Page 26 - Solstice Art & Literary Magazine 2020

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UNTITLED • JACQUELINE BOUSQUETTE
Ceramic • 8x6x3
2 BRASS CROSS • WILL ARNASON
1
Jewelery • 2x3
1
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CRISIS OF FAITH
SAMIR MIRZA
What does it mean to be faithful? Is it going to church every Sunday? Being baptized in holy water?
What does it mean to be Muslim?
Is it praying five times a day?
Reading the holy book to become enlightened?
My mother tells me that I should believe in God more than I believe in myself
But how can I believe in God when I don’t know how to believe in myself?
My Nani tells me every day on the phone that I need to pray more
But how I can pray when I don’t have a reason to?
Sometimes I wonder if faith is akin to innocence Believing that there is good out there in the world That somewhere up above there is a being that
genuinely loves us
Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to believe in Santa
as a child
The roses in your colored glasses have not yet
drawn blood with their thorns
They say that to be faithful is to be courageous To trust that Allah has a plan for us all after we die That willingly walking into a windowless room
and turning off the light is the purest form of
bravery there is
But is it courage, or ignorance
If you sit in a darkened room when the sun is
shining outside?
Maybe I am the ignorant one
After all,
I never bothered to learn to read the Quran when
I complained about reading a language that I
didn’t understand
I complained about fasting from dawn to dusk
without bothering to learn the reason why And sometimes when I’m alone
I pretend that I’m not Muslim
To escape the prying eyes
Leering at a part of my identity that I don’t know
if I want to be part of me
When I was nine, while praying, I used to say “I’ll pretend that this little spot on the carpet is Allah,” and stared at it, imploring it to feel my devotion
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