Sweetness in the Belly Read Online Free PDF Page B

gritty bread our Tuareg guide baked in sand.
    We would repent, we told ourselves, as we stood in the muddy shadow of a mosque and looked up at the stars. Soon, we would be kneeling to pray before the entombed remains of our beloved saint.
    We could hear the patter of drums in the near distance, and Hussein gripped my arm. I nudged him on, following him downhill through dark and narrow streets littered with vegetable matter and animal waste. Cats feasting on carcasses scattered as we grasped the walls on each side of us for balance. Before us, we saw a green archway framing the entrance to the compound surrounding the shrine. Through that archway, the movement of hundreds of people sparkled like sunlight on the crests of waves.
    I was used to the slow, quiet, uniform ways of the Sufis at the shrine in Morocco, but here, worship was far more colorful: urban Hararis, the men in their starched white galabayas and white knit skullcaps, their wives, daughters and sisters glittering in bright head scarves and beaded shawls; the people of the countryside, Oromo peasants who work the Harari lands, darker skinned and wearing duller hues than the Hararis, and the herders, sinewy Somalis and their butter-scented wives draped in long diaphanous veils. Landlords, serfs and nomads. Conspicuous wealth, backbreaking servitude and drifting poverty—secular distinctions all erased in the presence of God.
    In front of the shrine, a small, white, cupola-capped building buttressed against the city wall, a semicircle of men pounded taut-skinned drums with heavy sticks, throwing sweat from their bodies with each beat. The saint’s descendant and disciple, Sheikh Jami Abdullah Rahman, stood in the middle of them, his white turban the only thing visible at this distance, but his huge voice audible over the crowd. He was leading the heaving mass through a series of dhikr, religious chants, some recognizable to me in Arabic, others offered in a foreign tongue.
    Women were clacking wooden blocks together high above their heads as they repeated the dhikr over and over. Stalks of qat were being passed from hand to hand, their leaves washed down with water drunk from a hollowed gourd. Mouths were green, lips spittle caked, sweat flying as people bounced from foot to foot. They were too entranced to take any particular notice of Hussein and me. We leaned left and right with the crowd, and stalks of green leaves were passed into our hands. We hadn’t known qat in Morocco, and it was tough and bitter upon first taste; I spat it out onto the dirt at my feet.
    The qat fueled devotion, allowing people to sustain their energy over the hours and taking them to a point of near ecstasy, where they began hissing through their teeth and their eyes rolled so far back their pupils disappeared and they spun around in blind circles. When they lost their balance, they were pushed gently back upright by the crowd.
    “Like whirling dervishes!” Hussein marveled.
    At some point in the early hours of the morning, the sheikh’s voice suddenly vaporized and people’s movements began to slow, until their feet were leaden, still, and they took deep breaths and began to drift homeward. I looked at Hussein and implored him. Speak to the sheikh. It’s time.

    W e had come to Harar to honor Saint Bilal al Habash and seek his blessing and protection, for this is the city that houses the original shrine in a series of shrines in his honor strung like pearls on a necklace across the sands of North Africa. The shrine in Morocco where we lived and studied with the Great Abdal lay farthest west. The Great Abdal had once made this pilgrimage, and like all his students, Hussein and I had been raised to believe in this journey as our duty, and our desire.
    “You will go when God wills it,” the Great Abdal used to say to us.
    But first, Hussein had to fully recover. I never knew exactly what ailed him, only that he had spent some time in a cave in the desert and returned a broken man.