as I sat at maghrib prayer at dusk in June in the small village mosque – darkening shadows draped around like dark sheets and the heat of the brick floor still rising like waves to my face – I saw in the corner of my eye a flash of colour yellow, green and silver a snake – the deadly village viper it stood stock-still by the prayer mat still as the world around me and – as unreal and in that eternity we were suspended in a perfect harmony of calm and poise: man and animal; we were one in the house of God – it waited for me to turn my head in salaam and when I looked – it had gone. The writer is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC