Pin it right there!” instructed Sundus, gesturing over my head.
“It won’t stay,” moaned Shine, a new friend I’d met by contacting the Ohio State Muslim Association. “The wind is too strong!” I crouched at an awkward angle in front of them, trying to shield my head from the spring gales as she attempted to secure a hijab to my head.
“Hey ladies,” I teased. “If Allah is for us, can the wind be against us?”
A gust lifted my would-be veil. It skittered across the Noor Mosque parking lot, a silky green ribbon amidst a sea of cars.
“Ah!” I yelped. “Chase it!” Without the hijab, I wouldn’t be able to attend Jum’ah, rendering our trip to the mosque useless. Running after the veil, Sundus and I collided in a manner worthy of a sitcom, leaving only Shine to save the day.
“Got it!” Shine panted. She lifted the scarf up prizefighter-style—and the wind almost blew it out of her hand a second time.
“One of you hold the top of the scarf and one of you grab the bottom,” I said. Success!
Shine smoothed the head covering over my shoulders. “Beautiful,” she pronounced. “It really brings out your green eyes.”
I checked my reflection in Shine’s car window—the head covering was quite pretty. There is something to be said for the veil, I thought. From fasting, I knew that giving something up usually led to getting something else back. If I wore the hijab on a daily basis, I imagined it would free up the ridiculous amount of time I spent messing with my hair. Maybe I could work on my inner beauty instead of worrying about the gray streak I’d wrestled with since I was eighteen?
I turned around to face them. “What do you girls like about wearing the veil?”
“I started wearing the hijab my freshman year,” Shine answered. “It was totally my decision. For me it represents modesty, virtue, and protection.”
Since my college clubwear had been skimpy enough to make any modest God blush, I thought I could make a convincing case for extra clothing equaling additional virtue. (Sadly, no amount of extra clothing could have added virtue to the Reba Riley of 2004. There is no modesty to be had when offering one’s navel for body shots right before riding a mechanical bull.)
“The hijab is a constant reminder of my commitment to Allah,” said Sundus.
“I get that,” I replied, thinking of the WWJD bracelets and promise rings I’d worn in the mid-90s, when these girls were . . . toddlers? I briefly wondered what I might wear to remind me of my new faith—peacock feather earrings? Disco ball necklace? “Today I will make the hijab a constant reminder to give thanks to the Godiverse,” I promised.
Their nods said this was a good plan. I did not share the first line item on my thankfulness list: Thank you, Godiverse, that I left Reba Riley circa 2004 in 2004!
“How does it feel on your head?” Sundus asked as we walked through the huge parking lot toward the mosque, a massive structure of stone and glass. Police directed traffic around us.
I shook my head into the wind. “It feels like an AquaNet hairspray helmet!”
We looked at one another and dissolved into giggles.
MODESTLY DRESSED PEOPLE OF all races streamed in through Noor’s entryway. But for the pristine shoe racks lining the walls, it looked like any megachurch, complete with sign-up tables and programs and free inspirational calendars (of which I was now a proud owner).
“Shoes go over there,” Sundus instructed, pointing to the racks.
I happily removed my flip-flops, noting as I did so that Christians were really missing the naked-foot boat. Being shoeless implies reverence and a certain vulnerability. You have to trust that neither God nor your fellow congregants plan to drop heavy boxes on your toes.
Sundus, Shine, and I followed a crowd of women displaying the full range of hijabs around a corner. Amidst the flurry of scarves in colors ranging from rainbow to black (à la National Geographic), I spied a bathroom sign.
I signaled the girls to wait for me. In the stall I noticed sprayers conveniently located for the washing of one’s lady parts. Uh-oh. I’d read about the purification required before services but forgotten to ask Sundus about it. For the life of me, I couldn’t recall if the process entailed cleansing below the belt. Better safe than sorry? I grasped the sprayer and did my best, hoping Allah would forgive me for winging it.
Back at the sink, an old woman in head-to-toe black garb engaged in ritual washing. I hung back, giving her space to splash and whisper prayers. When she finished, I tapped her on the shoulder.
“The ritual washing . . . Taharah?” I asked, the word coming back to me just in time. “I don’t know how to do it. Would you please show me?”
Yes! Yes! Yes! She nodded, all smiles, before backing right out the door, leaving me very much alone and unsure of how to proceed.
I peeked my head out. “Sundus. Shine. Help!”
Placing myself in front of the trough-like sink, I explained my dilemma.
“It’s hands, mouth, nose, face, ears, hair—three times each,” Sundus demonstrated sans water since they had already washed at home. She counted the rhythm out loud for me, but I just couldn’t get the cadence right. Every time I missed a beat, the touchless faucet turned off, prompting me to wave around wildly before giving up and starting over. Shine kindly documented my failure, snapping photos with her iPhone.
I enjoyed the idea of full-body ritual purification, a material reminder of what we hope to accomplish by gathering together before God. Our bodies exist on a physical plane, and sometimes the only way to translate the wonder of spiritual experience is to do physical things that look a little nutty. The power and beauty of balancing in tree pose in yoga, chanting Hare Krishna, or—in my case—spilling water all over the floor of the mosque bathroom, exist within our intention. I imagined that no matter how imperfectly I performed, Allah would look down and say, “Oh, bless her heart,” possibly in the drawl of a Southern belle.
I prefer a God who hands out participation medals, because Lord knows I’ll never make it to the Mystical Olympics. (But, if I did, I’d want my event to be figure skating.)
EVEN THOUGH I WAS only supposed to splash my hands, mouth, nose, face, ears, and hair three times and my feet once, I ended up doing eight rotations. Water squished between my toes on the tile floor, but I was having such a good time that I didn’t even think about foot fungus.
When I finally got the ritual right, the girls cheered and offered me a slew of paper towels to dry myself off. Reaching for the paper towels, I slipped on the wet floor and fell backward into the trough sink. I tried to stand up and fell back down again. I started laughing so hard the girls had to forcibly haul me out of the trough. Together, we studied my soggy rear end.
“At least it only looks like you half-peed your pants,” said Sundus.
“You might want to, um, wipe your eyes too?” Shine offered helpfully, prompting me to look in the mirror. Even with mascara dripping black streaks and eyeliner smudged beyond repair, I looked happy.
The three of us left the bathroom and ascended the mosque stairs to the women’s section, a balcony enclosed by glass. As a feminist, I felt guilty for enjoying the segregation. Sure, we were up in the balcony behind glass (and what did that say about equality?), but all I could think was, How posh! Club-level seating!
Before sitting on the star-and-crescent carpet (mosques don’t have seats), we performed Tahiyyat al-Masjid, full-body prayer calisthenics intended to greet the mosque and set our intention for the gathering. Shine and Sundus moved with the practiced fluid motion of professional divers; I looked like a tubby kid doing a cannonball. Trying to keep up through raka’tayn, two units of the prayer, reminded me of boot camp’s exercises. At least Shine and Sundus didn’t seem inclined to put me in the corner for punishment. Post-prayers, we sat on the floor with our torsos folded over our knees and our backsides resting on our heels, a position I lasted in for exactly five seconds before tipping into a sidesaddle interpretation.
The imam issued a call to prayer from a story below us, and I noticed the beauty of the mosque’s interior. With multiple-story arches and windows, the building seemed to be made of air. Spring sunshine flooded the space, belying the wind outside. “It’s stunning,” I whispered to Shine. “I love all the light!”
She smiled. “Noor means light. It’s a fitting name.”
Attendance was a fluid concept; women came and went, bookending their experience with prayer cycles upon entering and leaving. In front of me, a little girl chomped on Lay’s Sour Cream ’n Onion chips, smearing the grease on her mother’s bright, cheetah-print scarf. The mom turned around to chat with us, but was promptly shushed by an old woman to my left. Chastised, we adults settled in for the service, but the little girl refused to be hushed. Sensing that I’d like to steal her chips, she gave me the stink-eye.
I couldn’t see the imam’s head very well, but I heard him clearly through the speakers. He spoke in heavily accented English punctuated by Arabic scripture. Even where I didn’t understand all the words, I grasped the meaning. He spoke of grace, though he didn’t call it that. He said, “There is no sin which Allah cannot forgive.”
If he had swapped out Allah for Jesus, this could have been a sermon in any Christian church. Hearing the same message in such a foreign place felt bizarre, as if I had stepped into a parallel universe where the food looked different but tasted just the same.
The imam told the story of a judgmental Muslim who told another person he was going to hell. But Allah was angry at the accuser, saying, “Is it your job to be the judge? I am the only judge!” Many covered heads nodded in agreement at this.
Post-service, I asked the girls a hard question. “Since I’m not Muslim, am I going to hell?”
They quieted for a moment, then Sundus leaned in. “It’s not up to us,” she explained, her face the picture of earnestness. “Angels sit on your shoulders recording your deeds—good deeds on the right, bad deeds on the left—and they create a book that will show your deeds at Judgment Day.”
I thought my “bad” angel must have dulled his pencil in 2004.
“You might be granted immediate access to heaven because your intentions are pure, but a lifelong Muslim might do some hard time in hell to atone for whatever sins he’s committed. It is all by the grace of Allah.”
To illustrate, Shine told me a story from the Quran. “There was a wicked woman, a prostitute her whole life. Before she died she showed kindness to a thirsty dog by giving him a bowl of water, and for that simple act, she was shown mercy and invited to heaven.”
“So it is about intention,” I mused, reminded of the story of Jesus and the woman at the well. He knew all her sins, yet she was forgiven.
As the girls relayed a few more stories with similar morals from the Quran, I considered the importance of the stories we tell. Before Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome, I believed that religious stories must be literal fact to be valuable, a vestige of the believe-it-all-or-believe-it-none theology I’d been raised to hold. But now I saw that the specifics (Did the prostitute actually exist? Where did she live? How many guys did she sleep with, anyway?) didn’t matter to the meaning behind the story, a truth that showed me a picture of God, One who sees humanity with all-encompassing grace.
Stories bypass the defensive nature of our literal minds, the nature that waves angry fists and demands concrete proof. Stories deliver a knockout punch, sending truth right where we need it—in our vulnerable underbellies, where we are filled with doubt and fear.
With a start, I realized that for me the value of religion no longer rested in the literal; it resided in the much greater metaphorical.
It no longer had to be true to be Truth.
AS THE GODIVERSE WOULD have it, Trent and I ended up in a taxi that evening with a Somali driver who was listening to Muslim prayers in stereo. I told him I had visited Noor Mosque that very afternoon.
He eyed me in his rearview. “You Christian?”
I took the easy way out. “Yep.” A three-mile fare doesn’t leave much time for explanation.
“You pray in heart?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir. I do.”
“The important thing not where pray, but that pray in heart. See, you and me, we not so different. You pray, I pray. This all same.”
When the receipt printed, I couldn’t give him a tip large enough.