What was it he had said again? Bismillahi then something, then something, then raheem…

She felt hopeless and lost as she turned, reaching for her Quran, the English translation. Abdelrahman. She passed her fingertips gently across the cover remembering, of all the things about that moment, the way his hand looked so brown against the book and his eyes how he looked so shy passing her the Quran after class.

If you have any questions, just ask me anything.

She remembered how his face lit up when she had finally found the courage to ask him about his religion, and later he brought her this Quran as a gift. She remembered the long conversations in the cafeteria during breaks and after class, talking often late until the campus itself was closing. The ache in her heart deepened and she clutched the Quran against her chest. He had invited her to take classes in the Masjid, the same Masjid where he married her soon after she converted.

Marry the converts quickly to keep them on the straight path.

A simple ceremony with the Imam, Abdelrahman, herself, and an elderly white-bearded man who stood in as her “father” and who had laid his hand upon her head in a fatherly blessing with a huge toothless smile after the marriage ceremony was over.

MashAllah.

They had only that one night together as husband and wife before the call. His voice was frantic on the other end of the line quickly trying to fill her in on the government men who had wanted to speak with him, who had come into his work, who had arrested him, and now were taking him somewhere. Where? He didn’t know, but he had been allowed no lawyer, and had begged this one call to her and then he was gone. When she went to the police they said there was nothing they could do, in fact the officer had brushed her complaints aside with a tone that advised her to leave before she found herself in trouble as well. The word “traitor” was written across his eyes as he took in her hijab and abbaya and he closed himself off before she could even utter one word. The men at the Masjid were so scared of being taken themselves that they could only offer her empty promises and lame excuses, afraid of their own tenuous holds.

It is the will of Allah subhana we ta’ala.

She stared down at her hands still decorated in her bridal henna and felt herself a widow before she had even been a wife, there had been no time to marry legally choosing instead to first marry in the religion and file the paperwork later. No time for even that. It was only two months since the towers fell, and was this still America? The America her grandfather had come to not so long before seeking refuge from persecution and crushing poverty in Ukraine. America, a land of hope, of renewal, of freedom of speech, and freedom of religion; but only if that religion was Judeo-Christian, only if that speech did not cross the line, and no hope if you did not fit the standard of the status quo.

I seek refuge in Allah…

Her voice stuttered and cracked and the silence echoed loudly in her ears.

Bismillah Arrahman arrahim…

It came back to her as the sound of his voice when he sat teaching her patiently, with slow pronunciation, how to recite surat-al Fatiha, the opening.

Iyakka naboodhu wa iyakka nastaeen, You alone do we worship and to You alone do we ask for help.

Was this America, the land of the free? Sitting alone in the middle of the room she began to weep, abandoned in the country of her birth.

Ih deena suratal mustaqeem, suratal adheena anamta alaihim, ghayril maghdhoobi alaihim, wa’alad daal lin..

Amin.

Living for the daily oddities and novel situations she finds herself in, Molly Elian graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in Communication Studies. And she still has a million dreams.