Heavenly Creatures

The next day, the little girl was talking in full sentences.

“Take me to this library,” she said, pulling up a map on Sun’s phone.

“Pardon?” I asked, mid-slurp into my egg soup.

“There’s a beautiful library I want to visit,” she said.

“I’m sorry, you want to go now? At—“ I checked my watch. “—seven a.m.?”

Sun grumbled. He was grouchy in the mornings.

My sister was the only one who took it in stride. “We’ll go right after breakfast—“

“Call me mother,” the girl said. I almost choked on my soup.

“Okay, mother,” my sister said. “It will be a bit strange to call you that in public…”

“It’s okay,” mother said. “You’re not here for them anyway. You’re here for me.”

Sun gave me a look, which I wholeheartedly returned.

“And I thought I was self-centered,” Sun said.

“Shut up, Monkey,” mother said, and an icy silence descended on the table.

As we walked out of our apartment that day, I muttered to my sister so mother couldn’t hear us. “Can we let her burn in hell now?”

My sister shushed me. We smiled and waved at mother, who looked back at us suspiciously.

Sister sighed. “She was cuter as a baby,” she said.

“You’re telling me,” I grumbled, following after Sun, who had mercifully fallen into line behind the little menace. I could imagine that his tail would have been drooping, if he had been able to show it in the street.

When we arrived at the library, I had to admit that the whole structure was breathtaking. The stacks of books reached up four stories.

“Wow,” Sun said. “Props to Korea.”

Mother walked over to the bookshelves and picked out a book. I read Al-Ghazali on the spine. It struck me that it was highly improbable that she could have found this English translation of this particular book in a South Korean library, but I chalked it up to another one of Sun’s tricks.

“Read this to me,” she said, handing the book to me. My sister and Sun sat on the bench beside me. I opened the book, marveling at the calligraphy inside.

I was a little disgruntled at being ordered around by a child, but as I read, I became immersed in a world of spiritual insight. When I occasionally looked up, I saw that mother sat against the bookshelf with her eyes closed. My sister and Sun sat quietly beside me.

We went to the library every day for the next few weeks. We read all of Al-Ghazali’s books, from his thickest treatises to his thinnest volumes. It was astounding how quickly mother had us going through them. My throat felt a little raw, and Sun kindly made me hot tea with milk and honey every night to help with the soreness. One day, mother stopped me from picking up a book we had been reading.

“No,” she said. “Today, I want you to read me Rumi.”

“Okay,” I said.

Time stopped in that library, and even the constant roar of people walking by dulled to silence. We seemed to float in a sea of stars. God had created time and space and man to witness it all.

On the twenty first day (Sun had kept count), mother opened her eyes suddenly in the middle of my sentence and held up her hand.

“God is because I am,” she said.

Sun smiled, and as I looked into his golden eyes, I felt that I was looking into the eyes of God.

“That’s right,” Sun said.

Mother’s eyes softened. “Let’s go back home,” she said.