Once Were Radicals (7 page)

Pakistan seemed to have mosques on every street corner and in every neighbourhood. The mosques would be packed with men on Fridays, which was the first day of the Pakistani weekend and regarded as a holy day. The mosques typically had at least one tall tower-like minaret along with a large dome on the roof, and they often had onion-shaped domes similar to those of Sikh temples. The arrival of the five daily prayer times was greeted with chanting of the
azaan
or call to prayer in Arabic. Within a few days, I had managed to memorise the
azaan
just by listening to these chants.

During our time in Karachi, we stayed at the home of my aunt on al-Falah Road (literally ‘the Street of Success'), across the road from a large mosque. The mosque wasn't named after a saint or religious figure but rather after the
street where it was located. Or maybe the street was named after the mosque. Who knows?

Mum wasted no time in enrolling me in the religious school attached to the mosque. The school was called Madrassat al-Falah (which I guess would roughly translate as ‘the College of Success'), attached to the Masjid al-Falah (‘the Mosque of Success' or perhaps ‘the Mosque on al-Falah Road' … whatever). I attended
madrassa
for four to five hours each day, learning the ‘Arabi' alphabet and how to join the letters to make the sounds of the Koran.

The mosque was quite a large and exotic-looking building with walls painted a combination of light green and white. Green and white are apparently the colours of Islam, and they were also the favourite colours of the Prophet Muhammad. They also happened to be the colours of the Pakistani flag. Was this just a case of Pakistani nationalism co-opting religion for patriotic purposes? How would I know? I was only six at the time!

The mosque was open before sunrise (in preparation for the morning prayer) until late into the night. The mosque was spotlessly clean and smelt of sandlewood and jasmine. It had three front doors, all of which were arch-shaped, and two tall minaret towers.

Each time we entered the mosque, we were expected to take off our shoes and place them in a plastic bag. Installed by the mosque's left side-wall were small taps, near which were seats (they were actually concrete blocks) where worshippers would wash before prayer. The mosque's main open space (its prayer hall) had no chairs and had a tiled floor which was quite cool to sit on. Near the entrance of the mosque was a basket full of cheap skullcaps woven
out of strips of straw, but Mum warned me against wearing these as they were lice infested.

My teacher (I was supposed to address him as Molvi Sahib, in recognition of his status as a
molvi
or religious leader) was a rather stern fellow with a long beard and large frame (he's now deceased. The way he used to hit his students, I really do hope God has mercy on his soul). He also led prayer services at the mosque. The
molvi
had a very simple teaching philosophy: the best way to teach kids how to make the proper sounds of the Koran was to bash the shit out of them using either a very hard cooking utensil or a stick of some sort.

I wasn't exempt from the process. Molvi Sahib had three sticks. One was short and hard, designed to cause pain. The second was long and malleable to cause a stinging sensation. The third was both long and hard and designed to provide us with the necessary incentive to memorise the Koranic sounds faster.

At
madrassa
, our uniform consisted of a white-coloured
shalwar kameez
with a prayer skullcap (called a
topi
) often embroidered with different designs and small chips of mirrored glass. It is an act of religious devotion for men to cover their heads when reading the Koran or another religious text. Many of the older boys were growing smallish beards. I assumed they must have been trainee
molvis
, preparing their faces as part of some hairy apprenticeship. Perhaps when their beards grew long enough, they could start their own
madrassa
where they could bash the Koran into (and the crap out of) their own students. In such an environment of spiritual sadism, it was little wonder I began to associate Islamic learning with big boofy-bearded
blokes brandishing sticks and passing on the Divine Word of the All-Merciful and Almighty with some almighty whacks. Whether we understood what we were reciting and memorising didn't seem to matter. Then again, if we could have understood it, we'd have made sure our
molvi
threw away his stick.

The first time I went to
madrassa
, I was wearing jeans. The
molvi
was most upset and delivered the appropriate beating. It was the first and last time I was beaten in an Islamic school for dress-code violations. Future beatings for dress violations weren't administered until years later when I attended St Andrews in Sydney, though these were of a more Christian variety.

At
madrassa
we would sit in long rows with some students more advanced than others. I was amongst the juniors and was still learning the Arabic alphabet using the
qaida
.

Surrounded by all these skullcap-wearing bearded men and boys, I imagined heaven to be filled with bearded men (and perhaps even bearded women!) all rocking away backwards and forwards reciting their
qaida
. Yep, paradise and
qaida
(though without the seventy-two virgins) went hand-in-hand even at that early age! No doubt some readers will now find the name of my teaching aid to be sure proof that Pakistani
madrassas
are little more than terrorist training facilities, but my
qaida
was just a book.

Other more advanced boys would read straight from the Koran without the aid of a
qaida
. Molvi Sahib would insist that we all recite loudly so that he could follow us. He would pace up and down our line, waving his arms in the air. Anyone not reading loudly enough would get a nice whack on the back with one of his sticks. I'm not
sure exactly how Molvi Sahib could have understood each individual with us all reciting loudly and simultaneously. Sometimes when he wasn't within striking distance, I would stop reciting and look up. We were a choir that looked and sounded like it was chanting to the instructions of a tone-deaf conductor having an epileptic fit.

Once Mum came to the mosque early to pick me up for an appointment. She saw the
molvi
in full flight hitting boys with his stick and was rather shocked. She pleaded with him in chaste Urdu, begging for mercy on my behalf.

‘Please don't hit my son. He is new to Pakistan and he isn't used to it.'

‘Listen, madam. I don't give special status to anyone. If Prime Minister Bhutto brings his son to me to learn the Koran, I'll have great pleasure in administering a good beating to him also! And maybe even his dad!'

(As far as I am aware, Bhutto's son never did learn Koran at the College of Success. Then again, given the imam's conservative politics, he certainly would have done the same to a PM committed to such evil innovations as ‘Islamic socialism'.)

Mum's entreaties fell on deaf ears. He continued belting me with his stick. Mum eventually removed me from that
madrassa
. There was no other mosque and
madrassa
in the area for me to attend so Mum supplemented Koran lessons with her own private tuition. Thankfully, her stick only consisted of a small wooden spoon which broke easily.

After all this pain and suffering, you can imagine my shock when a decade later, native Arabic speakers at the first Australian Muslim youth camp I attended told me that
the sounds I was taught to make at my Pakistani
madrassa
were actually wrong! So much for the College of Success.

My mother was the first person to teach me the ceremonial prayer (we called this
nemaaz
but it's known in Arabic as
salaat
) which consists of a range of physical postures combined with special prayers and recitation of verses from the Koran. Mum taught me that Muslims are meant to perform the
nemaaz
at certain fixed times, five times a day facing the holy city of Mecca, where the Prophet Muhammad was born. If they miss a
nemaaz
for some reason, they can always make up for it afterwards. However, deliberately missing a
nemaaz
time was a major sin.

For as long as I can remember, Mum has always performed her
nemaaz
at the right time. I only recall one or two occasions when she actually missed
nemaaz
, and this was always because of some extenuating circumstance.

The postures were slightly different for men and women. By copying Mum, I inadvertently started using the female postures, and I often wondered why people at the mosque would snigger at me while I was performing the
nemaaz
.

Mum taught me the various rules for performing the
nemaaz
and for special prayers to recite after
nemaaz
. I later discovered that many of these rules were heavily influenced by South Asian cultural understandings of religion. There is a large element of religious practice which Muslims of all backgrounds follow. For instance, all Muslims face in the direction of Mecca when they perform the
nemaaz
and the combination of physical postures is fairly universal. But Muslims from different regions of the world often preface
or conclude their
nemaaz
with prayers and worship formulae peculiar to their region.

Before performing the
nemaaz
, I would perform a special ablution called
wazzu
using as little water as possible. I would wash my hands and arms up to my elbow. I'd also wash my face, and wipe my hair lightly with water. The most important (and for a chubby kid like me, the hardest) part of the ritual was to wash my feet up to my ankles. It was something I would take shortcuts with, but somehow Mum knew about my shortcuts and would regularly check to make sure my feet were still dripping.

After being thoroughly abluted, I'd stand on the prayer mat with my hands by my side. I'd then lift both hands approximately to the level of my ears in a manner whereby I looked like I was pushing all my worldly troubles over and behind my shoulders. I would then remain standing with my hands clasped over my belly and recite certain verses from the Koran.

I would then move into bowing position with my hands on my knees. We called this posture
ruku
. I was taught to go down in
ruku
as far as I could whilst keeping both my arms and knees straight. The imam at the College of Success would hit those boys who did not bow down sufficiently or who had bent knees or arms during
ruku
. It wasn't easy to do, especially for a chubby kid who could barely touch his toes!

After
ruku
, I would stand up briefly before going into prostrations, called
sijda
. When I first learned to perform
nemaaz
, my
sijda
would often end with me banging the top of my head on the ground. This didn't cause much problem on carpet, but it did cause plenty of discomfort if
I slipped and hit my head on a hard surface. Now I know that I only need to lightly keep my forehead and nose on the ground, it's a lot less of a headache.

After doing
sijda
twice, I'd completed one
rakaat
(or cycle) of the
nemaaz
. Each
nemaaz
was to be performed at a different set time, and each set time involved a different number of cycles. It wasn't hard to keep up with the correct times in Pakistan. This was because the mosque kindly provided us with a rather long and loud alarm signal from its loudspeaker. This alarm consisted of a man called the
muezzin
, either live or via a tape recording, calling the
azaan
.

It is a truly majestic sound of Arabic phrases praising God. When done properly, it can send shivers down your spine. When done clumsily in a Pakistani accent, it would make you want to tell the
muezzin
to go find another job. In our neighbourhood, the latter usually applied. And if that wasn't enough, virtually every street corner had a mosque with a loudspeaker. Each
azaan
would start a few moments apart. By the time they were reciting together over third-world quality sound systems, it sounded as if a huge herd of confused cows were flying through the air from one minaret to another.

I couldn't help wondering: surely God didn't intend the call to prayer to sound like this. Why did each mosque have to perform the
azaan
? Why couldn't they come together and assign the task to one particular mosque? Or why couldn't they share the responsibility? By competing with each other, they just made the beautiful
azaan
sound like Bob Dylan being played backwards.

Eventually, I learned the proper postures for men from the son of Molvi Sahib across the road, whom I had befriended when I was a
madrassa
student. I also learned how to read the Koran, the
nemaaz
and other special prayers for different occasions. Islam seemed to have a special prayer for every daily activity, from getting up in the morning to finishing a meal to even going to the toilet. The problem was that all these different prayer formulae were in Arabic. Mum would try and identify some words which had managed to find their way into Urdu, but by and large, I hardly understood anything I was reading or reciting.