The Community

by N. Jamiyla Chisholm

To many of the Sisters and Brothers, Imam Isa was a prophet. If he never said that we could live, many of us would have died. Women wanted to be with him, and men wanted to be him. If he said we were supposed to fast for three months and three days, we would have starved until he told us to eat. Ummi swore Imam Isa’s nose could sniff discontent when spirits sank. She said it was then, in addition to salat, when he would emerge from his fortress and mingle. One day he started a water fight between the men and women. Another time, they had a flour fight. All of them, dressed in the few clothes they owned, threw white powder back and forth, laughing and screaming as though they had forgotten how fun fun was. They were children again, but their laughter was a strange sound in the house. Even to Ummi’s own ears, her happiness sounded odd. Everyone had a good time that day, but after all the mess was made, the women were left to clean the fine dust off the walls and from between the wooden floorboards, handwash their garbs, and panic over what to eat that night since they wasted all the flour on child’s play.