لَيْلَةُ الْقَدْر

29 Ramadan 1445

It’s the only one for the next seven years.

In New Jersey, nice weather feels like a time crunch 

and all anyone wants to do on a day like this is lounge

around, it’s really impossible to do any kind of work. 

And all anyone can talk about is where to get these glasses.

We are all trying to see the same thing up in the sky, 

when the sun is partially black and the crescent is 

distinct. We’ve been worrying about the sun and moon 

all month, so I think it’s kind of funny how this is

happening at the same time. 

Half of us are spread out on the lawn trying to find

a pair of glasses to share, and the other are spread out

over carpet in prostration with heads bowed.

My friend jumps around and waves so we can find

each other, so I can’t help laughing and doing the same.

Einstein taught in the building we stand outside of now, 

he sat in a chair somewhere inside and supposedly, that’s

supposed to mean something. He’s special so we should 

care that he, like the rest of us, sat in a chair and taught 

us something about whatever’s happening in the sky right now. 

You pull on the strap of my backpack to pull me closer, so I

can look up and see the moon crossing the sun properly. 

Maybe all those years ago, Einstein was known lovingly

as just Albert and someone pulled him back to be closer. 

I think physics does confirm that we all just want to be 

close. I don’t think Einstein was any more special than 

either of us, than this group of intricate and vulnerable 

people who all want to see the same thing together. 

I look backwards into the eclipse glasses and say

how that’d be a good metaphor, but you laugh and 

tell me how it doesn’t work that way. It’s just foil

and crinkle and my laugh and yours reflected back at me. 

Last eclipse, I was so anxious I’d lose my sight because

my school had us make our own eclipse viewer. The process

was something like: an index card with a square cutout, 

tape foil over the cutout and poke a hole in the center.

Theoretically, then, project the eclipse onto a piece of

cardboard and see it reflected. 

I get anxious easily in moments like this, so it 

feels good to be tethered back to someone. I’d

let you make me fall if it meant I could be stuck to you. 

I think that means I need to let myself be more 

stable all on my own. I hated that dinner where 

you said I hurt you and I hated myself more 

for hurting you at all. I am more scared of that

than anything. I close an eye and split the glasses

with you so we can both see at the same time. I’m 

most scared, I think, of losing this. 

We stand and I watch the sun go away and come back. 

We talk about Salatul Kusoof and how the sun is so

Islamic because it’s forming a crescent in front of us. 

The crescent is a sign, just like the sun and moon, how

everything is all paired up. The sky makes me emotional

lately because someone told me that every sunset they see,

they think of my backpack, which means at every 

Maghrib prayer, at every breaking of the fast, 

I come to their mind. Is that not a sign, too? 

Would Einstein know it? 

You say it looks like how it looks after it rains 

and I enjoy letting the grass make my legs itch. 

This one is better, someone says trading glasses 

so they can share this phenomenon. The earthquake,

the eclipse, I don’t know what Jersey’s doing. Think 

about the story. It’s funny, all these big moments 

in nature happening one after the other. 

I look up and see you looking 

up at the sky without glasses. 

No big deal, 

you say. 

No big deal.