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All that Remains is Love – and Reality of Death

With friends, it’s not the same. It makes you feel extremely blessed if you have family members close by, living in the Emirates. When you don’t, your pain and suffering become particularly acute.

Standing on the avenue in Istanbul, a green truck glides pass me, carefully making its way down the road. Its cargo is someone I’ll never get the chance to know. In his coffin, blanketed beneath a green cloth bearing the two testimonies of the Muslim faith, reminding him, “Don’t forget these are your answers.”

The truck is on its way to the mosque where he will be mourned by family, friends, and people who don’t know him but will be happy to help make his comfortable resting place full of light.

This might sound morbid, but I really miss being a part of the funeral prayers. Living in the Emirates, we sort of half-experience life, being without extended families, for some without even immediate family members, miss out on milestones such as birthdays, anniversaries, and deaths. The janazah, funeral prayer, is performed in only few mosques that have facilities for funerals. So, many prefer to have their bodies shipped home and buried in the land of their birth, I guess, they see no need in having too many of them. I can only remember one time that I witnessed the janazah prayer in UAE. That was when the founding father Shaikh Zayed, Allah have mercy on him, died.

Ironically, in the one devastating moment we were united as a nation; praying for his soul. Without these rituals, we may not notice it, but we go a little mad. We sort of lose our ability to see the important everyday reality of life. It’s as if some of the windows to our souls have been closed. Yet, it might creep up on us in the middle of the night, or give us a vengeful slap once we return home for a visit. But what if we end up with no one left to visit?

I went back home after six years in UAE. My parents died long ago. At least four of my extended family members had passed away while I’d been away.

Now, my family is tiny compared to most and it seems to be shrinking. I recently got an email from my uncle saying that my niece, a sweet, smart, and pretty girl who was only 19 had died. How? Why? Even her mother didn’t know. The former closeness of my family has broken down into the cycle of selfishness, estrangement, and individuality, all wrapped into the package of personal freedom. Sadly, what was once solely a modern American phenomenon, has gone global in many respects.

I had only seen my niece once in the past 10 years. Still, I felt shocked not so much by her death, but by the spectre of missed future opportunities; I’ll never get a chance to see her again. All I could do was offer my grieving sister drops of long distance comfort over the phone. I felt so useßless. I couldn’t even have an open house; this is when one opens their house for friends to pay their respects for the deceased.

In UAE, this is often held for family members who have died back home. At the time of my niece’s death, I hadn’t been here long enough to establish real ties, besides, without even a single member of family member here, what’s the point?

This made my pain particularly acute. I didn’t even have the chance to take a last look at my lovely niece’s face as or have someone to reminisce about when she was little and dreamed of being a Power Ranger when she grew up. All I have left is her Facebook account.

On my husband’s side, we have a sprawling 30 plus-member-family, when we go to dinner—even though we make a ruckus—the manager is always happy to see us. Last month my relative’s father died. He had been ill for weeks. She was here with her daughter helping out with the house and her brood; as she was soon due to give birth. She’d been with him at the start of his illness, and then he told her to ‘Go.’ It was better to help the next generation.

She came here to help out, but it didn’t stop her from being riddled with guilt and sadness, she sobbed for her father. When I saw her, I wanted to sob too. It reminded me of how much of an orphan I was. In this cycle of death there is life. Her father may be gone, but now, the family will soon have a grandchild for her and a great-grandchild for her father. A few of us saw her daughter off to the hospital. Flanked by her husband, mother, father, brother and multiple in-laws, she went off, confident that no matter what, when she got home, they would be there to take care of her. This is the essence of our lives, isn’t it? In spite of all of all the flash and dash, spinning ourselves into a tizzy, at the end of it all, love and death is all that remains. Perhaps this is worth Remembering!

Maryam Ismail is an American sociologist based in Sharjah