The End of the Prayer
Loss and learning and friendship and food.
I get the text from a friend at 10:30 on Friday night.
Jasmine’s husband has died.
I sit frozen on the couch, staring at the phone. One could say this is not a surprise. Murad had been fighting a rare, horribly debilitating cancer for the past 3 years, and things were not getting better.
But still, we had hope. There had been a period where things seemed to be looking up, before the tumour returned with a vengeance. There were weekly chemo appointments (70 in total, I later learn). There were drugs, and some caring doctors. There was even a possibility of getting him to America for an experimental treatment.
And now he's just… gone.
I wake the poet, who’s been snoring peacefully in the next room. We cry together.
Unsure about what to do, I finally send Jasmine a text. I can’t imagine being in her shoes and having to answer the phone, but I can’t imagine being in her shoes, period. How does anyone process something like this? After escaping the war together in 2015, crossing the border on foot with one child while she was pregnant with another. She’s been caring for Murad, and almost everything else in their household, for so long, all the while facing every kind of racism and dehumanization imaginable, as a Syrian living in Turkey,
For it to end like this.
She greets us at the door of her family home with dark circles under her eyes. Her body shakes as I put my arms around her. I love this woman so much. She started as a friend but became a sister and a comrade (and the best Arabic teacher ever). Her generosity knows no bounds. Which is partly why she’s had dozens, possibly hundreds of visitors in the past 48 hours. This is customary after a death, but it’s also due of the sheer volume of love she and her family have brought into the community.
We sit in the living room with her parents and her kids and her sister’s in-laws and some friends, again mixing Turkish, Arabic, English and French.
She tells us Murad had fallen, not an unusual occurrence, so she’d taken him to the emergency room.
The nurse told her his blood pressure was at three. Jasmine holds up three fingers as she says this.
The nurse asked, “Why is there no one here with you?”
Jasmine looked at her, confused.
The nurse said, “Your husband is dying.”
Jasmine shakes her head. “I thought, ‘What? How? He’s not dying. We just had a conversation!’ I had a thousand scenarios about his death in my head, but none of them fit what actually happened.”
She told him she loved him. That she will miss him. That she knows how long he’s suffered. That she will look after the kids.
She says, “I was scared of that moment, but it was really simple. It was not scary. He was really in peace. He was with love.”
He looked into her eyes, and then he was gone.
The nurse told her it was one of the most beautiful passings she had ever seen.
Also. He died on their wedding anniversary.
We talk and sniffle on the couch, as Jasmine’s father bustles around the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards.
“He can’t sit still,” she whispers. “He is obsessed with feeding everyone.”
He brings us plates of dates, which no one wants because we’re all stuffed. When he’s not looking, everyone puts theirs on my plate.
I’d forgotten the simplicity, the present-ness, the surprise laughter that comes with loss.
Django, who can’t read a room to save his life, paws at people’s knees for treats.
“Let’s take him for a walk,” Jasmine says, quietly.
We go outside, and she looks up at the moon.
“No more hospital visits,” she says. “No more pharmacies. No more pills, no more protein shakes.”
Then she leans against the hood of a parked car and sobs. “Could I have done anything different? To save him? To make him want to live?”
Whatever I say, I’m sure it’s not helpful. I want her to know that no one could have done more or better than she did. But I also know the guilt that comes with loss. Our brains try to convince us that we have control, because the alternative is too scary.
So I just hold her.
She tells me what her father, who only speaks Arabic and French and isn’t able (or allowed) to get around much, said earlier that day: “I’ve lost my only friend.”
I try not to lose it completely.
We go back inside.
Her father has packed up boxes of food to send home with us.
The next day, I’m back. Jasmine confided she hasn’t slept in days, so I’m armed with melatonin, and, at a loss for what to bring a family who constantly feeds me, a bag of oranges from the tree in my backyard.
There are more visitors, more coffee, more tea. During a lull, we go to her room and find some packages on her bed. She opens them and gasps: clothing for her kids, a Bayram tradition, left discreetly by one of her Syrian friends, who no doubt doesn’t have cash to spare. “Amina gave money, too,” Jasmine says, and for the twentieth time in the past 48 hours, I’m speechless. Amina has 8 kids and 1 grandchild, and makes approximately $15 USD a day, picking tomatoes. Frantically, I hold back sobs.
Jasmine puts on her prayer dress and prays.
Django watches her suspiciously, chewing on one of her socks.
Her father charges into the room with more food.
“This is why I can’t sleep,” she says, laughing.
I offer her a meditation track that never fails to put me to sleep. She puts the headphones in and immediately passes out.
Django makes low boofing sounds. I nestle between them, one arm over each, trying to shut up him.
As I leave, her dad rushes after me and hands me a bottle of juice, made from the oranges I tried to give as a gift.
It’s been just over 40 days since Murad’s passing.
On the 40th day, as is the custom, we gather again to memorialize him. We squeeze onto couches, and friends and family members read from the Qur’an, their voices coming together. Most of the kids fidget, poking each other. The little girl next to me softly pats Django, reciting along with the adults, beaming at me every time I look over at her.
My Arabic isn’t nearly enough to understand what’s being said, so I listen in silence, adding the odd prayer in languages I do know. Thinking again how strange it is that someone can be here and then, just, not be.
At the end of the prayer, they all hold out their hands, left and right touching, facing upwards, as if holding water. So I do the same.
It feels like receiving God.
As I leave later that evening, I remember when I ran into Leyla, Jasmine’s sister, that first night we visited, after he’d passed.
She told me there was a man in the hospital bed next to Murad’s. He passed a few minutes later. He was alone.
Muslim funerals happen the day after the person dies. Leyla said they learned that Murad and this man were buried at the same time, in graves next to one another.
“Maybe,” she said, “they will have each other.”
Thank you so much for reading, Gina.
So moving. Thank you for sharing