The Recitation

 

The sun was bleeding orange across the western sky when Ahmad heard the first verse.

He’d been sweeping the mosque’s front steps—just an old man with arthritic hands doing his daily chore—when the sound filtered through the open windows. The melodious recitation of Qur’anic verses wasn’t unusual in Cimande, especially during Ramadan, but something about this particular voice made the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention like tiny soldiers.

Odd, he thought, leaning on his broom. Real odd.

Ahmad knew every voice in this village; hell, he’d been calling the adhan here since before most of these folks were born. But this voice—this voice was different. It had a quality that seemed to hook into something primal at the base of his skull and pull.

The voice paused, and another took its place. And another. Each recitation passing like a baton in some cosmic relay race.

“Tadarus,” Ahmad whispered to himself. The communal Qur’an recitation was beginning early today. Usually, they waited until after Asr prayer, but the sun was still a good hour from setting.

He set his broom against the wall and shuffled inside, his rubber sandals making wet-sounding smacks against his heels. The interior of the mosque was cool and dim, illuminated only by slanting rectangles of dying sunlight through the high windows. The air smelled of old carpets and frankincense and something else—something Ahmad couldn’t quite place.

(fear)

He shook the thought away.

Five young santris sat in a circle on the prayer mats, passing the mushaf between them. The current reader, a boy of perhaps twelve with a serious face and glasses too big for his features, recited with surprising skill, his finger tracing under each word with reverence.

Ahmad frowned. He didn’t recognize a single one of them.

In a village of three hundred souls, where everyone knew which neighbor’s chicken had laid eggs that morning, five strange faces was as improbable as snow in Java.

“Assalamu’alaikum,” Ahmad called out, his voice echoing much louder than he’d intended in the empty mosque.

None of the boys looked up.

The boy with glasses finished his verse and passed the Qur’an to his right. The next boy took it with hands that seemed too pale, too long-fingered for a village child. When he began to recite, Ahmad felt that strange pull again, as if someone had threaded a fishing line through the center of his consciousness and was reeling him in.

Wait a minute. Just a goddamn minute here.

The breeze through the open windows intensified, bringing the scent of cooking fires from neighboring homes preparing for iftar. But underneath that familiar smell was something else—something metallic and ancient.

Blood, Ahmad thought suddenly. Old blood.

He stepped closer. “Where are you boys from?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. “I don’t believe we’ve met, and I know all the families in Cimande.”

The boy who was reciting stopped mid-verse. Slowly, all five heads turned toward Ahmad with synchronized precision that made his stomach clench into a cold, hard knot.

“We’ve been here all along, Pak Ahmad,” said the boy with glasses, except his voice wasn’t a boy’s voice at all. It was deep and resonant and somehow old, like stones grinding together at the bottom of a dry well.

“You just haven’t been listening,” added another, his eyes reflecting the dying sunlight like polished obsidian.

Ahmad took an involuntary step backward. “Who are you?” he whispered.

The tallest boy smiled, revealing teeth that seemed too numerous, too sharp. “We are tadarus,” he said simply. “We are the ones who study together.”

“That’s not possible,” Ahmad said, his voice cracking. “Tadarus is an activity, not—”

“Not what, Pak Ahmad?” asked the boy with glasses, his head tilting at an angle that no human neck should permit. “Not people? Not beings?”

The last rays of the sun vanished below the horizon, plunging the mosque into twilight darkness. In the distance, Ahmad could hear the muezzin beginning the call for Maghrib prayer, but it seemed to come from very far away, as if from another world entirely.

The boy with the too-many teeth opened the Qur’an again. “Join us, Pak Ahmad,” he said, his voice suddenly a chorus of whispers. “We’ve been waiting for someone who truly understands the essence of tadarus.”

Ahmad felt his feet moving forward against his will, drawn by that terrible, insistent pull. The circle opened, creating a space for him.

“What do you mean?” Ahmad asked, even as he sank to his knees on the prayer mat.

“Tadarus isn’t just about reciting,” said the pale-handed boy. “It’s about understanding. About transformation.”

The mushaf was placed in Ahmad’s trembling hands. The pages felt wrong somehow—too warm, almost pulsing with a life of their own.

“Read,” commanded all five voices in unison.

Ahmad looked down at the page. The Arabic script seemed to writhe and reshape itself before his eyes, forming patterns he both recognized and didn’t—letters that were Arabic but also something older, something that existed before written language.

“I can’t,” he whispered.

“You already are,” said the boy with glasses.

And Ahmad realized with horror that his mouth was moving, sounds pouring forth in a voice that wasn’t his own. The words burned as they left his throat—not Qur’anic verses as he knew them, but something twisted, inverted.

Outside, the call to prayer faltered and died mid-verse.

The five boys—or whatever they were—leaned forward, their eyes reflecting a hunger that had waited centuries to be sated.

“This is the true tadarus,” said the one with too-many teeth. “We don’t just study the words. We become them.”

As the last syllable left Ahmad’s lips, the walls of the mosque seemed to flex inward, like a chest expanding for a breath. The prayer mats beneath them rippled as if the floor had suddenly become liquid.

From somewhere in the village, a scream rose and was abruptly cut short.

Ahmad felt tears rolling down his cheeks as he continued to recite words he didn’t understand, couldn’t stop, couldn’t control. Each syllable that left his mouth seemed to dim the lights of the village homes visible through the window, one by one, like stars winking out at dawn.

The boy with glasses smiled, a terrible stretching of lips that revealed nothing human behind them.

“Don’t be afraid, Pak Ahmad,” he said softly, reaching out to pat the old man’s hand with fingers that felt like damp stone. “After all, isn’t this what tadarus has always been about? Learning together.”

Ahmad stared helplessly as darkness spread across Cimande like spilled ink, leaving only their circle illuminated by a light that came from nowhere and everywhere at once.

“Together,” echoed the others, their voices melding into one impossible sound.

And as the night deepened outside and the village grew silent except for the sound of their recitation, Ahmad understood at last the true meaning of tadarus—not as it had been practiced for generations, but as it had begun, in the darkest corners of human experience, where words held power that no modern mind could comprehend.

He read on, and with each verse, Cimande faded a little more from the world that had birthed it.

Together, they recited. Together, they learned. Together, they transformed.

And when the dawn finally came, there was nothing left of the village but an empty mosque, five empty prayer mats—and a single, weathered Qur’an, closed and silent on the floor.

The End