Don’t start with the birth certificate. No, take an obituary-out approach. Pick an age, a date, what to do in lieu of flowers. Yes, she must die. I know how hard it is to kill her, but the spell won’t work without it, for every story ends in death.
We set the obituary as a frame for a life. When Jidda first came to this country, she was frightened because she did not know the rules of this place, far from home. She wanted a child, badly, but feared her spell would fail without an understanding of the life I could have, without a grasp on the language I would have to speak. She knew I would die someday. Jidda had met with Death. She had stared him in the face as he wiped his feet on the welcome mat, and she had spat on his skeletal toes. And when she locked the door and ran into the house to write up a boat ticket for herself to escape, she scrawled a sentence on her arm. The daughters of this family shall live long, inshallah. And she knew it to be the most powerful spell she had ever written. And so when she wrote my life, she started with an obituary, because she knew I would die someday, but within she could cause a life to blossom.
An obituary outlines the shape of a life, prevents cruel endpoints. Give your daughter a dignified death to give her a dignified life. Write how the world will remember her. Who shall love and outlive her? Not the whole world. Great lives, worshiped by all, are weak fictions, weak spells. The magic of her life will grow weak. No, she will be remembered by her book club or her gardening society. Her neighbors, her niece, her daughter. No, not her mother. Let her live beyond you.
Make her story boring. No fame for her, inshallah. She will not save the world. The life of a hero, a saint, is impossible, an implausible story, a myth. Do not be so cruel to your daughter, to try to make her great. A real person is steeped in minutiae. It makes a story, a life, more real. She better dance to musical soundtracks in the kitchen. She better read celebrity magazines. She better have a stamp collection. Not an exciting story, but real, true. Give her joy in the mundane. Let her collect stamps.
No, her life is still meaningful. No, she can’t save the world, but–habibti, listen, listen, her life is not defined by death, huh? Just because you wrote an obituary… You think it is sad if she lives a boring life and then dies? Ha! Those are our lives too!
Oh, oh, sweetie. You’re so young. You haven’t seen the world yet, and I’ve sheltered you. Yes, yes, you’re an adult, I trust you to raise her, but we did shelter you, habibti. Maybe that’s why you think a boring life is meaningless, huh?
When Jidda spat at Death’s feet and fled to this country, this strange, stupid country that only tells stories of great men, she locked the door and crawled out the windows and took the key with her across the sea. She wore it on a necklace, because she always wanted to go home. Did she ever show it to you before she passed? I keep it in my jewelry box. Where is it—ah! Here, her key. No, of course she never went home. Death still patrols the land looking for our family, our scent ripe on his bloodhound nose.
And Jidda wrote my obituary so I would live long and someday, when Death draws back, I could return home to unlock her door.
I hope that day will come soon. But if it does not, this will become your key, and then it will become your daughter’s key. Jidda let me live, the way she had to fight for. Her family had been killed and she wanted family who could live. We live boring lives because Jidda could not have one. It is a gift.
Is the obituary finished? Oh, habibti. Let me hold you while you cry. I cried too, you know, and so did your Jidda. Your fingers are ink-stained. No, no, don’t wash them. It will give her a connection to you, the spell seeping into you through your skin.
Hold the obituary. Feel my hands on yours. Feel the narrative, the strands of a story straining on your fingertips, the story of your child’s life. Tell a story and tell it true. Tell the story of your daughter and how she grew, the woman she blossomed into, the things she cared about, the things she felt, the ones she loved and how they loved. Write her a story of meaningless frivolity, of nights around the dinner table with a deck of cards, of stamp collections and washing dishes and being just one of the many in the streets protesting, of returning home to a family with a key around her neck.
Content warnings: Reference to genocide
