I remembered Asif warning me on the way there: ‘You don’t ever disrespect the imam.’
The imam took Habib’s hand in his and shook it formally.
Habib spoke: ‘Salaam alaikum.’
The imam’s expression didn’t change as he bowed his head politely and replied: ‘Alaikum salaam.’
‘What does it mean?’ I whispered to Asif.
He leaned in close, trying to speak quietly, but his words carried across the mosque in a whispered echo: ‘It’s an Islamic greeting. It means peace be unto you.’
Habib shot us a sideways look, warning us to be quiet.
Next it was Saeed’s turn to shake hands, then Tariq’s, Asif’s, and finally mine. I’d memorised the greeting but I was a shy little girl and frightened that I would somehow get it wrong. The imam sensed my fear and was kind towards me, and thankfully I didn’t mess up the words.
Once we had all greeted the imam, Habib shepherded us to the side of the room and pointed at some prayer books that were stored in a pile on the windowsill.
‘Pick up your prayer book,’ he told the others. But I didn’t know what to do – I didn’t have a prayer book.
The imam came over. ‘Just watch and follow what your brothers do,’ he said gently in Urdu, but I still didn’t know what to do about the book because their books all had their names written on the front.
The imam sorted through the stack of books on the windowsill until he found a suitable one. He pulled it from the pile and held it in his hands, flicking quickly through each page to assess how difficult it was.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘use this one.’
I glanced at the book in my hands and saw it was written in Urdu. With the imam only speaking to us in Urdu and the prayer books all in that language, I would have to try to learn more of it. I knew enough to understand Mum when she was shouting at us in her native language, but now I needed to learn it properly so I could recognise Urdu words in books.
The book I’d been given seemed too childish for my age. It had pictures of people kneeling on prayer mats, a dog, a boy holding an apple, a boy brushing his teeth, a drawing of a cow, even a man banging a drum, but when I looked at the squiggles by the drawings they meant nothing to me. They weren’t like the letters I’d learned in school so I couldn’t spell them out. How would I ever understand them?
I was sitting trying to make sense of the shapes and words in the book when the mosque door flew open and crowds of children – around seventy of them – came flooding in. Soon the room was bursting with kids. They’d been brought in by a special mosque bus from different parts of town and they filled the hall. The noise was deafening, as each and every one of them began to chatter at the same time. Some went off to wash themselves before settling down so that prayers could begin. Suddenly the imam spoke and everything went quiet. A hush descended across the room, and now it was the silence that was deafening.
The new arrivals sat on the floor and waited to be told what to do. Each one had a prayer book in his or her hands. I scanned the faces. There were all ages here, with primary-school kids sitting crossed-legged next to teenagers. Some of the boys were already sprouting dark hairs on their chins and top lips and looked more like young men than boys. These children lived in a different area to me and my brothers. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. I felt like the new girl on her first day at school again. But then, I suppose I was. Suddenly I felt very small within this big crowd.
I thought of my mum back home, cooking in the kitchen, and wished she were here with me now, holding my hand like she used to do when I was little. Nowadays the only times she held my hand were when we crossed the road, or when I didn’t want to leave somewhere and she was dragging me out. She wasn’t an affectionate, demonstrative mother in the way that some of my friends’ mums were. Dad was the affectionate parent.
The whole room stayed quiet while the imam took his place at the front. He knelt behind a small wooden table, which stood only inches from the ground, just high enough to get his knees under. I tried not to laugh. To me it looked like a little dolly’s table.
The imam told us to read and memorise a page of the Koran. I looked down at the squiggles on the page in front of me and couldn’t understand a word of it. Asif saw me struggling and shuffled in closer to help. He pointed at the picture and then at the word, reading each one out slowly so that I could memorise it. I tried my best but there was so much to learn that I didn’t know where to begin.
Other than Asif, I didn’t speak a word to anyone. I was scared but still a little excited. I didn’t have any friends here but it didn’t matter because I had my brothers and they would look after me. For the first couple of weeks I stuck to them like glue.
Later that evening, the imam handed me my very own Islamic prayer book, written in Arabic, Urdu and English. I felt extremely important. Inside there were prayers for everything: prayers for the sick, and prayers for when you were travelling on a train, bus or ship. I examined the list at the back of the book and saw there was a prayer for sleeping time, a prayer upon awakening, one for leaving the house, one for entering and leaving the mosque, even a prayer for going to the toilet! My head spun with it all. How on earth would I remember any of it?
Despite my worries, my first night at the mosque went fine. Mum was waiting by the front door when we got back.
‘Well?’ she asked. ‘How did it go?’ She pulled at the arms of my winter coat, freeing me from the sleeves, before hanging it on a nearby peg.
‘It was okay,’ I told her.
She looked disappointed. I think she’d expected more but, to be honest, I wasn’t sure what I thought of the mosque. I hadn’t really known what to expect, but whatever it had been it wasn’t like that. I suppose I was a little disappointed. I’d wanted it all to be as happy and joyful as it was at Suki’s temple. Instead it had been very boring and serious. Still, it was only my first time. Perhaps it would get better.
From that day onwards, Mum decided that Habib could take us to the mosque every time.
‘Keep an eye on them all,’ she instructed as we set off. I glanced up at Habib and he didn’t look happy at all.
‘I’m always having to look after you lot,’ he moaned as we walked along the pavement to the mosque. ‘I’m sick of it. Nabila, walk quicker,’ he snapped, picking on me for no reason at all. ‘We’re going to be late at this rate. You don’t want to make the imam angry, do you?’
Lessons started at five on the dot, and the last prayer was at seven, so Mum expected us back no later than seven-thirty.
When we were walking to the mosque without Mum that second day, my brothers told me lots of scary stories about the imam.
‘If he gets angry then you’d better watch out!’ Asif began.
Habib explained that the imam would think nothing of hitting the children, but it was always the boys, never the girls. He’d hit them with the back of his hand. During the first few weeks there I didn’t see him hit anyone myself but I believed every word my brothers said, even though the imam remained kind towards me. He was so tall that he looked like a giant, with a long white beard and hands as big as a shovel. I thought how much it would hurt if he whacked you with those hands. All the other children seemed frightened of him too, so I was careful not to stand out in any way or do anything to make him angry.
One night when I’d been there for a few weeks we were all sitting reading when the imam walked up behind a boy.
‘You’ve not been paying attention, have you?’ he scolded.
The boy looked up from his book and flinched when he saw the imam standing over him. He nodded his head weakly. ‘I have. I promise.’ He was so tense and nervous that his voice cracked when he spoke.
I glanced round at the other children