It was the trees. The trees taught me how to pray again. 

I stopped praying a year and a half ago. I stopped when the whole act started to become a charade, done out of mere obligation. Every time I finished a prayer I was left with guilt. Guilt for not remembering which rakaa I was on, guilt for praying late, guilt for not praying, guilt for praying too fast. Guilt clung to me for minutes after I’d finished, like the sickening and sticky aftertaste of a coffee taken with a cigarette.  At some point I just realized I hated it, its every movement exhausted me. I knew that what I was doing was merely keeping appearance, like dusting a house of cards every few times a day, without ever putting anything into it to hold it together. So I stopped. I still thought of God. I still spoke to him, but I stopped dancing his dance, and I felt such relief. It was as if I had quit an addiction, like I’d cleaned off my desk, and organized everything into neat boxes and binders, like I could finally mark that year long lingering task from my to-do list.

But ever since I’ve come to Oxford, things have changed. In my daily thirty to forty-five minute walk to campus, all I see are trees. The trees at Oxford are undescribable. These immense and graceful beings watch over every narrow alley, every broad street, every corner building. They're organs for the city, guardians of its every movement. They are more human than any.other.life in this city, including my own. Sometimes they remind me of my grandparents, my great grandparents, my friend’s grandparents. Not only because that’s exactly what they are for this town, but because that’s exactly what they look like. The one right at the roundabout on Cowley-Iffley Rd. resembles my grandma. Standing with all her pride, in all the glory and wisdom her age has given her, her hair frizzed over by age, but yet still at the whim of every tickle in the breeze, her arms out inviting me in. Standing there. Just watching. With all her patience, she trusts in what she sees, never feeling the need to move too quickly, or even speak against it or in support of it. She just smiles. She just observes.

My friend once asked me to name my three favorite animals with my reasoning, as a part of some sort of personality test, every animal was meant to reveal something different about my character. I said, horse because a horse is strong, yet always graceful. Bird, because a bird is always singing, always happy. And elephant, because an elephant always seems satisfied with the bare minimum. Now that I think about it, I was really just trying to re-describe a tree: Strong. It moves its leaves and its branches with every touch, but it never lets anything access its core. It never moves its roots, unless it wants to grow. Happy. What better visualization for a giggle than the way leaves shiver in the wind. Humble.

Something in these trees one day forced me to take an extra pillowcase and lay it on the ground, to set a piece of earth on it, and to wrap my hair, before standing. As I stood, I realized that I don’t remember the last time I felt my bare feet against the ground. I brought my hands up and I dropped them and began. And I said every word. I did every movement, all while realizing that my feet were always in place. I was that tree, bowing and bending, moving and turning, without ever taking my feet off the ground. I was rooted, and felt more layers of flesh, of blood, of being in myself than I  had ever felt.

And so I’ve started to pray again. Yes, my prayer is still to God. I still address him, but where is he, if he’s not inside me, and who is he, if he’s not me? If he’s not the part of us that we live through. Aren’t we the creators, forgivers, protectors, nourishers, the givers of life? Doesn’t that eagle come to be as magnificent as it is, because each one of us notices it’s intricate wings, its bold dark eye, its grace as it soars. I’ve realized from watching how imbued that tree is of God, that God isn’t someone out there, up there, somewhere with a hand outstretched to me. He’s in me, with a hand stretched out to the world, to Mehdi, to my parents, to my sister, to you.

Now when I pray, it’s not out of obligation, or fear of an impending day of doom, but because I think I deserve. I deserve five minute increments in the day to myself, to think of who I am, to try to be that tree.