‘The Qur’an was the miracle that Muhammad, peace be upon him, was sent with. And it’s different from the miracles of the other Prophets because it’s still with us now… it’s still accessible. For the Arabs who first heard it, it was something new and strange, neither poetry nor prose, something they had never heard before. When the early verses of the Qur’an were recited, many people were crying from the words and how they sounded…’
He said, ‘Translations don’t do it justice. Much is lost…’
‘Yes, the meanings can be translated but not reproduced. And of course the miracle of it can’t be reproduced… But even then, hearing it from the Prophet, peace be upon him, not everyone believed. Not everyone accepted that the source and wording of what they were hearing came from Allah. The first believers were mostly women and slaves. I don’t know why, maybe they had softer hearts, I don’t know…’
‘Maybe in changing they did not have much to lose,’ he said. ‘It was the rulers of Makkah who were reluctant to give up their traditions and established ways for something new.’
She said, ‘They were very bad in Makkah to the early Muslims. Muhammad was known as Al-Amin, that was what everyone called him. It means the honest, the trustworthy, but when he said, “I am a messenger from Allah”, he was called liar, mad-man, poet. These are the doubts that people have… Allah tells us in the Qur’an, reminds us again and again, these verses are not the words of a poet, they are Divine revelation, certain truth.’
She paused and then said, ‘Everything in my religion comes from this. The words of the Qur’an which you told me the seventh-century Pope dismissed as heresy… Now tell me if you believe or not.’
She walked to the window. Flakes of snow drifted down from the roof, talcum powder, icing sugar. She saw the students whose voices she had been hearing. They were in the car park, two boys rolling a huge snowball grey with dirt from the ground. They laughed as they propped it against the door of one of the cars. She felt old looking at them; they were young and did not have many responsibilities. If Rae said no, what exile would he put himself in? If he said no, she would walk out on to the snow, an exile she would take with her wherever she went.
When she turned around he said, ‘I am not sure.’
She had expected yes or no. She would have known what to say if he had said yes. She would have known what to do if he had said no.
She sat down and because she was silent he repeated, ‘I’m not sure.’
She said, ‘Do you know what it means for us?’
‘I know. I’ve always known.’
‘I imagined we could get married today.’ Her voice startled and bruised her, like sandpaper, like sea-salt. ‘Now, and I could go with you to Stirling. I don’t want to go to Egypt.’
‘How could we get married now?’ The same distress in his voice.
‘I thought Fareed could marry us and it would not be difficult to get two witnesses.’ She had imagined students as witnesses. Even with the snow, they could still have found Muslim students. It was not how she had got married to Tarig, but it was how it used to be when people lived by Islam alone. Two witnesses, and a gift. A gift however simple or small. In the Prophet’s time, two chapters of the Qur’an were an acceptable gift from a man who had nothing to give his new wife but verses which he had memorised. Now in Muslim countries, it was gold and dollar bills, endless discussions about who should buy the video set and fridge-freezer.
There was a silence in the room. She thought, why isn’t he saying anything, why isn’t he talking to me? She thought, why am I numb, why am I not crying yet?
‘I thought you were homesick,’ he finally said, ‘and this anti-terrorist project would be a chance for you to go on to Khartoum, see your son. Maybe I made a mistake in suggesting it…’
‘It wasn’t a mistake. I was homesick for the place, how everything looked. But I don’t know what kind of sickness it would be, to be away from you.’
He said, ‘I know what my sickness would be…’
‘Don’t say no then, not sure is better than no, don’t ever say no.’
‘It’s not in me to be religious,’ he said. ‘I studied Islam for the politics of the Middle East. I did not study it for myself. I was not searching for something spiritual. Some people do. I had a friend who went to India and became a Buddhist. But I was not like that. I believed the best I could do, what I owed a place and people who had deep meaning for me, was to be objective, detached. In the middle of all the prejudice and hypocrisy, I wanted to be one of the few who was saying what was reasonable and right.’
‘It’s not enough,’ she pressed her hands together. ‘It’s not enough. It’s not enough for me.’
He leaned and put his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands.
She said, ‘Don’t you realise how much you hurt me saying objective and detached, like you are above all of this, above me, looking down…’
‘No, no it isn’t…’ His face had a deeper colour as if he had pressed it too hard against his hands.
‘It is. It is looking down, saying it has nothing to do with you, not for you. When you know very well that it’s for everyone. You know it’s not just for Arabs. You know the figures, you know more than me how much percentage are Chinese, Russians…’
‘I didn’t say it has nothing to do with me. I didn’t say that.’
‘You’re not reassuring me, you’re not saying anything to stop me being anxious.’ She was shivering. If she did not hold her teeth together they would start chattering.
‘You’re cold,’ he said. ‘This room can get too cold.’
She nodded. All the sunshine in the room, the light laughter coming up through the window and no warmth.
‘I’ll go get the heater from the cupboard,’ he said.
His absence was harsh, abrupt. In his absence the room was bleak, filled with too many things: books, papers, a telephone that rang only for him. She sat where his students sat, on that same armchair, panicking about their exams, their financial difficulties, on the edge of dropping out. She imagined that he was reasonable with them, genuinely concerned. It occurred to her now that she had come here to his office to ask him to marry her and he had not said yes. He had not said yes, and yet here she still sat, clinging. She had no pride. If she had pride she would go away now. Instead she was still sitting.
He came back pulling a large heater on wheels. It took time for him to untangle the wire, plug the socket in the wall. His movements were slow, a little clumsy, someone who did not spend much time doing things with his hands.
The rods on the heater glowed pink and orange. When he sat down he said, ‘Be patient with me, I don’t know what to do… All this fumbling and I never had so much empathy for anyone in my life.’
She did not understand the meaning of the word ‘empathy’. At times he did say words she could not understand, words she would ask him to explain. Sixties’ scene, Celtic, chock-a-block. But now she did not ask him the meaning of ‘empathy’. Today she could not ask. It sounded like ‘sympathy’, and, she thought, he feels sorry for me. To him I must have always looked helpless and forlorn.
Somehow she was able to speak, make the last attempt, ‘If you say the shahadah it would be enough. We could get married. If you just say the words…’
‘I have to be sure. I would despise myself if I wasn’t sure.’
‘But people get married that way. Here in Aberdeen there are people who got married like this…’
‘We’re not like that. You and I are different. For them it is a token gesture.’