Fiction
Once or maybe multiple times I was a slave girl. My master would beat me if I did not work hard enough. I had very little money to clothe myself. My days would be spent scrubbing floors, my nights in prayer.
I knew that beyond my life there was something beautiful, beyond imagination, beyond time. At night, when my master slept I would talk to the angels who would visit me. I’d laugh for hours and play.
Then sleep would come. In the early morning before my master woke for the morning prayer, a hand on my shoulder would awaken me. Sometimes it was Micheal, sometimes Gabriel. They’d wake me to get up. In the morning my body would be heavy. After visiting heaven, the hell that is earth would make me listless and sad.
In those times, I’d wash my face and hands, then quietly stand on my prayer mat. Moving my body through the familiar shapes of prayer, I’d liberate my body from the pain of being here.
After I was done praying, I’d hear the Azaan and quietly prepare everything for my master’s prayers. My master would be sometimes asleep, sometimes awake when I knocked on his door with his bed tea.
He had an illness that would make it difficult for him to digest food. I had to be very careful with the breakfast. There was tea to be made, bread to be baked and it had to be just right.
His water for cleansing his body had to be the right temperature.
After he washed his body, he would pray and then sometimes I’d hear him sobbing asking god for more money, forgiveness for visiting the prostitutes or forgiveness for how he had treated someone. I knew that the master had a heart except that it was hidden behind a cloud of confusion.
Some days he was very angry, and even after prayer, he had not found peace. Those days were difficult for me, because there was nothing I did right. The bread was too crisp or too soft. The food was not salty enough or too salty.
Sometimes everything was ok, but I walked a certain way that he did not like.
He’ d say to me, do you want to attract men? You think that if you serve me well, I will give you a house? You are nothing. You don’t know anything.
I would feel terrible in those times. My stomach, my entire being would burn with anger. I knew better than to reply to him. When I was a child I said something back, but he slapped me and pulled my ear.
Nobody ever dies. Though I died. I was born again with him. He was an ordinary man, but my body remembered him differently and thus we fell into the same pattern. He, the superior male beloved of the family and me the female burden–the slave.
Behind The Veil 