THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM 

My fourth Ramadan I travelled overland through Indonesia from Southern Bali to Northern Sumatra. There at the cassette stall in the Bukittinggi market the man unplugged Led Zeppelin and briefly allowed his lo-fi with megaspeakers to electronically scramble various readings from the Qur’an. Accepting that the full volume producing the distortion was necessary, what with the other stall holders still smilingly blasting out Led Zeppelin, I heard what I liked and made my selection. I bought a tape of Nanang Qosim reading Qaf (one of my favourite surahs) and suratul Mulk, which I would often play on my walkman as I wandered through Malaysia and the Indian sub-continent. “The month of Ramadan, wherein the Qur’an was sent down to be a guidance to the people.” 

I spent the next Ramadan just outside Leh, Ladakh, high on the western end of the Tibetan Plateau, surrounded by the huge desert that is the rain shadow of the high Himalayas. But “Give good tidings to those who believe and do good deeds, that for them await gardens underneath which rivers flow”, for in a few places the melt of the distant snowcaps gurgles up out of the earth to water a few fields of grain and some apricot trees, before revealing itself to be the source of the Indus River on its way to watering Kashmir. Then, after leaving the gardens of Shalimar, the Indus flows the full length of Pakistan from the northern mountains to the sea. Quite a trip for a humble desert spring, you must admit. 

The population of Leh, postal address the edge of nowhere, is half Buddhist and half Muslim, distant relatives of Tamerlaine and the great Mongol Khans. As luck would have it, I fasted all month amidst a houseful of Buddhists, a very pleasant if schizophrenic Ramadan experience, though with a real sting in the tail for my Eid present. The plan was to leave Leh as soon as possible after Ramadan in an attempt to get home before my money ran out, but the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley I realised, when I greeted the Eid-ul-Fitr moon and promptly collapsed with Hepatitis. 

I stayed with a Muslim family in town for the three weeks of my recovery, and that was the end of my listening to Mulk, as I had to sell my walkman to pay for my room and board. After four months of eating nothing but boiled vegetables, however, I felt that my liver might survive the rigours of Indian travel and I followed the river down to Kashmir. In Himachal Pradesh I also sold my camera, for less than I would have liked but I had more use for a pocketful of rupees, then took the train through Amritsar to Lahore, where two days of city squalor sent me running to Karachi and the sea. With all of Pakistan’s western border closed, and not enough money for a plane, it seemed that the only hope I had of getting nearer to home was to try to find a boat going my way. 

Karachi was mobbed with Afghan refugees and stranded Europeans, junkies strung out on the local heroin, and lechers availing themselves of the local rent boys cruising for trade in the hotels and cafes. Was this really what happens when Muslims make a country? Was this the Kingdom of God on earth? Of all the places I saw on my travels, Pakistan was the place I liked least. Appalled by the corruption and bigotry that surrounded me, and unable to find a hotel room even for ready money, I tried to find a mosque that would let me use their floor to sleep - not as easy as one might think in a Muslim country. At the mosque where I eventually stayed, the Imam made his opinions clear – I could sleep there if I was prepared to go out and preach the approved mosque message, but as this I was not prepared to do, they would throw me out in three days. As the man said, “You’ve seen the streets of Karachi, they are full of poor people who have nowhere to sleep. If we let them sleep here the Mosque would be full all the time.” I said that I thought that was the idea. 

In the downtown booking office they told me the monthly boat was to leave in four day to Dubai, and I thanked Allah for the perfect timing. I even found that when I counted my money I had enough. The fare took almost all I had but no more. My elation at the thought of leaving Pakistan was soon dashed, however, when they demanded the cash in dollars. Now I must admit that despite my faith in the every day nature of miracles, the situation finally seemed hopeless. Allah had provided a boat on time and within my budget, but I did consider it unrealistic to think of buying dollars on a Karachi street at the government approved exchange rate. 

No way out! Incapable of seeing any solution! That is when you need to know you are in God’s hands, and that is when suratul Mulk came in handy. I sat on a bench in some kind of park, and wrote a letter home to my mother. It was easy enough to tell her where I had been, but I really had no idea where I was going. As the birds flapped noisily into the trees above my head, I sent her a quote to keep her from worrying. “Have they not regarded the birds above them spreading their wings, and closing them? Nothing holds them but the All-Merciful.” 

That night in the mosque my sleep was disturbed by the noise of some late arrivals. It seemed it had to be a dream, as my ear so familiar to a background of Urdu, heard voices talking pure American. The light went on to reveal a room full of Hajjis, heads newly shaven, just off the boat from Jeddah. Though mostly locals, there were several Indonesians, and about six black Muslims from New York, New York. “Hey, you speak English!” said one, “Do you know your way around here? – Where can we change some money?” There are indeed times when Allah from His mercy lets us see those everyday miracles in a way that defies our ability to dismiss them as coincidence. 

That night, for the first time I tasted Zam-Zam water, and for quite a while we sat and talked. A few hours after having told my mother not to worry because my feeding was safe in the care of the All-Merciful, an Indonesian brother gave me two dates from Madina. One I ate, and one I wrapped up and saved, vowing not to eat it until the All-Merciful was letting me starve. After paying for my passage with my divinely gifted dollars, I had four rupees left, which bought some bananas for the voyage, and within days I was in Arabia. 

I was given the address of a mosque in Abu Dhabi, where I told them that I had no money, and asked if I could sleep. After salatul Maghrib someone stood and briefly spoke in Arabic, and suddenly I was surrounded by smiling faces, and hands pushing money into the pockets of my dishdasha. Very soon I had a job and a place to stay, and could afford a new camera, and a new walkman, and a ticket home after visiting Makkah. Of course I still have my date from Madina.