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 The
plane accelerated down the runway and lifted upwards toward the
pale blue expanse of sky over Atlanta. I gazed out the port hole
and saw the great city shrinking beneath me. Greenish brown
patches of land, the winding and cube like thoroughfares, the
red tile roofs of buildings and the sight of skyscrapers in the distance; an
abiding testament to the financial prosperity and the social
decadence of the southern metropolis. Thoughts crossed my mind,
that not long ago, chattel slavery had existed and flourished
under these same southern skies, and brave men from the opposing
armies of North and South, Union and Confederacy, had fought and
died in these same thoroughfares. Eventually the city disappeared
beneath me, obscured by the clouds, and my thoughts turned to
other things.
The atmosphere
in the airliner seemed artificial, transfused. Periodically my
ears would pop because of the air pressure. A flight stewardess,
her face frozen in a perpetual smile, came by with a lunch cart.
She was pretty; her complexion a smooth honey brown . She
smelled like jasmine and her eyes hinted at soft summer nights.
Yet there was something phoney and superficial about her; like a
manikin propped up in a store window. I smiled back at her as
she served me my meal, feeling awkward and clumsy in the small space, yet
admiring her dexterity and balance. I leaned back in my chair
and thought of Detroit. Although I had not been there in
fourteen years, Detroit was never far from my mind. I was raised
there. Detroit was my home, and now, after a long interval, I
was returning to the city I considered home. I realized that the
fourteen years I'd lived in L. A. had left a indelible
impression on me: The sunshine, the orange and palm trees, the
wide range of ethnic and cultural diversity, the different
races of its people-Hispanic, African, Asian, Indian,
Caucasian,- Then I was reminded of the sage who said "There
is only one race, the human race.''
Yet like an obscure
dream from which one awakens after a restless sleep, I could
find no significance in the memories . And, although there was
much about L.A. that I cherished, I had always felt like a
stranger there. I thought about my mother whom I had not seen
for over a decade and a half. I remembered how she looked the
last time I saw her. She was fifty years old at the time but
still youthful, energetic, and beautiful. Los Angeles had
beckoned me with its promise of opportunity and speculation. I
felt a need to traverse its avenues, to bask in its western sun,
to listen to its rich diversity of sound, and to achieve
financial success and prosperity. I had not found in L.A.
everything that I had sought to find, but I had found Islam, and
this was more than I had ever hoped for.
And now soaring
through the clouds with my face turned toward Detroit, I sensed
a new vista opening up before me; but a vista still held
together by the vista of my past. I felt, mysteriously, a vague
sense of melancholy consume me. Melancholy not so much for what
I had left behind in L.A; but for what I had left unfulfilled
ahead of me in Detroit. And what would I find there in Detroit?
Even among the members of my family? Would there be love or
indifference? Happiness or shattered hopes? Beauty or
bitterness? Is home a place where love resides? Or is it a place
of barely disguised hatred and contempt, concealed uneasily
beneath a facade of goodwill? These thoughts made me wrap my
jacket tightly around me, as if to fortify myself against a
bitter cold. Time had laid its uncompromising hands on me; had
made me weary of restlessness and uncertainty. I longed for
something assuaging, something familiar to stabilize my
listless, wayward heart. And home, instead of becoming less a
reality because of my absence, had become more real and more
crucial. And I thought of my  grandmother
who, when I told her that I was reluctant to return home because
I had no material possessions to give her, no money or gifts
with which to bestow upon her; responded ''Come on home,
you'll be the gift.''
I looked
at the vision of my face reflected in the glass of the port
window, and I remembered a time years previously, when I as a
youngster of fifteen, had stared at my image in the glass of a
city bus. I had felt so alive, so strong, so full of vigour and
hope. And now my face stared back at me, decades older. The same
face but wiser and more cynical; But then I thought of Islam, my
new-found faith, and I could discern a a deep indecipherable
curtain, or an essence of light and shadow that separates the
past from the present, and the present from the future, and the
future from eternity. And in the quiet and in the solitude of my
thoughts I heard someone say:
"You may cry in the night sometime, but if you hold on
and keep the faith, I guarantee you, that there will be
brightness and beauty in the morning."
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