It is evening, late August. The window is open a crack and outside the summer is not yet done: somewhere a ball bounces off a garage door, someone calls a name, twice, and then a back door slams. In the room a night light shaped like a half moon is burning. A swim bag hangs from the door handle, packed for tomorrow.
Noor is seven. She sits upright in bed, because you pray sitting up; she decided that herself. She folds her hands the way she does everything she has only just learned: a little too carefully, finger by finger, until it is right. She squeezes her eyes shut, so determined that her nose wrinkles.
In the doorway stands her father, his hand already at the light switch. He says nothing. This is the moment of the evening when he says nothing.
She begins.
"Our Father, which art in heaven."
The first line comes by itself; it is already hers. After that the path narrows.
"Harold be thy name."
It is not quite the word. She does not hear it herself and is already further on, and her father in the doorway does not move; correcting is for the daytime.
"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."
Debtors comes out in pieces, but it comes out. Then she falters.
"And lead us not into [...]"
For a moment it is quiet. Outside the ball bounces. She searches, her eyes still shut, and finds the word by touch, the way you find a door handle in the dark.
"[...] testing. But deliver us from the evil one. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen."
The amen she says most firmly of all. It is the only word in the whole prayer that she knows exactly what you do with: then it is finished.
She lets herself sink back into the pillow.
What she prayed took less than a minute. In the Greek in which Matthew preserved it, this prayer counts 73 words. A shopping list is longer.
And in those 73 words God is named once. Not "God", not "Lord": one name, in the Greek the very first word — the word Noor began with tonight, and the only one she has never had to ask the meaning of. Father.
The one who gave this prayer away prayed himself as well. Not much of that has been preserved: 38 verses, all told. And in them the same address sounds 16 times. In a garden, at a grave, in the middle of a crowd, in the night when everything was at stake — always that same one word, the word Noor said tonight: Father.
Once it was different: on a cross, in another language, with the words of a psalm — Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani; my God, my God.
In the bedroom the prayer has been over for a while. Her father switches off the light and stays standing in the doorway a moment longer, the way he stays a moment longer every evening. Noor turns onto her side; the duvet slides along with her up to her ear.
"Daddy?"
"Yes."
It is quiet for so long that he thinks she is already asleep.
"Nothing," she says then, from somewhere under the duvet. "I just wanted to know if you were still there."
He is still there. He stays until her breathing is that of a sleeping child, and then he pulls the door to behind him — not quite shut, because that is how it should be, according to her: the light from the landing has to make a stripe on the floor. Then the door is not really shut.
It is evening, late August. The window is open a crack and outside the summer is not yet done: somewhere a ball bounces off a garage door, someone calls a name, twice, and then a back door slams. In the room a night light shaped like a half moon is burning. A swim bag hangs from the door handle, packed for tomorrow.
Noor is seven. She sits upright in bed, because you pray sitting up; she decided that herself. She folds her hands the way she does everything she has only just learned: a little too carefully, finger by finger, until it is right. She squeezes her eyes shut, so determined that her nose wrinkles.
In the doorway stands her father, his hand already at the light switch. He says nothing. This is the moment of the evening when he says nothing.
She begins.
"Our Father, which art in heaven."
The first line comes by itself; it is already hers. After that the path narrows.
"Harold be thy name."
It is not quite the word. She does not hear it herself and is already further on, and her father in the doorway does not move; correcting is for the daytime.
"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."
Debtors comes out in pieces, but it comes out. Then she falters.
"And lead us not into [...]"
For a moment it is quiet. Outside the ball bounces. She searches, her eyes still shut, and finds the word by touch, the way you find a door handle in the dark.
"[...] testing. But deliver us from the evil one. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen."
The amen she says most firmly of all. It is the only word in the whole prayer that she knows exactly what you do with: then it is finished.
She lets herself sink back into the pillow.
What she prayed took less than a minute. In the Greek in which Matthew preserved it, this prayer counts 73 words. A shopping list is longer.
And in those 73 words God is named once. Not "God", not "Lord": one name, in the Greek the very first word — the word Noor began with tonight, and the only one she has never had to ask the meaning of. Father.
The one who gave this prayer away prayed himself as well. Not much of that has been preserved: 38 verses, all told. And in them the same address sounds 16 times. In a garden, at a grave, in the middle of a crowd, in the night when everything was at stake — always that same one word, the word Noor said tonight: Father.
Once it was different: on a cross, in another language, with the words of a psalm — Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani; my God, my God.
In the bedroom the prayer has been over for a while. Her father switches off the light and stays standing in the doorway a moment longer, the way he stays a moment longer every evening. Noor turns onto her side; the duvet slides along with her up to her ear.
"Daddy?"
"Yes."
It is quiet for so long that he thinks she is already asleep.
"Nothing," she says then, from somewhere under the duvet. "I just wanted to know if you were still there."
He is still there. He stays until her breathing is that of a sleeping child, and then he pulls the door to behind him — not quite shut, because that is how it should be, according to her: the light from the landing has to make a stripe on the floor. Then the door is not really shut.