Adhan

Abstract from From Letter from Turkmenistan
The New Yorker, 28 May 2007

The Golden Man
Paul Theroux

I sat in my four-berth compartment with a soldier in a dark uniform, a student of about twenty-two, and an old man with a long chin beard, wearing traditional Turkmen dress-a cylindrical black lambskin hat and a long brown cloak over a smock, one of those national costumes which seem eternal and comfortable everywhere, in all seasons. He saw me and began to address me, using the student as a translator.
"Salaam. Dbayf al-Rahman," he said. "Welcome. You are a guest of Allah, the Merciful One," the student translated.
"Please thank him for me.
" The man spoke again. "He has a question for you," the student said. "Will you answer?"
I heard the whistle blow. The train slowly pulled out of Ashgabat Station, and within minutes we were in the desert. The old man was delivering a monologue.
"He says that some years ago an astronaut went to the moon," the student said. "He was from America. When he got to the moon, he heard a strange noise. It was an azan"-the call to prayer, usually issued by a muezzin chanting from a mosque. "The astronaut recorded it. When he came back to earth, the scientists in America analyzed it, and they came to think that it was the voice of the Prophet Muhammad."
"On the moon?"
"Yes. On the moon." "Furthermore, he says that because of this the astronaut became a Muslim and began praying five times a day."
The old man was facing me, as though defying me to deny the story. "I haven't heard this story." "He says he believes it."
"What does he think about it?"
When this question was translated, the student said, "For him, it's good news."
It seemed to me like a Turkmen version of a Pat Robertson story: divine intervention in an unlikely place, resulting in a beatific conversion, the sun breaking through the clouds. Instead of Jesus speaking to a searcher, it was Muhammad, but it came to the same thing. Later, an Arabic scholar told me that a persistent urban myth in the Middle East is that Neil Armstrong – sometimes confused with Louis Armstrong - converted to Islam.
The best tactic on this overnight train journey, it seemed to me, was to get along, which meant staying off the subject of religion. As I was thinking this, the old man was still talking to the student. “He asks if you believe in God."
"I have a lot of questions on this subject," I said.
"He asks, 'But do you believe in life after death? "
"I don't know about this. No one has ever come back from the dead to tell us anything, so how can we know?"
“The holy Koran tells us."
The old man spoke directly to me in Turkmen and became very animated.
"He says, ‘The grass grows. Then the grass turns brown. Then the grass dies. Then it grows again. It turns green and gets tall.’”
The old man was still staring, one skinny gnarled hand in his lap, the other gripping the long gray beard attached to his chin.
"He says, 'Life is like that.' "
"Tell him I agree. Life is like that, even where I'm from."
"Where are you from?"
“Tell him America."
The old Muslim received this information with more interest than I had expected.
"He asks, 'Do you have cotton in America? "
"Lots of it."
"He is wondering how many hectares of cotton are growing in America."
"Tell him I'm not sure. Why is he interested?"
The man showed me his ruined hands, his twisted fingers.
"He picks cotton in the fields near Yoloten, south on the road to Afghanistan, where there are cotton farms."
The old man's name was Selim. He had been born near Mary. He had not gone to school. As a boy, he had worked in the fields, he had picked cotton his whole life. He had married a woman from his clan and had four children. He challenged me to guess his age. He looked about seventy, so I guessed sixty. He laughed and said that he was fifty.