The landscape turned mountainous around them. There were no longer any trees or any shade, just the sun pressing down on them, scorching their heads and stabbing their eyes. A path led them up to a hill and the cool interior of a cave. As soon as they stepped in, they heard the drip-drop sound of water, touched the wet walls and their eyes were soothed by the shadows that flickered around the cave. Further in was a hot spring, its water releasing vapours that were irresistible. Thirsty and dirty, they did not even confer but plunged in: Moni with a splash, Iman diving head first, pulling Salma with her. The water was everything they needed. It was comfort and welcome.
Iman felt the water penetrate the fur of her coat, reach deep to her skin. Her human skin was buried under the fur, a distant mark of her identity. She dived down and found that she could hold her breath for longer. She was like a seal, gliding away from her friends and back again. She felt the strength of her body and when she opened her eyes under the water, her tongue was safe in her mouth, her legs were her legs, her lower body that of a woman, her feet human. She struck through the surface of the water, pulled herself up but found that she was exactly how she had been when she first dived in.
In the warm water, Moni relaxed. Bobbing on the surface, she gazed at the walls of the cave, paintings in blues and reds. They were children’s paintings, flowers as big as faces, bodies as thin as sticks, mops of hair and everyone smiling. Moni smiled too. She did not know how to swim but she was not afraid of this water, not worried that she would sink. The water was washing her, and she had always appreciated cleanliness, enjoyed the smells of soap and detergent, the scent of lemons and pine. In the water, the stiffness of her body eased. She could spread her legs out, she could raise up her arms and stretch. How good that felt, to be tall and straight again! But it was only in the water. As soon as she stepped out of the pool, she sprang back into a ball, her knees up to her chest, her arms tight around her knees, neck craned forward.
Salma too, in the water, became her former self. The strength flowed back into her arms and legs. She could stand up, her feet touching the slippery bottom of the pool, her weight held up by the warm water. It was just like normal, how it had always been. She was not doomed to life flat on her back. The three of them were heading in the right direction; they were surely returning. This optimism lingered even when she pulled herself out of the water and found that, again, she had no strength. Again, she was unable to stand up tall or even to crawl. The water had not altered any of them. The water only showed them what they could be. But ‘only’ was not the right word, for the water gave them what was just as important as change. The water gave them hope. The water made them stronger in faith.
So, on they went. Through the valley of fear, where shadows played with their minds and sudden noises made their skin crawl. They saw visions of their own future deaths, the ultimate agony and ugliness, the loneliness of the grave. And that was not all. In the valley were spectres of known fears so that Salma submitted again to Amir’s scalpel and Moni was made smaller and smaller by the boy’s growing body. Iman was in a war zone again, dodging gunfire, stumbling over a corpse, touching softness that was mangled flesh, limbs torn off and flung. In the valley of fear, the three of them clung to each other as the shadows pounded them with nightmares and squeezed their hearts with fright.
Daybreak saved them. The first rays of the sun drove out the malevolent shadows. ‘We used to pray,’ said Salma when she saw the faint layer of light over the night. ‘What happened to that?’ None of them could remember when they had last prayed. When they had last prayed properly and it was not like brushing their teeth, going through the motions with their minds elsewhere. Noon jumbled into night, sunset mixed with dawn. They had come to the loch with their prayer mats and copies of the Qur’an, but they had not looked after them, they had not kept them safe. They had come to a country where people had stopped praying and not realised that they were the ones brought here to pray. They did not consciously take up the worship which others had left. They did not realise that they were a continuation, needed to fill a vacuum, awaited by the ancient forests and masses of rocks. They misunderstood their role. They underestimated their own importance and exaggerated their shortcomings. They inflated their problems and followed their egos, counselled each other but rejected what was right. Their quarrels taking up space, their connections weakening. And now they were far away, deep in the realm of consequence. Iman could not remember the words, neither Moni nor Salma could stand up straight. But they could pray with their hearts, couldn’t they? With their eyelids, with the breath they pulled in and out. They could, weakened as they were. Imperfect prayers, like those of the unclean and those who had not yet fully repented. Feeble prayers, but sincere because they were in genuine need.
The sun shrugged off the clouds and they saw ahead of them green and water, woodlands and glens.
