IN ISLAM during the holy month of Ramadan, it is said
that one night is holiest of all: al Qadr, the Night of
Power. According to Islamic belief, it was on the
night that the Qu'ran was delivered to the
Prophet Mohammed, and it is thus the
holiest of all nights. On this night,
prayers are granted "for everything that
matters."
The Night of Power is so deeply in-
grained in the Muslim heart that a
short chapter in the Qu'ran is devoted
to it. It begins as do all chapters
therein, with the exclamation, "in the
Name of God, the Compassionate, the
Merciful," and goes on thus:
Verily we have sent this
In the Night of Power.
And what will convey to you
What the Night of Power is?
The Night of Power is better
Than a thousand months:
The Angels and the Spirit descend in it,
By permission of their Lord,
For everything that matters.
It is Peace:
This until the rise of daybreak.
I will never forget the Night of Power that shook me,
not during the holy month of Ramadan, but in th hot,
humid summer of 1995, when I sat on death row's
Phase II with a date to die.
The sun had set behind the hills of West Virginia amid
ominous thunderheads, and now the forces of nature
struck like a divine assault team.
lightning stabbed the earth as if in the throes of celes-
tial passion, ans do powerful were the bolts that the
lights in the block - indeed, the whole jail - flickered
out.
On Phase II, lights are kept burning twenty-four hours
a day - bright uring the day, dim at night - though in
fact "dim" at two in the morning is hardly less than
bright at noon. Tonight - for now at least - it was com-
pletely dark.
I sat on the cool metal table and looked out into the
night. Cell lights, hall lights, yard lights, black lights,
perimeter lights, and lights on poles had died, and
not even stars broke the black carpetr. So dark!
Then, a splash of illumination that bathed the hills in
blue light, a rolling boom-BOOM of thunder, and a rapid
procession of blinks as lights went out all over the prison
complex.
It happened again and again and again, and yet
again--one sinuous bolt of lightning after the next
forking the black, sky, then white-washing it to midday
brilliance for the brief space of an eye-blink.
I sat there in the first real darkess since my arrival to
Phase II, transfixed by the display of such raw, primeval
power. The strikes seemed so close, I felt the hair on
my arms rise.
The storm moved westward, over the prison and across
the hills, and in its magnificent wake, darkness reigned
as man's lights bowed their mechanical heads to the
power it had unleashed.
There I sat in the darkness, with less than a month to
live, yet I fet better tha any other night I spent on
Phase II. I felt better even than I did a few weeks later,
the night my stay was granted. Why?
Then it dawned on me, like bright writing etched in
my brain:
"Here is true power, my son,
See how easily it overwhelms man's 'power'?"
Watching the veins of nature pulse thrugh the night
sea of air, making--if only for milliseconds--daylight
over the hills, I felt renewed. How puny man seemed
beore this divine dance!
I saw, then, that though human powers sought to
strangle and poison me and those around me, they were
powerless. I saw that there is a Power that makes man's
power pale. It is the power of Love; the power of God;
the power of Life. I felt it surging through every pore.
Nature's power prevailed over the man-made, and I felt,
that night, that I would prevail. I would overcome the
State's efforts to silence and kill me.
from Death Blossoms
