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you prostrated yourself (both knees, both hands, the chin, the nose, the forehead); and the meaning of holding up your right index finger during the prayer’s final section: another way to remind oneself that there was no God but Allah.
    I was a quick study, but Mina was insistent that the forms were not what mattered. And until I learned to understand what she called prayer’s “inner aspect,” she wouldn’t let me pray for real; I could only practice. I had to sit and listen to my breath, just as she had taught me to do that afternoon of the ice cream social. In the silence, she would make me focus on God. “Always imagine him close to you when you pray,” she explained. “If you think of Him as near, then that’s where you will find Him. And if you think of Him as far away, then that’s where He will be.”
    One day Mina finally decided I was ready. Much to my surprise, Father—who actually seemed proud of me—suggested an excursion to the same South Side masjid about which he always complained. That way, he said, I could offer my first prayer with the congregation, just as he had done as a child. But that Sunday, when we got to the mosque, there was a sign on the door announcing flood damage in the basement prayer room; the day’s worship had been cancelled. We went back home, where Father had another uncharacteristic idea: that we create our own congregation by offering prayers together as a family. Surprised as they were, Mother and Mina both thought it was a wonderful idea. So Father and I tied muslin to our heads—Imran wanted to join us, so we tied a piece to his head, too—then laid out prayer carpets in the living room. Father and I stood shoulder to shoulder, and Mother and Mina prayed shoulder to shoulder behind us. Imran sat off to one side, happy to mimic our movements.
    Afterwards, Mother was teary-eyed. Father pulled out his wallet and handed me a twenty-dollar bill.
    “What’s that for?” I asked.
    “You’re a man now. A man needs to have money in his pocket,” he said, clapping me on the back.
    “Just because you have it doesn’t mean you have to spend it,” Mother interrupted.
    “Let the boy be,” Father retorted, though more warmly than usual.
    Mina took me in her arms, cooing her congratulations: “ Behta, I’m so proud of you!”
    “Thank you, Auntie,” I said.
    “Did you do like I taught you? Did you imagine Allah before you as you prayed?”
    I realized I’d entirely forgotten. Mina read the response in my blank expression.
    “It’s the only reason to pray, Hayat,” she said. “To be close to Allah. If you just do forms, it’s useless. Even sitting quietly on the school bus and remembering your intention to be with God—even that is a hundred times better than just going through the motions.”
    “Okay, Auntie,” I said. “I won’t forget again. I promise.”
     
    For Mina, faith really wasn’t about the outer forms. She didn’t wear a head scarf. And since her troubles with food as a girl—she would stop eating when she was unhappy, and ended up in the hospital more than once because of it—she didn’t fast. But she still found a way to be true to the intention of Ramadan as she saw it: She would deprive herself of things she loved, like reading, in order to feel that quickening of the will—and the deepening of one’s gratitude—that she said were the reasons we Muslims fasted. Mina was an advocate of what we Muslims called ijtihad, or personal interpretation. The only problem was, the so-called Gates of Ijtihad had been famously “closed” in the tenth century, a fact I was aware of from a footnote in the Quran Mina had given me. The note explained that personal interpretation led to innovations, and that these innovations created chaos in the matter of knowing what it meant to obey God’s will. I asked Mina about it one day, and she explained to me—at teatime, with Mother at the table—that as far as she was concerned, these “gates” could