My ayeeyo is the warmest person I know. She makes me feel protection and safety to the highest degree, I never knew love before her. She is a God-fearing and kind woman, a woman whose fingers count individual beads on her tasbih while making prayer for me. She prays for me a lot, for my welfare, future and happiness. Her prayers keep me alive while I struggle to survive most days. My ayeeyo often whispers good fortunes on to me and we exchange bountiful dua’a through WhatsApp – our love has transcended the physical world, I also love her in the digital one.
I think about my ayeeyo a lot and her long life, I pray for her to live even longer. I cannot imagine a world without her, her light and her selflessness. She married the love of her life and had five children. My awoowe’s life unfortunately ended early and she outlived him with their many children. Then came the war, a genocidal war that affected her and her people, she fled with her children seeking refuge in Holland. My ayeeyo spent many years working on a strawberry farm, providing for her children and sustaining the new lives she had built for them. Years went by and she would live between London and Hargeysa, her children had grown and began to form families of their own. I think about my ayeeyo’s life and her unwavering strength a lot. And I know this paragraph does not explain everything she had experiences, but this paragraph alone explains the kind of woman she is – a woman of incredible character.
I think about my ayeeyo’s travels a lot and I particularly love when my ayeeyo comes back from Hargeysa – excitement permeating through my bones, I always feel like the fuzzy static that comes from a television. When she comes back it is one of the only times I see family members I have never met – waiting for her arrival just as I am. We drive in our big cars and congregate inside the airport like a welcoming party and then go back to the guuri (there are more of us waiting to embrace her indoors) and it could be either my uncle’s house or my aunt’s one. We only have two meeting places when my ayeeyo comes back to visit. And she often smells like the Berbera seafront and the warm Hargeysa sun. She smells like a home I have never been to, but a home I am all too familiar with. We do not celebrate Christmas, but when your ayeeyo visits London with suitcases of baatis, uunsi and the finest gifts it manages to feel like a celebration. We all end up together in one house, eating bariis and hilib on huge metal plates and laughing the evening away. Somalis be funny the way we say goodbye a million times before leaving. I love the end of the night when ayeeyo has settled in properly, she often watches Al Jazeera, whispering cusses at western politics underneath her breath and braids my olive oil soaked hair with her deep red fingertips stained by the henna she makes at home. She always asks me to make her shaax in between the commercial breaks and to rummage the cupboards for halwa and biscuits. My ayeeyo is the only person who would braid my hair. My ayeeyo is the only person who taught me surahs from the Quran and was patient with me. My ayeeyo is the only person who saw me as a child. My ayeeyo taught me my af tiris and the names of my forefathers. My ayeeyo always considered me.
I hate thinking about death, but as my ayeeyo ages, it is hard to not let it cross my mind. If the highest heaven was a person, it would be her and I know in my heart of hearts how deserving she is of Jannatul Firdaus. Ameen.
