“A Teacher of the Koran”
From the early days of the last century, Ecuador Street is associated with the Jewish community. There are religious school, Kosher businesses and other communal institutions. On its blocks are located the community dining halls for those recently arrived from Europe and shops in which to work at the trades that they brought with them from their countries such as tailors, furriers, jewelers and shoemakers. It’s a bit surprising that a century later, on the same street, a prayer room had been set up—a Musala—that if it didn’t reach the category of a mosque, it fulfilled similar functions for Islam.
The purpose of the place is to bring together social life and to have a space fitting for prayer. I knew the place when it was lived it by another tenant and I remember that it wasn’t very big. In spite of that, there are many Moslem immigrants who frequent it. You see them conversing animatedly on the sidewalk and walking around the neighborhood. The headquarters passed unnoticed, because there were no indications outside, only a postcard from Kaaba, hanging behind the entry door. There were no luxuries inside. A worn gray carpet, a shaking ceiling fan, four chairs, a shelf with copies of the Koran and religious manuals. The place gives the impression that their prophet astutely guided the Muslims to set up Musala near the wholesale merchants of the Once area. There they could obtain articles and bric-a-brac and earn they sustenance with a certain convenience. I am grateful because several have become loyal clients of my business.
They are all well-mannered, respectful and very assimilated to our customs.
Yunes is a teacher of Arabic and spiritual guide to this congregation to which attend South African immigrants, Pakistanis and those from Bangladesh. Thy are no Syrian Lebanese Arabs whom we are used to and have for many years had their institutions in the San Cristóbal neighborhood. Yunes has the tired walk of the clergymen. He is very large and his skin is dark like almost all of the South Africans, he wears a white tunic and uses enormous sandals as his only foot ware. It matters little if it be winter or summer. The people of the community respect him, and he speaks a reasonable if rasping Spanish as opposed to other immigrant, who chat only in their languages of origin, which makes communication difficult.
Yunes transmits a current of comprehension and empathy that crosses all culture, language and religion, so that when I saw him walking at midday through the Abasto, I invited him to eat falafel in an Arabic restaurant where I am a habitual diner. But he couldn’t accept because it was the month of Ramadan, something that it is easy to forget in the cosmopolitan metropolis in which we live.
As so I learned that Ramadan is an entire month of fasting, but only fasting by day. They eat before they leave in the morning and then when the sun sets. I thought that it wasn’t a complete fast, but without a doubt a great detoxification, a brake in the ingestion that is always a good thing. Wise were the ancients that imposed these customs among the common people so that they be healthier. The two of remained standing at a corner, without even being able to sit at a bar and without even knowing what to talk about. I took advantage of the situation to ask his about my conjectures about the origin of our incomprehension of Islam. We can’t guide ourselves by the literal phrases of the Koran, that seem aggressive to us, as we don’t take the conduct of the characters of the Bible. I suppose that Yunes was surprised that my question pointed to the epoch of our common ancestor: The Patriarch Abraham.
I asked him the name of the child that God asked Abraham to sacrifice. A question that had two possible answers. His was very clear: he was named Ismael. I didn’t expect anything else, but it hadn’t occurred to me that the Bible says the presumptive son to sacrifice was his younger brother Isaac. He was sincerely amazed by my revelation. I commented to him that although Isaac was the younger son, his mother Sarah had a higher place in the family hierarchy, and it had to be for that reason he was the preferred son. But neither did he know that the Egyptian Hagar, the mother of Ismael, was the second wife of poor Abraham. Nor that Ishmael and Hagar were expelled by Sarah with divine consent when she herself succeeded in giving a descendent to Abraham’s lineage. Nor were they saved in the desert by an angel that God sent to care for them, It was evident that he hadn’t read Genesis, only what the Koran transmits.
Neither had I read the Koran, and I wasn’t in my plans to do so. I only know a few passages that the enemies of Islam use to provoke panic and that I suspect are biased. For Yunes, sufficient proof that Ismael was the chosen one is that during the pilgrimage to Mecca they still sacrifice lambs as offerings. The objective is that every Muslim put himself in Abraham’s situation and understand the generosity of Allah who permitted the substitution of an animal for Ismael. Ismael es venerated as the father of all the Arabs. I told him that I didn’t agree with the sacrifice, I put on my habitual face of displeasure concerning the death of a living thing. I had to explain that I was a vegetarian. And that it wasn’t because it was in style, but because I am one for more than forty years. Although I doubt that in Yunes’s circles in was in fashion to be veggie, I believe he understood me.
We agreed that much time had passed and that nobody could know the truth about the destiny of the sons and the wives of Abraham. The holy books could have been adulterated in each case for the convenience of the interested party who printed them, the traditions can have been affected the little historic truth that is conserved. We recognized that there is deliberateness in considering the Arabs the descendants of servitude. For that reason, Hagar was in the Bible story. It was she whom Sarah tolerated because she couldn’t give sons to the patriarch. And no patriarch can consider himself one if he didn’t have a masculine heir. For Yunes, there is no doubt who was the favored son of Abraham, who moreover was the first born. I didn’t care in the least whom the patriarch decided on, but it did interest me to know the motive for this incomprehension that every day brought more pain to the earth.
I explained to him something like that, and he told me that it pained him greatly the name of God was used to kill. I don’t doubt his goodness. In Buenos Aires, the life of an Islamic cleric is not easy. because of his clothing, the taxi drivers ask him if he is a terrorist, before letting him get into the cab. They don’t know that the true terrorists imitate the local people. They disguised themselves as religious Jewish for attacks in France. We agree that the incomprehension has to be eradicated in the future. But his conclusion about how to rescue historical truth surprised me.
He proposed that children ought to recite the Koran by heart so as not to go astray. That caused me even more fear, because to learning by heart gets in the way of all reflection and makes the children future fanatics. To submit the children these days to only repeating the Koran seemed to me not only primitive but restrictive of their freedom.
Our worlds were separating so that I preferred lo lead the conversation to a more personal topic, the story of my Catholic mother-in-law, with whom I get along with well. She repeats to anyone who can hear her what she learned in the Church since she was a little girl: that the Jews killed Christ. She never once considered that the Romans had the power at that time and Jesus himself was and lived among Jews. I tried to explain away to my mother-in-law the theory that the first Christians were skillful in looking to the Jews as the guilty ones. It was in Rome where their future lay, and it was better to win over those in power. To consider the Romans as murderers was not an astute way to make new friends. Yunes told me that my mother-in-law was mistaken. It was impossible that the Romans killed Jesus because he hadn’t died, therefore nobody could kill him. It was a relief to know this. For Islam, it seems that Jesus didn’t die on the cross, but was elevated to heaven alive and kicking. He will return again and he will live a normal life and then he will die. They say nothing about whether he will get married like any other mortal. It seems that his stay on the cross was already sufficient punishment. The reason for his second coming is principally the establishment of justice on earth and the murder of the antiChrist. Laudable proposal if there ever was one.
A great piece of news, that if my mother-in-law had known, she would have left this world more tranquilly.
traducción al ingles por Stephen Sadow
Fuente https://bit.ly/3elxIxI
Es un capitulo del libro " Diario de un cuentenik" de Editorial Leviatan (2020)
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario