I’m playing like that. See.” He would sweep the mud floor clean with a broom and pour out ladlefuls of the mixed sand like idlis.
She knew he was lying. She would hold his hand and beg, her face always eager, “Don’t lie, Bawa. Why do you pour out these sand idlis every day?” Even though he understood her curiosity, he would laugh to himself. When he smiled, his short beard and moustache and the teeth between his dark lips would look odd.
It puzzled Rabia and her friends that he would make these every day and the men who came to pray at the mosque would take one each and go to the washroom. One day, Ahmad asked them mockingly, “Hey, do you even know what these are called, di?” His derisive laughter and boastful manner seemed to suggest that he knew a great secret and if they wanted to know, they would have to beg and plead.
Mathina and Rabia agreed that they shouldn’t ask him for any information at all. Being ignored by them would be a matter of shame for him. “Why, don’t you want to know the word, di? Tell me,” he said, rolling his eyes to frighten them.
“We don’t want to know, da, get lost. We’ll go and tell the Hazrat,” Mathina threatened him. Ahmad moved away from them and sat down, but he was desperate to tell them. Even though he tried his best to control himself, he couldn’t, and, looking towards the wall, he lamented, “It is called delakatti. Some stupid girls don’t know even this much, poor things.” Rabia and Mathina only registered the name that day.
Rabia had heard her father, Karim, often telling her mother, when he spoke disapprovingly of someone, “He is like a delakatti to me. I can chuck him away whenever I feel like it.”
Watching Mothinar Bawa’s hands pour out the sand in a measured manner, Rabia had worried that there were no fruits under the vatha tree that day.
She asked, disappointed, “Why are there no fruits today, Bawa?”
“Why not? Look there. The senior Hazrat has picked them up. Go ask him,” he pointed in the direction of the senior Hazrat, who was sitting with the tasbih rosary in his hand, having taken off his headgear. Rabia ran towards him. He looked at her with his kind eyes and called out, ‘Come here, amma.’
“Asalaam aleikum, Hazrat sir,” she said, sitting down next to him.
“Aleikum salaam. How come you are here? Only to ask me for fruits, isn’t it?” he teased.
“No, no. Just like that,” Rabia said, lowering her head shyly.
The senior Hazrat had shrunk a great deal – a thin body with wrinkled skin, a hunched back and sunken eyes. He would sit counting his tasbih beads and chewing betel leaves, muttering “sallallah” to himself. He had a very long nose and a long beard, through which he was now running his fingers. On many days, he would pick up the fruits himself and hand them out to the children, basking in their happiness – he had great love for children. The children loved him too. If any child had a fever or was unwell, the family just had to come after dusk prayers and take water blessed by him to give to the child. Even when Uma or Ramesh were sick, their families would bring water to be blessed by him. Uma would wonder, “Rabia, do you think he’s a big aulia? We get well immediately. This sickness couldn’t even be controlled by Dr Saravana’s injection!”
The junior Hazrat, on the other hand, wasn’t liked by anybody – least of all by Rabia and Mathina. If they mispronounced even one word while reciting their prayers, he would pinch their thighs. He reserved his stick for beating the boys, but with the girls, he would always do the same – he pinched their thighs. Rabia often felt that he wasn’t doing it just to correct her. Every time she saw him, she was filled with a mixture of embarrassment and disgust.
“Rabia, come and sit near me. Your mother has said I should teach you well,” he would say, making her sit next to him, pinching and caressing her cheeks now and then. Rabia would feel like crying.
She told Mathina, “I hate learning prayers from this guy.”
“Only you? Even I don’t like learning from him,” Mathina retorted.
Even the boys despised him. Ahmad said, “This man hasn’t got married and doesn’t have any kids. No wonder he doesn’t have any affection for children. He beats us like a savage.”
“Don’t speak like that about Hazrats! You’ll go to hell. Hell’s fire can’t touch the places hit by a Hazrat – don’t you know that?” Rabia scolded him.
“It’s okay if I go to hell. What if I go to heaven – what’s the use of all these beatings then?”
“Get lost, da, you nutcase. Why am I even talking to you?” Rabia said warily.
Excerpted with permission from The Dark Hours of the Night, Salma, translated from the Thamizh by GJV Prasad, Simon and Schuster India.
