Praying

My daughter is an American college student studying Arabic in the West Bank. She lives in a nice apartment in Ramallah, a modern city with ancient rituals. She lives near a mosque where the bells toll five times a day calling Muslims to prayer, even at 4 am.

She loves it there despite the ricochet of gunfire, the perpetual footfall of the military, and the threat of air raids. She isn’t rattled when a loaded gun is shot into the air to clear the crowded restaurant she’s eating in. The place is supposed to be closed out of respect for someone who died recently. (When I hear this is a local custom, I wonder how often they can possibly be open.) She doesn’t mind the checkpoints at gunpoint or the fragility of it all.

I asked her what she did five times a day when the bell rang calling her friends to prayer. She said that she does not pray. I do not need to hear a bell to remind me to pray, I’m on permanent novena.

Kim Dannies ©2008