Solomon and Miriam
Suleiman spread a fresh mattress on the semen-stained floor and wore a skull cap over his mussed hair.
As he knelt down for the prayer and bowed low towards the west he could not concentrate, as usual.
All he could think of was Mary, and her sad face. He had decided, in spite of the anticipated troubles, to defend their love against the zealots. He remembered this particular verse from the Quran—
“This day are all things good and pure made lawful to you…. Lawful to you in marriage are not only chaste women who are believers, but chaste women among the People of the Book, revealed before your time, when you give them their due dowers, and desire chastity not lewdness.(Qur’an 5:5).”
—which seemed to suggest the possibility of a marriage between a Christian woman and a Muslim man. Their love had taken an idealistic undertone which had transformed them in ways which they could not immedietly comprehend—Mary lovingly called him Solomon and he called her Miriam.
Suleiman couldn’t complete his namaz and his heart welled up with an image of her which seemed to tell him a verse which she texted him from The Song of Solomon two days back: “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.”
