Rabia Looks for the Needle

In the old city of Basra, beside a narrow lane that smelled always of bread and orange peel, lived a small woman with very bright eyes.

Her name was Rabia.

She owned almost nothing. A clay cup. A small mat. A single shawl that she wore in the morning and folded under her head at night.

Her neighbours loved her. When they were troubled, they came to her door. She would seat them, pour them water, listen for a long time, and then say one small sentence that made them laugh and weep at once.

One evening, after the call to prayer had drifted across the rooftops, the neighbours came out into the lane to take the cool air.

There, in the middle of the dusty street, in a patch of moonlight, sat Rabia on her knees. She was patting the ground softly with both hands.

"Sister," said the baker's wife, "what are you doing on the ground?"

"I am looking for my needle," Rabia said gently. "I have lost it."

The baker's wife came at once and knelt beside her. The oil-seller came too. So did the young boy who sold pomegranates. So did an old man with a stick.

Soon there were ten people on their knees in the lane, patting the dust, peering into the cracks between the stones.

"A silver one?" asked the boy.

"Silver," said Rabia.

They searched. They searched everywhere. The moon climbed a little higher. No one found anything.

At last the baker's wife sat back on her heels.

"Rabia, dear sister, where exactly did you drop it? Tell us, and we will look right there."

Rabia smiled. The smile spread slowly across her face like the first light of dawn on a wall.

"Ah," she said softly. "I did not drop it here."

The neighbours looked at her.

"Where did you drop it?" the old man asked.

"Inside my house."

There was a silence. Then the oil-seller laughed — a confused, kind laugh.

"Inside your house? Rabia, then why are we searching the street?"

Rabia looked around at the lane. The white moonlight lay on it like a soft cloth. The dust glowed silver.

"Because," she said simply, "the moon is bright out here. And inside my house — there is no lamp tonight."

The neighbours opened their mouths. Then they closed them. They sat back in the dust and looked at each other.

The young boy began to laugh first, very softly. Then the old man's shoulders shook. Then the baker's wife covered her mouth.

Rabia laughed with them, gently.

"Oh sister," the baker's wife said at last, wiping her eyes, "you are teasing us."

"I am teasing myself," said Rabia. "I have been doing this all my life. Looking out here, in the bright moonlight of other people's words, for things I have lost in the small dark room of my own heart."

The lane went quiet.

A breeze moved softly through, lifting a corner of the boy's shawl, turning a single dry leaf along the ground.

The old man cleared his throat. "Rabia," he said, "explain a little. We are slow tonight."

Rabia sat down properly, folding her legs.

"When you are sad, friend, where do you go to find joy?"

"I go to the market. I drink tea with friends. I listen to music."

"And does the joy come?"

"For a little while. Then it leaves."

"Because you are looking for it in the moonlight outside. But you lost it in here." She tapped her own chest, very lightly. "Somewhere between yesterday's worry and today's hurry."

The old man looked at his hands.

"And when you cannot sleep, sister?" Rabia asked the baker's wife.

"I count my troubles. I count my money. I count what I should have done that day."

"And does sleep come?"

"It comes only when I stop counting."

"Yes. Because the sleep is in here too." She tapped her own chest again. "Not in the counting."

The boy spoke softly. "Rabia, then how do we find these things? If there is no lamp in our own house?"

Rabia smiled at him. She reached into the small bag at her side and brought out a tiny clay oil-lamp. It was no bigger than her palm. She set it down between them on the stone.

She took a small flint, struck it, and lit the wick. A warm yellow flame stood up, very small, very steady.

In its light, the dust no longer looked silver. It looked like dust.

"This is the lamp," she said. "It is small. It is yours. It is always with you. When you want to find something you have lost, you do not need to run out into the bright street. You only need to sit down, light this little lamp, and look — slowly — at the corners of your own house."

The neighbours sat in silence around the tiny flame.

Then, very quietly, one by one, they went home.

The baker's wife did not bake that night. She sat in her kitchen with a small lamp and thought of her mother, who had died many years ago, and she let her tears fall without counting them.

The oil-seller lay on his roof and watched the stars and did not, for the first time in a long while, plan tomorrow's prices.

The old man with the stick sat in his doorway, closed his eyes, and discovered that the courage he had been searching for at the mosque had been sitting on the threshold of his own house all along.

And Rabia?

Rabia went into her small house. She lit her own lamp. She sat on her mat. After a little while, she reached over and picked up something thin and silver from beside her water-jar.

The needle had been there the whole time.

She held it up to the lamplight and smiled at it like an old friend.

"Welcome back," she whispered.

She set it down carefully. She blew out the lamp.

She lay down on her mat and slept like a child.