When the first tender-green leaf appeared on the mossy wall of her one-room home adjoining the mosque, Ameena had smiled. She did not have the heart to pluck it out. For a while now, she had stopped going out, spending most of her days in the single room, all alone. She was recovering from a miscarriage arising from something much worse that had left her shattered. Living in the shadow of the horrors, she had nowhere to go. The tiny, fresh-green, heart-shaped leaf was the only tender thing around her in those days.
That it grew in the direction of qiblah – was that an insignificant fact, or a more profound sign? She was unable to decide.
Within a month she had noticed the crack in the wall widening, spreading across, and the stem growing bigger – about a foot long, with a few more leaves hanging delicately from its slender branches. Nothing about it bothered her still. She had started feeling at peace again. The riots had stopped. And an old rhythm had returned to the streets. She had started doing paid embroidery work from home. Often, she would talk to herself while working around the house, as if someone was finally listening, bearing witness to her trials and trauma.
Little did she know about the massive spread of the peepal on the other side of the wall that faced the street belonging to other people. Others with whom they had little, if any, exchange these days. She’d had no idea of when someone had placed a few sacred stones behind the wall, when the miracles took place, when people solicited opinions and funds to build an alternative structure around the tree. It seemed like the peepal was conspiring behind her back. There was no question of uprooting the divine manifestation. In fact, there were stories around it; why this particular tree in this particular place whose roots were the abode of lord Vishnu. Or was it Brahma? She pondered over her own ignorance as she tried to read the notice…