Kubra from Turkey wore a midnight blue hijab. Under the florescent lights of our classroom, night’s magic was draped around her. She had a lot of headscarves, but she had an even greater sunglasses collection. It was Ramadan and she ran up to me the moment class finished.

“Come," she said. "We are having a celebration tonight. Please come. You will be my guest.” Kubra began to scribble the address on the back of an extra vocabulary quiz. Then she put on her sophisticated shades and bounced away. 

It was a Friday night. I knew I’d be exhausted. But I also had something to pray for and it couldn’t hurt to pray. When I arrived at the rental hall, I inquired for Kubra and a woman quickly ushered me to a prayer room. All were facing Mecca. The women stood. The men were kneeling, placing their foreheads on the floor and then sitting up again. Like a beautiful dance, their heads moved up and down.

My walk towards Kubra was silent, but my movement seemed too loud for this space. Kubra’s eyes fluttered open. She saw me and smiled. I took on her position of prayer. Eyes closed, chin down.

“Please God,” I began to pray. “I need your help.”
​
After several minutes, Kubra prodded me toward the door. When the door closed behind us, she hugged me.
“I’m so glad you came. Come. Let’s eat.”

The hall was full of circular tables and white paper tablecloths that ballooned in the breeze from children running by. It looked like a wedding reception. We must have been celebrating our marriage to God. Plates of food served as the centerpiece at each table. My paper plate became heavy with rice and dolma as the women at the table insisted I try everything.

One woman scooted her chair next to mine. “I’m Kubra’s friend, Zehra. They will begin the presentation now. I can translate for you as best I can.”

The words of the Koran flashed on the screen in the center of the room. The slides advanced and my translator’s lips came close to my ear. She whispered, “During the entire month of Ramadan we must fast and pray, but it is believed that one night, perhaps it is this night, is the most special night of Ramadan. Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, had the holy Koran come to him on this night and that is why it is so special. It is called Laylat al-Qadr, or the Night of Power. All the angels descend from heaven and listen to our prayers closely. If our hearts are pure and we pray with all that we are, then a prayer on this night is magnified hundreds or thousands of times. We are connected to all the angels and to the heavens tonight.”

“Beautiful,” I whispered.

When it was time for me to leave, I embraced Kubra.

“Thank you so much. Next time, you can come with me to my church,” I said.

That night, I lied in bed with my hands on my heart. Please, angels, hear me. Please, God, hear my prayer.
I picked Kubra up on Sunday morning and we drove to the First African Methodist Episcopalian Church of Los Angeles. It was the church where I had been baptized several months before. Yes, it was a black church. And yes, I was one of about three white people per church service. And yes, I do love me some gospel music. I had special needs, you see. I required a church that had spirit and soul.

The choir was at the front with their blue and gold robes swooshing. We slid into a pew. Women in big colorful church hats swarmed us. They hugged Kubra. Men reached out to shake her hand. How they gushed over a girl in a hijab.

Kubra stood perfectly still as if she were still praying in the silence of the mosque. She took in the voices and the crescendo of the drums. Then, she couldn’t hold still any longer. She began to clap. She danced. She laughed. The preacher’s sermon was a song, rising and falling. The cymbals clamored underneath the word of God. The choir hummed as one soprano voice cried out. We swayed. The preacher beckoned those who needed God to come forward. A woman in the front row of the choir stumbled. Then, her heart jolted towards the sky.

“What’s happening?” Kubra asked. “Is she having a heart attack?”

Her body bent all the way back and two others rushed to catch her before she hit the floor.

“No,” I said. “She’s overwhelmed by the holy spirit.”

Her eyes were closed, but you could see her ecstatic face, her lips turned upward. She was carried off.

“She’s going to be fine. She was just touched by God,” I said.

“Sometimes I’ve seen imams do that in prayer.”

Kubra resumed dancing. We kept on dancing after the service and out into the parking lot.

“That was so fun!” Kubra said. “Do you mind stopping at TJ Maxx? I’ve got to pick up some sunglasses for my friends in Turkey. My flight is tomorrow.”

“So, that’s where your collection of sunglasses comes from?”

“They have the best sunglasses there.”

“What will you do when you go back to Istanbul?”

“I have to finish my dissertation.”

“What’s it on?”

“Kurdish identity.”

“Why did you choose that?”

“Well, my boyfriend is Kurdish.”

“Oh my! Does your family know?”

“They don’t know. They wouldn’t approve. He is an activist for the Kurdish cause.”

“Do you think you will marry?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t figured that out yet. It will probably not happen.”

“But you love each other?”

“Yes.”

We drove in silence. But it was so loud…that ringing of two women’s longing hearts.

At TJ Maxx, Kubra got to work checking out fake Chanels in the small mirror.

“Did you understand most of the sermon?” I asked.

“Well, some bits were hard to make out. He talked so fast. They kept on saying, ‘Hey man, hey man!’ I got that part.”

“It wasn’t ‘Hey man’ it was ‘A-men.’”

“Really? Amen?”

“Amen.”

Amen. Shalom. Salaam.
Heyyyyy Mannnnnn.
​
P.S. My prayer on Laylat al-Qadr-- that special night during Ramadan---was answered. Praise be to God. Praise be to Allah. Praise be to the Universe. Use what name you will. Or do not use a name at all, just love. Just. Love.

​I have a fever.  My head is burning.  There’s also a holy fire raging all over this Earth. 
 
I am not alone.  I am the fire.
 
“We’ve been in a holding pattern,” said the captain on Sunday on my flight back from the Women’s March on Washington. “There’s a storm.  We’ll be circling for about 20 minutes more.  Then, we’ll begin our decent. It’ll be turbulent.”
 
From where we were being held, you could see sweet butter sun and creamy skies.  It was heaven.  It was still.  We hovered just above the darkness.
 
Then our plane entered the storm.  The window turned gray.  The interior lights went out.  We jolted.  We dipped.  My stomach dropped lower than the plane. Under the florescent glow of emergency lights, I smiled at my seat neighbor.  I don’t know if I was trying to reassure her or myself.  She raised her brows.
 
Water lines like crooked fingers grasped my window.  Desperate they were to survive the climb across the plane.  A moment they paused, but no more.  They pushed on into murky mess. 

​The pressure in my ears intensified. I had a vague memory of the heavens above, but they were like a fairy tale. Like the fairy tale book you held when you were little.  The one that you read a thousand times over because something in it made you feel good. Then it disappeared.  Anyway, it no longer seemed relevant.  But it still haunts.  You wonder if the book is searching for you too.  Child-like, you wish you could go back. 
 
My ear sizzled but it did not pop.  I went deaf.  And the plane cabin and the people in it became distant.  An alternate reality.  I was in it, but not part of it.  
 
How much more suffering?  I might die.  Are we ever going to land?
 
Then, I saw you out my window.  You little dots of light below.  We broke through the clouds and there you were City of Angels.  Shining stars, sent from heaven, seeded in the earth.  My guiding lights, just under the storm, to welcome me home.  You are heaven.  My fairy tale.  My once upon a time.  My happily ever after. 
 
No, I am not alone in fever.  I am fire. 
 
We have weathered this storm many times before.  We know our course. 

Shock.  Post-election shock waves.  A few said they weren’t shocked.  They had prepared.  They clenched their jaws.  Flailed their arms.  Screamed at others to duck. 
 
We didn’t duck because we didn’t believe.  Then, the blast. 
 
After the blast of an IED, soldiers say the one whose legs are ripped off may be the lucky one.  The soldier still walking around, unscathed physically, without a gurney’s squeaking wheels chasing behind, will suffer from PTSD. 
 
The blast wave affects the brain.  Innards hang in the air.  The wave reverberates off the walls around it and amplifies itself, which is why you’re more likely to be hurt seeking shelter in a corner.  The after shocks are worse than the initial blast. 
 
Shock waves are creatures.  Silver bubble specters push through the back of you, penetrating every cell.  What happens in that one thousandth of a second that the shock wave occupies your cells?  Where do you go while it attempts to push you wide apart? Suspended.  In limbo.  Then it exits. 
 
If you have endured generations of racism or sexism or classism or any other –ism maybe you weren’t traumatized by post-election shock waves either.  Why would you be?  It’s more of the same.  It never really went away.  BOOM. 
 
The thing about shock waves is no one escapes, not the ones used to them and not the ones shocked.
 
The biggest shock waves in our universe are the result of supernovas.  A star is born.  It lives.  It dies.  If the star’s mass is big enough it explodes.  BOOM. 
 
We’re all fighting gravity from birth until death.  In the vast darkness of our mother’s womb we begin when two cells fuse together.  The star is born in the womb of the universe when two hydrogen atoms fuse together. 
 
The star must continue fusing to resist gravity’s push to destroy it.  To shine light is to fight.  To fight is to live.  Yet, gravity is not the enemy. Gravity is the midwife.  She pulls swirling bits of dust and clouds together and summons it all into a spiraling fire.  She forces new life out of the void.  Postpartum, the midwife keeps on pushing.  To resist, the star instantly becomes the ultimate alchemist.  It burns its gases in order to live. The alchemist star fuses hydrogen and produces helium.  When all the hydrogen is all burned out, it fuses helium and makes carbon and then oxygen and then sodium and magnesium and calcium and iron and on and on, providing the basis for life.  You have to keep the alchemy going because if you don’t, you see, the gravity will crush you.  You die. 
 
Keep shining, star.  For in your fight to exist, you give others light and life. 
 
But when does that BOOM hit?  When do we feel the shock waves? 
 
There is a star known as the white dwarf.  The white dwarf knows it’s dying.  It knows that its whole way of life and structures that sustain it are crumbling. It has been fighting off the gravity and the grave, just like us.  The white dwarf, out of gas to burn, in desperation, siphons the life-blood from another star nearby.  The white dwarf sucks in more and more energy from this bound star.  It can’t stop.  It keeps going until finally its mass becomes greater and wealthier and more powerful and more.  And MORE.  And MORE.  And MORE.
 
Until, finally, it explodes in a supernova. 

​

BOOM.  The blast wave creatures fly.
 
There is another way to supernova.  The massive alchemist can fuse on its own without siphoning from another.  It gets more and more condensed. It burns through everything it has.  It is reduced to its core.  The truest core, nothing more.  Then, it collapses in on itself.  Supernova.  BOOM. 
 
This alchemist is not dispersed in its explosion.  It has so much gravitas it creates its own black hole. 
 
Are you scared of the black hole?  Dive in.  There lay the gateways to other universes, where the dreams you dream, and so much more, are realized.
 
Supernovas are the way of the universe.  Why resist? The universe will have its way with you, with all of us, always.  
 
Super. 
Nova means new. 
 
Shock waves birth new stars. Shock waves have birthed you.  The elements of your body: oxygen, iron, carbon, all created through nuclear reactions and massive explosions.  The shock waves gave you life.  Yes, the very same shock waves that hold our organs in suspension and give us nightmares and PTSD and make our skin crawl. 
 
So, let these shock waves suspend.  Let gravity crush.  After all, these are the tools of the great alchemist.