Mahgrib

There is a mosque in the village of Pero, lost on the empty shore of the Indian Ocean. In the morning little boys sell eggs up and down the broken road that leads to the lagoon. The coastline is empty and yellow, and there are tangles of dry things at the top the sand. Most days ugly waves grunt onto the reef offshore and the long, fading line of the land is smudged with a smear of salt-spray. Pero is a long, long way from anywhere: one of Indonesia’s frayed and forgotten edges. It takes many days of rusted ferries and broken buses to get back to anything that could be called a city. East and west of the village there are people who live in the thatched houses among the tall palms. In those villages they worship their ancestors, but in Pero they are Muslim, and they have a mosque. The dome of the mosque is cracked like a willow-pattern vase in the backroom of a grandmother’s house, and fixed, not with brown superglue, but with rough cement. And when the sun runs in west along the line of the yellow coast, and drops beyond the palms where the ancestor-worshippers live, the muezzin has a voice as cracked and broken as the dome of his mosque.

“Allaaaaaaaah uh akbar, Allah uh akbar…”

South of here there is nothing until the water cools and you meet the pack ice of the Southern Ocean.

But while the thin fishermen in Pero kneel in the broken mosque, their limbs bony in loose sarongs, the sun is running westwards, and in Surabaya, the Arabs of Ampel are taking down the bolts of coloured cloth and bundling up the packs of dates from Tunisia and pistachios from Iraq, and beyond the long rat-run of the Sacred Ampel Street there are small boys in white skull caps hawking plastic bags for the shoes of the faithful. They are washing their feet at the fountain in the courtyard, and up high where the sky is paling there are kites, catching the tail of a Dry Season breeze. Inside the mosque it is already too dark to see. Fat men are sleeping on the marble steps and in the garden thin men are sitting, cross-legged by the grave of the Wali, with their hands cupped, and the hibiscus and frangipani flowers fallen from the broke-back trees all around them. All of them shift when it comes.

“Allaaaaaaah uh akbar, Allah uh akbar…”

And on and on and in the heavy green heat in Singapore there are Indian men in white pyjamas making their ablutions in the level courtyard beneath the yellow-green lines of the Gaffoor Mesjid, and there are Chinese ladies with thick glasses on the street outside.

“Ashahaduan la il aha il Allaaaaaaaaah”

And the sun runs on, faster it seems, outpacing jet-planes bearing for desert states and cold capitals, dragging half a day, and north and north, and over flood-swept fields and the finger-stretched waterways of a broken river state, and in Mongla where the hotels are dirty and the river is full of boats, every muezzin of every mosque is in full voice as the falling sun bleeds a little into the milk-coloured air, and the Bengali men with high cheekbones and moustaches make their prayers.

“Ashahaduan la il aha il Allaaaaaaaaah”


And onwards and the prayercall is louder than ever over the tangle-crickle-dog-leg-chain of alleyways in Mughal Delhi, and to jog up the red steps of the Jama Mesjid breaks a brow-sweat. From the minaret, with the coal-dark stretches of stair you can see all of the old city, and the water tanks in the railway station beyond the Turkman Gate, and there are men peering skywards on every rooftop, and the pigeon flocks are tumbling and swelling and closing in the humming dusk.

“Ashahaduan Mohammad ar-rasul Allaaaaaaaaaah…”

And in the mirror of the Delhi mosque, beyond the border where they have just marched and strutted like chickens to close the gates, in the great courtyard beyond the Sikh Walls, half of Lahore have turned southwest, and before the domes and marble inlay of the Badshahi Mosque they are lined in long ranks, so when the bend and kneel together the sound of forty thousand shalwaar kamises rustle like wind-chased leaves.

“Ashahaduan Mohammad ar-rasul Allaaaaaaaaaah…”

And north and north, turning to beat before the west-stream of the sun, over high ice and scar-cut valleys to meet the desert edge. There is only the thin line of the road with a vast hollow emptiness of cold sand beyond, and a faltering string of towns, and way across dry stone to the south, beyond the silhouettes of two-humped camels there is the long broken blade of the mountains, darkening before the falling sun. And in Yarkand, at the edge of the mud-walled bazaar, close to where the town gives wall to alleys lined with thin poplars, and grey-water ditch-channels, and houses without windows, and donkey carts and pomegranates, a few old men have lined on the frayed green carpets of the mosque. Their beards are white and their eyes turned like almonds at the corners and there is only cold stone and sand for many miles around the town, and there are stars already in the pale sky, and the mesh of roses on the trellises of the mosque courtyard. And here the muezzin may not amplify his voice.

“Haya as-salaaaaaaaaaaaat…”

And south and south, across cold slopes where Marco Polo sheep, heads bowed under the weight of their own horns, are pawing at the snow for frozen grass, back to catch the fizzing wake of the sun, and still in the mountains, in Rumbur, beneath walnut trees, a man is treading red grapes for wine in a broken wooden trough, and across the mud-lane an old man is making the call with hands cupped to his ears and no electricity to fracture his voice.

“Haya as-salaaaaaaaaaaaat…”

And on and on, sweeping to catch a sun that has left the coursing jets behind, and pulled Pero and Surabaya and Singapore and Mongla deep into purple night, across a white courtyard behind the old caravanserai near the Story Tellers’ Bazaar in Peshawar where the Afghans are praying, sweeping on until we catch the hard, crystal light as it flicks red-flame onto the snows of Ararat, rearing high over the cold plain beyond Dogubayazit, then on again over claw-scored mountains to Erzurum, lost on the edge of the cold Anatolian steppe.

“Haya al-falaaaaaaaaaaaah…”

Faster and faster the sun is running on, but we sweep behind it, arching through its fading trails, south again, and into the City along the Street Called Straight, to the steps beside the café with the white cat, and through the gate in the Roman walls, and they have half-filled the courtyard, and the women in black, crying at the tomb of John the Baptist have been shooed away so they can make their lines. We are swinging through the compass now, and they are twisting, edging their shoulder to the fading light.

“Haya al-falaaaaaaaaaaaah…”

North again, north and north and in Konya where the Mevlana whirled and the air is cold and the tiles of the madrasah green. But only a few men are praying here.

“Allaaaaaaaaah uh akbar….”

Down the line of the Levantine coast, sweeping past metalled beaches, under the breath-breeze falling from the Lebanon ranges, into the Delta, along canal-cuts and fellah-villages under sagging palms in the gloaming to the Cairo, and to the minaret of the Ghurriyya and the sound is mixed here, a hundred times from a hundred needling spires, and below, in the velvet gloom of the mosque, they have left their shoes and washed their feet, and now turned their backs full to the sun.

“Allaaaaaaaaah uh akbar….”

And on and on over sand and stone and four borders, light slipping from our grasp, sun trails fraying and coming apart in our fingers, and across the last of the desert and a blade-back of mountains until we are brought up again before the sea in the grubby streets of Rabat, and a mosque with a square tower and winter surf breaking on dirty shorelines below the flaking, white-walled alleys of the medina. The mosque has green tiles laid into yellow stone and rain has run through in the afternoon and left the buildings damp and there is a smell of rust and grilling fish, and offshore the sardine boats are beating against the broken swell under a bleeding sky. It will rain again soon, and the men hurrying into the courtyard have pulled up the hoods of their coarse jellabiyas and the tower of the mosque is black now against the sky and the spray from the broken waves is catching in the wind and spitting onto the patch of dirty paving where boys with cropped hair are playing football, and there is nothing beyond here except ocean, and we have finally lost the sun.

“La il aha il Allaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah…”

© Tim Hannigan 2008