Mothering a Muslim by Erum & Nazia

Author:Erum & Nazia [Erum & Nazia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Juggernaut Books
Published: 2020-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

Epilogue

One of my oldest memories is of my mother’s low, melodious voice reading the Quran as Maghrib approached . It would gently flow as the sky changed its colour. As if her deep, undulating rhythm was enough to pull the whole world into a deep slumber. Her voice remains embedded in my mind.

The magical quality of the voice would beckon us from wherever we were playing much like Pied Piper. We would giggle as Mamma closed her Quran and gently blew through her pursed lips the dua into our faces and inside our clothes. We wore her dua as an invisible vest around us and felt comforted in its warmth.

Today Myra has begun to show signs of independence. She is already in playgroups and is ever ready to go explore the world outside. Slowly, step by step, month by month, she is letting go of my fingers to find her own footing. I understand now, as a parent myself, why my mother read the religious scriptures and blew her prayers on us. It was her way of keeping us safe when she wasn’t around. I too find myself giving Myra my own dua vests. Because mothers cannot be everywhere.

But our prayers and words can always accompany our children, subconsciously become the voice in their heads. I try to take a long, hard look at my own words to know how my child will process the world around her. She will see this world as joyful and as happy a place as I tell her it is. She will find it as wondrous as my words paint the world to be. She will also find it as dark as the many demons I tell her are out there waiting for her.

I have not introduced the concept of ghosts to little Myra, and she is unafraid to skip into any dark room alone. With no fear holding her back, she simply reaches out and switches on the lights. We live in a nuclear family in a cosmopolitan society where not everyone knows their neighbours. It is a controlled environment, and easy to gatekeep information reaching my three-year-old. But some day someone will tell her, ‘Oh, but it’s dark, won’t you be afraid?’ and from there the journey to the dark world of fears will start for my Myra. She will learn that she is expected to be afraid. Just as a casual remark about a news story on Hindus–Muslims might throw up differences with negative connotations for her to process.

Once she reaches the world of the big school, the task of gatekeeping will become even harder. There will be many who will tell her about demons that exist and there will be many monsters that I too will have to warn her about to protect her from physical harm. But while working on this book, I realized there is a mental and emotional harm that we mothers have not been preparing them for. The task gets only more difficult as they grow up and their avenues of information increase – television, social media, peers and other adults.

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