Spiritual Sunday
We are in the final days of Ramadan—I believe it ends on Wednesday—so here is a poem honoring the holy month. I always think of my Ugandan reader Farida Bag around this time of year. Agha Shahid Ali was a Kashmiri Muslim who moved to and lived in the United States before dying tragically of cancer at 52.
Prayer Rug
By Agha Shahid Ali
Those intervals
between the day’s
five calls to prayer
the women of the house
pulling thick threads
through vegetables
rosaries of ginger
of rustling peppers
in autumn drying for winter
in those intervals this rug
part of Grandma’s dowry
folded
so the Devil’s shadow
would not desecrate
Mecca scarlet-woven
with minarets of gold
but then the sunset
call to prayer
the servants
their straw mats unrolled
praying or in the garden
in summer on grass
the children wanting
the prayers to end
the women’s foreheads
touching Abraham’s
silk stone of sacrifice
black stone descended
from Heaven
the pilgrims in white circling it
this year my grandmother
also a pilgrim
in Mecca she weeps
as the stone is unveiled
she weeps holding on
to the pillars
(for Begum Zafar Ali)
From The Half-Inch Himalayas (Wesleyan University Press, 1987)
