Disclaimer: Not mine. Probably a good thing. I'd ruin it.
A/N: Little Mosque on the Prairie is a comedy. I have a pathetic sense of humor. But I'm good at drama, so drama it will be. I'm not Muslim, or Canadian, so if I get anything wrong (phrases or kilometers or celsius, etc.) I'd love a kind correction. Reviews and criticisms more than welcome. If you haven't seen this show, check it out on YouTube (type in "Little Mosque on the Prairie"). The world needs more shows like this!
Shrieks of young laughter and crystalline light coruscated over the snowy street as Rayyan pulled up to the mosque. Sweet, frosty air scented with wood smoke and wind blew through her headscarf as she got out of her car, weaving its fingers through her hair and brushing the back of her neck. She shivered and lifted her face to the late morning sun, letting its radiant warmth fall over her face and wash away the cold. Only for a moment did she stand enjoying the January day before her own pleasure reminded her another's fear, and what she was there to do.
The small smile that had lifted her lips failing, she turned to the mosque and pulled open the door. Removing her coat at the rack inside and slipping off her shoes, she went to the cheesy fake stone fountain they had plugged into the wall and slid her hands under the gurgle, gasping at the frigid water. Over and over her hands turned round one another, cleaning palms and fingers and wrists, and already she felt herself beginning to enter into a state of prayer with that familiar movement. Cupping her hands she brought the water up and poured it over her face, and felt herself becoming liquid and flowing into prayer as the water ran over her.
Reaching for the stack of towels near by, she took one and gently wiped the drips from her skin and dropped it into the used bin, her skin tingling as she moved through the cool air of the empty building and entered the prayer hall. With so small a group of worshipers, each had their customary rug among the patchwork of them laid out on the floor, and by habit she went to hers. Hands raised, she murmured the opening of her prayer, the Arabic words floating off her tongue and up to Allah's ears. "Allah is the greatest… Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, the Beneficent, the Merciful..."
He couldn't concentrate, and only felt mildly guilty for it. It was supposed to be his day off after all, and if he had a congregation that seemed to pull another harebrained problem out of a hat every time he opened the Qur'an to study, well, that was Allah's will, wasn't it? There was no way he was going to catch up on a week of contemplation in a single day, especially not after the week he'd had trying to keep Baber from declaring war on the 'heathens' after his daughter had been invited to attend a church New Year's function by a friend, and especially not with the sound of children laughing filtering into his office, reminding him of snow-filled childhood days in Toronto.
Throwing his pen in a drawer, he at last gave in and stood. If Allah had made it snow, then snow was the calling of the day!
Thinking of the snowman he was going to build, he rushed into the foyer but stopped in his tracks at the sight of Rayyan in prayer through the doorway. What was she doing here? The time for mid-morning prayer had already passed, and it was not yet noon. And it was Sunday. By a mutual, mostly unspoken agreement the members of the mosque didn't usually come on Sundays to avoid riling up the church-goers on their sabbath. The delicious anticipation of snow that he'd been filled with a moment before was squelched by a falling sensation in the pit of his stomach. Rayyan wouldn't be here unless something was wrong.
But he wouldn't interrupt her. Quietly as he could, he pulled on his jacket and gloves and slipped out the front door into the icicle-fractured light on the front steps, trying to let in as little cold air that might disturb her as possible.
With nothing else to do while he waited, he began building his snowman. Picking up a clump of snow, he packed it together into a tight ball and began patting more snow onto it until it was large enough to begin rolling beneath his hand. But his mind was not with his hands, and what had sounded like fun a few minutes ago now became automatic movements he was largely unaware of as concern flitted around his mind.
He had gotten the sphere of snow large enough that it came almost mid-way up his thigh and was pushing it around the churchyard when Rayyan finally emerged, buttoning closed her coat. She saw him laboring over the giant snowball and graced him with an amused smile, the worry dropping from her face and a little from his mind as he straightened.
"Is that going to be a Muslim snowman?" she joked, approaching him.
"Complete with a beard of twigs," he answered rubbing his hands together. "Though I may have to go steal one of Baber's hats."
She grinned. "I thought it was supposed to be your day off."
He rolled his eyes. "Thanks to Baber himself, I haven't gotten a thing done all week. I made up the first half of my sermon on Friday ten minutes before we were supposed to start, and made the other half up on the spot."
"I guessed as much," she laughed.
"So that's why you were snorting during the sermon!"
"I was not snorting!"
"You were laughing at me!"
She blushed a little and said sheepishly, "I was trying really hard not to."
"Oh, well that just makes it all better then." His grin faltering, he asked, "I saw you praying. Everything okay?"
"Yeah. It's one of my patients. She's pregnant, and she's already miscarried three times. She's five months along – she's never made it this far before – but she wants this child so badly, and she's afraid she's going to lose this baby too. I helped her through her last miscarriage, and I know how much pain it caused her. I came to pray for her."
"Do you think she'll make it?"
Rayyan shook her head. "I don't know. I hate to say it, but it's not likely. I just want to get her a couple months further along. If we can keep her from miscarrying another couple months the birth will be premature, but the baby will probably be okay. She's on bed rest and medicines to keep her from going into labor, and I've got an emergency plan set up with doctors at Frances hospital so we can take her in immediately if she starts to miscarry again."
"But Frances is more than fifty kilometers away. Why not take her to a closer hospital?"
"Frances has a team of doctors that specialize in these types of cases, and they have a pretty high success rate. No one else has anything close."
Amaar hesitated, the question he hated to ask hovering in his mouth for a moment. "But… what if it's snowing? Can you get her there?"
Rayyan's lips twitched in a grimace, and her eyes shone with worry. "That's why I'm praying."
She looked away, her gaze unfocused as she fell into her thoughts. He watched her, watched the shadow of doubt cast over her face, and became determined to pull her out of it. "Well," he called her away from her thoughts, "now that I know the world isn't balancing on the head of a pin-"
"It is for one woman," she contradicted.
"But not for you," he reminded her. "And yours is the only world that matters to me." She gave him an odd look, and he almost swallowed his tongue when he realized how that had sounded. "Yours, and Baber's, and your parents', and Fatima's, and everyone else's in the congregation," he added smoothly. "Because Allah help me if one of your guy's worlds starts falling apart. I'll be making up my sermon on the spot again, and having to endure you snorting at me through the entire thing!" She laughed brilliantly, her dark concerns momentarily forgotten, and he grabbed the opportunity. "Come on," he told her, turning back to the bottom of his snowman, "you get to help me with this thing."
"Oh, really?" she grinned.
"Consider it your penitence for laughing at me on Friday."
She crossed her arms as he began to push the heavy ball. "I don't recall anything in Islam about penitence."
"No, it's a Catholic thing, but I think it's an great idea," he grunted. He looked up at her. "Would you get over here?" he ribbed her.
She smiled broadly, her face for a moment light like a child's, and took her place beside him. "And after you can help me break into Baber's house and steal a hat."
"You aren't serious."
"I am too. I'm tempted to steal every one of his hats and leave him with nothing to wear as retribution for this past week."
Together they pushed the ball around the yard in circles, heaving and putting their weight against it until they had a somewhat lopsided sphere as high almost as high as their hips.
"There," Amaar breathed, dusting extra snow off his gloves. "You go start the next piece while I get this one set."
While he crouched down and began packing snow around the bottom of the ball, she walked off a little ways to a fresh patch of snow, her feet sinking beneath her. With cupped hands she gathered soft powder and pressed it together, squeezing it and turning it until it was round. As she added a little more to the growing ball, she glanced over to Amaar. He had to be the strangest imam she had ever met. He certainly didn't act like one. An imam building a snowman? A Muslim snowman? And joking about stealing hats? Surely there was something sacrilegious about that. Unlike most of the imams she had known who were solemn and distant, he was so casual, so human and warm and fallible (and sometimes cocky) that she forgot he was their spiritual leader until he said something reflective and wise that always seemed to catch her by off guard. But that was one of the things she liked about him: he made her forget - made all of them forget - that he was above them in stature, and everyone felt at ease with him.
As she watched him, and the snow in her hands grew to the size of a baseball, an idea came over her that was definitely irreverent, and completely irresistible. As Amaar stood and shaved off the top of the sphere to make a flat surface for the torso to sit on, Rayyan knelt and packed more soft snow onto what she had started.
Amaar scraped the last of the snow off the surface he'd created, and looked at it with satisfaction. Turning to look for Rayyan, he asked, "How's the torso com-"
He didn't even making it all the way around before she threw the snowball, launching it perfectly just as he began to turn, and it shattered over his face. He stood frozen with surprise for a moment, trying to dig the snow out of his eyes, and when he could see stared at her in disbelief. She laughed nervously, afraid that maybe she'd stepped too far over the line after all. But her laughter broke his astonishment, and he grinned with anticipation.
"Oh, you are so dead!" he shouted.
She ducked behind a tree and began making a second ball as he stooped to make his first. He threw it as she peeked around the tree, and she pulled back, his snowball glancing off the trunk and disintegrating. Moving around the other side, she threw her second and pinned him on the shoulder.
"This is war!" he declared.
Laughing and breathless, she knelt to make another snowball, unaware of the cold seeping through her skirt. But when she stood and glanced around the tree again, Amaar wasn't there.
Confused, she turned around to look for him, and gasped as found herself face to face with him. Point blank he threw his snowball at her, and it sprayed all over her face. She shrieked at the cold and ran from him, and she could hear his laughter behind her as he gave chase. She turned and threw the snowball in her hand. He tried to duck, and it hit the back of his neck.
"Agh!" he cried, dancing around. "It went down the back of my shirt!"
She was about to duck behind the unfinished snowman when her cell phone rang. Immediately, her laughter faded and she held up a hand to Amaar. With cold and nervous fingers, she fumbled to pull it out of her coat pocket and flip it open. "Hello?"
His next snowball forgotten in his hand, he watched as her face paled, the sinking feeling returning to his stomach.
"Yes… Yes, I've got a bag packed and in my trunk. Call the ambulance. I'll be right behind her."
She snapped the phone closed. Amaar dropped his snowball and came to her. "Your patient?"
"Yes," she answered. "She's miscarrying… I'll call my parents on the way out of town, let them know."
"No, let me call them. You just drive."
She looked up at him with gratitude. "Amaar, pray for her, please."
"For you both. Go."
"Thank you," she murmured, and almost ran to her car.
"…Rayyan!" he called. She turned at the open door and looked back at him. "Be careful."
She nodded, and got in her car. He stood in the snow and watched her pull out and drive away, something cold settling in his gut that he tried to tell himself was the weather. Glancing up at the sky, he saw the sun was closing in on zenith, and he turned toward the mosque. Praying a little longer today seemed like a good idea.