Pride, indolence, envy, shame that's my palette, that's my choice of colours, and with them I have drawn the portrait of the devil till he's turned into a scabby, legless, mangy figure. and if I look long enough, I can see some faint outlines of the artist under the dark glaze. and so,I press my palette of vices to my lips and walk towards my pyre, where I draw the last portrait, that of myself.

Yes eyes heavy, eyes open only half against that same weariness I found my mind returning to the two of them.
I don't know why, but prayer and the worship of God has always been difficult for me since I was a kid. I might not have been able to count the months that passed before I had a chance to pray on one of the Fridays and that was with a lot of effort. It's been a while recently, however, something in me has kind of taken hold, thank God.
Only a few days ago, my sister told me that it's a bit of a hypocrisy to pray with it all day, and then, when we come to Isha, to lie behind the fatigue of the day, behind the fog on my eyes, to let it pass, not by mistake, but deliberately, over and over.
Now, however, when I hear the Isha Azaan, the conscience attuned to me did not give me any peace. Even before I could make a decision, I was already getting ready to take my wudu, I was already in the washroom taking my wudu as if I made the decision first. As in all things in our lives, our own will is not always wholly our own.
That evening I arrived at the mosque where the worshippers were still awaiting the time of Isha. That's neither here nor there: I don't know if there were any minutes left or I just came early. I quietly sat in the last row, close to the outside door.
The night was almost holy with a soft rain outside. As always when it rained, power had been out; just the lights in the mosque had a persistent, tenacious glow. My village on the outside was like a ruined, abandoned kingdom, alone, silent and empty.
There were two people I didn't recognize in the front row, maybe travellers. A small boy, and a man whose age was somewhere between the end of youth and the beginning of old age; no doubt a boy's father. I think for some decorum of the mosque, the father had concealed the small packet of chips in his shalwar kameez.
But and the child so carefully, so quietly kept slipping his little hand into his father's left pocket and taking out the chips, one at a time, and placing them in his mouth as if his father found him if the child were caught, he would bring down some punishment too great to bear.
I watched, silent, I could not look away. Every time he wanted his eyes to connect with mine, I would avert my gaze rapidly and softly as if to say, "I saw nothing. All I saw was nothing.
“The only thing a man can imagine is a monstrous sin is corrected quietly, and he sees someone else commit a small sin, and he is ordinarily forgiven”
I could not have imagined who these guys were and what would be the ultimate punchline of my article, but some things are not written and not said, and when that is the case a man who can only see the monstrosity of his sin is silently corrected by seeing another man's small sin go quietly, calmly, and ordinarily away.

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