Today my father's friend passed.
Today my friend's father passed.

Today we washed him,
turned him this way and that
on that cold steel bed in the masjid's
morgue. We bathed him and dried him,
and his sons sobbed as they wrapped him.

Today, my father emptied a whole vial
of zorium on his friend, a perfume
ten years in the waiting to be used—
his rizq made its way to him, even as
he was laid down into his wooden bed.

Circled around his shrouded coffin,
some woman of the household cried
"sabar ni thati" as another hushed her
kindly and told her not to cry, perhaps for...