Safar, husband of Amal, father to Anoush, and a sheik at a local Mosque in Baghdad, gave me his prayer beads as a gift. Gifts in Baghdad have a weight unlike gifts from other places. The weight comes from the transference of a certain responsibility from the giver to the receiver. It is tacit contract and it binds them to an agreement to remember.
Every gift quotes Gertrude Stein: "When you see this remember me."
Gifts with the weight of this responsibility to remember shift the material quality of the object itself, transforming defects into virtues, and the grime of use and history into an aura of intimacy.
There is a gift economy at work which escapes both calculation and quantification.
The beads are plastic and feel cold to the touch. The discoloring from one bead to the next must come from Safar touching each bead individually as he prayed. I never touch the beads like Safar. I never pray with beads and cannot remember the time I in fact prayed.
