Week 5 Story: A Child's Imagination
“Lunch is ready!” the woman yelled.
The boy stopped what he was doing and ran downstairs. He arrived to the kitchen, where he took a seat and started to eat the sandwich plated in front of him.
“How is your project going, sweetheart?” the woman proceeds to ask the child.
“I think it going great!” shouted the boy with a great deal of enthusiasm and a mouthful of sandwich, “I made a name now, and I came up with a great idea, I’m going to make a throne for myself!”
“Is that right? What name do you come up with?”
“Allah, and I also came up with the idea to write what I want to call Tablet of Destiny!” the boy made a big gesture, “An-And it going to be about the people who believe in me. Like I wrote about this boy named Ahmet, who is going to grow up and teach Physics!”
It was easy to tell that the boy was excited about his project as he continued to describe the life of this boy he wrote about and the woman was happy about seeing his enthusiasm.
“Have you talked to the others about this?” the woman asked, interrupting the boy’s tangent.
The boy quickly nodded his head, “Yea! I talked with Yahweh and we talked about the Torah and about how we had some ideas that were almost the same. It was so cool! And then we talked about how many people we’ll each have. I told him I would have a billion people and he said he was only going to have millions!”
“Remember sweetheart, you have to share this world with the others.”
“I know, some of the people I make I’m going to share with the others. Like I was playing with God and he said that he’ll let me have one of his people. He said her name is Fidelma O’Leary and she teaches people like Ahmet does.”
“I’m excited to see how it turns out, sweetheart!”
“Thank you, Terra Mater!”
The boy ran towards the living room, where a bunch of other kids were playing around and talking to each other. It was an incredibly group of diverse kids, their ages appeared to have a range of ten years or so.
(Mosquein Abuja, Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Author's Note: This story is based off of the cosmogony of Muslims, where it talks about the first steps Allah makes when creating the world. With my story, I decided to play with the idea of creationism as a whole but focus somewhat on the one of Islam. I had the idea of humanizing Allah and other gods, and giving them the ability to thrive as a child's imagination would. I've always had the idea that religions and their respective gods coexist, in a different plane of existence, and I wanted to somehow incorporate into the story. I added the character of the woman, who is supposed to represent Earth as a maternal figure who helps the deities form their religion.
Hi Dora, this was definitely an interesting story. I got a little confused when it was talking about Allah and God and other religious terms; I didn't understand exactly what was going on. But your author's note cleared that up. I really liked the mother character and how she represents Earth. I wonder if there is any other meaning to Fidelma O’Leary. Is that just another name or is it something more? Maybe you could explain it in the author's note.
ReplyDeleteYou're right I didn't clear that up, Fidelma O'Leary does have some significance. When I learned about the ritual of Hajj in a documentary, one of the people in the documentary was Fidelma. I learned about her experience and I got to see her first time at Hajj and I could see how much faith she had and I wanted to include her. She was raised Catholic and converted to Islam later on in her life. That's why I added her to the story the way I did.
DeleteHey Dora,
ReplyDeleteThis was a cool twist on the story. I really liked the idea of the child's imagination and creation coming together. With religious stories it can be challenging to think outside of the lines. I'm not really sure if this is helpful feedback but I was wondering if you thought of maybe detailing the rooms that the children were in? It kind of just seemed like it was just a house. Which maybe should be more than a house because they are all Gods coexisting in another plane of existence.