On the 9th

25 October 2004, 10 Ramadan 1425

The 9^th of Ramadan has become a day of ritual for me. Since 1998, I have been inviting a certain group of friends over for iftaar on the 9^th. Since this ritual started, I have developed new friendships and have interesting relationships with lots more people – young and old. Yet, the 9^th of Ramadan group is largely the same people. I realised yesterday that the last time I had seen the one couple was last year, 9^th of Ramadan.

We get together, break our fast, share food, laugh, make lots of jokes, a little bit of gossiping, some catching up. If we feel like it, we pray taraweeh together (led, of course, by men and women – Farhana is the best Qur’ān reciter in the group so we all prefer that she leads). We play some music – Arabic, Hindi, English, various African pieces, whatever gets our fancy at the time. And, except for yesterday, I always cook butter chicken.

Three days ago my sons asked me whether this 9^th of Ramadan I would also be cooking butter chicken. I told them that I had decided not to but that I would cook something else instead. To which Shir’a responded with shock. ‘How can you not cook butter chicken?’ he asked. ‘That’s like not having turkey on Thanksgiving Day.’ I explained to him that Thanksgiving was a racist American holiday and that it wouldn’t do to compare that to the important 9^th of Ramadan. I think he bought it.

Another change this year was the venue. We decided to move it from my cramped little flat to my sister’s much more comfortable house where we could have our meal in the garden, next to the swimming pool. It was a beautiful, peaceful evening, punctuated by our laughter and the sound of all our kids playing.

Oh, what is so special about the 9^th of Ramadan?

It was on the 9^th Ramadan, seven years ago, that my wife, Shamima, breathed her last. And the bunch of us that have been getting together every year since then includes some of her and my closest mutual friends in Johannesburg. It is an occasion for us to remember a close friend, comrade and (in our minds, at least) an icon of various kinds of struggles waged here and which we feel strongly about.

But I don’t want to write about all these struggles – you can read about them on her website.

Shamima had had cancer for about four years before her death. Those were four painful, challenging years for us both (and our kids). It was a period during which she had to have two doses of ‘high dose chemotherapy’ (about six months worth of chemo over a 24-hour period) and weeks of radiation treatment. After all that, her hip collapsed so that she had to use crutches or a wheelchair, her one optic nerve dried up so that she remained with double vision till the end of her life, her lungs filled up with fluid so that she could neither speak nor breathe without coughing.

And through all of that, she never stopped. Farid Esack, in his obituary to Shamima, quoted the ḥadīth: ‘If the last hour strikes and finds you carrying a sapling to the grove for planting, go ahead and plant it.’ And so she continued planting: writing, participating on shows on the community radio station she was a founder of, travelling across the country three weeks before her death to speak on her favourite topic - women in Islam, advising people on how to deal with the position she had just vacated in the Muslim Youth Movement – head of its Gender Desk…

It was a trying time for us both. We probably fought more in that time that at any other in our marriage. But that period was also a period of enormous growth for us. It was a time that helped us understand differently and more intensely our relationship with each other and, more importantly, our relationship (together and individually) with our Creator. The period before her death was one of the two most spiritually uplifting in our lives. (The other was our hajj, in 1997.)

We learnt about mortality, about always being prepared. We learnt about reliance on Allah, about the importance of being able to give ourselves completely to Him and putting our trust entirely upon Him. We learnt about the necessity to be comfortable and happy and contented. To have peaceful hearts, even as we were dealing with chaotic situations around us.

I think it was during this time that I began to really understand something Shamima had said a long time ago. Twelve years earlier, soon after we had had our first meeting – about five hours locked up together in a room at the C.R. Swart Police Station in Durban – she said something to me which I thought was very arrogant. She had said: ‘You know, I’m God’s favourite child.’ Although she had repeated that statement later, I didn’t challenge her about it – until after we were married.

I then told her that I thought her seemingly flippant refrain was arrogant and inappropriate. Shamima smiled at me, her very typical smile, and said: ‘You are God’s favourite child too. You just don’t know it yet.’ I think it was while we were trying to deal with her illness, twelve years later, that I got it.

When I think back to that time and the relationship with Allah that we realised we needed to develop, I often think of the word ‘appropriation’ as explained by Paul Ricouer. Ricouer, of course, was talking about texts. I think of that word, however, not in relation to texts but in relation to Allah. Contrary to what the immediate understanding of the term appropriation might be, Ricoeur does not understand appropriation (of texts) as a process of taking possession. Rather, he says, it is a ‘letting-go’. ‘Relinquishment is a fundamental moment of appropriation.’ I often think of that understanding of appropriation, of ‘letting-go’ and how this is the ideal relationship one should have with Allah, where one is able to simply ‘let go’ to Him.

The morning that Shamima died – at 1am on the 9^th Ramadan (8^th January) – she was surrounded by family and friends praying for her. Her eyes had opened – after about 24 hours – and I held her hand as she took her last breath, as her process of appropriation was completed.

There were many of us that cried. There were many of us that celebrated, for a life well-lived. I was in the latter group. Except that I had two reasons (at least) to celebrate. I celebrated Shamima’s life well-lived and I celebrated my life, graced by her presence.

It is that celebration that we continue, every year, on the 9^th of Ramadan. Friends that were close to her, people who felt she had much to offer our crazy world, the woman who led her funeral salah, her husband. The spirit of ‘that mad Shaikh woman’ – as she came to be known to some of her detractors – lives on. And for those of us that meet every 9^th of Ramadan, even if we don’t even mention the name ‘Shamima Shaikh’, we meet to know that that spirit lives on within us.

Hamba Kahle, Shamima. Eyakho indima uyifezile.

Go well, Shamima. You have fulfilled your task.