Nanu

About a year before that incident, Yara remembered slipping out of her parents’ home and into Musa’s car on the driveway where she quickly flipped through the divorce papers he brought over for her to sign. The sun had just finished setting so Yara used her phone light to scan through the documents, a small tear slipping out when she first touched her pen to the page. She didn’t notice the car in the darkness and suddenly realized she was sitting on leather seats.

“Did you get a new car?” she asked. “Nevermind.”

She shook her head and continued scanning the documents quickly so she could escape the need to cry in front of Musa. After signing the last page, Yara handed Musa the papers and gave him a hug. Although they were chest to chest it felt oddly distant. Unfamiliar. When he let go she looked into his eyes as the car light caught his pupil, then ran back into the house. 

The house was bustling with a rotation of visitors paying their respects to Yara’s grandmother, whom she called Nanu. Nanu had been battling various illnesses for years, and her recent state indicated that not much time was left for her. When the rush of people seemed to die down, Yara went upstairs and sat next to Nanu's bed, holding her soft, feeble hands. Yara pressed on her protruding veins, remembering the way she used to play with them as a child. Her parents’ house was still beating with the voices of all her aunts, uncles, and cousins who had flown in from her mother’s side. Chittagonian people are not quite known for their noiselessness. It was the first time everyone had been together since Yara’s wedding, which was something she could barely think about or process at that moment. All she wanted to do was delicately run her hands through the few hairs Nanu still had left on her head and recite poems and scriptures that her dementia still recognized. Yara kissed Nanu goodnight and went to sleep on the makeshift bed her parents made for her on their bedroom floor.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Yara heard one of her aunts yelling to everyone in the house. Yara jumped up and rushed across the hall to Nanu’s room.

“She just threw up, I think we should all sit with her right now,” Yara’s aunt suggested.

Slowly all twenty-two members of the family squeezed into Nanu’s bedroom, some standing bedside, some sitting in folding chairs, and the younger family on the floor. Yara was one of the cousins who sat on the floor, leaning against her mother’s legs and looking at Nanu through a crack between two shoulders. Everyone was calm and praying. Her uncle recited various prayers out loud so Nanu could hear. Every few minutes her uncle would check Nanu’s pulse, listen for her breath, and keep praying. Yara looked around intermittently to make sure her elders didn’t need any water or a comfier seat before she went back to looking at Nanu’s soft features. 

“She’s no more,” Yara’s uncle suddenly said faintly, his voice breaking.

Nanu had passed so peacefully and painlessly Yara didn’t even realize the moment when it happened. Several people around the room began crying. Yara could feel a sharp lump forming in her throat, but her tears could not escape from behind her eyes. She got up with her sisters and they systematically looked through the spreadsheet they had created to ensure all the steps would be followed. 

Call the hospice. 

Call the local mosque to set up funeral arrangements. 

Call the burial site. 

Call the police. 

Gather the garments to wrap Nanu’s body. Everything had been planned so things would run smoothly. Yara felt her spirit idly watching herself as she went through the motions of the checklist into the morning.

She drove herself and her family to the funeral home and waited for Nanu’s body to be washed and wrapped. She watched herself look upon Nanu’s glowing face, neatly wrapped in glistening white garments, and somehow looking as if it had reduced in age by about twenty years. She watched herself pray at the funeral, return hugs to countless people, and distribute samosas to those who attended. She watched herself stand by the burial site as her father and uncles lowered Nanu into the ground. And then she snapped back into herself, and wept. She wept and wept until she got home, allowing her tears to release without sound. 

When everyone returned to Yara’s family home, all twenty-two family members squeezed around the dinner table not knowing how exactly to conclude the day. There was an awkward silence tinged with an unspoken closeness that everyone could sense. A blanket of safety. Peace. 

“Did anyone ever see that scary figure in Nanu’s guest bathroom that looked like it had a top hat on?” Yara blurted out suddenly. 

The entire room erupted with laughter, and the question began a chain of story-telling, recalling embarrassing stories that were all somehow tied to Nanu. Yara’s family had a special talent of simultaneously telling and listening to multiple stories with each new voice getting louder and louder. Not one tear was shed the rest of that night and no one outside of that dining room would have been able to guess that someone had just passed fourteen hours ago.