Photo by William Gullo on Unsplash
I cut ties with my estranged
parents when I left home in my early twenties, and I hadn’t spoken to them
since. As a second-generation immigrant, I wanted to distance myself from my
Muslim roots as much as possible to pursue a career in show business.
Although
I had built a significant fan base over the years, I never landed a lead role.
With bills piling up, I had to take a part-time job at a downtown funeral home
to make ends meet. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the job, but I was grateful
for the steady income it provided.
While
the job required me to work long hours, it was the nature of it that left me
feeling drained by the end of the day. Washing the corpses and preparing them
for their loved ones took a serious toll on my psyche. No amount of soap and
water could remove the stench of death that hung in the air for days. It clung
to me like a foul, invisible cloak.
During
my first week, Mr Ahmad helped me get used to the routine tasks, so we did
everything in pairs. As time went on and I settled into my role as a budding
autopsy technician, he entrusted me with maintaining the funeral home and
handling the deceased.
He
treated me as if I were truly his son – even giving me a place to stay when I
couldn’t pay rent and got kicked out of my one-room flat. But he had a
biological son, one he missed dearly and grieved every waking hour. Whenever Mr
Ahmad prayed, he asked me to join him, and together we prayed for Allah
to forgive his son’s sins and welcome him into janat – paradise.
His son
was one of many who lost their lives in 2023. His death was gruesome – nothing
was left of his body. The flames singed his flesh, liquefied his organs and
skin, and reduced him to ash in the dead of night at a displacement camp. He
was brutally murdered and became one with the twinkling stars, crying blood.
That year, the world watched in silence – and some even cheered – as yet
another atrocity was etched into history.
Locals
buried the dead in shallow graves, hoping for an end to the occupation – but
even the dead weren’t allowed to rest in peace. The entire place was bombed
into oblivion, razed to the ground, and the few who still fought for freedom
were deported to the desert and left to die.
Several
weeks passed since the siege that tore through his homeland when Mr Ahmad was
finally allowed to enter the country and bring back what was left of his son to
the United Kingdom. That poor man begged his occupiers for entry like a dog – a
barking dog devoted to its torturers. And for what? Just to enter his country.
Or what remained of it.
I
couldn’t imagine what that would feel like – to be denied access to the very
place your ancestors called home for centuries – by radical forces who twisted
scripture to justify the unimaginable, claiming superiority over the very lives
they erased. What a joke.
The
previous employee said Mr Ahmad’s son left behind a widow and two children, but
their whereabouts were unknown. They were most likely murdered – just like all
the other women and children in the occupied country, whom the occupiers
claimed were human shields.
It’s
always the women and children – treated like dirt, denied opportunities,
subjected to Islamophobia and racism, and seen as weak and oppressed because of
a single cloth on their heads. When was the last time a Muslim woman harmed
anyone? When she refused to remove her headscarf to enter a bank or get a job
at an airport?
Whenever
I thought about what happened in 2023 – and how the world watched – I felt my
blood run cold. What sort of people could kill with such cruelty? Leaders with
skeletons in their closets, trying to dominate every corner of the Middle East?
Power-hungry icons rewriting the truth to suit their image? Artists and moguls
backed by shadows we’ll never see? Or people so corrupt they turned the
vulnerable into pawns – trading dignity for dominance?
Then
again, what else could it be? Nothing else made sense. Only the most twisted
minds, consumed by power and greed, could justify the murder of children – children
they’d rather destroy without remorse than spare from being used as human
shields. Their crimes should be carved into history – not erased – so
future generations can marvel at how evil once wore a suit and tie.
Where was I? Ah, yes, now I remember.
