Ramblings on Death

The Story of Passing

I remember so well the day my grandmother passed away. It was New Year’s Eve and it is so perfectly imprinted in my brain that I can never forget that day or how I felt.  My siblings and I were at our cousin’s house for a sleepover to ring in the New Year. My brother got a phone call and I remember I had a slice of Jalapeno pizza in my hand. I was about to take a bite when my brother hung up the phone and told us the news. I was stunned. She was ill but no matter how much you prepare for it, death is always a surprise. It was like an out of body experience. I remember just sitting there, with my mouth still open, poised to take a bite out of the pizza. I never did take that bite.

We all went home and sat together and talked and fell asleep wherever we were sitting. Our parents didn’t wake us, like they always would, to send us to our rooms. Instead, they just let us be. I remember when I woke up the next morning; it took a moment to remember what had happened. I laid there for a long time just thinking how curl this world is, how heartlessly it moves on like nothing has happened. No matter how big the tragedy, the sun always rises. 

That is the reality of it all. My grandmother was gone, she was dead. I hadn’t seen her in four years and now I was never going to see her again. This was a tragedy; the world should have stopped spinning. The sun shouldn’t have risen. 

But it did. 

The world kept on spinning and the sun continued to rise, oblivious to the pain it caused. And those of us who are left behind, we have to move on with the world or else, we become worse than the dead. We become the living dead, covered in the dust of time yet untouched by its healing hand. We slowly turn into stone, until death comes to, finally, shatter our statue and releases our tortured soul.

The Story of Quetta*

Dead Alongside the Living

Imagine yourself sitting outside, on the street, next to the dead body of your loved one. It is 29^o F, drizzling rain soaking your clothes and the cold wind chilling you to the bone.  Yet, you sit there clutching a picture of the one whose body lies in front of you.  You are not alone. You are surrounded by 80 other dead bodies and their loved ones. 

Alamdar Road. Quetta, Pakistan 

You sit there in protest for the lives that were lost. You sit and wait for someone to notice, someone to act, someone to tell you that this will not happen again. Not to you or to anyone else. You want protection for your family. You want your children to grow up in the light of the family of the Prophet of Islam. You want the freedom to cry for Imam Husain** a.s. You just want to be left alone.

Yet you sit there, third day in a row, with your dead loved one. The world notices but your government is ever silent. They want you to bury your dead and move on. But you will not move. You will not budge until you are promised that tomorrow you will not have to bury your brother, who went out for a stroll after dinner only to be caught in the blood thirsty hands of terrorists. 

You want peace. You want protection. You want life.

*Quetta is a northern city in Pakistan. On January 10, 2013, twin suicide bombings took place on the busy Alamdar Road, located in majority Shia neighborhood, killing 102 people and wounding 200 others.  The victims’ families are protesting the senseless killing and the lack of government response by a peaceful sit-in which has grown to a 100,000 participants in Quetta alone.  The families are refusing to bury the dead until their demands for protection are met. 

Following Quetta’s lead, 100 other cities in Pakistan and 10 cities outside are holding sit-in protests to show solidarity with their Quetta brothers.

**Imam Husain (a.s.) was the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.). He was martyred in Karbala, Iraq along with 72 of his companions while defending Islam.  During the first two months and 8 days of the Islamic New Year, Shias commemorate the tragedy of Karbala and grieve for the sufferings of Imam Husain (a.s.).

For more information on this and how to get involved, check out the links below:

• Join the twitter movement to protest the #ShiaGenocide.
• Protest in Downtown Chicago.
• Information on protests worldwide.
• Sign the official White House Petition to Condemn the Shia Genocide in Pakistan.
• News article about the third day of the Sit-in in Quetta.
• News article about protests in other cities.
• Google “Quetta Dharna” to read more about this event as it unfolds. (Dharna means sit-in protest in Urdu)

Mahreen