Happy Birthday - Sana Helwa
IMAN ALZAGHARI
Visual by Sheikha Al Habshi (@coffeeandcastoffs.com)
Birthday parties are supposed to be frivolous
gatherings of babies and Babas.
Silly celebrations of the passing of time,
of life moving forward.
Silly because living is easy,
until it’s not.
The future assumed,
until the body begins to fail itself,
until everything is painful.
Until we knock on closed doors,
with bated breath
waiting for movement or sound,
for signs of life.
Until we end each visit with a hug,
and he ends each visit with a prayer,
for our marriages, our careers, all our successes.
In case he’s not there to see our beautiful lives unfold.
He won’t be there.
But his prayers will have touched all those moments.
This year the commemoration of life,
is not silly but sacred.
A gathering of a Baba and his babies
and their babies,
cloaked in mortality and gratitude and love.
This year with stinging eyes we sing:
sana helwa ya gamil
May the rest of your days be beautiful.
Iman Alzaghari is a Muslim Palestinian American from California. She holds bachelor's degrees in Arabic and Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley. Iman is an avid reader, and is passionate about language. She runs @arabicnerd, an Instagram account focused on Arabic and Arab-American literature.
Edited by Engy ibrahim.