Highlander - Donna Lettow [1]
Allahu Akbar! God is Most Great resounded from the loudspeakers in the minaret. The modest Akhirah Mosque couldn’t even claim a live muezzin to climb the tower and issue the traditional call to prayer.
Ash-hadu an la ilaha illallah, the tape crackled. I bear witness that there is no God but Allah.
What the Akhirah Mosque had in its favor was its location. This Friday, like any Friday in Hebron, the Jaffa Road market teemed with Arab buyers and sellers, haggling over the price of a lamb, arguing over the quality of a crate of lemons fresh picked from a nearby orchard. Women hurried to finish their shopping before the market closed at midday, their heads and bodies covered despite the hamsin winds blowing hot off the desert, making a normally gentle spring feel like the blasting heat of summer. Old men, their dark faces wrinkled by the sun, filled the nearby coffeehouses, content to watch the constantly changing scene, while a few young men in crisp uniforms—members of the newly formed Palestinian police—patrolled the market as had their Israeli predecessors not too long before. At times the din of the market could nearly drown out the call to worship.
Ash-hadu ana Muhammadur rasululla. I bear witness that Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah.
Those Muslims who had the leisure streamed toward the magnificent al-Haram al-Ibrahimi al-Khalil for their Friday prayers alongside the many Muslim tourists on pilgrimage in Hebron. Those whose lives and work revolved around the Jaffa Road market preferred to stay close by and perform their ritual worship at the more humble Akhirah.
Hayya alas salah! Come to prayer!
By midway through the prerecorded adhan calling the faithful of Islam to gather, the inside of the tiny mosque was full of men ready for prayer. Most of the women of the market had hurried home to worship in the privacy of their houses. Those men arriving at the mosque too late to be accommodated inside simply spread their colorful woven prayer rugs on the ground, on the sidewalks, in the marketplace, wherever there was room, always facing holy Mecca to the southeast. For the Prophet said, “Wherever the hour of prayer overtakes you, you shall perform it.”
Hayya alal falah! Come to salvation!
The din and clamor of the market, a place of chaos only minutes before, disappeared as if by magic, replaced by orderly rows of the faithful silently preparing their hearts and minds for communication with God.
La ilaha illallah! There is no God but Allah!
As the last echo of the call to prayer faded away in the hamsin winds, a serious young man joined the faithful in the marketplace outside the mosque. He hurriedly spread a prayer rug near the back of the throng before the communal prayers began. His skin was smoky dark, like that of the others, and he was dressed as any one of hundreds of Palestinian students from the nearby Islamic University, in his white dress shirt and dark slacks. His dark hair was cropped close to his head, covered by a knitted lace prayer cap, and he had a worn leather rucksack for his texts and research. He was a small man of slight build. With his boyish face, he looked nineteen, maybe twenty.
But as he stood at attention, his right hand over his left on his chest as prescribed by the Prophet, chanting “Glory and praise be to You, Oh God” in Arabic with the others, the eyes he raised toward Mecca were seemingly without bottom, round and dark. He might be seeing all the way to the spires of the holy city itself with those eyes.
“Bismillahir rahmanir rahim,” his prayers continued, followed by ruku, bowing to God in a show of love and respect. Three times the young man chanted “Glory be to my Great Lord and praise be to Him,” and three times he bowed low in the presence of God with the other faithful.
Then the ultimate act of humility: proud men prostrate before