Mean Solar Time - the time of clocks and watches; relies upon an approximate speed of the sun throughout the year.
Sidereal Time – the time of celestial maps; measures earth’s rotation in relation to stars beyond the sun.
Ephemeris Time – the forgotten time; defined by the precise orbital motion of the earth around her sun.
Historical Time – human time; predicated on events whose permanence fades with relation to their present irrelevancy; this notion of the present is measured in terms of Mean Solar Time; this present notion is an approximation.
Mountain Time – [not to be confused with U.S. Mountain Time (MT)] recognizes measurements of celestial and historical time only insofar as they record recent bouts of bloodshed on The Mountain; where the people see from a point in the past beyond the historical and fading to the mythical; to a violent future so close at hand that every night is sleepless and sunlit naps are stolen at every opportunity; circadian rhythms entangle celestial trajectories collide with postal holidays and world war remembrances until man’s markers of time explode and are forgotten with the fading of its embers; Mountain Time is measured by the death of the person who marks it; Mountain Time is finite and the one who counts it cares only that it takes them in a moment of glory.
. . .
Hassan al-Banna was named after the Egyptian politician who influenced the modernization of Islam and founded the Muslim Brotherhood: an organization that he discovered, not through modern technology, but deep within his troubled dreams and from the coming and going of voices in his head. The original Al-Banna saw Islam as a comprehensive way of live. The Al-Banna of The Mountain saw the Quran as a weapon to be used at his disposal. Hassan—from now on the Al-Banna of the Mountain will go by this—stressed to his people of the Masjid Most High that the value of jihad by the sword is unmatched in the afterlife by jihad of the heart. “They aren’t even close,” was how he put it. Hassan’s god, and therefore, by relation, the god belonging to the people of the M.M.H., sought out hearts that were calloused and cold. And so, following in the ways of his conception of god, it meant nothing for Hassan to treat his wife with less dignity than their outdoor cat, Enoch.
On the day of their nikah, Hassan required Mary to stay home and send two of her friends to witness the ceremony in her place. The absentee bride was not unheard of in Islamic marital practices, and Hassan had assured her that this decision was strictly financial, that they would save the money and use it to get away for a week or so, perhaps to an ancient American coastal civilization called St. Augustine, an idea of a place that Mary had fantasized about ever since Hassan first spoke of its name. In the most private recesses of her heart, Mary was fascinated by the lives of Christian saints, of whom she learned from a scorched, pocket-sized bible that she pulled from the ashes of the ’05 jihad on the jabal. It was not from a sudden inspiration of religious devotion that Mary was drawn to the saints, but from a yearning for any narrative that existed outside of the Quran. On the jabal, such stories are intrinsically taboo, and Mary could not recall a single day when the innermost chambers of her soul were not turned open and set ablaze by these unspeakable desires. Poetry, philosophy, an old clipping from a New York City newspaper about a play called Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat: any of these articles found discarded and half-buried in the scrub brush would be more valuable to Mary than a velvet pouch overflowing with diamonds. Then again, a pouch of diamonds will hardly do a person any good if she has no place to go and, more importantly, no way to get there. A stack of fashion magazines from all across the world, no matter their date or condition, would lift Mary high above the jabal and send her along the four winds to places where she could see could see all the colors and styles and feel all the smooth fabrics between her fingers.
. . .
And among His Signs is this, that he created for you mates from among yourselves, that you may dwell in tranquility with them. . . and he has put love and mercy between your hearts . . . And among His Signs is that . . . you . . . that you may dwell in tranquility with them. . . that you may dwell in tranquility. . . dwell in tranquil. . . tranquil love. . .
“What is this,” screams a voice outside of Mary’s dozing. She opens her eyes to find Hassan, eyes wide and chest heaving, with their marital papers clutched in his fist.
“Wh—what do you…,” Mary follows his furious glare to the half-finished Mehndi decoration on her wrist that she botched when she fell asleep. “It’s just a paste I made, it will wash off…,” pleads Mary with nervous eyes darting toward Hassan’s face, assessing the extent of his rage, and retreating to the floor out of the sudden and unexpected reflex against impending his violence. He had never laid a violent finger against her. “I’m—”
“I know what that is!” Hassan’s face writhes and contorts under unfamiliar angles of rage. “What I did not know is that I just married a filthy hindu!”
“Hindu?” Surely he must know this is a shared tradition. Surely he must know that all tradition is shared. If not then I. . . “ Hassan, this is part of our tradition as well—”
“Bullshit! Lies! Bullshit and Lies! You live here all your life, when is the last time you saw a woman wear that on the day of her nikah? Wait…wait a minute, when have you seen anyone wearing—”
Mary shoots up off the couch and marches to the kitchen sink where she scrubs furiously at the Mehndi paste on her wrists—ground from the dried leaves of the lawsonia inermis that were gathered and sent from her dear cousin Armineh in Afghanistan—at once asserting her frustration and distancing herself from Hassan before she speaks her mind. “What has gotten into you? Why do you speak to me this way? For three years you have never spoke to me in this tone, why now? Why on our wedding day, on the day of my wedding which I am not to attend, and with my absence that I do not attest—why on this day do you treat me like this? When all I am doing is trying to make myself look beautiful for you, you stand over me with a fist that you must restrain from beating me.”
Mary stares out the window over the kitchen sink through a patch of trees to the edge of the cliff overlooking the valley where she can make out the shapes of two children sitting on the edge with their feet dangling carelessly out into the void. Struck by a fear that the children apparently lack for themselves, Mary stops talking and forgets breathing. She squints for a better look and sees the skin of the two children turn from caramel to amber to emerald to a brown so dark that it could pass for black. She closes her eyes. When she opens them there is no longer a difference between the rattling leaves in the trees and the children with their swinging legs.
“Did you take care of the corner cabinet like I asked you,” comes Hassan’s voice from far away. It is much softer now.
Mary has been scrubbing the same place on her wrist under a scalding stream of water. She jerks it away. “No. . . I did not.”
Hassan responds with a scolding gaze directed first at her then towards the corner cabinet. Incredulous, Mary laughs as she makes way for the corner cabinet—crafted from particle board that Hassan was too cheap to stain—hits her knees, and shoves the canned goods aside to vacant space in the adjacent cabinets. Their kitchen was the kind that is always missing key ingredients, missing most everything most days. She throws her arms out akimbo.
“Now the shelves,” demands Hassan.
Mary struggles to remove them. Eventually she pounds them with the side of her fist, a rare display of anger, until they break loose. She wipes the sweat from her brow with the side of her fist that is not splintered. “There you go Hassan…lemme tell you this is one hell of a marriage consecration. You don’t even notice my kaftan, the one that took me six months to save for, and now I’m ripping out one of our cupboards for God knows why…”
“When you are not completing your chores around the house you will be staying here.”
Mary can only excrete a single laugh of disbelief.
“Why don’t you try it out now?”
“Go fuck yourself,” this was the only time Mary could remember cursing at Hassan, but if there was a time for it this was certainly it.
“I’m going to forget you said that and give you another chance to try out the cabinet. Go on.”
It was suddenly apparent that Hassan was not the man he had advertised himself to be these past years. He stood no taller than 5’9” but his wiry frame and broad shoulders gave him an ominous appearance. That said, Mary knew she had to take off quick to get ahead of him. Changing tones, she prowls over to Hassan and puts her hands on his chest. “Come on honey, aren’t there more important things we should be doing right now?”
Hassan smirks as he lifts her hands off his chest, “Yes, but first I want to see how you fit.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Hassan-al Banna. I am the leader of this community and you are now my wife. You will do as you are told.” Mary cocks back her dominant foot and sends it flying straight between his legs. Direct hit, his moaning and groaning is spectacular but Hassan only falls to a knee as Mary flees out the front door toward the cliffside where she saw the strange children earlier. She thinks about jumping, perhaps diving towards a life that would allow her to feel all the different fabrics between her fingers. Chiffon, crepe, organdy, silk, handkerchief linen, suede, velvet…all these woven into a soft cloth of death, wrapping her in a vessel that will carry her to new life, maybe in Paris. But then there’s Allah…if there is an Allah. According to scripture, she can’t remember which exactly, if Mary does a 300-foot swan dive into the flesh of the unforgiving earth below, she can expect to be tortured by her method of suicide on judgement day. As she bursts through the trees and high shrubs her emerald green kaftan is ripped to shreds, but she doesn’t notice, she is more concerned with the rapidly approaching existential dilemma on her hands. Oftentimes, Mary, in private of course, doubted the concept of God, all Gods, and most of the time she spent in the mosque was spent fantasizing about one of the redneck boys who mowed the grass just close enough to the dividing line for her to see him. His clothes were always too big for him, as if they had been handed down, but she knew there was a monster of a package swinging low between his legs. Perhaps it is this brief flash of fantasy, and the desire to fulfil it, that forces her to pump the breaks some feet before the edge of the cliff and make a beeline for the top of the jabal. Looking back over her shoulder, Mary hoped to see Hassan summersaulting off the cliff, but instead found him closing the distance between them with a scowl like a mad dog. She should have kept her eyes on the prize because just as soon as she turns her head back forward, her foot catches an exposed root, and she bites the dust. Without saying a word, Hassan takes her by the legs and drags her to the edge of the cliff. He swings her around and dangles her head over the edge. “You are now my wife, yes?”
“What are you doing? Pull me up!”
“Say it! You are my wife. Say it!”
“Well it doesn’t look like I have much of a—”
Hassan pushes her further off the cliff.
“Yes, yes, I’m your goddamn wife okay,” Mary looks down below to find the whole world spinning out from under her.
“And you will do what I say.”
“What?”
“If I say go to cabinet, you will go, yes?”
“Fine, fine, okay!”
Sweat from Hassan’s forehead pours down into Mary’s eyes. If this sort of thing would have happened in the bedroom, as it should on a couple’s wedding night, she would be fine with it, but these beads of sweat are like acid scorching her eyes. He pulls her away from the cliff and she gives him a good shove when he does.
“You asshole! What is wrong with you?”
Hassan slaps her face. Mary hangs her head so low it could be dragging in the dirt as she limps back to the house. When she does look out across the horizon it is filled with a filthy yellow mud sunset, like some toxic waste spill, and she thinks about being a little girl. Mary was born on the mountain, all she knew of life was here, and anything below was alien. For all she knew, people down there treated each other worse than outdoor cats. For all she knew, people below were as self-serving and disease-ridden as rats.
. . .
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