My New Home

Chapter Eight

I woke up to the sound of the call to prayer for Jumah; the central mosque is just a stone throw from my house so whenever they call to prayer using the mega phone, the sound will reach my house clearly .

I groggily got up from my comfy matrass to prepare for prayer. I took another bath, performed ablution, put on a nice cloth and headed to the house mosque. On getting there, everyone was absent and I was confused on what was going on but waited anyways.

I was in the mosque for two solid hours. I already heard the voices of people getting back from Jumat and I was seconds away from bursting in anger at the delay before those in the house started entering the mosque one after the other. I could have easily checked their rooms and ask for the reason for their absence but I didn’t for reasons unknown to me, so, I shouldn’t blame them for their lateness.

One of them asked why I came to the mosque early, thinking I got there few minutes ahead of them to pack all the rewards. I replied her that I’ve been in the mosque for the past two hours but saw no one and decided to wait till Asr since we don’t need to prepare lunch today as we’ve prepared it together in the morning and it only needs to be microwaved.

Ameera explained that since we didn’t go for the Jumaat service, we have to observe our normal zuhr prayer and we can only do that after Jumaat is over. I felt stupid for not knowing that and instead, getting annoyed unnecessarily. That’s another lesson learnt. I thought. After observing our salat, we left the mosque but before I got too far, Qoriah called me back to ask if i recited suratul kahf, and that she forgot to remind me in the morning.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Suratul kahf. She repeated. It’s rewarding to read it on Fridays before jumaat, so, have you read yours?”

“I forgot”. I lied, I couldn’t tell her that I’m not an avid reader of the Quran and my irregular Arabic school attendance only resulted in me reading very few surahs offhandedly and I couldn’t even recognise all the Arabic alphabets yet.

“Okay. Go and ahead and read and but remember to read it early next Friday”.

“Alright I will”. I made a mental note of asking Jamal to help me out with my recitation and proceeded to my room.

On getting to the room, I met Jamal in a deep sleep on the mattress and decided to leave him be. I checked my phone and saw that I’ve missed a call from kabeera. I put a call through to her and she picked up on the second ring.

“How is Sulaiman’s health?”

“Straight to the point, I see, she sassed. No greetings or beating about the bush, you can’t even ask about your favouritest sister”.

“There’s no such word”. I bite back.

“Favouritest, favourite, we’re saying the same thing”.

“It’s not the same, I retorted. Enough of this digression, tell me what I want to hear”.

“Well, she dragged. About the arrest I told you about the other time, it fell through. Before dad could get to the church with his fleet of police, mum and his pastor have escaped; instead, they met an empty church. So, dad had to pay the officers for a service that wasn’t rendered obviously”.

“And where are mother and son now?” I asked.

“Still in hiding, we haven’t seen either of them since the night they left for church”.

“How sure are you that something didn’t happen to them? Audhubillaah, what if they were kidnapped”. I was beginning to doubt her claim of mum taking Sulaiman to her pastor.