Why I had not touched its pattern before is due to my selfish will, which attempted to ensconce Heaven into definable planes, when it can never be so. It is a perfect design; no imperfect creature can impose theirs on it. And so, I cannot surrender while encompassing a physical form. I must become immaterial, etching myself into its design.
I release my humanity. I become the world.
The psychospiritual planes embrace me, eliciting a laugh and a sob. Remembering Adel’s warnings about drifting, I ground myself in a memory. I imagine the monks beside me.
‘Close your eyes.’ Sister Umairah’s voice careens from the spool of memory. ‘The bone-shards are there. You never needed eyes to see them.’
The bone floats behind my eyelids.
‘Do you sense death? Do you see with eyes closed?’
Yes, I do. The world floats in a black void of death. I stare as if the blank bone is my consciousness given form. I imagine it taking me to the Heavens.
The laws of the physical realm begin dissolving. A tinge of gold strokes against the white; the shape of bonds kneading through it. I meditate into that bone, wishing I can be there forever, sitting peacefully, scarred fingers resting on bone-stone.
Then I am falling through the past and present, into the Heavens: the buffer between Paradise and Hells. Memories unfurl until I hear my students’ farewell.
Be a monster.Until I am no longer in Azadniabad butsomewhere else.
Around me, shadows of birds graze the backdrop, of gardens and a lake, in golden illuminations. Vak-vak trees curve out, their branches holding thousands of beautiful human heads with fond, upturned smiles, tongues proffering berries. The faces tempt me to take their fruit as if I am Adam.
This must be the genesis where time unravels, worlds merge and realms become one. The cosmos are spread before my eyes, whole worlds on the canvas of the universe appearing as tiny freckles on a cheek.
The truth strikes like spittle in the face. None of us are in control against a higher power. We are the trapped jinni in a lantern knocking endlessly with closed fists against encompassing copper walls.
Eajizi is one drop of knowledge in a boundless well. Greater worlds are out there, perhaps greater capabilities. So to refuse the Gates of Heaven is absurd. The monks who tell us differently are merely dipping their finger into a pond instead of swimming; they like the illusion of control, because knowing of freedom but not having it is even crueller.
Not me. My face turns upwards. A gentle wind caresses me.
‘Foolish servant,’ a voice greets me.
I blink and suddenly see the most beautiful entity. It has no features. It simply exists. My mind tells me it is beautiful, though I cannot say why.
It moves, rippling like petals dropping into an oasis. Perhaps my eyes are fooling me that it’s more mortal-like than it really appears.
The light of my surroundings crackles about, like Heavenly fire hoping to scathe, but nothing moves – not in the gardens, not in the lake. For all of the surroundings beauty, it’s bereft of spirit.
‘Where am I?’ I ask.
‘How very accomplished you feel at your human knowledge, which is nothing more than a grain of sand in a desert. This place is the bond between man and soul, a line so deep it forms the boundaries of the cosmos.’
‘We are inside a bond?’
‘Yes, neither up nor down, nor earthly. Simply there, inside a bond, below the Heavens.’
Its words trip like a riddle. ‘Are you a jinn?’
An iambic laugh flutters from it, and I realise what I first perceived as beauty is, in fact, terrifying. ‘Do I look like a fire-being to you? You take, yet you do not know fromwhomyou take?’
Only onecreationis made of nur. The Creator is pure, but the Creator is no creation.
‘You are an angel: a creation of light with no free will.’ I lift my hands, every movement ensconced in a blankness, not fast nor slow.
‘It seems the human spares some intelligence for herself,’ it says. ‘I am a Gatekeeper, at the lowest of the Heavens between Paradise and Hells.’
‘And I am an ignorant servant,’ I confess.
The angel cocks its head. ‘You are like the rest – greedy, seeking power, uncaring of its consequences. Is one power not enough?’
