Life in Utica – making a shift
Listening to the sound of the muezzin, Imam Ferhad Mujkic’s call to Allah, it felt like home after so many months in a faraway country. I felt like I was back in the verandah of my house, sitting in the broken, discolored cane chair with my mother, watching the sun go down, the streets emptying and the powerful sound engulfing it all – all images, all sounds and all feelings.
And today listening to the same powerful calling at the small mosque in Utica, thousands of miles away from home, it brought back connections and renewed bonds that I feared losing in this strange country, I feared moving beyond surrounded by everything that was so different, the food, the people, the seasons…I felt lost at times.
And that sound helped me step back.
Day in and day out, I would listen to the five azans. They became a part of my existence. They divided the time. My mother would wake up from her afternoon siesta at the sound, the maid would arrive and tea would be brewing. It became the sign of life, the symbol of normalcy and defined continuity itself. It was comforting to hear it. Almost like how you would switch on the radio in old times to know everything around you was alright.
The temple bells were hard to hear. At least in the neighborhood that we lived in. Only if you walked a little bit, you would hear them ringing in the evening at the time of the arati. Or during big festivals like Dusshera when even whispers had to be shouted out loud. Loud speakers played everything from Bollywood songs to bhajans during those 10 days.
As I sat in the little room that served as an office, clad in a heavy coat and stockings, externals that just did not fit in with the 25 years of life spent in India where winters were not harsh but cozy. Of course it was cold and people died but not as ruthless. And people died because they lived on roads and slept on pavements in the cold winter nights.
I was at the mosque to talk to the Imam about an assignment for the newspaper. When the Imam excused himself to offer prayers, I noticed what was a left-behind part of my life.
I soaked in the feeling, the smell of the incense, the faint and familiar attar, the green carpet and the Arabic letters engraved on black velvet hung on the walls.
I felt at comfort with my being, my choice and my life here in a country that I had come unsuspecting and unaware, relying on just a fragile relationship that was to break in a few months, a relationship that left me cold and cautious and in an abyss of unfamiliarity. I had been lonely. For months I felt that way. Isolated, torn away from everything that I related to.
When I moved to Utica, I thought I was taking time off to reflect. I needed to stop and think. I had been here before as an intern and I had come to like the pace of life here. So, I left New York City and the crowd to live a life that I never thought I would live. I would live alone here.
But as I met people, visited them at their homes, I started to feel better. This was a retreat and it would teach me many things, I told myself.
When I had sheer khurma on the second day of Eid ul Adha at a family’s house, the sweet rice pudding brought back a sense of home. The woman was from Pakistan and looking at her bright bangles, her bright red salwar kurta, her hijab and her voice…I felt soothed. In that moment, at her house, stirring the pudding, I felt the ties getting stronger, the bonds being renewed.
For so many months, I felt I was losing touch, I was moving on and beyond. I was forgetting the taste of my mother’s cooking that I had desperately tried to find in Friendly’s burgers and fries or in pizzas or pastas here.
Moments like these were my solace. They helped me see myself, rediscover my self and continue on familiar grounds into an unknown future.
Life is never going to be the same again. But I am not lost, I guess. At least not totally.
Redemption is near and the sound of the muezzin confirmed it that evening.
As I walked out of the mosque, I felt good about the choice that I had made. Coming to Utica was not a mistake.
