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My mother's eyes, at the end, became yellowish, egg-yoke like.
Her belly swelled rapidly like an overly full water tank
ready to burst at any moment.
No longer able to stand, or sit, or even move her fingers,
she just lay there.
She, at the end, did not look like Mother anymore.
Relatives came each morning, every evening,
telling Mother to be prepared,
to be ready to die on the holy day, Friday;
uttering la ilaha illallah, Allah Is One warning her not to disappoint
Munkar and Nakir
when the two angels arrive to ask questions;
asking for cleaning the room, cleaning the yard,
be sure that shurma and atar are on hand
when he finally arrives, the death.

Now the hungry disease danced over Mother's body,
sucked her last remaining strength,
made her eyes emerge from their sockets,
dried her tongue,
stole the air in her lungs.

As she struggled to breathe,
her forehead and eyebrows squeezing with pain,
the whole house asked her, shouting,
to send their regards to the Prophet.
None doubted that she would go to Jannatul Ferdous, the best heaven,
would walk hand-in-hand with Mohammed
on a lovely afternoon, soon, in a garden.
The two would lunch--bird meat, wine.
Mother dreamed her lifelong dream:
she would walk with Mohammed in the Garden of Paradise.
But now, at the very time for departing Earth, what a surprise,
she hesitated.
Instead of stepping outside,
she wished to boil Birui rice for me,
to cook fish curry and fry a whole hilsa,
to make sauce with red potatoes,
She wished to pick for me a young coconut
from the south corner of her garden.
She wished to fan me by hand-fan,
remove a few straggly hairs from my forehead.
She wished to put a new bed sheet on my bed,
to sew for me a frock with embroidery.
She wished to walk barefoot in the courtyard,
To support the young guava plant with a bamboo stick.
She wished to sing sitting in the garden of hasnuhena,
‘Never before, had such a bright moon shone down,
never before, night was so beautiful.. .’

My mother badly wished to live.

There is, I know, no reincarnation,
no last judgment day:
heaven, bird meat, wine, pink virgins -
these are but traps set by religionists.

Mother will go to no heaven,
Will not walk in any garden with anybody.
Cunning foxes will enter her grave, will eat her flesh;
her white bones will be spread by the winds.

Still, I want to believe in heaven
over the seventh sky, or somewhere,
a fabulous, magnificent heaven
where my mother reached
crossing the impossible bridge, the Pulsirat, with ease.
And a very handsome man, the prophet Mohammed,
has welcomed her, embraced her, felt her melt on his hairy chest.
She will wish to take a shower in the fountain,
She will wish to dance, to jump with joy,
She will do all the things she has never done before.
The bird meat will arrive on a golden tray.
My mother will eat to her heart's content.
Allah Himself will come by foot into the garden to meet her,
put a red flower into her hair, kiss her passionately.

She will sleep on a soft featherbed,
be fanned by seven hundred Hur, the virgins
be served cool water in silver jag by beautiful gelban, the young angels.
She will laugh, her whole body will move with enormous happiness,
she will forget her miserable life on Earth.

An atheist,
how good I feel
just to imagine
somewhere there is a heaven.

 

Translated by Taslima Nasrin and Warren Allen Smith.