Rain Dogs

   That dogs that wander aimlessly in your neighborhood after a heavy rain are lost is true and is such a profound, personal sadness; the trail of scents that marked their way back home is washed away by the downpour and into the gutter, cleaned off of the walls, the streets and the pavements; scattered, dying bits of familiar but vague scents are dissolved into the small puddles of water on the dirt road, tainted by the busy footsteps of Man, adding insult to the already disheartening confusion.

   That sharp, hysterical pain of panic from losing your way home, that disturbing fear of living and dying alone and astray, lost, unguided, unloved, unwanted, insignificant; a state of life which is worse than poverty; that dogs, albeit mere animals without free thought and of stature befitting of dirt, truly feel in their hearts.

   That was how the young Malay man felt when he was introduced to the tall and bearded white American muallaf, whose piety showed through the dark, callous patch of skin on his forehead, from prostrating long into the night, whose fear of God showed through the dark, swollen clouds of skin under his eyes, from tears during the prayers; "How I wish to have been born a dog instead, oh fellow Brother," the young Malay man lamented in a mix of regret, guilt and shame, "...despite my lifelong, now meaningless, head start; thus far, the gift of Life and Knowledge has amounted to nothing worthy of my existence, not here, not there, and not in the hereafter."