Reciting the Holy Book
By Mo H. Saidi
Mother recited the Koran every night.
None of us knew what those words meant.
She persuaded us to pray every day.
She would frighten us,
“You’ll go to Hell otherwise.”
Near the mosque I was born.
Reciting aloud the muezzin kept us
awake all night. Mother said, this was
God’s call, and we would suffer
forever if we didn’t respond.
She paid us to recite the Holy
Book, "So you’ll go to Heaven,”
she’d cry out. When she saw
that we ran away instead
she prayed for us every night.
She brought a mullah who called
us pagans because we read Hugo
and Hemingway, played chess and listened
to Mozart. We kicked a ball
and played soccer in the courtyard.
Our father dismissed the bigot quietly
told us, “That is an ignorant fool:
go to school and read Hedayat and Ferdowsi.”
That mullah is now the Grand Ayatollah
who resides in the Shah’s palace.
Mo Saidi, "Reciting the Holy Book" from Between A and Z. Copyright © 2014 by Mo H. Saidi. Reprinted by permission of Mo Saidi.
Source:
Between A and Z
(Wings Press)