Curiosity ~ Lucidity ~ Humanity
"SUCH A LONG TIME TO BE GONE AND A SHORT TIME TO BE THERE"
Jerry Garcia - (1942-1995) - Box of Rain
It would seem that on Christmas day my father pressed sweets on my mother, food at every meal, snacks when they took their coffee breaks or morning tea. It was one of his ways of expressing his love and devotion to his wife of nearly 50 years. It was also his culture’s way of showing how much one cared. Offering and sharing food was Love.
My mother, Lola, was my father Aziz's junior. She was born in 1917; he in 1898. She departed her body in 2002; he in 1988, short 10 years of making it to the 100 years he had so much hoped he would live to celebrate.
Years before my parents went to play on the Galactic Plain, they walked daily the short distance to the University of Utah's Union building cafeteria from the then new Marriott Library where they shared an office on campus. Their desks faced one another on the floor where the Aziz S. Atiya Middle East Library's shelves were full of valuable books my father had collected for it. It is where to this day his stately portrait hangs at the entrance and can be admired through vast plate glass windows and the glass doors leading into the stacks.
The brilliant Utah painter Alvin Gittins had captured my father's likeness and essence perfectly showing him sitting in crimson academic robes, his hands and his expression just as I remember them.
My parents had been gone a total of half a century when I started writing “My Dead Come Before Me”. Over time, as I recalled so many of my loved ones, I continued to tweak it until it went from a short poem to the nano tale below. It is a remembrance of an abbreviated moment in time saved as a memory.
It is perhaps also a means of consolation.
Nayra Atiya
October 2025
On Moosehead Lake in Maine
All my dead come before me
on this day
in the rain
I see vignettes:
Father pressing food on Mother
Teta Katrina (her mother) moving over
to leave me the better part
of the double bed we shared for a decade,
until (in 1955) we departed for America
We had lived in an extended family group until our migrations
And it was my cherished grandmother who mostly raised and protected me
When she died in 1969 I gave my newborn daughter her name
Now when I think back,
I see the summer sun
dappling crisp, clean linens
and heavy cotton bedspreads
airing on her bedroom balcony
And I remember their fragrance
Sun soaked, at once warm and fresh,
I recall burying my face in their folds
inhaling a fragrance I can conjure up at will
One week on and one week off
after hand laundering by our worthy washer woman,
linens were line dried on the flat roof of our home
until afternoon when she gathered them up
to send out tied in a bundle for ironing
When returned folded without a wrinkle
they were placed in the linen closet
(bull nosed edges facing out)
larded with the spicy flowers of Tamr Henna
the bush's star-shaped pods harvested,
dried by my grandmother,
sagely placed between the sheets
My dead come before me
And this time I see my Father in his brown tweed suit
spotless thanks to Mother’s vigilance.
“Are you polishing your husband?”
Grandmother teased her daughter
My mother simply smiled
On the way to the cafeteria
Father holds his cane
as does Mother
and they clip along,
companions for life
Sitting across from her,
he says: “You must eat, Lola"
“I have no appetite,” she responds
“You must eat something,” he persists
placing a pair of crisp french fries on her plate
or half of his sweet roll
“Have a bite, just a bite,” he insists then warns,
“I will eat nothing if you don’t”
She nibbles.
One day,
I am with my parents
Father says,
“Order what you like...
Have a little more of this...
Don’t waste food...
I speak as one who has known hunger”
He then tells his story of the egg.
The story brings to life his early life
the hardships he endured when the cotton market crashed
and the family was bankrupted in the 1920’s
Sacrificing his dream of a medical school education
he went to work to support his widowed mother and four younger siblings
He begins his egg story thus:
It was plump and white,
with a beautiful yellow center
Nessim Abu Saif, my roommate,
had the luxury of an egg
every day
Imagine!
An egg daily!
I subsisted on a handful of greens
bread and salt,
sometimes a chunk of cheese
which I carefully wrapped in paper,
hiding it under my pillow
to safeguard it
You see, we were all hungry
in varying degrees
capable of stealing food
from each other...
I watched Nessim
eat his egg,
while longing filled my heart
and my belly stayed empty
The egg,
was a luxury, my father concluded
having travelled back in time.
As I remember this
all my dead come before me:
I hear my father's voice on our Perry Avenue porch
telling of bread and radishes dipped in salt and cumin
and of having to walk to work in shoes so worn
he lined them daily with newspaper layers for soles
Summers in Egypt, I am reminded of a Flame tree
under which Father sometimes sat to reminisce
"Those shoes of mine
were not all that was full of holes," he says softly,
"my undergarments too were threadbare
But these I could conceal..."
Despite their tired state
his only pair carried him
to the University as a night student
walking there to save car fare
Late into the night,
he studied by the light of a tiny oil lamp
trimming the wick diligently
his mother bringing a cup of coffee she had lovingly prepared on a tiny brass alcohol burner and served in a cup not much bigger than a thimble
At dawn, the shoes carried him again
to the Cairo Veterinary School of Medicine
where he had secured a job and where
daily, In government issued notebooks
he registered clients coming in for treatment:
‘Donkey number 1’
‘Mule number 13’
‘Horse number 2’
and so on...
After hearing him tell his Flame Tree stories,
I felt a strong urge to write about the tree itself and how they had shared their essence
What came to me was this:
Surface wounds repel the sunlight
tension rips the sleeping moon
Velvet shutters fill the hours
with capricious, fragrant blooms
Tree leaves hold you
Hunger stalks you,
Wafting perfumes shelter untold stories;
silent tears
Comfort given
Soon is taken
by the stringent needs
you face
Oh, so careful
is your journey
caution being your steed of choice
Counting steps
like beads and baubles
you persist in hope and diligence
keeping sight of gleaming horizons
as they glimmer with untold dreams
No words squandered,
No food wasted,
No steps taken
without thought
You are steady
as you wander
You are silent
as you ponder,
Now, your final
chapters speak
As I steep my heart in memories,
my dead come before me
They are messengers from the past
stewards of stories
and the tellers of stories
keepers of words
like pebbles
They mark a path to understanding
a time, place and players
My dead come before me and thus lead me to myself.
Nayra Atiya Bio-Fragment: Life has taken me where it wished; my path serendipitous. As an adult, while getting to know Egypt, the land of my birth, I began to listen to people talking. I was spellbound. In a culture which values oral history, I had suddenly stumbled on a rich mine of storytellers. Listening led me to segue into writing.