CRY TO ME [h. potter x oc]

CHAPTER 13

AS PER tradition, my grandmother's burial took place very hastily after death; it only took a day for my father to send out the news to relatives and then contact our local mosque. It was a quick, but solemn affair, all of us sat in front of the covered body, while the Imam droned out the funeral prayers, before we all went in a silent march on foot to the graveyard. My mother, my aunts, cousins and I all waited outside the steel gates, since women and children were not prohibited to see the burial — then, when the men returned, we all went back to our house, where shoes piled up at the doorway, gifts of bags of flour deposited on the kitchen table, and collective crying from the ladies clad in black on mattresses laid out on the living room floor.

The day blurred for me. What I found myself remembering the most was the itching of my hijab, which I wore so rarely, the bitterness of the coffee that was passed around, whilst listening to the various tearful stories of my grandma's good deeds. I was relegated to the kids' corner, amongst my three year old cousins, who clearly didn't know what was going on, and were nonchalantly playing with a few toy cars.

It's hard to feel grief for someone who you know wouldn't have been too bothered if you'd been the one under the white sheet instead. A horrible thing for me to say, but the thought wouldn't leave my brain. My grandma would've been in my position, sat amongst the children, playing with them because — what could she say about me? And what could I say about her?

We didn't know each other at all.

Nevertheless, my parents had known her. She'd been my father's mother, for fuck's sake, so I showed my respect, bowed my head, and murmured the occasional 'god bless her soul' in Arabic, whenever the collective wailing died down for a few moments. By the time all of our relatives left, apart from my uncle Ubay, who wanted to stay overnight to make sure that my father was alright, our entire family unit was exhausted.

When I was in my room, preparing to go to sleep, my father knocked on the door, and came in quietly, while I was sitting on my bed. "How are you feeling?" he asked carefully, slipping into the room.

I paused, unsure of what to say — I looked around my room as though it would help me — I returned my gaze to him, and offered, "I don't know."

"Me neither," my father replied with a brief quirk of his lips, before he made his way over to the bed, and gingerly placed himself beside me. There was a long silence; my father and I hadn't spoken one on one since a day ago, since he'd been swamped in funeral preparations. Then, he murmured, "I don't know how she did it, you know. Raising five children, during a dictatorship."

"And 'aamu Abdul was one of them," I responded a bit dryly, causing him to let out a short laugh.

"I'm sorry, Ibtisam," he suddenly said gravely, "I should have been there. You shouldn't have had to see her go."

"You couldn't help it," I replied, though I was uncertain of my words.

"I could have. We all knew," my father rubbed a hand through his dark hair, his thick eyebrows furrowed, "we all knew she was dying, Allah rest her soul. I should have stayed at home."

I turned to face him properly, with my own frown, "Baba, you did all you could. You gave her a bed and food, you made her last days as... comfortable as they could be." I cleared my throat, before I admitted steadily, "Before she... passed, she... talked about Jiduh. I think she wanted to be with him again, and... I think that she's with him now, and she's happy." I ended on a firmer note, nodding to myself.

My father looked me over, before he stretched his arms out in invitation for a hug. I leaned into the shoulder of his creased, black shirt meagrely, and he took it as an incentive to embrace me properly. "She's happy," he agreed quietly, the grief hanging in the air like a light fog.