The Sweetness of Forgetting

by Kristin Harmel

One evening, after sitting with the Haddams while they said the Salah in Arabic, Rose was in her own room praying in Hebrew when she turned around and saw Nabi watching her. “Come, Nabi,” she said to the boy. “Sit with me while I pray.” He knelt beside her while she finished her prayers, and then they sat together in silence. “Rose?” he asked after a long while. “Do you think God speaks Arabic or Hebrew? Can he hear your prayers or mine?” Rose considered this for a moment and realized that she did not know the answer; she had begun to doubt recently that God could hear her at all, no matter what language she spoke. “I do not know,” she said finally. “What do you think, Nabi?” The boy thought about this for a long time before replying. “I think God must speak all the languages.” His tone was confident. “I think he can hear all of us.” “Do you think we are all praying to the same God?” Rose asked after a moment. “Muslims and Jews and Christians and all the people who believe in other things?” Nabi appeared to be considering this question quite seriously too. “Yes,” he finally told Rose. “Yes. There is one God, and he lives in the sky, and he hears all of us. It is just that here on earth, we are confused about how to believe in him. But what does it matter, as long as we trust he is there?”