Download the Book - Islam and Science Fiction

chairs and sit in front of the house in the gathering coolness of the
night, gossiping. It was pleasant.
Summer nights in our house were extra special. Some of us -
particularly my grandmother and myself - would sleep in the open, on
wooden cots covered with crisp, clean sheets. It was extremely
pleasant lying there in the coolness of the night, staring up at the starstudded
sky and listening to the snores of the rest of the sleepers and
the chirrupings of crickets, grasshoppers and other insects, while the
fragrance of spring flowers filled my nostrils.
During holidays, my afternoons were usually spent in
grandfather’s room. I would lie beside him on his bed and he would
tell me stories of great thinkers of the world - and I would lie there
assimilating it all, occasionally asking him a question, otherwise
remaining silent.
After the story session, he would usually go to sleep and I would
get up from his bed and go around prowling in his room, searching for
any books of his that I had not read. I would invariably find one book
or the other and start reading it at once, sitting in his armchair. These
books were usually quite old ones, their bindings torn, their pages
termite eaten, and a strange sort of smell rising up from them - a
mysterious, magical smell.
Have you ever noticed what books, particularly old books, smell
of? They smell of sunny and cloudy days and dark and moonlit nights.
They smell of battle-fields and gardens, of open skies and dusty attics,
of deserts and mountains, of destinies and purpose. They smell of
time.
Friends
I remember a time when late one night, Ali and I sat on a bench
in the park near my house.
We started talking about artificiality in our lives.
“Self deception is our darling," I said. We do not have the guts to
criticise ourselves. There is artificiality in our thinking, in our actions.
How can we be free of this artificiality?”
At last, Ali spoke: “If one can come out of the circle of self then
one is free.”
I thought over this statement. “Yes. But self is insidious. It gets
into everything and pollutes purity.”
“How?”
“Take worship. What kind of worship of God do you think is
more laudatory: worship that is done to get rewards from God,
73