What a strange year it’s been for me. I felt like I had to relearn life all over again, redefine myself all over again, reestablish old beliefs into new ones all over again, and be jolted awake in a way that, for the first time in a long time, felt like genuine growth. The kind of growth that happens against your will, not the type that you force yourself to experience through the seasons.

As I look at the date, I realize 2024 feels condensed but I can remember so many days and so many experiences so vividly that it almost feels like I’ve lived every day that has passed this year twice. The days simply will not end. And the thrust of new responsibility has kept me on my toes to the point of mild visible deterioration.

When the Israelis bombed the Maamadani Hospital, killing 500 people in one go, I remember I was coming home from the supermarket and had opened the news piece while I was in the elevator. My heart plummeted out of my body as I realized the weight of that event and I slumped outside my apartment door, reading, watching, and listening in disbelief at what had just unfolded. Sitting outside the apartment, the milk went warm and the world stopped having meaning. I eventually picked myself up and moved my news-viewing to the television. I called my father, in anguish, expressing my sorrow and sadness and looking for some kind of sense into what had truly turned out to be a nonsensical mad mad world.

Crying into the phone, I eventually managed to steel myself to a steady rhythm and awaited his wisdom. “God’s plan is much bigger than everything you’re seeing. We are witnesses to it. Doing nothing and doing everything will bring the same result.” I had only found out a few months later that this exchange had meant so much to him; that he had brought it up in pride in a setting I wasn’t present in. My dad had followed the world’s injustices in earnest. I was always a witness to it and never realized how much this hatred of injustice had characterized him until I was so fundamentally broken by it.

The days had gone on and another heart-plummeting event had happened. May God have mercy on him and grant him heaven, my father’s soul had ascended. The sheer amount of grief I had experienced through the last couple months is not enough to express the great loss I feel. The sudden loss of those moments of wisdom, the loss of the feeling of invincibility, the loss of security and safety, the loss of the family routine that seemed unbreakable.

There’s only one person to call for any issue I have. Only one get-out-of-everything-free card. From my little squabbles at school to my uneasiness in selecting a job to the nervousness of joining the workforce to the ‘how do I do this weird thing at the Amer center’ to the ‘can I afford something like this, how do I buy it?’ to the my car broke down to the I feel so very alone… and so very… small…

Now there’s no running away. I have to be my own man. In this mad mad world. And when it’s all over, I will thank you. So very much. And so very infinitely. And you’ll stop me so quickly that it will never be enough. Even in eternity. Even in heaven. I love you and miss you, baba.

اللَّهُمَّ اغْفِرْ لَهُ وَارْحَمْهُ وَعَافِهِ وَاعْفُ عَنْهُ وَأَكْرِمْ نُزُلَهُ وَوَسِّعْ مُدْخَلَهُ وَاغْسِلْهُ بِالْمَاءِ وَالثَّلْجِ وَالْبَرَدِ وَنَقِّهِ مِنَ الْخَطَايَا كَمَا يُنَقَى الثَّوْبَ الأَبْيَضَ مِنَ الدَنَسْ ..

إنا لله وإنا إليه راجعون