Is there still hope for me? From dust, I was brought into the world. And to dust I shall return. Yet I wonder, have I spent these years well? Have I served my lord well?
April 2005 “Raa-fia?” the physician’s assistant called out. I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to be here. “Please…
“There are giants in the sky,” I whispered to my little cousin, tucking her in as I flipped to the…
In Jannah, inshaAllah, I pray my home will be made of many rooms, each one holding a memory of those dearest to me. One of those rooms will be a red-bricked house, part-dorm, part-home..
It was pink. The cupcake filling was pink. In all honesty, I was expecting blue. For some reason I always thought that we’d have a boy first. Not in a gender-biased way, but in an “our family kept having dreams it was a boy so it altered our expectations” way.
At ten years old, you get invited to a classmate’s house for her birthday party for the first time. Between cake and presents, you observe the presence of her older sister in the background: a towering figure, so cool, almost unapproachable.
My grandmother had small hands and long, black thick hair. She wore a ribbon in her hair and bangles on her arms and once upon a time she was seemingly content, but worried. Always worried. Worry lay silently in her veins and sometimes shone in her eyes during the afternoon.
The sounds of the Fajr adhan pierce the stillness of the night. My grandmother’s bed is empty; she’s already seated on her veranda, her prayer mat carefully spread before her, lost in deep prayer and supplication.
