Peacock Feathers on the Q40: A Commute to Jumu’ah

By Faust B

At Jamaica Station, anxiety makes dhikr, while pigeons trace circles like tasbeeh beads.

My fitted cap marks me—NY script forward, a verse still learning its translation.

The Q40 arrives on divine timing, doors parting like Red Sea revelations. Qur’an in my backpack speaks the force— against MetroCard, against city motion.

Watch how faith moves through concrete forests, halal carts blessing air with surf and turf, corner stores turn potential mihrab, as every street sign points to Mecca.

Then Sharif stands—QUEENS bold across his chest, akin to borough boundaries redrawn in pride. “Young ‘uns out here staying on their deen,” his smile bright as sunset off iron and glass.

We turn on Jamaica and Van Wyck, I count choices as my prayer beads slide through careful fingers. Some days, I fold my feathers, turn pigeon-gray, let my Islam whisper instead of shine.

But today—watch this transformation. A single peacock feather becomes ayah in light. Brother Mychael’s sea moss stand turns corner into oasis, into proof of possible.

You see us moving through Friday crowds, Old Bay seasoned with remembrance, making pure space between bus stops, while adhan returns off borough walls.

Here’s what the landscape teaches:

How to be both building and brownstone, how to let faith flex like subway maps, finding new routes to ancient truth.

Some question how Islam fits these streets. I show them my feathers—each one named for a different way devotion speaks when concrete tries drowning out the call.

But watch closer—how Queens builds paradise. New halal cart here, Jumu’ah at the next moment, how we turn bus routes into Silk Roads, one stop a different way to bow.

And somewhere between stations, prayer beads clicking like turnstiles, we discover what our folks knew: Faith flies best in open skies.

Let them mark us now— peacocks rising above pigeon expectations, above fear, writing our own translations of belonging in a language any believer knows.

The Q40 keeps rolling like revelation, through boroughs built on immigrant dreams, and we keep unfolding our true colors till even pigeons learn to pray.

 

Faust B is a poet and writer from Queens, NY. His poetry collection “Crude Listeners: Verses from the Void” captures the authentic voice of contemporary American Muslim experience through the lens of city life and spiritual transformation.