In his hotel room Hassan carefully prepared to say his evening prayers. He washed his hands and his arms up to his elbows, then his face, being careful to clean his nostrils thoroughly. He rinsed out his mouth and then dried himself with a clean towel. Dropping the towel on the floor, Hassan stepped into the shower and poured water from the small hand bucket over his feet, washing them up to the ankles. He put the bucket back on the stool in the shower, stepped out onto the towel and dried his feet.

Now, on the floor of the bedroom Hassan laid out his prayer rug. The rug had been given to him by his sister the year before she committed suicide. It was hand-woven, and its designs included a rendering of Mecca and the Kaaba, the empty temple at the center of the holy city, which was a focus for Muslim devotion. The door of the Kaaba was facing the top of the prayer rug, and he always placed the rug so this door was pointing toward Mecca. Then, when he stood on the rug to pray, he, too, was facing the city where Islam had begun and where the Kaaba reminded all Muslims that there was but one God.

He turned on the light, for it had grown dark in the room. The sun had just set, and so it was the fourth time for prayer in the daily schedule of a Muslim. He prayed at sunrise after he got up, at noon before he ate, in the mid-afternoon, just after sunset, and at night before he went to bed. Now he heard the cry of the muezzin from the minaret at the nearby mosque, which was broadcast through loudspeakers onto the streets of the city:

Allah is great! Allah is great!

There is no god but God,

And Muhammad is his prophet!

Come to prayer! Come to prayer!

Come to abundance! Come to abundance!

Hassan knew that Christians resented the broadcast of this call to prayer, and he had to admit that it was loud and the quality of the sound coming from the speakers was not very pleasant. But he looked forward to the call to prayer. It was part of the very fabric of his life, as a Muslim.

The call to prayer touched his heart, and opened up a part of him that he kept well-hidden most of the time. Hassan thought the prayer reached through the layers of his personality and his mind all the way to his soul. Like Christians, Muslims believe that a spark of the Spirit of God exists in each person, but in him as in others this spark is hidden most of the time by the need to present a strong and even harsh face to the world. Yet, for Hassan, it took only the piercing call to prayer to set his soul ablaze. Prayer five time a day for Hassan wasn't a burden. Instead, he was grateful for the opportunity to step out of his everyday life into the wondrous world of prayer that offered to him a sense of eternal life.

He listened to the muezzin's call echo through the streets of the city. La ilaha illal Lah: Muhammadur Rasulullah. "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God's prophet." He was filled with the rhythm of the prayer as well as its meaning. It was music for his soul. He chanted along with the muezzin: La i-la-ha il-lal Lah; Mu-ham-ma-dur Ra-su-lul-lah. There were four beats in the first phrase, La i-la-ha il-lal Lah. The second phrase began on the upbeat of the end of the first phrase and then was recited in four additional beats, Mu-ham-ma-dur Ra-su-lul-lah. Once more, he joined the muezzin: La i-la-ha il-lal Lah; Mu-ham-ma-dur Ra-su-lul-lah. "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God's prophet."

As the call to prayer ended, Hassan stepped onto his prayer rug, facing the door of the Kaaba. Allahu-akbar, he chanted. "God is greater than all." Then he recited the opening passage of the Qur'an.

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Creation,

The Compassionate, the Merciful, King of Judgment day!

You alone we worship, and to You alone we pray for help.

Guide us to the straight path,

The path of those whom You have favored,

Not of those who have incurred Your wrath,

Nor of those who have gone astray.

He chanted a second short text from the Qur'an in Arabic and then bowed and said three times, "Glory to the Lord, the Exalted." Standing erect again, he raised his hands, saying: "God hears him who praises him. Our Lord praise to you." Then Hassan knelt and pressed his forehead onto his prayer rug, at the door of the Kaaba. In this position he chanted quietly, three times: "Glory to my Lord, the most High." He remained still for a moment, as the blood pulsed through his temples. It seemed as if all the tension in him was surging from his body toward his face and flowing out of him into his prayer rug, at the door of the Kaaba.

Hassan rocked back on his haunches, put his hands on his upper legs, and pushed himself erect. He took a deep breath and exhaled. Then he breathed in again and repeated his prayer. Allahu-akbar, he chanted. "God is greater than all." He recited once more from the Qur'an.

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Creation . . ..

Bowing, he repeated three times, "Glory to the Lord, the Exalted." Then he stood erect and prayed: "God hears him who praises him. Our Lord praise to you." Kneeling once more, Hassan pressed his forehead onto his prayer rug, at the door of the Kaaba. He chanted quietly, three times: "Glory to my Lord, the most High," lifted his head, and again stood up.

He repeated this sequence one more time. Allahu-akbar, he chanted. "God is greater than all." Then he recited from the Qur'an, bowed and said three times, "Glory to the Lord, the Exalted." Erect again, he prayed: "God hears him who praises him. Our Lord praise to you." Kneeling, he put his forehead on the door of the Kaaba and said, three times: "Glory to my Lord, the most High." Then he lifted his head and paused for a moment, before standing.

A sense of peace settled over him. For a moment, his mind was a blank, and his body tingled with the rush of blood from his head and the pulse of the chant beating silently within him. He sighed, then breathed in and out slowly and easily a few times, before stepping off the prayer rug.

Hassan leaned down and gently lifted the prayer rug from the floor. Slowly he folded it, as he always did with the Kaaba showing. Then he laid the rug on the table along the East wall of the room. He would use the prayer rug again before he went to bed. Touching the prayer rug reminded him of his sister and then of his father. For a time after his sister's death, he couldn't pray. But as his mother went crazy and his father grew silent, he returned to his prayers five times a day, on the rug his sister had given him. The time of prayer provided a place of refuge for him from the chaos and tragedy that had overwhelmed his family, and after many years he realized that his prayers had also helped to heal the wounds within him.

Like all Muslims, he had learned his prayer in Arabic, but Hassan had also learned how to translate Arabic as well as recite it. All Muslims knew the basic meaning of their daily prayers, but many could not read the Qur'an in Arabic. In the West the Qur'an is published in translation, but in Islamic countries it is only available Arabic. So, Muslims in Pakistan who understand Urdu and Punjabi but not Arabic can only experience the sound of prayer. They cannot read the Qur'an for themselves in order to interpret its meaning. Of course, the mullahs preach on the Qur'an in the mosques, but many of the mullahs were poorly educated. Their sermons were often little more than harangues on morals or ideological issues.

A few years earlier Hassan had begun reading portions from the Qur'an after saying his early evening prayer. Now he picked up the Qur'an he carried with him whenever he traveled, sat on the small sofa in the hotel room, and opened the scriptures to one of his favorite passages. He read the opening prayer aloud in Arabic, because the Qur'an was meant to be recited, and then translated in his mind the words of the text.

God is the light of the heavens and the earth.

The likeness of His light is as a niche,

Wherein is a lamp, the lamp in a glass, the glass like a glistening star, kindled

An olive neither of the east nor of the west,

Whose oil would almost shine had no fire touched it.

Light upon light: God guides to His light whom he will . . ..

He believed that the light of God was reflected in all creation and also in human creativity. For Hassan, it was clear that the religions of the book, Judaism and Christianity, revealed that same light, and he supposed that other religions might also reflect "the light of the heavens and the earth," at least in part. Always, of course, it was necessary to sort out truth from error, whether in Islam or in any other religion. But the light of God, he believed, shone through every light in the world and was reflected in all that was good and beautiful.

He turned to the Qur'an once more and recited: "To Allah belongs the east and the west. Whichever way you turn there is the face of Allah." The one God was in all things-not identical to all things, of course, for that sort of pantheism was nonsense. God wasn't in a cow the way that at least some Hindus seemed to think. But God was the light behind the life of the universe, and thus Muslims were right to call all people to submit to the will of their Creator. Hassan felt that the basic thrust of the Qur'an was praise. There were many passages about right and wrong, and about the coming time of judgment. Nonetheless, he believed that the scriptures were not primarily threatening but were inviting him and other Muslims to submit their lives to God, the Creator, the Merciful, who is omnipresent and all-knowing.

"Roam the earth and see how Allah conceived Creation," he recited from the Qur'an. "Then Allah will create the Second Creation. Allah has power over all things; He punishes whom He will and shows mercy to whom He pleases. To Him you shall be recalled." His life, all life, was of no consequence compared to the life-giving reign of God. How could there be any meaning apart from that given by God to Creation? Mary, the mother of Jesus, gave her life to God. And Jesus, too, submitted to God's will and was the greatest prophet of all, until God revealed His will fully to Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him, through the words of the Qur'an.

Hassan closed the Qur'an and remained still for a moment, letting what he had read settle into his mind. The rhythm of his prayers was still pulsing within him. The familiar words of the muezzin were as loud and clear now, in his mind, as when he had heard them. La i-la-ha il-lal Lah; Mu-ham-ma-dur Ra-su-lul-lah. "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God's prophet." In the stillness he could feel his heart beating and the blood flowing through his body, keeping time with the words of this prayer.

Then he rose, put his Qur'an away, and took a seat at the small desk in his room. He wanted to go over his arguments once more before the hearing in front of the Supreme Court tomorrow. They would only get one chance to present their case. They had to get it right, and it was primarily up to him. Yet, he wasn't really worried. He knew he was well prepared, and they had good arguments to offer the Court. He had been a little surprised when the Court agreed to hear their case, but that must mean the justices were ready to take some action. Otherwise, he thought, they would have simply postponed the hearing. Yes, it was a good sign. Perhaps they were close to checkmate after all.