The Ones Still to Come

Rain slid down the windows of Classroom 2, and the old radiator clanked like a spoon tapping a pipe. It was Saturday morning at the masjid in Huddersfield, and Hawa had her chin in her hand.

Ustadha Nasreen was telling the class about the Companions: how they prayed in rows behind the Prophet ﷺ, heard his voice, and learned from him face to face.

The other girls were copying from the board. Hawa wasn't. A heavy, sulky feeling had settled in her chest, the one she got when her cousins came back from Hargeisa full of stories she hadn't been part of.

"It's not fair," she said, before she could stop herself.

Eleven heads turned. Ustadha Nasreen put down her pen. "What isn't, Hawa?"

Hawa's face went hot. "They got to see him. They actually sat with him. We just read about him. I was born fourteen hundred years too late."

Nobody laughed. Ustadha Nasreen looked at her thoughtfully. "Stay behind after class, would you?"

Hawa's stomach dropped.

When the room had emptied, Ustadha perched on the edge of the desk next to Hawa's.

"I used to feel exactly like that," she said. "Then my teacher told me a hadith. Can I tell it to you?"

Hawa nodded.

"One day, the Prophet ﷺ went to a graveyard and greeted the believers buried there with salaam. Then he said, 'I would love to see our brothers.' His Companions said, 'Aren't we your brothers, O Messenger of Allah ﷺ?' And he said, 'You are my Companions. Our brothers are those who have not yet come into the world.'"

Hawa frowned. "Not come into the world? You mean not born yet?"

"Not born yet. Some of them not for hundreds and hundreds of years," said Ustadha. "People who would never see him, and would still believe in him."

The radiator ticked. Rain pattered on the glass.

"But I'm not a brother," Hawa said slowly.

Ustadha smiled. "In Arabic, that word gathers everyone in, sisters too. You're in there, Hawa."

Hawa chewed her lip. "So the Companions weren't his brothers, but we are? Does that make us better?"

"Oh, no." Ustadha shook her head. "The Companions were his brothers as well as his Companions. Nobody else can ever be both. But he thought about us too, long before we were born, and he wished he could see us."

She leaned forward. "Then the Companions asked how he would know the people of his Ummah who hadn't been born yet. He asked them: if a man had horses with white blazes on their foreheads and legs, mixed in with horses that were all black, wouldn't he know which ones were his? They said, 'Of course, O Messenger of Allah ﷺ.' Then the Prophet ﷺ said that on the Day of Judgement those people would come with their faces, arms and legs shining white from wudu, and he would reach his Pool, the Hawd, before them. He'll be there first, like someone who goes on ahead of tired travellers to get the water ready."

In her mind, Hawa pictured a whole field of dark horses, and among them a few with white blazes on their foreheads and white socks on their legs.

She looked down at her wrists. That morning before Fajr, the bathroom tap had run so cold it made her gasp, and she had rushed through her wudu as fast as she could.

"Wudu," she whispered. "Even mine?"

"In sha Allah, yours too," said Ustadha softly.

On the bus home, Hawa leaned her forehead against the steamy window and watched the stone terraces go by. She thought of Hooyo, who had never seen the Prophet ﷺ and still sent salawat on him every morning while she plaited Hawa's hair. She thought of Ayeeyo in Hargeisa, and of Ustadha Nasreen. Every one of them had been among the ones still to come. So had she. Allah had chosen her time, just as He had chosen theirs.

That night, before Isha, Hawa ran the tap until the water was warm. She made her wudu slowly this time, watching the water run across her face, along her arms and elbows, and over her feet and ankles.

After she had prayed, she climbed into bed. The rain had softened to a whisper against the window.

Fourteen hundred years too late, she had said. It didn't feel like that any more. It felt as though, long ago, the Prophet ﷺ had thought of people just like her, and called them "our brothers".

"O Allah," she whispered, "let me be one of the ones he knows."

Then she lay still, picturing that field of dark horses and the few with bright white blazes, until her eyes grew heavy and the rain hushed her to sleep.