A rusty red haze overtakes the radiant white glow of the moon as it stands watch over the still Somali desert. The sudden but silent celestial change perturbs not the trees, the crickets, the night moths. After the first few moments of this reverie pass, a loud and echoing masculine drone cuts through the peaceful black that unites the Heavens with this Earthly vantage point. The Somali Believers have fled to the mosques.
As I hear the call radiating through the night I envision our male students and our Somali askarii (guards) convulsing prostrate in prayer in the newly-finished school mosque. A woman not as welcome in the main halls of a mosque because of her gender is sequestered instead in the courtyard garden of our building. She is whispering prayers and Quranic verse, trying her best to save something – her soul? Perhaps ours too?
It is so strange to have students at once devoted to their religion so absolutely unquestioningly, so sincerely committed to following its words in good faith, and at the same time experiencing a mental awakening like few ever get to experience in their life. Imagine, just as Abdirachman is reaching the hilt of his energy, the pique of youth at 15, his English vocabulary is bursting forward, his powers of reasoning are phenomenally strong, and suddenly everything he has known before is blown up into conflation with new knowledge, images, experiences in the form of the words and lessons and exposure we, his foreign, maybe even alien-seeming teachers unveil, step by step. Questions begin to percolate in Abdirachman's mind:
“Did humans really come from monkeys? Will they go back to being monkeys? You said that we know the ingredients of everything, like Earth, Sun, Space, and even humans. Why didn't the scientists create a human or rebirth the died people? Why they didn't create another world and life? Why they didn't invent something that can keep them live forever because every scientist will die one day?”
And another student, too:
“What about marriage? In my country I am allowed to marry four wives at once. My western teachers will only ever marry one person at a time. Which is right...for me?”
I have (or can easily find) answers for the questions concerning scientific or historical fact. I can give my opinion on matters concerning American culture and convention. And where matters of personal development are concerned, I do my best. I say that I can only speak from my own westernized mentality and experience, and that from my Western point of view, xyz would be the desired goal. But that Somali culture and/or Islam may advise otherwise. And that there is a freedom of choice with which I believe all human beings to have been endowed – so the choice is there's to make. I tell them that deep down, they almost surely know what is right for them.
On this night at least, the students have clearly chosen their path. It is their tradition, one of our Somali teachers explained, that at the time of an astrological phenomenon such as this, good Somali Muslims are to pray, pray, pray, until the passing of the event. And so while they pray, we breathe. The other teachers and I snatch up these extra minutes of time to ourselves to catch up on what has taken a backseat to the priority students now occupied with a mission very separate from what we know. Tomorrow we will meet again, picking up where we left off.
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