The Other Hall
For the boy — turning his paper over now — is sitting in two halls at once. One hall he sees: walls, a blackboard, a fan going round. And one he does not see: wider than the first beyond any measure, its ceiling the sky and its floor this earth, and his seat in it is his whole life. He entered it the day he was born, and he will leave it the day he is carried out. There is no single paper in it; everything that happens to him is a question paper.
For human existence is not an aimless drift through the space of chance, nor a random journey with no purpose and no end. It is — in the sober Islamic view — a house to pass through and not to stay in, a place of crossing and not of settling, a stretch of travel and work and not a home of rest and reward. And the difference between two men in this world is not in what befalls them, but in which of the two halls each of them thinks he is sitting.
The two halls do not come one after the other, one ending so that the other may begin. They run at the same time. In the moment the boy decides to copy from his neighbour's paper, something moves in the smaller hall that the invigilator does not see: the flick of an eye. And something else moves in the greater hall: a pen writes, and a line is set down. One act, two recordings. And this is the key to the whole of this book: every second you do one thing, and it is entered in two records.
When the Envelope Is Opened
The invigilator breaks the seal in front of the candidates, and every head lifts at once. One paper on each desk, and a known length of time written at the top of it, after which no pen is accepted.
No envelope is opened and no announcement is heard. The questions come down one after another in the shape of an ordinary day: money that increases, a friend who lets you down, an illness that drags on, a chance to be honest that passes in a second. The time allowed is known to the owner of the hall, and it is not written at the top of the paper.
The Number on the Seat
A small chalk number on the back of a chair. The candidate did not choose it and was not asked about it. One seat is by the window where the air comes in, another under the air conditioner where its owner shivers, a third in the front row under the invigilator's eye.
No one chose his time, or his parents, or his face, or his health. This one has room and that one is straitened, this one is well and that one is afflicted. And the seat is not the mark; the mark is what is written on the paper while you are sitting in it.