An anecdote

by Zorina Shah

One day in early February 2010 Father Michel de Verteuil surprised me.
Several years before he had collapsed in a bookstore in Toronto and remained in a coma for maybe three weeks. He suffered severe memory loss from a stroke, following a mass at Paramin later the same year.
On this day in February he remembered my first name. He remembered the name of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. He remembered that Germaine Scott had given him a copy of Bhutto's autobiography. He remembered that Bhutto's marriage had been arranged but that she fell in love with her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, (he didn't remember that name) afterwards.
I had gone to his apartment at the priest's residence, top floor of Fatima College to tell him that I was going to Guyana for a few months.
"You will need something to read," he said as he plucked the book off the shelf. I tried to convince him that he should keep the book and read it especially as I had already taken the Anne Murray CD, a gift from the same Germaine Scott. He tried equally hard to convince me that he didn't need to read it again.
I sat at his computer, a trusty Mac G4 ibook, checking to make sure his email was working, his online newspapers were loading and that he would have no computer problems for those few months. After about 20 minutes of total silence (he was peeved) and out of nowhere he asked "What is Sura (something or the other)". The pronunciation of the second word had me stumped for a long, long time. Then he explained it. While Benazir was in prison she recited this prayer 49 times every night he told me. I checked every chapter where Bhutto was in prison and came across the reference. The prayer is very short and when translated into English says:

In The Name Of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful

Say: He, Allah, is One.

Allah is He on Whom all depend.

He begets not, nor is He begotten.

And none is like Him. Father had read the book.