My mother spent her whole life
with a string of prayer beads in her hand.
Other women collected perfumes.
She collected prayer rugs.
She made up every prayer she missed.
She never told me I had to pray.
She never said: ‘everyone prays for themselves.’
She’d say she prayed for me, too.
And never expected anything in return,
Only the chain not to be broken.
When she started working,
she’d set aside money
from every miserable paycheck
for the annual qurban.
An entire year of saving.
Other mothers saved
For summer by the sea
My mother set aside money
for an overpriced sheep
we would slaughter behind the house,
and then give the meat
to others.
She wore whatever people gave her,
often what was left behind by the dead
And taught me there’s
no boundary between the living and the dead.
So I, too, would go through piles
of the dead’s clothes with her.
Once, near the end of the war,
we were coming home from a gathering.
It was summer. Midnight.
The cicadas were in ecstasy.
We had to pass by the cemetery.
I tried to cling to her.
She gently pushed me away:
‘That’s where my father is. And your uncle.
You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.’, she said.
My mother spent her last days in agony.
She wasn’t afraid of sickness or dying,
she was terrified she’d go to hell.
Nothing I said,
could change what was boiling inside her.
She was convinced that hell was waiting for her.
Her bones were crumbling,
blood leaked from her ears,
her nails fell off,
none of that scared her.
What tormented her was eternity.
She’d had an abortion after the age of forty.
By then, she already had five children.
As soon as she confessed,
and word got out,
they told her she was going to hell.
When I asked her why she did it, she said:
‘It was a shame to be pregnant at that age.
What would people say?’
Back then, she wasn’t thinking about death.
She was thinking about the whispers behind her back,
that kept her from ever saying goodbye
to herself.
Until the very end,
she believed she was headed for a terrible place,
For she couldn’t bear one more child.
I cannot believe that paradise
is a place where there’s no room
for a woman with prayer beads in her hand
and tears in her eyes.
And if there isn’t,
then let it all burn.
.
Naida Mujkic
Picture Nick Victor
.