"One day [my grandmother] called me. I came and saw a blackboard at her side. «Come, sit next to me. I’d like to teach you an ancient craft. Take this chalk in your hand.». She inserted it between my thumb and index finger and went on. «Now draw a dot and concentrate all your energy into this one dot. It is the beginning and the end, the navel of the world.»
The following day, she called me again. «Fawzia, come!» She sat at her usual place with the board next to her. «Now draw the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, the alif, a vertical line; start from the top, keep your hand light and put all your inner strength into the downward movement. Let the line become as long as three dots lying above each other.» Again, I took the chalk between thumb and fore finger, and I made an alif (ا). She explained that the alif is the first expression of the dot. It is unique among all the letters of the alphabet and contained in all of them. Trace it with reverence, she told me, for the alif is the dot’s longing to show itself. It is through the dot’s longing to grow beyond itself that the alif is born. Regardless of their multiple, outer shapes, all letters are the alif in their essence. (...) I felt my body straighten into a living alif. My arms, hands, back, legs, and feet all turned into alif.
Another day came when my grandmother called me. (...) «Anchor your feet to the earth and balance your weight on both legs. Now shift your pelvis to the right and then to the left, as if you were drawing a shell. Every time you reach the furthest outward point, stop, balance back to your middle and then to the other side. Now come, make the same movement with the chalk on the board (ٮ): Does this shape remind you of something?»
«It’s the second letter of the alphabet, grandmother, but the dot underneath it is missing.»
«The dot is the beginning,» she explained. «The dot begets all the other letters. The dot is below and the alif in between (ب). Together, they form the word (father), one of the names of the Divine. When you whirl or when you circle your pelvis, you are drawing the dot, the origins. From this shape all other movements are born – they all stem from this dot, from the navel in your belly.»
