Bismillah.
I lost faith in my religion around the same time I lost faith in my father.
My relationship with my father always mirrored my relationship with God. Tenderness and hope, pleading and mercy, and a whole lot of disappointment. It’s as Nicole Yoon articulated, “Growing up and seeing your parents’ flaws is like losing your religion. I don’t believe in God anymore. I don’t believe in my father either.”
I discovered my father’s flaws at an early age, watched as they unravelled onto the kitchen tiles like shattering rose-tinted glass. I tried to pick up the pieces with the same palms I used for supplication, but they cut and bled — I wondered what it was I was praying for. Thus, I was ten and emancipating myself from God, deciding that if my ‘test’ for this duniya was to love a man who did not deserve it, to show him mercy and forgiveness, then I would simply not sit the test. It was shortly after that I decided that I no longer loved my father.
Now, when I am asked the unavoidable question, “So, are you religious?” I remember my scraped knees on a soft, maroon jai-namaz, begging for mercy, and being met with silence. “No,” I tell them, with the aching distant memory of my father ever-present. “No, I’m not religious,” I say, because no one ever thinks to ask you if you still love your father.
In Islam, the religion is passed down from the father to his children. It is the first thing we inherit, before our eyes or noses or anger. Funnily enough, my father has never been considerably religious. He held onto his faith simply because he knew that he should. It was the way he was raised; to not question, to not defy. I forget that my religion is inherited from him due to his nonchalant, ‘could-do-without’ attitude.
When I did pray, it was always for my mother. She held onto her faith simply because it is everything to her. It was the way she was raised, to not question, to not defy — but it is also the way she has survived, believing in a merciful God that may, one day, prove to her that all this hardship was worth something.
It was on the way to fourth grade one day, the beautiful, sunny morning the day after a horrible domestic fight the previous night, that my mother told me that if I asked God for something intently enough, and if I were good, He would listen to my prayers. She had this distant look as she told me, as if she had been asking for the same thing for too many years now. Perhaps she thought that a child might have more sway over Him.
Even though I am not religious anymore, I remember the prayers that I made as a kid. I have inscribed them into the palms of my cupped hands, memorised them like holy verses, and I still whisper them to myself so as not to forget. Happiness. Safety. My mother’s laughter. A home to invite my friends to. A family, whole and at peace. (And, if He had the time for one last prayer – if I wasn’t already asking too much of Him – for that one boy to like me back, pretty please). I’m not religious, because I remember the prayers I made as a kid. I still whisper them to myself so as not to forget that sometimes you call out to God and beg, and he doesn’t hear you. “I talk to God, but the sky is empty”, or so says Sylvia Plath.
Yet, while I have inherited my father’s complete disregard, I seem to have also inherited my mother’s hope. I have found myself calling out to God, once again, just as I have begun to feel myself losing my father, once again. The sky is still empty, but I find myself talking to God.
The anger I have held onto for the last years now feels redundant since my father’s diagnosis of dementia.
Vi Khi Nao said “if [God] wants forgiveness, he shouldn’t have given us memory.” It is easy for me to hold onto my anger, and direct my blame towards an omniscient God, because I remember why I am angry. But as my father begins to lose his memory, I find myself grasping at any trace of forgiveness I can find in me, both for him and for God. I see no other path — dementia cannot be stopped, it is an inevitable slow death. I consider it a final act of mercy, a parting offering — I am trying to make it a painless death for the both of us.
The earliest memories go last. My father has only begun to forget where he has been in the last 24 hours, when he visited Bangladesh last, what year I graduated high school — the insignificant details of everyday life. There will come a day, however, where he won’t remember why I am angry with him. He will be left with the sweet, rose-tinted memories of childhood – building pillow forts and watching Pingu and the ramen he would make for me after school — and I will be his little girl, again. I will be left to carry this one-sided hate on my own. Then, shortly after, he will forget me all together. Muscle memory remains — but loving your daughters is not muscle memory. Neither is loving your father.
Dua is.
Dua is ingrained in me. It’s ingrained in a lot of us, who have forsaken their God but still find their sentences littered with Bismillahs and Inshallahs. When I want something, I return to the sky and pray that this time He will answer.
On the periphery of loss, you begin to wonder if you should have loved your father more while you had the chance. You wonder if you should have prayed more. Would that have changed your story? It’s a confusing balance which often leaves you feeling betrayed by yourself — you forgive him, you betray your past, you don’t forgive him, you betray your future. It’s okay to still hold anger in one hand, and kindness in another.
It’s an oversimplification to say I no longer hold onto my faith because God did not ‘protect’ me. Now I know that at ten years old I did not entirely understand my religion, blinded by a desperation so fervent that I believed it would be enough to get a God to hear my pleas. Blinded, then, by an anger towards my father very much redirected towards God, because it’s easier to blame an omniscient deity than the man who once whispered bedtime stories to you. I hold anger in one hand, and kindness in the other.
And, in a way, it seems that my relationship with my father still reflects my relationship with God. Mistrust and caution still exists: I tread around the house like a ghost, I step onto the jai-namaz with a heavy heart. But my voice softens when speaking to my father the same way it softens for dua. My patience precedes me in a way that I had not experienced before. I find myself repeating and reexplaining memories to my father like a repetition of prayers: please remember.
Please remember — don’t forget us just yet. I am not done being angry with you. I have not even begun being loved by you.
Besides. The professionals tell us there’s nothing to do but pray.