Baby Yunus slept through it all, the sound of eternity now living softly in his ears.
Emine finally exhaled, tears streaming down her face. She picked up her son and held him close. His head rested in the curve of her neck, and she could feel his warm breath, steady and calm. azan in baby ear
Hayya ‘ala-s-salah… Hayya ‘ala-l-falah… (Come to prayer… Come to success…) Baby Yunus slept through it all, the sound
Gülnur leaned over and dabbed a drop of rose water on Yunus’s lips. “Taste the sweetness of faith, little one,” she whispered. His head rested in the curve of her
Baby Yunus’s eyes, which had been half-closed, suddenly opened wide. He did not cry. He did not startle. Instead, his tiny mouth formed a perfect little ‘o’, and his gaze lifted—past his grandfather’s weathered face, past the lamp on the table, as if he could see through the ceiling into the vast, blue dome of the sky.
A single tear rolled down Yusuf’s cheek and fell onto the baby’s forehead. It was not a tear of sadness. It was a tear of transference—of legacy, of silsila , the unbroken chain of believers stretching back fourteen hundred years to the Prophet himself, who had done the same for his grandsons Hassan and Hussein.
Ashhadu an la ilaha illa Allah… (I bear witness there is no god but God…)