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.