To God We Belong and Unto Him is Our Return

A thin white shawl draped over her head, my grandmother sits on a rickety old chair alone in the dark, the big house voiceless and lifeless in the early morning hour. Her head is lowered, her back slightly hunched, and her tongue kept busied with the remembrance of God, praising Him, thanking Him, entreating Him for His Mercy and Forgiveness. “Inna lillali wa inna ilaihi raji’oon“, I hear her whisper. To God We Belong and unto Him is Our Return.

I tread softly out of my room not wanting to interrupt her reverie, but she hears the floor creaking underneath my bare feet and asks me if it is time for Fajr, the dawn prayer. I respond in the affirmative and we engage in our daily Fajr-time banter about who the earlier riser is and recount the number of times that I had woken up first and the number of times that she woke up first the past week. She lets me win since I tell her waking up for night prayers and not going back to sleep doesn’t count as waking up for Fajr. Within a few minutes, alongside our subdued voices join the shuffle of feet and drowsy voices whispering salaams in the dimly illuminated hallway. Peace be unto You. My father’s voice reciting Qur’an slowly wafts into our rooms, serene and peaceful, washing over us like a sweetly scented fragrance.

When the house is quiet again with everyone having fallen back asleep, heads resting heavily on plump feathered pillows, my father sits down beside my grandmother and speaks to her about a time elapsed many years ago before my birth. They talk about relatives, near and far, and she lists off names of people that have passed on in her most recent trip back home, names that my father recognizes from his childhood and names that stir his memory. He asks about some of their stories and intermittently whispers “Inna lillahi wa inna ilahi raji’oon” as my grandmother relates the end of their affairs.

As they sit together, mulling over memories of people lost and people left, I glance down at my grandmother’s hands. The lines on her palms are etched dark and bold and pulse with life, but the back of her hands, once rigid and sturdy are now soft and frail. Blue-green veins pumping blood, pumping life, protrude jarringly from underneath her pale, milky-white skin, and my mind involuntarily drifts to a time when those hands will lay limp, a time when she will only be a long forgotten name on a family tree, inked carefully by someone who had once cared. The dusty chart carrying faceless generations will have by then been chewed away at the corners by the uninhibited passage of time and discretely tucked away in an old decrepit drawer. Someone who once knew her will inquire about her as my father inquires about people I know not of, and maybe someone will remember her and recount her story in the vaguest details as she recounts tales of people that had once journeyed the lands.

The reality of a slowly disappearing generation is not lost on me. My grandmother embraces the news of another death in her family with fortitude, and a tragic bravery I find difficult to comprehend.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilahi raji’oon. To God We Belong and unto Him is Our Return.