Part 2

Part 2: The Losing Bargain

the worst moment of realization

POV: "When you discover that you are placing conditions for identity upon the prayer rug, while He is extending to you the lifeline that you are cutting with your own hand."

Epigraph: "I thought prayer was the reward I would grant my Lord when my life straightened out, and I did not realize that the crookedness of my life was only because I had declared my independence from prostration."

"Khalid" lived off deferred promises, carrying a heart clamoring with resentment and an eye that saw nothing in existence but deficiency. He tied his tie every morning with a lifeless automatism, casting a veiled glance of reproach at the neighborhood minaret, as if between him and heaven there were a personal feud. He would whisper to himself whenever the caller to prayer called: "O Lord, You know the tightness of my means, and You know the bitterness of striving... Grant me first the life I deserve, and I will be the most devout of Your servants, I will pray when I am settled, I will bow when the clamor of debts in my head subsides."

"Khalid" had turned his worship into a commercial "bargain"; he wanted the profit first to pay the price later, oblivious to the fact that standing before God was the "profit" before which no favor comes.

Years passed, and Khalid only grew more resentful, and the prayer rug left in the corner of his room only gathered more dust. Whenever his steps faltered in the mire of life, his aversion grew, and he deludedly thought that by abandoning prayer he was "punishing" destiny, when he was punishing nothing but a soul withering within him.

Until that night came... a night whose reckoning had not included pain.

A sudden stab in his chest robbed him of the room's air and brought him to the ground beside that abandoned prayer rug.

In the cold hospital corridors, under the pale, merciless "neon" lights, Khalid awoke to the monotonous sound of the heart monitors. The doctor was speaking of a "tumor" that had betrayed his body, and of a course of treatment that might not end in survival. In that moment, a funereal silence reigned in his imagination... He tried to lean on the "achievements" for which he had spent his life, but found nothing but banknotes that could not buy a single breath, and promotions that could not ward off the choke of death.

Came the worst moment of realization: when Khalid realized that he had not abandoned prayer because his life was hard, but his life was hard because he had deprived it of its only water. He realized that the "work" he had used as an excuse was nothing but a mirage, and that he had been stipulating to the "Creator of time" to grant him time to worship Him!

He looked at the ceiling, and a burning tear cut its way down his cheeks, and said in a choked voice: "What a waste of a lifetime... I was waiting for my life to improve so I could pray, and now I am certain that prayer was the life I was waiting for and it never came because I... never went to it."