When silence is “yeelen” (light): Exploring the corporeality of the mind in a nocturnal solo zikr practice (Odienné,Ivory Coast)

The devotional inducement of the night

From 2014 to 2019, I had carried an ethnographic project called “Odienné by Night”. ¹ In the course of sixteen months of fieldwork, I deepened an earlier observation: the urban night of a provincial town of the West African savannah does not reduce to a realm of secrecy, boldness and fear in which shameful, forbidden or malevolent activities flourish (see Chappatte 2014, 2018a). ² Before any attempt to investigate the urban night as a “counter-hegemonic” time (Schnepel and Ben-Ari 2005, 160), the expression of a “dominated culture”(Galinier et al. 2010, 828), ³ or the space-time for “an alternative life” (Tinat 2005, 243), I asked myself: to what types of corporeal experience does the urban night invite? The verb “to invite” means that the urban night is not an experiential field which is imposed on people; it is a sensuous inducement: this sensuality is sensations, that is the fused relatedness between sensory and affective ⁴ experiences. This inducement is felt like an open door which is embraced (or not) in various depths, intensities, and directions, depending on how one has been educated with regard to the place of the night; in other words, “a space that is lived in” (Relph 1976; Sheppard 2002; Tuan 1977). In Odienné, for instance, some people live this sensuous inducement as a religious call.

In 2017, I asked a local scholar, who studied in Medina (Saudi Arabia), about the relations between Islam and the night. He first replied, “the Quran was revealed to Muhammad during the night”. He then picked a Qur’an from a shelf, opened it, and enumerated surahs that refer to the night, such as: surah Al-Isra, The Night Journey; surah Al-Muzzammil, The Unfolded One; ⁵ and surah Al-Fajr, The Break of Dawn. Another Muslim scholar of Sufi obedience explained me that God inhabits the highest of the seven skies. Deep in the night, however, God goes down to the lowest sky to hear people's demands. A student of a médersa (French/Arab modern school) told me that, following the recommendation of his professor in Islamic studies, he often set his alarm clock at 2:55 a.m. to pray until 3:30 a.m. According to this professor, God dwells in the lowest sky from 3:00 p.m. to the dawn prayer (Ar. Fajr). In Odienné, observant Muslims of all Islamic tendencies understand the night as a pious time par excellence. While most family members are asleep, fervent Muslims wake up in the middle of the night to practice supererogatory prayers through which they meet the light of God.

In numerous religious traditions, light is associated with divine presence. In Islamic theology, this association can be of three kinds: nur Allah (the light that existed before the creation of the world); nur Muhammad (Muhammad’s light); and the light that illuminates the mystic’s soul (Lange 2021). In this part of the West African savannah, Muslims often say that “praying is about bringing God within you” (ka sɛli yé ka Ala jigin ɛ kͻnͻ yé). ⁶ At the same time, they describe God as “yeelen” (light). ⁷ The combination of both local idioms resonates with the third kind of association found in Islamic theology. Local Muslims also used to say that “if you do not know God you are in the darkness (dibi); if you know God you are in the light” (Ni ɛ tɛ Ala don ɛ ye dibi ye; ni ɛ bɛ Ala don ɛ ye yeelen ye). This mystical knowledge is also put in dynamic with darkness in Islamic theology: “the light of knowledge, or knowledge and learning as being a lamp in the darkness of ignorance and sin” are “commonplace metaphors” (Rosenthal 2006, 156-7) to express the experience of the light of God in Sufism. This article probes the experience of the mystic light mentioned in Islamic theology in Madou’s practice of long sessions of solo zikr (recollection of God) after midnight in Odienné. ⁸ Madou is a local Muslim scholar and a friend whom I met in 2014.

Rather than juxtaposing light and darkness in an instrumental fashion, I first examine the way they co-initiate and shape the experiential space of zikr practice at night. I then explore such nocturnal solo zikr practice as a corporeal journey of “concentration” towards the light of God. Madou’s reference to concentration means his mind focuses on the immediacy of experience during such practice. Inspired by the embodiment approach of the subject elaborated by Csordas (1990), I consequently explore the mind in zikr as the intuitive [immediate thinking] body and the self as form of being that becomes aware of itself through reflexive corporeality. This article therefore contributes to the issue of transcendent interiority in Sufism (Abenante and Vicini 2017) by exploring the corporeality of the zikr’s journey. It thereby explores the self as an unbounded form of being (e.g., Pandian 2010) through a corporeal perspective of the mind.

In 2016 and 2017 I attended several of Madou’s long nocturnal sessions of solo zikr practice. I also had the privilege to film one of these sessions (Chappatte 2020). However, no words were exchanged between Madou and I during these zikr practices. I therefore asked him questions over his nocturnal experience of solo zikr practice when we met during the day. I also recorded an interview on the topic. But Madou was never talkative about the subjective qualities of his experience of zikr; his answers were also pragmatic. The examination of Madou’s corporeal journey therefore mostly follows a mute ethnography framed by my own experience of zazen, ⁹ another kind of long corporeal practice of concentration taught by a religious tradition, the Soto school of Zen Buddhism. When someone asks me questions about zazen, I do also offer short and pragmatic responses (e.g., showing the posture of zazen) because it is a corporeal practice and not an intellectual discourse. I thus understood Madou’s short concise comments on his zikr practice as “expressing his flesh” during such demanding experience of concentration. ¹⁰ Whereas De Munck and Manoharan explore the “interior alignment between participants” in Sufi rituals (2019, 506), this article examines a researcher’s access to the interiority of his informant when both are involved in practices that study the mind through the body. My own regular practice of zazen has therefore been the empathetic ground within which I examine the corporeality of the mind that such zikr practice involves.

I first introduce how Madou’s early Islamic education was marked by an “esoteric episteme” (Brenner 2000) that is found with various degrees in the Sufi practice of zikr across the world. The specific discipline of this episteme sowed the seed of a faith forged through the body that Madou still cultivates via zikr practice. I therefore illustrate how the quotidian of such bodily practice requires a strict daily schedule, as Madou organizes his sleeping time around nocturnal solo zikr practice. The second half of the article enters more deeply into Madou’s experience of concentration during these long demanding sessions of zikr practice. To do so, I explore, through an ethnographic account, the body in zikr as a “devotional place”, a concept that has been inspired by the seminal work of the philosopher Edward S. Casey on the phenomenology of place (1996, 1998, 2009). Taking the body as the centre of a devotional place, I then examine Madou’s corporeal journey during this demanding zikr practice as a set of synesthetic experiences. ¹¹ Synesthesia here refers to the “globalité du sensorium” (Rosenthal 2011, 24). As an immediate experience synesthesia stresses a “total” sensorial presence that is no characterized by any kind of borders between senses. Such bodily practice of concentration brings us to the threshold of phenomenological account: “perception at the primary level is synesthetic – an affair of the whole body sensing” (Casey 1996, 18). According to Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 2007, 271), “the experience of separated senses” corresponds to a very specific attitude of the mind which “cannot be employed for the study of the direct awareness” because perception is by nature synesthetic. ¹² I therefore demonstrate that Madou’s devotional journey refers to two kinds of light that express synesthetic insights of what I call the “corporeal mind.” This journey begins within the subdued light of the penumbra to navigate towards the spiritual light through the synesthetic silence of the deep night.

An esoteric upbringing

In 2014, I visited the office of the local branch of Ansar Dine in Odienné, a powerful West African Muslim association founded in 1983 in Bamako (the capital of Mali) by Haidara, ¹³ the “spiritual guide” of this association (Holder 2012). Sharing with some members of this local branch my interest in the relationship between Islam and the night, I was told that Ansar Dine organizes a “public sermon” (wajuli) every Thursday night (from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m.). Their Président then asked a member to bring me by motorbike to Madou, the official preacher of Ansar Dine in Odienné. We found Madou at his home in company of his two wives and four children. After the usual greetings, we spontaneously talked about various topics with a touch of humor. Madou was a humble and witty man.

A few days later, I paid him a visit right after the fifth regular Islamic prayer. I often initiate such customary acts of politeness during a fieldwork so as build trust with someone I wish to know more. His wives and children welcomed me; but Madou was not home. One of the wives then asked a young man to drive me by motorbike to where Madou was. After a short ride across the district, we stopped at the entrance of a dark and narrow hallway shaped by two cement houses. We walked into the hallway to enter a vast courtyard. The young man then pointed at the dim light coming out of the door of an isolated corner room. There I found Madou sitting cross-legged on a carpet. He was exchanging with another young man. We greeted each other. “This is my room; my wives do not come here [laugh]” Madou added. He then introduced me to his “[Islamic] student.” In our conversation, my curiosity pointed at a sheet of paper with hand-written Arabic script that laid on the floor at my feet. It was the script of a verse of the Qur’an used in zikr practice that Madou teaches to few advanced students. I also learnt that Madou was the Imam of the mosque that shares with this corner room the same courtyard. A few students lived in the next-door residential wing. Madou used to spend time in this isolated room at night to meet people in private, to study, and to practice zikr in quietness.

In Odienné Madou was known to be a preacher of Ansar Dine. Before settling in this town, he studied a year in the médersa of Haidara in Bamako. He later attended specific courses given at the next-door Head Office of Ansar Dine Mali to become an official preacher of this Muslim association. Due to my interest in the relationship between Islam and the night, Madou introduced me to the zikr that he practiced alone at night in this isolated room. Madoús zikr practice, however, was less known by the inhabitants of Odienné. This devotional practice of concentration refers to an Islamic education that he received before joining Ansar Dine.

Madou was born in Central Ivory Coast from an Ivorian mother and a Malian father. His first contact with the practice of zikr dated back to his childhood. Madou remembered fetching the perfume that his father put on before the long sessions of prayer ¹⁴ he performed at night. Madou also remembered fetching the inky liquid that his father used to wash his face before these nocturnal prayers. His father first wrote names of God and Qur’anic verses with ink on a wooden slate (walaha), ¹⁵ washed these religious writings with water, and then kept the inky liquid in bottles. His father told him that this liquid was thereby blessed by God. His parents then sent Madou to a village near Bondoukou (east-central Ivory Coast) where he attended ten years of “duguma kalan.” The literal etymology of these traditional Islamic schools (or Qur’anic schools) means study (kalan) on the soil (dugu.ma). Qur’anic students (Ar. “talibe”; Bam. “garibu”), who are often children, sit directly on the ground and learn the Qur’an “by heart” (ka durusi kɛ). This method of Islamic teaching shapes and passes on an “esoteric episteme” (Brenner 2001, 18–21). In his book Controlling Knowledge: Religion, Power and Schooling in a West African Muslim Society, Brenner rightly stresses the hierarchical conceptualization of power and initiatory stages associated with this episteme. In this analysis, however, I wish to further explore an aspect of the early stage of this pedagogy mentioned by Brenner: learning the Qur’an by heart for years is “to fuse the Holy Word into the very being of the child,” in other words, to nurture “a specific form of [corporeal] consciousness” (19). Put differently, this pedagogy disciplines the mind through the body, a point that resonates with what I observed during Madou’s practice of zikr at night. His Islamic teacher in Bondoukou also practiced similar long sessions of zikr at night. Madou observed his teacher, assisted him, and progressively learned how to perform nocturnal solo zikr. Madou was roughly eight-years-old when he started to practice zikr at night on his own. He first performed such zikr for short periods, and years later for longer periods, when, according to his own words, his “faith was solid.”

In the interview Madou narrated me that: “If you have found friendship with God, you will not get tired quickly [in zikr practice]” (Ni ɛ ye tɛryia sͻrͻ Ala fɛ, ɛ tɛ sɛgɛn joona). At the same time he acknowledged that: “It is difficult for someone to sit two hours with a mind which does not wander but focus on God only” (Adamadenya ka sigi ka se ka ɛɛri fila kɛ a ka miira ma taa fen wɛrɛ kan fo Ala kelen, fana o ka gɛlɛn). He therefore explained that the depth of this mystical friendship is linked to the attitude of your mind: “It is particularly important that the mind focuses only on God” (ka hakili to Ala kelen la, c’est très important). In other words, it is crucial not to lose the threat of the zikr’s recollection of God. Madou commented in a concrete way: “If your mind makes detours, it undermines the zikr” (Ni ɛ ka hakili bɛ munu munu, a bɛ mͻgͻ ka zikiri faga). ¹⁶ He added: “You cannot do zikr between you and God if you are not able to put all your desire on God only” (mͻgͻ te se ka laayilaa ko ɛ ni Ala de bɛ ya fo i ka hami bɛɛ ka kɛ Ala kelen kan). In this regard, the key of this attitude of the mind (hami) is of ontological nature: “to call God means to be sure that God exists; this is light” (ka miiri ko ɛ bɛna Ala weele, o kͻrͻ ye ka toi tu es sûr que Dieu exist; o ye yeelen ye). In zikr practice the ontology of God is corporeal insofar as the light of God is lived and forged in the concentration, a point developed all along the text.

After ten years of traditional Islamic school, Madou attended five years of médersa, in which knowledge was transmitted via a “rationalistic episteme” (7–8). Instead of first learning the Qur’an by heart for years, students in such modern school study Arabic grammar and vocabulary. Madou later pledged allegiance to the Ansar Dine association and its spiritual guide. He consequently started to follow Haidara’s Islamic teaching (e.g., Chappatte 2018b) made of both epistemes. ¹⁷ The long and nocturnal sessions of solo zikr Madou still practices today nonetheless reveal that his faith in God is forged by an attitude of the mind that he was initiated into in his first Islamic education. The zikr practice stemming from this education is central to the way he organizes his sleeping time.

An every-night life dedicated to zikr

Madou is the main preacher of the local branch of Ansar Dine in Odienné. In this regard, he is regularly invited during lifecycle events (e.g., funerals) to give sermons about what is required to be a good Muslim according to Haidara’s teachings. He also preaches during Ansar Dine’s weekly public sermon. And he often travels in the town’s hinterland to help establishing sub-branches of Ansar Dine in the Kabadougou Region. Occasionally, someone in need of spiritual help asks Madou to pray to God on his/her behalf. In such cases, he takes seven days for a spiritual retreat called “kalua” (Ar. khalwa). Madou let me know that “all mobile phones are switched off” during this devotional seclusion. He undertakes this intense practice no more than once per month. Madou receives gifts (material of financial) thanks to his public interventions. As for the kalua, it requires a financial gift of no less than 50,000 fcfa. ¹⁸ When a day is free of these religious interventions, Madou organizes his daily schedule to get ready for performing long solo zikr at night, a regular practice that I will explore ethnographically in the next section.

During a week, two nights are especially blessed by God: the night from Thursday to Friday, which announces the Friday congregational prayer; and the night from Sunday to Monday, which heralds the day the Prophet Muhammad was born. If available, Madou also prepares for the practice of nocturnal solo zikr during the other nights of the week.

Madou goes to bed around 8:00 PM, shortly after Isha, the fifth regular prayer of the day. When he has visitors, he will go to bed a bit later. He then wakes up shortly before 1 AM. He has a wash, takes the ablution, and then practices zikr without stopping until the call for Fajr, the first regular Islamic prayer of the day. In general, a nocturnal session of zikr practice lasts between three to four hours. After having led the prayer at the mosque, he goes to bed from 5:30 to 7:00 AM. He then teaches in a local médersa until midday. He prays and then returns to bed until 2:30 PM. In order to be fit for a daily life that includes the solo practice of zikr at night, Madou divides his sleeping time in three periods: four hours in the evening, one and a half hours in the morning, and two hours in early afternoon. Like this, he still manages to sleep seven and a half hours per day. While after midnight is the sleeping time for most people in Odienné, Madou wakes up to practice zikr until dawn because, as a fervent Muslim, he considers the deep night to be a pious time par excellence.

A mute ethnography

During the first months of my stay in Odienné, I systematically undertook fieldwork from dusk to dawn (6:00 PM to 6:00 AM). My aim was to cast a wide net over night life so as not to confine this ethnography to the “classics” of the urban night (e.g., bars, clubs, prostitution). These activities are not classic in the sense that they preponderate the urban night; they are classic for those who do not participate in but only imagine night life from home. These early-bedders and nocturnal homebirds, the majority of the population, are often caught by the quasi-universal association of night life with low morality. ¹⁹ After these first months of ethnographic familiarization, I did not go to bed before at least 3:00 AM. I then slept until I woke up (between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM). ²⁰ I had a wash and then went into town for a meal and few greeting visits. I came back home to ritually take fieldnotes (roughly 45 minutes) and practice zazen before dusk. I then got ready to start another nocturnal fieldwork. I called a few friends whom I might visit in the evening. I put on mosquito repellant. I packed a notebook, a pen, and a digital camera. I then went into town by moto-taxi. Fortunately, ²¹ this demanding ethnographic timetable consisted of a series of short periods of stay (two to four months) spread over six years. The ethnographic work at night mostly produced conversational (about others) ²² and observational materials. But with Madou the ethnographic work took a radically different shape.

Apart from a few furtive eye contacts, Madou and I did not directly interact when I attended one of Madou’s long nocturnal sessions of solo zikr practice. In other words, we felt the presence of each other but did not exchange a single word between us. For hours, I faced a mute ethnography. Scrutinizing Madou, I sat and remained still for a while, and then took a few notes when something happened. ²³ But what does “happen” signify in the very moments that I chose to take notes about this pure observational ethnography in which nothing seems to happen? My mind was in fact taking the rhythm or the pulses of the “nothing” of zikr. In other words, I took notes because something grasped my attention. Is this something a shift in Madou’s bodily posture? A shift in Madou’s tone of whisper? A sudden surge of the scent of incense in your nostrils? A piercing vibration of an incoming mosquito? The cyclic contact with the stridulation of grasshoppers? Similar to what I experienced during hours of zazen, all these awake oscillations of the observing mind, in fact, revealed in the instant that silence is at the heart of this demanding zikr practice. The mind of the instant, in other words, realized silence and its vastness in-between and through thoughts. ²⁴ As hours go by, I started to live time in a non-linear poetic form. Like the mirroring relation between the script of words and the blank page in the poem, Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (Mallarmé 1914), ²⁵ the act of taking notes revealed the elusive omnipresence of the silence of the deep night in zikr practice. This silence is central to the formation of place at night.

The notion of place here brings us to the experiential dimension of this mute ethnography. Firstly, any study of experiential place asks for “ethnographic tact” due to its omnipresent, obvious, and intimate character (Geertz 1996). I initially focused my attention on Madou’s body. Similar to Pinto in his study of zikr [dhikr] practices in Syria, I observed “the importance of the body as the experiential arena” for the divine reality (2017, 96). With the passing of minutes and hours, moreover, my attention unconsciously enlarged to Madou within the surroundings. Kasmani in his study of fakirs in Sehwan Sharif (Pakistan) invites us to “treat space not as a container of body but study the body as a source of space” (2017, 74). Taking the body as the center of a devotional place, the murmurs of the zikr, the corner room’s dim light and the silence of the night together expressed, instant after instant, the zikr performer’s awareness of the here and now. In this perspective of place as “embodied experience,” the corporeality of zikr practice exemplifies “the site of a powerful fusion of self, space, and time” (Feld and Basso 1996, 9). ²⁶ Reflecting upon the place of the body-home through Bachelard’s book La poétique de l’espace, Casey also suggests to explore the interiority of being as an “intimate immensity” (1998, 290–296). As a corporeal practice of concentration, zikr is an instance by excellence of such body-home perspective. Madou’s zikr practice therefore cannot be studied as a bounded experience; it is an event that happens through relational moments (see Casey 1996, 26–30). The event that happens is the devotional place of the body in zikr practice; its [event] relational moments its corporeality. I below explore a sample of this corporeality through an ethnographic account of senses during Madou’s solo nocturnal zikr practice.

Sensuous nights

In December 2016, I attended a session of Madoús nocturnal solo practice of zikr. It was during a night from Sunday to Monday, the night that heralds the day the Prophet Muhammad was born. I spent the late evening in town before joining Madou in his isolated corner room. I was sipping a coca cola in a bar-restaurant next to the Class A night club. I did not want to smell alcohol, out of respect to the devotional Islamic ambiance of zikr practice. Young people were celebrating a birthday at the Class A. Its vast courtyard was full of elegant dresses, sexy garments, and colorful motorbikes. 12:30 a.m. I greeted my friend, the manager of this bar-restaurant, and left to find a moto-taxi. Walking across the square, a wobbly man hailed me. He smiled at me but suddenly came close to me and started to insult me, shouting “slave!”, “cunt white man!”, (…) “bastard!” in a loud voice. I listened still, smelling the smell of cheap spirits (e.g. Calao rum, whisky sachets) coming out of his yelling mouth and feeling his spit on my face. In fact, I knew this person. He was a sweet man whom I occasionally met at his workplace during daylight. He then moved away and so did I. A moto-taxi station stood nearby at the roundabout.

On my way to Madou’s corner room I observed, from the backseat of the moto-taxi, an owl taking off and flying over the street. Locals say that witches often take the shape of nocturnal animals. In Mandinka speaking areas of West Africa, the night (su) is associated with witchcraft (subaga). The etymology of su.baga is composed of two words: su (night) and baga (poison). Subaga is thus the poison that devours people from within during the night. Locals can therefore become suspicious and fearful when crossing an owl at night, especially when the owl prowls around their house. Locals also associated the night with forbidden desires, such as alcohol consumption and extramarital relations. In Odienné, a nocturnal programme radio called “su.mͻmͻ” (to excavate the night) sensitized young people about not breaching moral standards when darkness falls. The radio host of this nocturnal programme told me once that when you get up early in the morning you see traces (e.g., leaves, broken eggs, bones) of non-Islamic practices in the town’s crossroads. In West Africa, representations of the night are often moralistic (not to say paternalistic) because elders perceive its darkness as a threat to public morality. But the night is not only about a darkness that hides.

The nighttime in which Madou dwells is the deep night, the time after midnight. In the interview Madou explained me that the depth of this night stems from the silence of its darkness. At that late and quiet time, Madou indeed wakes up to enjoy this deep night because it is “a silence that sharpens concentration.” When most of the town is asleep, he added, no “noise” (mankan) interferes with the corporeal devotion of zikr. The wobbly man, the intrepid youth, and Madou all invite us to sensuous nights, in other words, ²⁷ to live desire (whether pious or forbidden) through senses.

Preparing the devotional place

The moto-taxi dropped me off in a sandy street, not so far from Madou’s isolated corner room. I walked and crossed the gate. The courtyard was dimly yellow under the bulb’s light that traversed the curtain that hung at the room’s doorstep. Apart from a distant engine’s roar the place was tranquil. I took off my shoes and entered the room. Nobody was inside. Madou was probably having a wash. I sat and prepared my notebook and pen. Madou came shortly after. I noticed that his hands and face were wet. He had just taken ablutions. We briefly exchanged eye contact. Madou was getting ready for the zikr practice.

What kind of chronotope ²⁸ is the urban night in West Africa in terms of human experience? I tackle this concern through a phenomenology of the penumbra. At night, darkness falls. Electric lights are switched on. In unlit streets the night is also rarely totally dark due to the light of the moon. In fact, the darkness of the night and the light of electricity (or the moon), when considered separately, do not describe people’s experience of the urban night. It is their interplay that people perceive. The darkness reveals the light and the light the darkness; the nature of their existence is their interactive coexistence. This existential reciprocity creates a broad ambiance of penumbra. According to the novelist Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, traditional Japanese houses value this penumbra because of its “power to calm and soath” (1977, 15-16). In a similar vein, I argue that this specific ambiance of twilight induces an inward polysensoriality in the way people perceive their presence in the here (as surroundings) and now. What does it mean?

The five senses work in interdependence. ²⁹ When the sensory power of one sense alters, the sensory powers of the other senses alter as well. By “sensory power,” I mean the presence of a given sense in our awareness of the here and now. The presence of the sensing body as a whole can be analytically broken down into characteristics; one of them is the perceptual directionality. ³⁰ In this regard, the sense of sight sets the direction of our perception outward during daylight due to its dominant perceptual directionality. How so? As is the case with the sense of olfaction (Classen et al. 1994), the sense of sight has a strong presence in our awareness because it is an immediate sense. You open your eyes and the visual information is awake in your mind in a straightforward way. Contrary to the other senses, this information is moreover interpreted by our mind as discernable in terms of the localization of the corporeal self in space. By corporeal self, I mean the sensory awareness of the self. In this regard, sight tends to situate what the “I” see outside the corporeal self by demarcating a physical distance between the material body (the body of flesh and bones) of the “I” subject and the visual focus. ³¹ It therefore implies the idea of exteriority, of a border between inside and outside the sensorial self.

The sensory powers of the other senses are less discernable in their spatial perception of the corporeal self. In other words, their sensorial focus does not clearly demarcate the material body in space. During daylight, the sensing body as a whole consequently follows the outward perception set by the sight. But at night, the sensory power of sight is seriously reduced. As we see “the “silhouettes” of people’s activities but barely their “faces”” the visual information becomes a “shadow play” (Chappatte et al. 2018, 14-15). In other words, the “thereness” of the daylight vanishes to give entirely place to the “hereness” of the night (Handelman 2005, 252–253). The other senses then fill the sensory presence set free by the nocturnal impairment of the sight. In doing so, they set people’s polysensorial perception inwards because their sensory powers undermine the impression of a clear-cut physical distance between the corporeal self and the sensorial focus. ³² The sense of hearing, for instance, is known for its emotional ability to move people from within. The architect Juhani Pallasmaa (2005, 49-51), in his seminal book The Eyes of the Skin, speaks about the “acoustic intimacy” that creates an experience of interiority. The inside-outside dimension, often associated with sight, is in fact not appropriate to spatially define the sensory powers of the non-visual senses. Can we for instance pinpoint an inside and an outside in our tactile activity? Concerned about the bias towards vision found in contemporary architecture, Pallasmaa, argues that all senses are extensions of the tactile senses. This haptic perspective of the whole sensorium is strengthened when darkness falls. In this regard, the darkness of the night sharpens the “haptic” ³³ quality of the sight; we tend to see the “hereness” of the nocturnal world from within the corporeal self. The phenomenology of penumbra therefore invites our polysensorial presence in the world to be more inward. Some people open this sensuous door to intimacy; others do not. In zikr practice, the whole body sensorium actively fills our presence in the inward “hereness” and now.

After taking the ritual cleansing (ablution), Madou put on a white boubou, the traditional cloth par excellence that local male Muslims wear for the communal Friday prayer. Here the white color symbolizes the purity of God. He then burned an incense stick (wusu.lan) in a pot placed behind his back. He also put perfume on his clothes. In the interview Madou explained me that the important point is to choose “pleasant scents” (kasa min ka di) because “it helps to foster concentration” (A bε i dεmε ka concentration soro). He also told me that he often opted for the famous perfume Bint el-Sudan, nicknamed “the Chanel No. 5 of Africa,” ³⁴ because “this perfume is filled with blessing” (Dubabuw bε nin parfum la). He pointed out that “each name of God has its own perfume.” Sensing the flagrance of the perfume within the silence of the night therefore helps to “quieten the mind” (ka hakili sigi) as well as to attract God’s favor on his person, Madou added. Like his father did, Madou then washed his face with an inky liquid that is traditionally composed of a set of God’s names or Qur’anic verses (e.g., Nieber 2017). This act is also deemed to attract God’s favor on his person because it is like “wearing the signature of the One we love to let Him know that we love Him,” Madou concluded. In other words, God is attracted by seeing his name and verbe on the practitioner’s face. All these sensuous rites prepare the ground for the zikr to happen as a devotional place.

Madou prayed two rakats. ³⁵ After, he checked his mobile phone and put it on silent mode. A single light bulb lit the room; the courtyard was silent. Madou’s body was now clean, his face and cloth adorned by the “signature” of God, and his mind quietened through inward sensory activation. Madou was ready to take a corporeal journey towards the light of God.

Numeric stamina of the mind

Madou sat crossed legged on a prayer carpet. He then carefully grabbed an Islamic rosary in each of his hands to calculate zikrs that he would utter in a whisper this night. The long rosary of 200 beads held by his left hand counted the hundreds of zikr, the shorter rosary of 100 beads on the left hand by the units. ³⁶ In the interview Madou pursued by telling that the calculation of zikr is important for two main reasons. Firstly, it puts forward an “organization” that “fosters concentration.” He explained me that: “If you practice zikr without counting, your mind will get lost and you will give up after a while.” On the other hand, he added: “If you know how many times you need to utter a specific zikr, your mind will attempt to reach this number whatever the hardships encountered on the journey.” The calculation of zikr builds up the stamina of the concentration. Secondly, this calculation must be precise because Madou explained me that certain numbers contain “advantages” (nafa), a point that refers to Islamic numerology. Madou illustrated this point by commenting that: “If you want to call someone but you make a single mistake in dialing his phone number, are you going to reach this person? It is the same [when you call god] with the practice of zikr.” He added that certain numbers are therefore “compelled” (in a ritual way) in this practice. This very night Madou uttered in a whisper 13,332 times (4,444 × 3) “God forgive me” and 13,332 times the incipit Bismillah in Arabic. He also read parts of the Qur’an.

Entering the intimate room of the body

1:05 AM: Madou started the practice of zikr. His body was still; his lips whispered quasi-inaudibly “God forgive me” without stopping; his hands rotated the rosaries. Madou’s right hand was skillfully handling the rosary of the units: 3–4 zikrs were counted each second. Such intense speed of repetitive pronunciation turns the zikr practice as a kind of glossolalic prayer that reveals the gestural meaning of language (see Csordas 1990, 26–30). The glossolalic zikr carves a mesmerizing interiority that dwells in the corporeal mind. After a while, Madou’s body swung forward and backward gently from time to time. The clicks of the rosary, in this isolated corner room, revealed the silence of the deep night.

1:44 AM: a cricket started to sing in the courtyard. Silence. 1:58 AM, the engine of a passing motorbike and the barking of a dog emerged from the neighborhood. Silence. Arguing for a haptic perspective of the whole sensorium, Pallasmaa wrote about “the nocturnal sound” that “the space traced by the ear in the darkness becomes a cavity sculpted directly in the interior of the mind” (2005, 50). In the context of this nocturnal solo zikr practice, the bottomless sound of the silence of the deep night dwells the corporeal mind of the practitioner of zikr.

Deep into the night the silence is “light”

2:12 AM: the long rosary became the rosary for the hundreds, the shorter rosary for the units. Madou had already uttered more than 10,000 units of zikr. His body posture changed, leaning an upper arm on a knee. Madou had not stopped zikr practice for 90 minutes. This corporeal journey towards God, when prolonged for hours, becomes dotted with tiredness and physical pain. From time to time, Madou swung his upper body, put his head down, scrubbed his neck, yawned. But these discomforts did not stop his devotion to zikr practice. A few times, however, Madou fell asleep for a few seconds before waking up by opening wide his eyes to swiftly resumed the zikr practice with his eyes half-shut. Approaching the end of the night, Madou read the Qur’an for a while because his wrists were aching due to continuously handling the rosary for hours. In the interview, Madou told me that his fingers occasionally bled following this sustained friction.

In the context of prolonged zikr practice, tiredness and physical pain are unavoidable and even expected. In fact, hardships encountered in prolonged zikr practice sharpen the devotional place in a crucial way. Madou told me in the interview that these hardships attract “God’s pity” (hinε) and multiply “divine award” (baraji). In a more experiential level, they build up the “faith [in God]” (limanyia). ³⁷ For Madou, these hardships raise your concentration: “To call God means to be sure that God exists” (ka miiri ko ɛ bɛna Ala weele, o kͻrͻ ye ka toi tu es sûr que Dieu exist). With years of regular practices Madou explained that you can experience instants when “you are within the light [of God]” (ɛ bɛ yeelen de kono). At some point in the “concentration” of zikr, Madou added, “God is, that is all” (Ala bɛ, c’est tout). Does the zikr practitioner then meet the light-like God? Madou however warned: “God can help you to enter the light, but God is not light itself” (Ala bɛ se ko ɛ ye sama ka na yeelen ma, mais Ala yɛrɛ tɛ yeelen ye). In Islam, God is beyond any association. Madou indeed stressed that God is beyond darkness and light. What therefore does yeelen mean here in terms of ontological experience? I argue that the silence of the deep night becomes light through synesthetic processes. In this case Madou’s usage of the term light goes beyond the symbolism of a metaphor. In phenomenological thinking, experience is “mediated by” language as well as “given in” language (see Csordas 2008, 119). In terms of intuitive analysis, I would add that the phenomenological writing does not explain experience but express it in words. According to Casey (1996, 34), the experience of a place entails the interpenetration of the perceiving body with the knowing body. In other words, “knowledge of place begins with the bodily experience of being-in-place” (Casey 2009, 46). In this regard, what for the reader seems a metaphor that subjectively represents the intimacy of the body during prolonged zikr practice, the light of God, puts the experiential field of the self into “corporeal” words. This corporeality of words can be intellectually explored but cannot be fully [intuitively] understood outside analogous experiences. In Madou’s explanation, light is the synesthetic experience of how faith in God is lived in zikr practice, full stop. The devotional place of zikr is light: “You are within light” Madou simply repeated as a conclusion. From the penumbra of the night to the silence of the deep night and the silence of the deep night to the light of God, these “implacements” ³⁸ depict Madou’s synesthetic instants during prolonged nocturnal solo zikr practice. During these instants, the self is realized as an unbounded form of corporeality.

A “placeful” ³⁹ faith

2:54 AM: a rooster started singing in the neighborhood. The cold of the night slowly entered Madou’s isolated corner room. Legs stretched out on the carpet and back against the wall, Madou, head down, was still engaged with zikr practice. The speed of pronunciation was slow; the corporeal energy weak. Madou’s whole body was lethargic, only his little finger was counting up zikr bead after bead. 4:00 AM, the voice of a muezzin softly resonated in the neighborhood, quickly followed by two others. 4:05 AM: an alarm clock rang in a room at the other side of the courtyard. 4:40 AM: Madou stood up and prayed two rakats. He then drank some water and moved outside to make the call for dawn prayer. Another night of nocturnal solo zikr practice (three and a half hours in total) just ended.

This article explores the theme of light in zikr practice as an experiential form of being. Taking phenomenology as “a descriptive science of existential beginnings” (Csordas 1990, 9), it argues that the threshold of Madou’s nocturnal solo zikr practice is the penumbra of the night. This penumbra, co-shaped by the bulb’s dim light of Madou’s isolated corner room and the silent darkness of the deep night, introduces the devotional dimension of zikr. The haptic “hereness” of the penumbra, in other words, invites to a corporeal intimacy of the mind. In the context of zikr, this corporeal intimacy means a concentration that brings God within the practitioner. In this concentration, the mind is the intuitive body and the self a form of being that becomes aware of itself through reflexive corporeality. The surrounding becomes an extension of the body insofar as the focus of the sensing body as a whole is less demarcated by a visual exteriority. In zikr practice, this interior space is better expressed by the concept of devotional place.

As the hours go by, Madou lives zikr practice as a corporeal journey towards God. As the hours go by, this demanding journey forges the mind in a non-linear series of deep instants. By ‘deep’ I mean that the self potentially abandons the cognitive reflexivity that gives to the experience of being its individually bounded life. The concentration during the zikr is a form of transcendence which brings perception at its primary level: synaesthesia. In Madou’s account, “yeleen”, the spiritual light, does not mediate his corporeal focus; it gives it. In this regard, yeleen expresses synesthetic instants in this corporal journey towards God when the body becomes the mind and the mind faith as the penumbra becomes silence and silence light. Such demanding zikr practice does not bring Madou to a deeper belief in God; it rather brings him to a placeful faith. By ‘placeful,’ I mean that such zikr practices bring Madou to an experiential path towards the realization of an unbounded self. In rare instants, there is no separation between the corporeal self and the devotional place: Madou is the light of God.