It’s getting pretty tired now-the gold embossing on the cover is all but worn off. The binding is coming undone, and…
BY JENNIFER LYNN JONES
OF ALL THE SENSES, THEY SAY SMELL IS THE ONE MOST CLOSELY TIED TO MEMORY. I BELIEVE THIS IS TRUE BECAUSE OF MY QUR’AN, THE MASSIVE A. YUSEF ALI TRANSLATION, PRINTED IN 1968.
It’s getting pretty tired now-the gold embossing on the cover is all but worn off. The binding is coming undone, and the thin pages are almost completely yellow-but I would never trade it for a new one, and that’s not just because I went to the trouble of stealing it 15 years ago. It’s the smell, that wonderful scent of old paper and ink, that takes me back to when that Qur’an was the only thing I had to connect me with Islam, that time when I had yet to meet a Muslim in the flesh, and my closest tie to the Islamic community was the view outside my father’s car window as we sped past the small mosque in Corvallis, Oregon, on the way to visit my grandparents an hour away from our home. I was 14 years old, a freshman in high school, and I was a Muslim… Definitely the only one in my school, and quite probably the only one in my small town of four thousand. I hadn’t set out to become a Muslim or “discover Islam”-I just needed a topic for a research paper in my English class. I remember the only requirements were you had to use more than one source of information (and encyclopedias couldn’t count!), and it had to be 14 pages long-a veritable thesis by freshman standards.
Other than that, the topic could be about anything. I suppose many of my classmates chose the usual topics for thatage group; rock bands, favorite hobbies, current events of the day… Me, I chose “The Split Between India and Pakistan and the Role of the Islamic Religion.”
I’ll admit, I was a bit of an odd kid. From a very young age I was always interested in religion. I even logged about a year as a “Rajneeshee,” or a follower of a cultish group that took over a small Oregon town by the barrel of a few hundred Uzi submachine guns, a couple attempted murders, and one mass intentional food poisoning of a salad bar… But that’s another story.
I also loved geography; Ah the world, so big, so different, full of possibility, new experiences, places! Not so odd when you consider the stifling familiarity of small town life. I saw the film, “Gandhi,” as I am sure every publicly educated American student has at least three times by age 17, and that was enough to pique my interest in India (which had already been roused by my Rajneeshee stint), and, since I didn’t want to research “boring old England,” I thought Islam and Pakistan would suffice to round out my paper.
I have also always been a rabid book person. Give me a good used bookstore and I’m as happy as a kid in FAO Schwarz; so the opportunity to go to the school library, one of the last remaining without those nasty theft detectors at the door, was always a welcome event.
Once in the library, all I really remember is finding that Qur’an, laying on its side on a shelf in the research room, the inner sanctum of librarydom, whence one may never even borrow, but only peruse while under the gaze of the ever-watchful librarian. I sat down to read, opened the already yellowing pages, and smelled that wonderful scent for the first time. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting… something in keeping with the evening news; angry rhetoric, crazy musings, anything resembling the vaguely negative image Islam had in my brain. What surprised me was the tone, the beauty, and, more than anything the familiarity of the words; almost as if I had seen them before. I knew, even before I left my seat, that first time I read from its pages, that this Qur’an would be mine… And, though it was big, I bundled it up in my other materials and walked out of that library slick as you please. It took me only about two days of reading to realize that I was a Muslim.
A few people eventually knew of my faith, but believe me, it wasn’t something that you advertised. It became difficult when my family started to realize the magnitude of my decision. I would hide to pray, so they didn’t notice that, but they did notice my steadfast refusal to eat pepperoni pizza, my sudden interest in Islamic books, and my posters of Islamic places on my bedroom walls.
Change is difficult on a family, and, although mine was never religious, the cultural residue of Christianity clung tightly. One can’t really blame them. But when they took my prayer rug (that I had acquired in Disney World), my one long dress, and my beloved old Qur’an, and told me they were throwing them in the garbage, I wanted to die.
Somehow I persuaded them to let me put them in a box to keep in the attic, sealed and out of reach. I didn’t read that Qur’an for three years. Sure, I read from other copies of the Qur’an and Islamic books, but always in secret and away from home. I loved the small college library a few miles away, because it had a small collection of Islamic books, and I would make up excuses to go there to study.
One day, I even got the chance to finally go to a mosque. My friend called me and told me he was going to the Corvallis mosque, the same one I used to drive by on my way to my grandparents, for a school project. My hands shook, and I tried to sound nonchalant as I called to my mother in the living room to ask for permission to go. My Qur’an had been in the attic for a year already, and I suppose she decided I had backed off my intense interest, so, miraculously, she agreed.
As we drove through the hilly farm-country on our way to the mosque, I fought my intense nervousness. This would be my very first contact with a real live Muslim! I was terrified and excited at the same time. This had literally been what I had dreamed of. When we arrived and stepped out of the car in the rainy evening, I looked up at the building in disbelief. I’m really here! I thought, while trying to look calm in front of my friend.
We walked up to the building, opened the main door, and stepped across the threshold and into the cool dim of the interior. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a figure moving in my direction. I turned, and was met by a little man, rushing toward me with a wide-eyed look of horror. Flapping his hands in a way similar to the manner in which one would shoo a stray cat, he exclaimed, “No! No!” “This is for men! You go!” while he put his arm around the shoulders of my friend and led him inside.
I won’t pretend I wasn’t hurt by this “warm” reception. Somehow, I expected my faith to show… to be welcomed like some long-lost sister. Instead, I stumbled back out into the rain and made my way to the women’s door a few yards away. There, I entered, removed my shoes, and walked up the soft, carpeted steps to the empty women’s floor.
Silently, I padded around the rooms, looking at the posters of Arabic letters on the walls, enjoying the freedom to explore in privacy. I even walked over to the large, round window overlooking the busy street below, pulled back the curtain and looked out to where I used to drive by in my father’s car. Eventually, some women came in. One, an American, even confirmed the fact that I was, indeed, a Muslim… validation I desperately needed.
Three years later, when I left home for college, I asked permission to pack the box in the attic to take with me. Later that night, as I sat in my new dorm room in Corvallis, just one mile away from that mosque, I opened the box and took out my Qur’an again. Now it’s almost 16 years since I found my Qur’an lying on its side in the reference room. I have thought about returning it, but I can’t bear to part with it. You see, when I open it, the memories come… and Allah is forgiving.
Jennifer Lynn Jones is a writer, a homemaker, and mother living in Seattle, WA.
