Prayer Beads

It’s Thursday afternoon – late – and I’m walking in the marketplace looking for fresh bread and a few vegetables.  The place is filled with Muslim men and women doing last minute shopping for tomorrow’s day of prayer.  A small boy is sitting on an orange milk crate playing with a set of Muslim Prayer Beads, the Masabha.  The Masabha is made up of three sets of thirty-three beads and one large one making one hundred in total, or just thirty-three beads with two small oval beads to set off each set of eleven beads. The Masabha the little boy is holding is of the smaller variety, is made of olive wood and is worn down from use. (The ninety-nine beads are used to say the ninety-nine names for God (Allah) during prayer. Muslims consider that repeating Allah’s name over and over brings them closer to Allah. They would call Allah by names such as; the Wise, the Compassionate, the Merciful, the Good or the Eternal. Sometimes Muslims recite the same few favored names over and over again.)

The boy is holding them, shaking them in order to hear them rattle.  His pale blue eyes stop me in mid stride.  I smile down at him.  He holds out the prayer beads as an offering of friendship to a peer.  I take this as a compliment and am immediately grateful to be pulled into his world – a world smaller and simpler than mine.  A world in which the lines are only drawn between those who smile at you and those who don’t even notice you sitting there, like a god on his throne.  As I kneel down to take this offering from his tiny hand, I am aware that several dozen pair of eyes are watching me, among them those of this boy’s father or grandfather to whom these beads belong.  Collectively, this crowd of people draws in and holds its breath.  I look down at the beads in my hand and study them for a moment.  I can see exactly the place where thumb has worn down the wood.  I can smell the scent of the person who has prayed them down so. 

I thank the boy as one thanks a one-year-old, and give his gift back to him, the giver.  As the child takes the beads back, the people in the crowd all exhale at once; I can hear it.

“Do you want to keep them?”  The man asking is a man about my age.  He is dressed in the white robe of a religious man, with a cream-colored skullcap on his head.  I wonder if he is an Imam, but I don’t ask him that question.

“Are they yours?” I ask, nodding toward the beads.

“They belonged to my grandfather.”

“And you’d give them to me?”

“No,” he said, his smile imperceptible, the corners of his month turning slightly upward.  Nodding toward the boy, he added, “But he would.”

“Yes,” I say, nodding my head and smiling his smile back at him – imperceptible exchange of grace.

He waits.

I ponder what to do. I pray, I think, I pray.  “One day he would regret giving them to me, I think.”

“Yes,” he said, “I think so too.”

With that, he reaches out a hand; we shake and I walk on.

“Hey,” he calls out.

I stop, turn around, and see him walking toward me.  In his hand is another set of prayer beads.  Someone from the crowd must have gone into a nearby shop and brought them out to him.  He holds them out to me, and as I look from the beads to his eyes, I see his grandson standing there in front of me, and I am weak in the knees.

I reach out to take them.  “Okay,” I say.  “Okay.  Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,"  he says.

I look around at the crowd.  There must be a hundred or more people standing and watching this little drama enfold.  I wonder if anyone in this crowd knows who I am.  I wonder if, after I walk on, someone will tell this granddad who I am.  I wonder who I am.  I wonder what he’s thinking right now.  I wonder if God is somewhere in the crowd, somewhere in the little boy, somewhere in the little boy’s grandfather, somewhere in me, in you, in this world somewhere and doing something good in this somewhere where God is – and is this one of those good things that God is doing?  Is a bridge being built – a flimsy little bridge?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Maybe this is nothing.  Certainly this is not much more than an interesting story.

I don’t know the answers to all the questions that are arising around “them” and “us.”  But I think “us” being with “them” might mean that God is with “them and us” too.  That’s what I think.  But what do I know?  Not much, actually, and less and less every day.  But I do know this: That little boy was sure generous, wasn’t he?  Maybe I’ll say a prayer for him tonight.  Better yet, maybe he’ll say one for me.