A Warrior Bends Her Knee in Prayer

False Starts
by Wanda Sabir

I’d been watching a sliver of new moon on the western horizon Monday evening

It was dark on the beach. I was looking for a stick, yet kept picking up seaweed tublars instead, until I found the perfect implement to write her name in the sand
I wrote her name big—

 I wrote her name B-I-G-big in the sand
As crescent moon slipped beneath a blanket of clouds

Offering salutations and supplications . . . to dear Dhameera
for a life well-lived

I am at Lighthouse Mosque for El Hajjah Dhameera Carlotta Ahmad's Janaazah or prayer service Wednesday afternoon. I learn later this place is where the Black Panthers and radical Christians met, now conscious Muslims meet. It was a Black House, a space for social justice. Brother Jerome showed me the image of Malcolm X he’d painted decades ago. The shape of El Hajj Malik’s head with iconic glasses is still visible beneath layers of yellow paint. We see its outline on the exterior wall just below the circular stained glass window. 

The masjid is on the other side of the freeway overpass on 42^nd Street below Telegraph. I park by someone’s home, sofa inviting . . .  the living room near a trailer bus. It smells like urine in the street.  I wonder about the people in this neighborhood, Jesse Douglas Allen-Taylor’s article fresh in my mind, the forum on homelessness in the City of Oakland at Allen Temple last week resonating too.

Brother Raouf explains the Muslim funeral prayer to guests inside Lighthouse. He explains the three Takbir or Allahu Akbar[1] salutations, and the supplication between each one: recitation of Al Fatihah or the Opening chapter of the Qur’an, Durood-e-Ibrahimi a prayer for the prophets, then at the third Takbir, a prayer for the deceased, yet to be born and the ancestors: her mother Betty Opal Simon Johnson and dear Mark Simon, younger brother preceded her.

Dhameera's Janazah is also a prayer for the community. The Janazah prayer concludes with As Salaamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullah or God’s Peace and Mercy on everyone present and those absent too.

As the women pray outside on the lawn, the mosque full, my grandson Legend has tears in his eyes as he leans on his mother TaSin’s chest. He feels the sadness. The hearse pulls off, Khalilah and I walk to my car and head to 5 Pillars Farm in Livermore for the burial.

Stuck in traffic we reflect on Dhameera and others we will see soon: Brother James, Sister Elretha, Sister Ummus Salaama, Brother Zareef, Sister Nabeehah, Brother Saladin. . . .

Dust to dust.

There are more cars at the cemetery than I have ever seen before.  It is also hotter than ever before too. There is a cooler with water for us.  I welcome its refreshing sweetness.  Later I pour a bit for Dhameera on the ground as Brother Raouf speaks as family shovels the dirt on her form and then the bulldozer dumps the rest of the soil on the site.

Father seated, daughter, Veronica, to his left. 

I sprinkle three rocks. We move closer together. Her father, Joseph (Bunny) Simon, Sr., seated at her feet.

Dear Dhameera
What can I say
Words disappear at the thought
of your gentle passage into
Fajr
Dawn’s early light two days ago

Your Brother Imams bless your head and feet with recitations from the second chapter of the Qur'an: The Cow or Sura Al Baqara [2] (1-5): 

"Alif, Lam Meem [3]

This is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for those conscious of Allah --

Who believe in the unseen, establish prayer, and spend out of what We have provided for them,
And who believe in what has been revealed to you, [O Muhammad], and what was revealed before you, and of the Hereafter they are certain [in faith].

Those [have right] guidance from their Lord, and it is those who are the successful.
Yes, whoever submits [her] face in Islam to Allah while being a doer of good will have [her] reward with [her] Lord. And no fear will there be concerning them, nor will they grieve." 

I change the Al Baqara (85-86) recitation at your feet, for other verses here:

"Righteousness is not that you turn your faces toward the east or west, but [true] righteousness is [in] one who believes in Allah, the Last Day, the angels, the Book, and the prophets and gives wealth, in spite of love for it, to relatives, orphans, the needy, the traveler, those who ask [for help], and for freeing slaves; [and who] establishes prayer and gives zakah; [those who] fulfill their promise; and [those who] establishes prayer and gives zakah; [those who] fulfill their promise when they promise; and [those who] are patient in poverty and hardship and during battle. Those are the ones who have been true, and it is those who was the righteous" (2:177).


But among them is [she] who says, "Our Lord, give us this world [that which is] good and in the Hereafter [that which is] good and protect us from the punishment of the Fire" (2:201).

Dhameera, Saadat, Azizah, Yusuf and his wife; and Nisa

Birds dip their wings, as the sun burns memories
Etched in flesh
Dhameera too dear to forget
Shadows fall on
Rendered darkness
Sweetness lingering on her frail form beneath mahogany earth
Lumps of earth
Children and family bid farewell
Her name sketched on a plaque
“Dhameera Ahmed”
January 11, 1950-July 24, 2017

Azizah and Nisa (front),
Yusuf and Ismael (rear)

Married 41 years
Her anniversary a day of black liberation
Juneteenth
Brother Saadat + Dhameera
4 children:
2 daughters
2 sons;
Brothers
A Sister
A dear father
Grandchildren
Nieces
Nephews
Friends

I remember meeting her 40 years ago. She was holding Nisa’s hand.

Nisa was my student at Muhammad University of Islam No. 26

Smart

She had a sweet lisp

Later I would have my first child on Dhameera’s birthday

Bilaliyah and Azizah would play together with YaSin and Sharifa and other children

Bilaliyah . . . Dhameera . . . Ashay!

She like the other warrior women, was my big sister, and like big sisters didn’t hang out with me

A school principal, she and Dr. Intisar Sharif brought Montessori education to the Oakland Public Schools. I remember her work at Yuk Yau Child Development Center in Chinatown.

I remember her work at the Oakland Unified School District with Sister Warrior El Hajjah Nabeehah Sabree Shakir (1949-2015)

She was Marilyn Buck’s friend, Yuri Kochiyama’s, Sekou Abdullah Odinga's, and friend to so many others political prisoners and prisoners of war locked up, but not locked down.

Can’t Jail the Spirit  was her gift to me.

Can’t bury spirit either.

Spirit rises.

She was at San Francisco State when the student strike for Black Studies occurred. She raised her fist for Black Power as a member of the Black Panther Party.  The San Francisco native was one of the honorees at the 50^th Anniversary exhibit: All Power to the People at the Oakland Museum of California.

She organized the Lighthouse Mosque Community to serve meals to the adults living at a hotel on Jackson Street in downtown Oakland. The hotel residents had food Monday-Friday, but nothing on the weekend. I remember how excited she was one Sunday when she and Brother Sadat set up the luncheon smorgasbord so that the residents could make their own lunches and how much that pleased them.  Choice not charity. Dignity not dependency.

Sadaqa is giving without strings attached.

We went to the Oakland International Film Festival’s 50^th Anniversary of Alex Haley’s Roots and sat near the Black Panther Party section of the house. We also went to see Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed and had plans to see Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon together. I wish she’d been able to go with me. I would have liked to hear what she thought of it. We’d had plans to see Daughters of the Dust at her house with friends. I know they had fun at the sleepover. Her schedule was so busy, with family trip to Yosemite for Mother’s Day, Brother Saadat’s birthday early July, Spa Sundays and saline treatments on Thursdays. We also missed Shifting Movements: Art Inspired by the Life and Activism of Yuri Kochiyama (1921-2014). Just couldn’t fit it all in.

We spoke often and TaSin would share her greetings with me on Fridays when she saw Dhameera at Juma Prayer. She would always say, “When are you coming to visit me? I miss you.”

I wish she’d been able to attend the Muhammad University High School Reunion (1974-1975), that would have been nice. I did text her a photo I saw of her as a younger woman in an album that Sunday afternoon.

I will miss her. Dhameera Carlotta Ahmad (née Carlotta Basseau Simon) was a huge presence in a world that is shrinking. I am happy our paths were one at some point and shared many subsequent intersections.

Her burial was on Oya’s day [4]. Oya, guardian of the cemetery, spirit of the winds or transformation and change.

I wore a blue dress, the color of Yemanja [5] and on my earlobes brass cowrie shells with the Akan Adinkra: Kwatakye Atiko, a symbol of bravery and fierceness, in honor of the warrior woman: Yeye Dhameera Ahmad. [6]

                                                       Ashay, Ashay. . . Ashayo




Here is beautiful tribute Brother Khalid Al Waajid produced:

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[1] God is Great!

[2] In addition to these verses of Surat-al-Baqarah, it is recommended for those present at the grave-site to remain for a while reciting other surahs and verses of the Qur'an such as Surat al-Fatiha, Surat-a;-Ikhlas, Surah YaSin, Ayat al-Kursi, seeking forgiveness and supplicating (dua) for the deceased   (http://islamqa.org/hanafi/daruliftaa/8570/reciting-verses-from-surat-al-baqarah-after-burying-the-deceased).


[3] http://quran.com/2

[4] Oya is a “proud, self-willed woman. She is described as a tall, comely women, who at the same time is a fierce, bearded Amazon. She is called a woman who grows a beard (becomes more fierce than a man) on account of war [or danger]. The beard is symbolic of transformation (Gary Edwards and John Mason, Black Gods; Orisha Studies in the New World p. 94).

[5] Yemanja: mother goddess, the “personification of motherhood’ (Edwards and Mason Black Gods, p. 85).

[6] Kwatakye Atiko symbolizes the “hair style of an Asante war captain,” the “symbol of bravery and valor.’ ‘This symbols is said to be a special hair style of Kwatakye, a war captain of old Asante.’ The symbol has come to represent bravery and fearlessness. It is also given as an earned title to any brave [daughter] of an Akan community.” W. Bruce Willis, The Adinkra Dictionary