All this pain is nothing, I am assured, compared to the fire of Hell if I do not memorize. Before I learn to bite my tongue, I question. “If Allah burned my flesh off, and then regrew it, and then burned it again for all eternity, won’t I eventually get used to it?” “No,” my mom replies. “Allah will make sure that every single time it hurts as much as the first time.” I was terrified of Allah, of the Day of Judgment, of burning in Hell—not things that occupy the mind of the average child, well, not the average non-Muslim child.
