Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [107]
Razaq shook my hand with great aplomb and thanked me for giving him guidance. “Bro, you’ll be a great leader for Muslims one day!”
I already am, I thought.
Soon I initiated the final part of my three-pronged plan for achieving piety: public prayer. It came about as I thought back on the advice I’d given Razaq. I decided that if I could just do something big—something that would show all the Muslims in the MSA how much I loved Islam—perhaps that would create a moment of sublimation, a sudden eradication of all their doubts about me, and bring an immense infusion of gravitas to my tenure. In short, I needed a public display of submission. Something big and explosive. An act that would annihilate all doubts in one swift swoop. A flash of light that would burst across the landscape and let every onlooker know in emphatic terms: this Muslim represented Islam like no one else.
I petitioned the various deans and administrators at the university, seeking their approval to play the azan, the Islamic call to prayer, from the bell tower on an upcoming Friday. I went to a designated committee of three and had them listen to various recordings of the azan. Looking pleased with themselves for their intercultural tolerance, they agreed to play the recording by the muezzin of the Holy Mosque in Mecca.
As the appointed Friday drew closer, I became more and more excited. I made plans to lead the whole MSA out to the bell tower after the Friday sermon that afternoon. I sent out letters exhorting people from all across Atlanta to join us for a supplication after the azan. I even sent out gleeful messages to MSAs all across the East Coast, gloating rather prematurely about “our”—I meant “my,” of course—success.
It was a cool fall afternoon. I delivered an impassioned sermon on the merits of being truthful and then we went outside as a community, men and women, old and young, student and staff, and we stood under the bell tower at two-fifteen. Shortly after the bells chimed the quarter-hour, the voice of the muezzin from Mecca rang out across the university.
“God is Great! God is Great!” rang the azan. “There is no god but God!”
Students sitting at the outdoor cafeteria looked up in confusion at this sound they’d never heard. They could see me, wearing a thowb and a kafiya, leading my community.
I looked around me at the fifty or so Muslims gathered in a circle. I had expected to see tears streaming down their faces, hands outstretched in prayer, faces wreathed in nostalgia and reverence as loud exclamations of “Takbir!” went up. I had expected to see warm smiles directed at me, both thankful and deferential. I had expected to feel as if we were one body, bound together by the beautiful voice of the muezzin. I had even hoped to see CNN cameras, representatives from other MSAs from up and down the East Coast, and perhaps representatives of national Muslim organizations who had come to read letters of commendation. The azan was supposed to be an act of transcendence so immense that afterwards not only would no one doubt my potency as a Muslim leader, but I, Amir ul Islam, would become a legend among America’s Muslims. Maybe the news would reach Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and in Arabic and Urdu Muslim journalists would write that a young leader in Atlanta, the president of his local MSA, had managed to hold one of the first-ever public calls to prayer in the West, and certainly the first one at an elite Christian university.
Yet as the tones of the azan rang out, it wasn’t like that at all; it wasn’t as I’d imagined and hoped. A couple of people got emotional, true; a couple of people smiled; a couple of people even thanked me. But no cameras. No organizations. No commendations. No international celebrations. In a swirl of breeze and fall leaves, everyone disappeared.
I was left standing alone under the bell tower.
5
Almost as soon as I had become president, I started feeling like I was losing the MSA. No one came to the Quran study sessions I held. No one was inspired by the sermons I gave. No one had sudden