Imagining Death:
As one crosses mid eighties, one starts thinking about the impending death. Some start preparing for the day, making wills, making financial arrangements for their funerals, praying and turning their ears to the silent footsteps of the angel of death. I am not such a fervent fan of that messenger but still an ardent dreamer of the surreal.
I have often imagined the last rites, with my body riding high on the shoulders of friends and male relatives like an unsung hero, who had found recognition in death, with the white cloud of my soul tumbling over their heads. I have debated in my mind the choice between the two masjids of which I have been credited to be a founder member. Lurking in that white cloud, I have counted the people surrounding my grave after the burial, recognizing the faces and empathizing with their feelings, wanting to embrace them and bid them farewell. I have heard the du’as for my maghfirah and said Ameen. I have also imagined scenarios of cultural-traditional ceremonies of Qur’an khwani and forty-day feasts.
I have also imagined flowers on my body and on my grave, the fragrance of them permeating the air in which the white cloud of my soul is floating. I will take this fragrance with me to the other world as a souvenir. (Having said all this let me stress that I am still in good health with no sign of any ailment, nor any indisposition.)
Then as a bolt from the blue, an evil star appears on the horizon, code named covid-19, which showers pestilence on the populace around the globe. There are no divinely written “no entry” signs on the doors of the pious; there are no sanctuaries. It brings Moses and Pharaoh to walk the same path. It pronounces equal opportunity death. It diffuses into the courtyards of masjids, temples and churches; takes complete control of the social infrastructure; disrupts commerce; demolishes economic empires; treats giants as midgets and declares lock downs.
My death scenarios are twisted in a tempest. Gone is the shroud and the cloud, the masjid and the solemn faces of the graveside crowd. Friends are banished from the scene. The loved ones are distanced. I am being warned that far from a white-shrouded body and a snowy fluffy white cloud, my body and soul could go up in sooty black smoke or at the best I may be hurled into a pothole in a plastic body bag and dirt pushed into it by a grave digger’s truck. No friends, no janaza bearers, no brothers, no sisters, no cousins and nephews, not you not them. This is a horror movie, a Frankestinian diabolism. I wish I could wake up from this bad dream.
Waheeduddin Ahmed
April 3rd, 2020
I have often imagined the last rites, with my body riding high on the shoulders of friends and male relatives like an unsung hero, who had found recognition in death, with the white cloud of my soul tumbling over their heads. I have debated in my mind the choice between the two masjids of which I have been credited to be a founder member. Lurking in that white cloud, I have counted the people surrounding my grave after the burial, recognizing the faces and empathizing with their feelings, wanting to embrace them and bid them farewell. I have heard the du’as for my maghfirah and said Ameen. I have also imagined scenarios of cultural-traditional ceremonies of Qur’an khwani and forty-day feasts.
I have also imagined flowers on my body and on my grave, the fragrance of them permeating the air in which the white cloud of my soul is floating. I will take this fragrance with me to the other world as a souvenir. (Having said all this let me stress that I am still in good health with no sign of any ailment, nor any indisposition.)
Then as a bolt from the blue, an evil star appears on the horizon, code named covid-19, which showers pestilence on the populace around the globe. There are no divinely written “no entry” signs on the doors of the pious; there are no sanctuaries. It brings Moses and Pharaoh to walk the same path. It pronounces equal opportunity death. It diffuses into the courtyards of masjids, temples and churches; takes complete control of the social infrastructure; disrupts commerce; demolishes economic empires; treats giants as midgets and declares lock downs.
My death scenarios are twisted in a tempest. Gone is the shroud and the cloud, the masjid and the solemn faces of the graveside crowd. Friends are banished from the scene. The loved ones are distanced. I am being warned that far from a white-shrouded body and a snowy fluffy white cloud, my body and soul could go up in sooty black smoke or at the best I may be hurled into a pothole in a plastic body bag and dirt pushed into it by a grave digger’s truck. No friends, no janaza bearers, no brothers, no sisters, no cousins and nephews, not you not them. This is a horror movie, a Frankestinian diabolism. I wish I could wake up from this bad dream.
Waheeduddin Ahmed
April 3rd, 2020
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