… because you passed away two days before it arrived. Ammi always said at the end of Ramadan,
Oh Allah, let me live to see another.
Did you ask this of Him the year before? He, the overseer of the unseen, took your soul at its appointed time, but for us it was sudden and unexpected. Your passing shook the foundations of our house sitting on a hill. The precariousness of its situation and our comfortable lives was revealed to us on that day. With you went all feelings of security.
We had lost family members before but they had lived over the sea and the news of their passing arrived in blue airmail envelopes, telegrams or short, fraught, booked telephone calls from abroad. News of your passing came from a doctor in a white coat, sitting in a room bleached white to match, in a huge concrete hospital. This was followed by seeing you lying in a bed with your eyes closed. Different in death, the wrinkles and puffiness under your eyes already erased. The revelation that I’d never see you awake again sucked all sound and surroundings from my ears and peripheral vision. And then we left you there.
He should be buried within 24 hours.
Not possible the funeral directors directed. Not in this country. And so your janazah was on the first day of Ramadan as old aunties’ tales snaked their way through the community.
Those buried in Ramadan are headed for Jannah.
After your janazah, the foundations of the house settled, people stopped coming for afsos. Everything was quieter; your voice was missing, the absence of your presence, deafening.
I would wake for sehri, putting lights on all over the house. It’s good for people to know others are up, said Ammi. She was right. Somehow it was comforting knowing that people across the road were awake in darkness, eating, talking, praying and communing with family. You weren’t there but there was a guest in the house, one that would stay for a month. Such a welcome mehman that the doors of Jannah are wide open while it stays.
The experience of Ramadan days, days like no other; feeling my body on the earth, fulfilling duties. My heart and head elevated and somewhere else, looking downwards upon me.
I liked this mehman, this Ramadan that made sure I didn’t dwell on the sadness of your passing; that got me up in the morning to eat and pray, that suggested I read the Qur’an and find that ayah.
Every soul will taste death.
The mehman that would tell me it was alright to slow down and not cram in too many worldly activities, most of which were unnecessary anyway.
This beautiful, invisible mehman that came and stayed for a month, caring for us, providing answers to our questions. Wiping our tears but letting them flow, cocooning our mourning souls with answers about where we go when we’re no longer here, and physically healing our bodies.
The sight, near iftar time, of children carrying dishes from their house to ours: chana chaat, samosay, pakoray, halwa and kheer was joyful. And we reciprocated: daal, bhujia, more chana chaat. Magnanimous, generous Ramadan was at everyone’s house.
The discovery of laylat-ul-qadr. The night of power when malaika descend and visit. I looked out of the window. The sky looked red, unlike a sunset which emanates from the horizon, this red came from above, a hazy red, diaphanous. I looked for the malaika. Was my waking on an odd-numbered night rewarded that year?
And then Al Wida, the goodbye. The last jummah of the month. Kind, serene Ramadan , letting us know softly that it will soon be leaving us. Always calm, no sudden announcements, always cushioning, always caring.
Waking up on the morning of Eid, you’re not here. Ramadan is not here.
Oh Allah, let me live to see another. Aameen.
Narimaan Shafi is a writer, ex-science teacher and content creator. As a writer, her passions are memoir and flash fiction. In 2022, she won the Portico Library’s Rewriting the North Mentorship Prize with Faber for her memoir writing about growing up in the north of England in the 1970s and 80s. Her short story What if Annette Comes for Tea was published in an anthology by Fox and Windmill in 2024. Her flash fiction story Mischief Night won the Off the Shelf Festival’s Sheffield Short Story Competition later that year.