The Peacemaker

'Azan' is the prayer call for Muslims. A fictionalized version of a true event.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

               Mulayim opened his eyes after practising the azan. He continued sitting on the floor and rested his long, thin hands on his legs. The sun had just gone down and the sky was painted scarlet. The orange glow ambling in through the window behind him always seemed to breathe life into the green, cracked sun-baked walls of his small room.

He sprang on his bed and crawled towards the window, poking his head out to look for the old lady who lived two houses away. Her rust-haired, freckled face greeted him with a bare toothed smile from the balcony. She swayed her arms in the air as she spoke to him. Her words of praise for his voice echoed in all the differently coloured, closely packed, narrow houses either side of the 10-foot wide road. Mulayim had lost his hearing two years ago, but he knew what she was saying. She always gave him her blessing when she heard him practise the azan.

“I know you are deaf, but I’m having doubts about her hearing as well,” said Ruhana in sign language as she joined him. Mulayim turned towards her and blinked slowly before hitting her gently on the head. Ruhana didn’t have to do anything except stare at him with a grave expression and her piercing, hazel eyes. She was small even for a ten-year-old but had the ability to transform her shy, attractive face into a stone-hearted manslayer’s in the blink of an eye. Mulayim was also aware that her thin frame was deceptive; her punches really hurt.

“Don’t say that. She’s a nice lady,” he gestured.

“Maybe she’s too nice. She just wants to make you feel good about this silly habit of yours. Maybe she’s just taking part in this charade out of boredom. You’re lucky you can’t hear. It’s painful to hear you sing every day!”

Mulayim didn’t pay any attention to her and put on his prayer cap.

“Why do you even sing every day?”

“It helps me keep up the practice,” he said, wearing his sandals.

“Will Maulvi sahib really keep his word and let you recite it during prayer time?” asked Ruhana in her contemplative voice. She could only whisper because of the incredulity of what it meant. Mulayim simply smirked. He ruffled her hair and walked out of the room.

“Wait, is that supposed to be today? You can’t go out today! Mulayim!” yelled Ruhana. But her brother couldn’t hear her. He crossed the small courtyard and ran out of the house enthusiastically.

 Mulayim had impaired hearing since birth. His left ear hardly registered sound. But he had lost all hearing when a firecracker went off right next to him. At the time his friends and family were more concerned about the gunpowder that was sprayed on his face, but none of it had managed to enter his eyes. However, everyone’s relief was short lived.

Mulayim was twelve when it happened but he didn’t let his handicap hold him back. Being stripped off the ability to listen to music or his own melodious voice - something he had always treasured and thanked God for �" devastated him. But rather than lamenting over the fact, he doubled his efforts in learning to convey his words to anyone who came to their house. In the beginning, it was just a diversion from his agony, but he was surprised by how quickly he was able to learn lip-reading and communicate with others. He didn’t start learning sign language until his sister found him a book more than a year later. He knew learning it wouldn’t help him communicate with people who still often screamed into his ear so that he could hear them. The only reason he learned it was so he could continue educating Ruhana. It was her idea, and he was touched by it. 

While he began communicating in just a few months, it took him a long time to start using his voice. He only wanted to use it for one thing, and he felt it would require a huge amount of determination and desire. In the end, it was his plight and misery that forced him to give it a try. He sang as if he was possessed, and it was his father’s tear-stricken face that told him he hadn’t lost the voice he was blessed with.

Mulayim ran past the closing shops energetically. His ears were deaf to the distant noise of public protests, but his urge to shine blinded him to all the warning signs. The people in the street tried getting his attention. They called out to him, tried grabbing onto him, a couple of them ran after him, and one even threw a pan at him. But nothing worked. For one thing, he was still the fastest runner within the entire walled city area of Jaipur. But more than that, the people who wanted to stop him had something else as a priority, which was to seek shelter in their houses.

Vehicular traffic had become almost zero in the streets. Word of unrest in the area had spread quickly. Pedestrian traffic, though, was on the rise. There were those who wanted to wait it out in their house, and there were those who wanted to add their muscles and voices to the tussle between the locals and the police. And there was Mulayim, oblivious to how various brothers of his community had marched to the police station where a couple belonging to their religion was being held for violating traffic laws. The policeman who had caught the duo had allegedly assaulted the woman.

Mulayim was exhilarated to see so many people in the streets. The congregation in the mosque would be greater, and everyone would have come because they heard him reciting the azan. Mulayim’s chest was already swelling with pride. When he turned away from the police station road towards the mosque, he was surprised to find it nearly deserted. But it struck him as an opportunity rather than something suspicious, ominous. The Maulvi was not in his usual spot either, which did seem strange to him. But Mulayim wanted to impress him more than anyone, to repay his faith in him. He counted the seconds on his watch and headed over to the microphone.

Even though he was deaf, he felt all hint of sound fading away. Even though he couldn’t hear anything, he placed his fingers on his ears. He wanted to do everything right, down to the posture. He did a quick rehearsal; concentrating to pick up the signs of inflections in his voice, noticing the knitting and rising of his eyebrows when he escalated to higher notes, feeling for the sag in his throat when he descended towards baritone. The tightening and loosening of his abdomen matched with the lilt. Finally, he cleared his throat - as a precaution - before turning on the microphone.

The first sounds of the azan only provided a soft background score for the violent mob outside the police station. It was only a murmur, but audible nonetheless. One of the pelters threw a flaming bottle at a police van, setting it ablaze. But the roaring inferno was muted by the rising sound of a humble strain. The raging crowd was overwhelmed. All they could do was pant. Even the policemen dropped their guard and surrendered themselves to it. All batons, stones, and sticks fell to the ground in a single, mild clatter.

There was an ambition to prove himself that drove Mulayim, but it was pure, innocent. It gripped everyone, coming at them in waves. There was no ebb, only flow. But the waves did not submerge them. Rather, they uplifted them. The ringing echoes raised everyone up high; high above unbridled rage, high above closed minds, high above resentment, high above intolerance. None of them recognized the voice. It didn’t seem like a boy’s, but neither was it a man’s. It was transcendent.

Some people recognized the voice, though. One of them was a rust-haired, freckle-faced lady, who did more than just smile and praise this time. She screamed her thanks to God, and it reverberated through the dense, tense streets. The faint echo was bolstered by the erstwhile ferocious mob. The policemen could do nothing but wait the situation out and see how things unfolded.

Ruhana was in tears. The voice was different from what she heard every day. It was different yet familiar, as if a long supressed, happy memory was unlocked, her body swept over by the paroxysm of joy that flooded within. When she imagined her brother stepping down the stairs of the mosque with a timid smile, her crying only became more vigorous.

Boys cannot wait to become men. Then they try and make the leap towards becoming great men. But on that day, Mulayim became something more. He became the man he was supposed to be. As his name suggested, he was The Peacemaker.  

Author's Note

Feel free to say everything that comes to your mind. If you feel anything can be changed/improved in the structure, I'm all ears!

Reviews

[JayG]

• He slowly blinked his eyes, his long eyelashes caressing his white cheeks.

Clearly, the narrator is explaining what's happening in the scene, because Mulayim can't see his own eyelashes, and he would never "slowly" blink, because that's called closing and then opening your eyes, not a blink.

But the primary problem I see is that you’re thinking cinematically, visualizing the scene and reporting what a viewer would see. But that takes time to read—lots of time. And in reality, does a reader care that someone they can’t see leapt onto the bed and crawled across it before looking out of the window, or simply stood and went to the window? No. Had he walked to it, or danced to it, the same person, in a room the reader CANNOT see, looked out of the same window. But on the page, in order to do something that takes only four seconds to do in life, the reader must read for seven seconds (I measured and compared the times). So your story runs dramatically slower on the page than in film or life.

Here’s the deal: You cannot tell a story on the page in the way you would in person for several reasons.

First, it slows the action too much to be an acceptable approach to a reader.

But of more importance, telling the story to an audience is a performance art. The audience must be able to hear the emotion in your voice. On the page it’s a monotone. They must hear your changes in intensity, cadence, and more. That’s impossible on the page.

They also must be able to see your gestures, your expressions, and your body language. In the page? They sit in the dark, unable to see you—informed, but not entertained.

In short: you’re using the techniques of another medium, one that makes use of sound and vision, in a medium that reproduces neither. It’s something the majority of hopeful writers do because in our schooling no one tells us that we learn writing skills that our future employers prize, not the specialized knowledge and skills of the professional fiction-writer. Those, we must acquire for ourselves.

And that’s my point. You have the desire, the perseverance, and, the story. But to that you must add the fiction-writing tricks of the trade. How can you structure a scene if you’re not aware of how a scene on the page differs from one on stage or screen?

After all, if we are to please readers who have read professionally written and prepared fiction for their entire lives, doesn’t it make sense that we need to know what those writers know?

So keep writing, of course. But while you do, dig into the tricks of writing professional-level fiction. They’re not obvious. So devour a few good books on fiction writing technique, and practice them till they feel as intuitive as the nonfiction skills you already own. As I so often suggest, you might dig into the articles on writing fiction in my blog. They’re written with the hopeful writer in mind, and may give you a feel for the issues you need to delve into.

Then, knowing how to give wings to your words, who knows how far you’ll fly?

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/

[Agyani]

Hey Jay
Thank you for the review. Even though I haven't always agreed with you 100%, I have learned from your previous reviews, which is why I sent you a read request for this story. I'll try my best to get my hands on some of the material you are suggesting. I can only find out if I agree with them or not once I give them a read.
You have pointed out a few important things in your review, and I thank you for that. :)

[Ghost writer]

It wasn't really my kind of story, but the end still captured me and the writing was good

[Agyani]

Thanks for giving it a read despite this not being your cup of tea. I'll keep it in mind from now on. :)

[barleygirl]

This is a much more sophisticated story than we usually see here at the cafe. This is amazing, the way you have woven so many themes & so many different characters into an uplifting message with hope & inspiration. I was afraid something bad was going to happen to the deaf boy as he did the azan, but it all turned out well & you capped it off by telling us the meaning of his name. I hardly ever see such a message of hope these days & I love it. You do a superb job of building suspense all along & building up the intensity of how important this is to the boy. This intensity is very memorable, as far as you ability to tell a killer story. I love it when writers write stories that teach us about things we are stupid about & therefore people get hurt becuz of our ignorance. I mean for many some tenets of practicing Islam to show the reality rather than the misunderstandings many have here in the USA about muslims. And also your vivid detailed description of experiencing deafness -- this is an incredible teaching piece to help people be more compassionate. None of this would be possible to convey with authenticity if you were not a very compassionate person yourself naturally (((HUGS))) Fondly, Margie

[Agyani]

Hi Margie
It really pleased me to read your review. You always talk your heart out, and the fact that you took the time to read this and write a detailed and heartfelt review makes me really happy.
When I started writing stories I just focused on the storytelling and the basic plot. But in my three years as a writer I have learned quite a few things, and honestly, my short stint here at the Cafe has already taught me so much! People here don't just have a different perspective from mine but are quite often so much experienced and learned in life and the trade of writing.
It's always a joy to read the works of and interact with people like you. :)

[Dhara_Ditzy Kat]

This story touches my heart. If only the world had more Mulayims. As it stands today, the dearth of such people is leading humanity to a sad state. Great story telling!

[Agyani]

Hey Dhara. I'm glad the story moved you. That was the intention. The threshold for tolerance is getting lower and lower everywhere, even more so in India in recent years. People everywhere just want to exercise their right to freedom of expression or speech without reflecting on things at all. These things often lead to mindless violence.
More Mulayims would surely help, for they would spread peace even without knowing it! :D

[Dhara_Ditzy Kat]

You are most welcome. It was a pleasure. Please send me RR for anything you specially want me to read. I'd love to know your thoughts on varied issues plaguing us.