The first lesson

Shook from semi-solid sleep. No dreams the night before. Above me, the face of my aunt with invisible strings of some emotion tugging at eyes and mouth.

-come kiss your daddy for the last time.

Did she speak those words? Or do I use them now, as putty in the gaps of that day?

Still there he lay, still.

Eyes closed, a cruel imitation of sleep.

My grandmother with her eyes bleeding salt and furious prayer frothing from her lips, while my father’s brother, the Imam, ties a strip of white calico around my father’s head and jaw, wrapping a gift for Allah?

Because that was where daddy was, they told me. With Allah.

What six-year old knows of ritual and rigor mortis.

My aunt leads me to where he lay.

Sleeping daddy. With Allah.

Cold.

That I remember.

But not much of the rest.

Just the house, a haven for tears.

And the women, these nebulous shapes in black, on the blankets spread out where the lounge furniture used to be.

Tissues and tears. And prayer.

And a bulk swathed in white in the middle.

Where was my mother?

I found her in another room, looking small and distant, as only the bereft can.

I was held close, smothered by the heaviness, infused with her desperation and stifled by what I didn’t understand.

Not then.