Divinity Road (34 page)

Nuala stirs and asks me if I would like some tea. I am thinking that she must be growing bored but when she comes back she says it is fascinating, asks me to tell her more, so I explain that like Muslims and Jews, the Ethiopian Christians have set rituals that cover the way they slaughter animals. They cannot eat pork. Women cannot enter a church if they are menstruating. When they enter the church, they must cover their hair with a scarf. Even the way they sit is like in a mosque or synagogue – men to one side, women to the other.

And that, in a way, brings us back to the beginning of our discussion, the nature of my own personal faith.

So you see, in my mind, there was no great contradiction in my conversion, I tell her. It is difficult to explain, but it was just like swapping one blanket for another. They are both warm, comforting, fulfil their function. So converting was no big deal.

And now you still consider yourself a Muslim?

Of course. Not just out of loyalty to my husband. Like I said, Islam gives me what I want from a faith. What I want for my children, too.

What about all those accusations of Islam oppressing women?

Well, part of the problem is that outside the
Qur’an
itself there is what we call the Hadith. Those are the secondary, oral traditions relating to Muhammad’s words and deeds. They are sometimes contradictory and vague and can obscure the
Qur’an
’s original message. Also, this message can be corrupted by cultural influences. All this burkha business, for example.

There is nothing in the
Qur’an
that says women have to cover up completely. There are one or two parts dealing with how women dress, Surah 24:31, I believe, and 33:59. They say that women should behave with modesty and cover their bosoms in public, nothing more. Well, I don’t have a problem with that.

Wow, you really know your
Qur’an
, eh?

Bible, too. I spent my childhood learning it by heart to please my parents. Then I had to do the same with the
Qur’an
to satisfy my in-laws.

One thing people are always talking about is how harsh Islam is to Muslims who leave the faith. Isn’t the punishment death, or amputation or something equally gruesome according to Shariah?

For apostasy? Well, it depends who you listen to. Me, I always go back to the
Qur’an
. Let me see, it is
Al Nisa
, 4:115:

If anyone contends with

The Messenger even after

Guidance has been plainly

Conveyed to him, and follows

A path other than that

Becoming to men of Faith,

We shall leave him

In the path he has chosen,

And land him in Hell –

What an evil refuge!
Now to me that doesn’t sound like Allah telling us to go out and punish an apostate ourselves. Sounds to me like He is just telling us to leave him to his fate. That call to violence is down to the interpretations of individual scholars fuelled on poison, urged on by a lust for power. But my faith is between me and God, so to hell with whatever anyone else says!

What about that stuff about the different values put on men and women? Someone once told me that there’s something in the
Qur’an
about how in a law court, one male witness is worth two women.

Surah 2:282. Yes, it is true. Just like
Peter
3:7 describes a woman as the ‘weaker vessel’ in relation to her husband. And of course I can’t agree that women are inferior. Both books are old, they were written at times in the past when people saw some things a little differently, so maybe we have to see them in some kind of context. I believe that any healthy religion must be open to a certain amount of adaptation, that any religion whose every facet is a hundred percent prescribed must be unhealthy, insecure, and can only survive through blind adherence, or brainwashing, or force. A mature, secure religion must allow for some dissent, for discussion. And that is what Islam means to me.

But there must be some key differences between Christianity and Islam? Nuala asks.

I consider the question.

Look, I am not a theologian. All I can do is read the books and make my judgment. I certainly think there are more similarities than differences. For both it is basically the carrot and-stick approach. What do you mean?

Both of them start off with the promise that if you adhere to them, if you behave well, treat others with mercy and care and respect, then you will be rewarded. On the other hand, if you don’t do what is prescribed, then you will be punished. Both books have their positive messages of peace and tolerance and harmony. And their negative ones of hell and damnation, of war against the enemy. But at the end of the day both are about mercy and love. Surah 7:199 goes:

Hold to forgiveness; Command what is right; But turn away from the ignorant

Micah
6:8 says:

What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and

to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.
Two books, one message, eh?

Nuala is looking at me oddly and I feel a little embarrassed at my discourse. To cover my feelings I put her on the back foot.

What about you? I ask. Where do you stand on religion?

She laughs a little awkwardly.

Well, it’d break my mother’s heart to say it, but I suppose I’m against any organised religion, whatever that’s called. I don’t know if there’s a name for it. I was brought up a strict Catholic, mass every Sunday, Easter like a permanent camp-out in church. That’s what put me off first. Later I suppose it was seeing the effects of religion around the world that made me so negative. Not just the Christian versus Muslim thing that seems to have been going on since the Crusades, but all the other conflicts, the Protestants and Catholics in northern Ireland, Singhalese Buddhists against Tamil Hindus in Sri Lanka, Hindu fascists persecuting Muslims in India, the violence in northern Nigeria, Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. All that brutality committed in the name of one doctrine or another.

Yes, but that is not the religion. That is the people interpreting the message, twisting it, using it for their own pursuit of power or wealth, or because their minds are poisoned and weak. That is human nature. You cannot blame the religion.

Maybe. I mean, if the religion leads you to be kind to others, to do unto them as you’d have them do unto you as it were, then I haven’t got a problem with it. If your
Qur’an
or Bible or
Torah
or whatever leads you to behave in the right way, then good for you. In that sense, when it’s just a means to an end, I have no problem with it. It’s just that I don’t believe you need to sign up to a set organised faith to get that. I mean to me it’s common sense. Personally I’m just cutting out the middle man.

We both laugh.

What about your mother? I ask. What does she say?

Well, I’m sure she disapproves of the way the kids have been brought up. They’ve been baptised all right, but I don’t manage to get them to church more than twice a year, I suppose. And that’s really just to appease their grandma. Of course, I still feel the guilt. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic...

The conversation peters out, we reflect on each other’s words. Then Nuala breaks the silence.

I’ve never heard the
Qur’an
read, she says. But I like the sound of Arabic. It’s kind of soothing but powerful. Read me something from the book.

Really, I say, caught off guard by her unexpected request. What do you want to hear? I don’t know. Anything. You choose.

I consider this, flick through the Surahs, finally pick on 41:34 and 35. I begin to read the Ayat off the page, but I know them well and soon I close my eyes and let the words flow from my heart:

Nor can Goodness and Evil Be equal. Repel Evil With what is better: Then will be between whom And thee was hatred Become as it were Thy friend and intimate! And no one will be Granted such goodness Except those who exercise Patience and self-restraint – None but persons of The greatest good fortune.

When I finish she smiles and sighs. It sounds nice, she says. Like a song. And then, Fancy another cup of tea? And with that, our theological debate comes to an end. It is late now, my love, and I must get up early to revise for a classroom test.

My purest love to you, to Gadissa. You are my food, my drink, the air that I breathe. You are my waking and my sleep, my dreams and my prayers. You are inside and out. You are everywhere. And you are nowhere.

When she invites Semira to stay it is almost in spite of herself. She’s already told herself that it wouldn’t be a good idea. She treasures her own privacy too much. When she reveals to her friend Mary what she has done, the older woman shakes her head in amazement.

You must be mad, Nuala. You spend your working day dealing with all those problems. Surely you need that time at home to protect your own sanity.

What could I do? She had nowhere else to go.

Yeah, but you’ve got enough on your plate. You’re your own worst enemy.

Enough on her plate? She knew Mary would say something like that. It isn’t the first time she’s come across the idea that her loss is some kind of time-consuming burden, an activity to prioritise, as if she needs to set aside a certain number of hours for it each day. And yet nothing could be further from the truth. What she fears most since After is an enforced idleness that gives her time to dwell. On the contrary, her coping mechanism is based solely on the creation of activity, of bustle and commotion. The children’s needs provide a great deal of distraction, of course. But there are still gaps to be plugged, especially after bedtime, when reality comes hurtling down on her. There’s a part of her, then, that sees Semira’s arrival as an opportunity. She’s not sure whether this is a sign of weakness, though, so she says nothing of it to Mary.

And anyway, her decision to invite Semira is not taken blindly. After all, she’s been her tutor for some months, certainly enough time to gauge her personality and conclude that she has a good heart.

And of course there are other benefits. Like an end to the organisational headache and financial burden of babysitters. Semira rarely goes out in the evening, and makes it clear she considers it perfectly acceptable to take responsibility for Sammy and Beth when Nuala is bullied into a trip to the cinema with Mary or Linda, an after-work drink with colleagues on the Cowley Road, or an evening at the monthly book club get-togethers she has now resumed.

A further advantage, less easily measurable, is the positive effect of Semira’s children on her own. Helpful and obedient, no fights, no stroppiness, no sibling combat. Nuala watches and marvels and prays that just a tiny bit of that magic might rub off on her own two.

Semira’s arrival also allows Nuala to get to grips with her overprotective neurosis, to come to terms with her Doomsday Theory. Watching Yanit and Abebe’s independence – Semira now permits them to walk to and from school and often sends them to the shops on errands – gives Nuala the strength to hand some back to her own children. She returns to full-time teaching and gives up her role as voluntary classroom assistant for Sammy and Beth. She forces herself to take a step back from their lives.

Her job is fine. It provides all the escape she needs. From the moment she arrives at college she’s thrown into a frantic cycle of administrative and bureaucratic activity as well as the classroom teaching itself. There are termly schemes of work to complete, weekly class records, syllabus design and materials development, registers and student files, lesson plans and photocopying.

But it is her interaction with the students that inspires Nuala and prevents her jumping ship when the bureaucracy seems too oppressive. When people ask her where her students come from typically, she always tells them to pick up a newspaper and identify where there has been recent conflict. Today they are Afghans and Kurds, Somalis, Sudanese and Congolese, East Timorese and Burundians, Chinese, Palestinians, Rwandans and Kosovars. Tomorrow, of course, it might be different. At any given time she has, within a single classroom, a snapshot of global upheaval, whether social, economic or environmental. Contemporary politics in a nutshell.

A week has passed since Semira’s arrival. She spends her lunchbreak giving individual tutorials, an extended trouble-shooting session that she timetables in once a week, an opportunity for her students to bring her their problems. Today one student is uncertain how to get a place for his daughter at primary school. Nuala drafts a job reference for another, helps a third one to fill in her passport application form, a fourth to obtain a free bus pass. She helps decipher a court summons letter, refers a young girl for counselling, runs through the procedure for claiming back income tax. One student asks her how she can apply to a British university, another how to deal with council tax.

Nuala’s not timetabled to teach that afternoon but she’s agreed to accompany one of her students to the town hall for her daughter’s local education authority appeal hearing. Having endured months of bullying by a gang in her school including a night attack on her home, the daughter has refused to return to class and so they have applied for a transfer to another school further from her home. The new school has refused and they have appealed.