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Mourning in the diaspora

  • Writer: peterkyei
    peterkyei
  • Mar 7, 2015
  • 3 min read

For many of us with relations in far-off lands, the calls that carry bad news often come in the wee hours of the morning. Mine came at 3:13 a.m. one day last week.

As soon the phone rang, I knew it was trouble.

“The old man left us this morning,” I heard my brother say. “He was not in pain. He went peacefully. We were all there with him at the end,” he added, referring to other brothers and sisters.

No, we weren’t all there with him, I thought. You were all there, but I wasn’t. I should have been there to bury my father, but I wasn’t, and I felt as if I had let him down. It was no comfort that I was there with my son a year ago to see him.

Some of us can’t just drive across town or even to another city to be with a sick or dying parent. Arranging a 14-hour flight is an adventure all by itself. And it is at a moment like this that you realize how much you’ve given up, how much of yourself you leave behind when you migrate to greener pastures like Canada.

I offered a silent prayer for my father, and my brother interrupted my thoughts to say he had to go and make plans for the burial. He would call later, he said. That’s how Muslims do it. We don’t waste time when a person dies. Within hours of a death, the person is buried, and it stung even more as I realized I wouldn’t be there to help bury him.

When I came back from my last Hajj pilgrimage more than a decade ago, I gave my father the Ihram I wore (the white piece of clothing pilgrims wear) to be used to wrap him up when he dies. It is something of a tradition, and he was pleased to have it. I don’t even know if he was buried in it, and haven’t had the chance to ask.

My father was 98, so instead of mourning, I should perhaps be celebrating the fact that he was blessed to have lived so long. My father was such a big influence on how I turned out, I would have welcomed an opportunity to say a few words about his life and what he meant to me. But Muslim tradition doesn’t have room for eulogies. As we all do when someone close passes away, we cling to the memories.

Fathers and sons often have long conversations from time to time. Little and large events happen that shape their lives together or individually.

One stands out because it turned out to be a defining moment. I was about 14 and in what we used to call Middle School. I believe I was in Form 2 or 3 (probably Grade 9 in Canada) in a school run by the Presbyterian Church. The headmaster happened to be a pastor, and he insisted that all students, including non-Christians, attend church on Sunday. Needless to say, my father would not allow it.

So at every Monday morning assembly, the headmaster would read out the names of those who were absent, line us up, and give us six to 12 lashes each, depending on his mood.

After a while, my father realized it was affecting me, and one day he sat me down for a talk. He told me he knew I was hurting, and would give me a way out: I could leave school, pick any trade I wanted and he would pay for the training. I said I would go to school, and he promised to make every sacrifice possible to help me go as far as I wanted – even if it meant selling the clothes on his back. He kept his promise. I remember in secondary school being sent home on occasion for missing the deadline on boarding and tuition fees, and my father having to sell some of his prized possessions to raise the money.

There is one prayer service left, and I am scrambling to be back there to honour him.

By: Mohammed Adam

 
 
 
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