Elixir of Life

Chapter 2: The Hameds

Faryal Belmadi

May 2016

Halb, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Faryal Belmadi, forty-one, walked along the sidewalk patterned with yellow and black borders. Her black garment danced with the soft wind behind her to reveal her tan heels. Faryal reached her hand out for Ameerah Hamed, thirteen, and dressed in her school uniform of a navy blue top and plaid-gray skirt. Its logo read Deutsche Internationale Schule Halb.

Halb was a small city populated by short, glass-walled buildings accented with sand-colored walls. Dark green palm trees filled the spaces in between buildings and roads. The few roads that lead out of the city were met with flat lands and sand dunes in the far distance of their gaze.

Ameerah already had her mother's figure—both slim with long, dark brown hair. Faryal put on her sunglasses in sight of the sun, as it baked the hot summer day to about 90°F. Traffic was halted beside them for strolling pedestrians, as women in identical black garments pushed strollers across the city street. Surrounding road signs read in both English and Arabic.

Halb was a giant suburb. As they walked, Faryal thought about the thousands of lives living here, all so unique and different from one another. She came to realize that other people's lives, which seemed so normal, were far from it. Public streets were always uneventful, but private lifestyles here resulted in events that only occurred behind closed doors.

The day's second call to prayer sounded as they entered the market streets. Men in white garments carried boxes of oranges, citruses, and dates inside their shops. Faryal smelled the fresh baked bread, the baskets of jasmine tea leaves, the dried fruit. It smelled like her childhood. The smells longing for another smell. A nostalgic enchantment of brew and sand. There was no elixir quite like it.

Faryal passed by shop advertisements, some of women's fashion, which had the women's faces blurred. They exited the markets and joined a small crowd in the clearing surrounding their mosque.

The mosque ahead had a tall, slim tower with a circular balcony at the top. The two neared it as the muezzin's calls sounded through the site's speakers, "God is great. God is great."

Faryal and Ameerah joined the crowd gathering at the entrance, passing under the horseshoe arches, all removing their shoes and entering further inside.

*

Ameerah was by Faryal's side inside the women's prayer hall. Rows and rows of veiled women joined in closing their eyes and lifting their hands. Everyone was on their knees on ornate prayer rugs of various colors.

After prayers, the women and children all joined in the men's prayer hall. All the men were grouped in the front rows, as the others sat behind them. Faryal looked toward her periphery at the Mutaween, the religious police, as they walked back and forth among those sitting.

Everyone was turned to the front of the hall, where the imam spoke through a microphone.

The imam stroked his long beard in contemplation. "Blessed be Allah, the best of the creators. And you will most certainly find them the greediest men for life, every one of them loves that he should be granted a life of a thousand years... And his being granted a long life will in no way remove him further off from punishment. And Allah sees what they do."

The imam returned to his stand, flipped along pages of the Holy Quran and read from it, "Ash-Shu'ara, verse eighty-eight to eighty-nine says, 'The day when wealth and sons avail not any man. Save him who bringeth unto God a whole heart'."