Five times each day

I have missed a lifetime’s worth of prayers. That is neither an exaggeration nor an admission I make with pride.

I was around 10 or 12 when my mother and I began formally learning how to pray. There was irony in this. My mother was born and raised Catholic and embraced Islam when she married my father. Yet it was she who taught me.

Or perhaps we learned together.

Our guide was a photocopied booklet with typewritten translations along its margins. I cannot remember why we began only then. What I remember is that when she started, I started, too.

Five times a day. Fajr, before sunrise. Dhuhr, after midday. Asr, in the afternoon. Maghrib, after sunset. Isha, at night.

Together, these constitute salah, the prescribed prayer and the second of Islam’s five pillars. The Qur’an requires prayer at appointed times. Each involves recitation, standing, bowing and prostration, ordinarily preceded by wudu, or ritual ablution.

A few years later, in 1993, we joined my father in his diplomatic posting in the Sultanate of Oman.

There, admittedly, praying became easier.

The adhan, or call to prayer, echoed five times daily, beginning before dawn. Even our villa’s thick walls could not keep it out. Long before Bluetooth speakers, neighboring mosques formed what sounded like a daisy chain of reminders.

Fridays were particularly anticipated.

A group of Filipino Muslim workers who had earlier paid a courtesy call on my father soon became family, our ragtag “A-Team,” our sandigan.

There was Kuya Musa Amiril, our informal spiritual adviser; Alicman Borowa, now a Philippine Coast Guard official; Engineer Edresh Pascan; and the late Engineer Gerry Pundoma, affectionately called “Kumander.”

They would arrive as I prepared for Friday prayers. Around 15 minutes before noon, we would leave in Kuya Musa’s white Honda Civic for the mosque in Al Khuwair.

Beside it was a bakery run by a Filipino selling what was labeled “Filipino dinner rolls.”

Pan de sal, of course.

After prayers came Yayay Deling’s chicken barbecue, kare-kare, and home-cooked favorites, followed by lessons about Islam.

Far from home, faith helped create another family.

Eventually, we returned to the Philippines and life continued, eventually without my father.

The familiar calls to prayer faded. So did much of the discipline they helped sustain.

There were prayers performed, many more missed, and conversations with my Creator. Moments of bliss, certainly, but also guilt and fear.

A commentary I once encountered suggested that abandoning prayer could place one’s very faith in question. Scholars differ on the implications, but the warning stayed with me.

Had I wandered too far?

Yet the Qur’an also says: “Do not despair of the mercy of Allah.”

Recently, a video portraying a Muslim passing away while prostrating reminded me of three paternal uncles, Umbrah, Abulkhair and Anuar, who, I was told, passed away shortly after performing salah.

Then I remembered my father, sitting beside the bed before being taken to the hospital.

I do not know whether he had performed his prayer. I pray that he had.

Today, prayer applications provide reminders, recitations, translations, and directions toward Makkah. I keep several to find my way back.

During a meeting, nervousness made me feel disregarded. Remembering Surah Al-Fatihah and Ayat al-Kursi helped me remain restrained and composed. Perhaps prayer must also teach us how to conduct ourselves beyond the prayer mat.

There remains another responsibility.

My mother taught me how to pray. I am now a father, yet I have not begun to teach my own children. Perhaps, as my mother and I once did, we can learn together.

I cannot recover the years that have passed. But I can answer the next call, and perhaps teach my children to answer theirs.

I learned how to pray as a child. I have spent much of my life learning why.

And now, Insha’Allah, I must learn to live by it.