have done differently.
* * *
I grew closer to Magool in the weeks after my father’s death. My young cousin had grown up smart, independent, a free spirit, tough and yet compassionate, with a no-nonsense attitude toward life. Now she was the suddenly my only precious link to my extended family. Magool had lived with me for over six months in the Netherlands in the early 1990s. Unlike Sahra, she adopted the Western values of individual responsibility in matters of life, love, and family. Because everyone in her environment had tried to convert her back to Islam, she knew how annoying the process was and never tried to convert me. Magool was also my connection to the Somali bloodline to which, whether I liked it or not, I still belonged.
One day I asked Magool for news of my mother, and she told me a story that surprised and pleased me.
All those long years after my father had left my mother alone in Kenya with three children, Ma had refused to say more than a word or two to him. Her mute, awful anger lay between them even before he left us; her silence filled our house on Park Road in Nairobi, until he could no longer bear it. When he came back to Kenya ten years later, she turned away from his outstretched arms and ignored his endearments, even in the presence of family and friends.
After I fled my family and my father moved to London, Ma followed the news about him closely, Magool told me. When she learned that he was dying and suffering, she believed it was because his soul was not being allowed to depart quietly and in peace. My father’s kidneys failed, then started functioning again; he would breathe on his own for a while and then had to be hooked up to the ventilator again. Ma saw all this not as the effects of leukemia or the septic infection that was raging through his body and killing his organs but as a sign of, a prelude to, the explicit tortures of the grave that loom so large in Islamic teaching.
In the hell described in the Quran, flames lick the flesh of the sinful; burning embers will be placed under their feet, their scalps will be scalded and their brains boiled. These tortures are endless, for as their skin is burned it is replaced and burned again. In the suffering of my father on his deathbed, my mother believed, Allah and his angels were giving him a taste of the punishments to come for his wrongdoings.
I imagined my mother must have asked herself whom my fathercould have wronged more than he had wronged her. Who else had he abandoned, cheated on, dragged to foreign countries? Who but she had gone hungry and watched her fatherless children fall away and betray her after he departed? Who could possibly have suffered more than she because of the sins of Hirsi Magan Isse? My mother felt she held the keys to my father’s last chance for salvation before the grave, so she resolved to act.
Perhaps she thought that by doing good she might be forgiven for her own sins. Or perhaps it was because she truly loved him. (This is what I tell myself.) Maybe her sense of ethics and justice, of being the daughter of a respected judge among the nomads, never deserted her, or maybe her act was all about power. Whatever her reasoning, my mother decided to register at my father’s deathbed like his other wives. Her presence was different from theirs, however. She cajoled Magool, the daughter of her younger sister, into going to the hospital on her behalf to deliver a message.
I am not sure how, but Magool had grown friendly with my half sister, Sahra. She found out from Sahra that my father was in the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, and also found out which ward he was in. Then she went to see him with a message from my mother. Unlike me, she did not talk at first, but hovered quietly for a few minutes, until she felt comfortable enough to whisper his name. Magool said that he opened his eyes and raised his head to see who she was. Making eye contact with him, she then delivered the message
* * *
I grew closer to Magool in the weeks after my father’s death. My young cousin had grown up smart, independent, a free spirit, tough and yet compassionate, with a no-nonsense attitude toward life. Now she was the suddenly my only precious link to my extended family. Magool had lived with me for over six months in the Netherlands in the early 1990s. Unlike Sahra, she adopted the Western values of individual responsibility in matters of life, love, and family. Because everyone in her environment had tried to convert her back to Islam, she knew how annoying the process was and never tried to convert me. Magool was also my connection to the Somali bloodline to which, whether I liked it or not, I still belonged.
One day I asked Magool for news of my mother, and she told me a story that surprised and pleased me.
All those long years after my father had left my mother alone in Kenya with three children, Ma had refused to say more than a word or two to him. Her mute, awful anger lay between them even before he left us; her silence filled our house on Park Road in Nairobi, until he could no longer bear it. When he came back to Kenya ten years later, she turned away from his outstretched arms and ignored his endearments, even in the presence of family and friends.
After I fled my family and my father moved to London, Ma followed the news about him closely, Magool told me. When she learned that he was dying and suffering, she believed it was because his soul was not being allowed to depart quietly and in peace. My father’s kidneys failed, then started functioning again; he would breathe on his own for a while and then had to be hooked up to the ventilator again. Ma saw all this not as the effects of leukemia or the septic infection that was raging through his body and killing his organs but as a sign of, a prelude to, the explicit tortures of the grave that loom so large in Islamic teaching.
In the hell described in the Quran, flames lick the flesh of the sinful; burning embers will be placed under their feet, their scalps will be scalded and their brains boiled. These tortures are endless, for as their skin is burned it is replaced and burned again. In the suffering of my father on his deathbed, my mother believed, Allah and his angels were giving him a taste of the punishments to come for his wrongdoings.
I imagined my mother must have asked herself whom my fathercould have wronged more than he had wronged her. Who else had he abandoned, cheated on, dragged to foreign countries? Who but she had gone hungry and watched her fatherless children fall away and betray her after he departed? Who could possibly have suffered more than she because of the sins of Hirsi Magan Isse? My mother felt she held the keys to my father’s last chance for salvation before the grave, so she resolved to act.
Perhaps she thought that by doing good she might be forgiven for her own sins. Or perhaps it was because she truly loved him. (This is what I tell myself.) Maybe her sense of ethics and justice, of being the daughter of a respected judge among the nomads, never deserted her, or maybe her act was all about power. Whatever her reasoning, my mother decided to register at my father’s deathbed like his other wives. Her presence was different from theirs, however. She cajoled Magool, the daughter of her younger sister, into going to the hospital on her behalf to deliver a message.
I am not sure how, but Magool had grown friendly with my half sister, Sahra. She found out from Sahra that my father was in the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, and also found out which ward he was in. Then she went to see him with a message from my mother. Unlike me, she did not talk at first, but hovered quietly for a few minutes, until she felt comfortable enough to whisper his name. Magool said that he opened his eyes and raised his head to see who she was. Making eye contact with him, she then delivered the message
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