Like Minded Courage

An Islamic scholar and MAID (Medical Aid in Dying)

That morning I asked my brother, "Are you scared?" He shook his head one time in a simple no. 

I asked, "Are you sad?" He nodded his head yes. 

My siblings and I gathered around Atif’s bed and listened to the songs he requested - Forever Young for the kids, the Rhiannon Giddens version, Sade’s By Your Side for us, and for him - the great Nusrat Fateh Alikhan’s Sanson Ki Mala. The version I pulled up on Spotify was 18 minutes, so we had to cut it short, already playing with blasphemy. In this instance to the divine magic of Qawwali.

I kept my eyes locked on his as we listened quietly to powerful verses, sending him love from my heart and a steadfast reassurance in my look that we (not him) can do this. He’d look at the others and come back to me, recognizing the transfer.

He closed his eyes and let his lips move in Urdu with the rosary of breaths. His tears conveyed a magnitude of peace and love that words cannot capture.

Then, we listened to Surah Yaseen per my mother’s Facetime request the night prior when my brother said goodbye to his mother, and my mother said she’ll be right behind him soon.

His hospice team was waiting in the parlor room outside to wash and ready him one last time before the ceremonial end of life.

For months, Atif had Zoom sessions with an Islamic scholar from the University of Zurich, Dr. Elham Manea, and she was on video that morning. Their introduction was facilitated by Atif’s dear friend, Joe, who produces the independent media, Alternative Radio, out of Boulder.

Joe always invited our family to these Zoom sessions, but I never could / did attend. 

I wish I had.

In late stage ALS, Atif had pursued the path of MAID (Medical Aid in Dying). It was critical for him to retain residency in Colorado because of this, and he refused to initiate any federally-funded or Medicare programs in Texas, where our family resided more or less, that would’ve inhibited that.

He had a vision long before some came out of denial.

Dr. Elham, a Swiss-Yemeni Fulbright scholar, is well known for her leadership of the Islamic feminist movement and human rights advocacy, including LGBT rights in the Arabic and Islamic world. 

She is not for everyone with her bold stances. But she was for Atif.

When she heard about his journey through Joe, she wanted to learn more about his struggle and support his decision from a faith perspective to end life with dignity. They formed an immediate friendship, and the only joint video call I attended with her was when I was with Atif in person a week before his death. 

I observed tenderness and mutual respect, a shared spirit of equals changing this world with their courage. It felt like maternal love.

After a few private moments in the garden where Atif shared his last guidance for us, each breath laborious and his voice impossible to understand for those not tuned in to the frequency of love, it was time to commence where a few close friends were waiting.

Was it a funeral? A living funeral? I was inviting, uninviting, blocking visitors, failing all week. People that came to say goodbye days earlier couldn’t handle the finality, and I found myself telling them to come again to hold space one last time after he transitioned. 

They weren’t letting go, and I was trying my hardest to protect his energy and failing.

He would convey to me that he couldn’t speak more and needed to rest, but then he’d say ok to so and so. How could he turn away those that loved him? He was pouring out love like the Dalai Lama or something, and people couldn’t step away from the magnetic spirit. 

He was halfway on the other side, and we all knew it. We wanted to touch it.

Joe had Dr. Elham on a video call that morning, and Atif shared a goodbye with her as Joe put the laptop to his face and Atif’s electric wheelchair made its way to the large floor cushions we set up under the willow tree.

The tree

The hospice protocol is that the nurse cannot mix the two components of the lethal drug. I read the instructions of that bag in the fridge we had been carrying around like kryptonite a million times. Mix part A with part B, consume fully within 1 minute. 

Simple, still not comprehensible. 

He was at the cusp of no longer being able to swallow, so to take down that amount of liquid in 1 minute would be like asking him to stand from his wheelchair and dance. I read it again and again to make sure I was not going to fuck it up, then I stuffed it back in the fridge.

I communicated the day prior to Akif, my second brother, that I did not want to lift the glass to Atif’s lips, and I wanted him to do it. He understood and was ready.

It was the details of this wedding, funeral, are we really doing this, when is Shakira arriving, what time do the newly invited people show up because I was too drained to stick to a no, coordinating that was flooding my brain. 

All the while, trying to stay present with my brother, find slivers of my own time with him, not to forget the shifting of pillows every few minutes, adjusting his arms and elbows, turning him, administering morphine, and getting some amount of food and water in him.

I had help from his good friends in numerous other physical needs, in addition to bringing loads of laughter, beef tallow fries on their way, and playing tunes on the guitar.

The full moon we howled at the night before. We howled for him.

As we neared the grassy area where people were loosely gathered holding space, the hospice nurse, Lisa, thankfully told me she would mix it. I gave her an open mouth half nod, having no time to wonder what, why but intuitively feeling that she knew I needed help.

Akif and my brother’s childhood friends lowered him from the electric wheelchair down to an upright laying position. ‘Soul contracts’ is something he and I used to say, and I repeated it to him one last time. He smiled his gentle smile in response.

Lisa appeared by my side with the glass and metal straw, and I took it from her. The clock had begun.

We fumbled positioning my brother where he was comfortable and upright enough to drink, the guys essentially using their full weight to keep him lifted. In that confusion and my instinct to reach out to help, I put the glass down next to me. 

In the grass.

Akif was now one of three guys lifting my brother upright. The glass wobbly on the uneven ground, ready to tip over any second spilling his last chance.

A flash of panic or frustration or something I’ll never understand flashed across Atif’s face.

My eyes were on him the entire time, and when he met mine, I understood the assignment.

Reaching for the glass, I instinctively whispered “In the name of God” in Arabic bringing the metal straw to his lips.

He gulped it ferociously, surprising all of us who watched. He must have used every ounce of his power to get that medicine down. 

Akif hurriedly freed a hand to follow with a bite of sorbet, which the nurse said would be immensely helpful to soothe him. The spoon we saw earlier was somehow now missing, making him think on his feet and dig the right minuscule amount with the metal straw and practically toss it into his parted lips.

The guys laid him back and we quietly did whatever we did. Some prayed, some opened heart chakras. We all cried.

Sitting facing him with my hand on his, about an hour plus after he drank the medicine, I felt his spirit rise with adventure, curiosity, and excitement.

I sensed a red aura.

I felt Atif’s surprise that he could walk, then run! 

He took off exploring with no time to waste.

When we collectively acknowledged that something had shifted in the energy space, Joe brought the laptop closer to where only we sat. Dr. Elham had been watching and praying on mute. She now recited two Surahs for the small audience that approached us and this Rumi quote my brother chose:

Die happily and look forward to taking up a new and better form. Like the sun, only when you set in the west can you rise in the east.

It would be many hours later that he took his last breath. He was transferred inside the zendo room by the EMT because a storm was coming - that’s a whole other story with a oh, shit is the medical power of attorney on file - only myself, my younger sister, and a new hospice nurse were present. The others had left, and Akif and the guys had stepped away. 

The sky had just started to turn pink. The time he always said he would like to pass, but he had settled on the 10 AM timeframe concerned that sunset would not facilitate communing afterward.

I strongly believe that his soul transitioned early under that willow tree when I felt him free, a hawk present and perched atop as we took position, flew off timed. I believe some version of his soul spent the rest of that beautiful sunny day paying respects to his dear friends that carried him through immense suffering, allowing them to commune and grieve. Maybe in the in between, he visited my parents and checked out his favorite spots that he hadn’t been able to enter in too long.

Willow Farm

For Atif's final transition from this realm, he chose Maghrib as he had wished - a time he cherished watching the sky change colors. And he chose to pass only with his family present, as he had also expressed to me many times that week.

Within seconds, the sky roared with thunder announcing his departure. 

A gust of wind blew leaves outside the screen doors, and a light trickling of rain lasted only a few minutes. 

Others later shared pictures of a rainbow appearing.

Atif made an intention, and God accepted it. It was evident in nature that day that he had fulfilled his contract in this world.

He became the leader he was destined to be and lived life with conviction, regardless of his physical capacity. He changed the way people think. A lasting legacy. Trailblazer is a word that kept coming to my mind that week, and he chuckled when I shared it with him as a possible etching for his stone at the open land burial preserve.

It was a day of expansive love and peace. Dr. Elham was a comforting blanket to my siblings and I during a scenario we never dreamt to experience. A transformative experience that Atif gifted us.

A brilliant thinker, with an undergraduate in Religious Studies and graduate classes in Peace and Conflict, I had wondered what he was working through with her. I knew he was right with God and what came next. I felt it in him clearly an entire month before MAID, even if he struggled early on through his own grief.

Some time later, I watched the Zoom calls. It broke my heart to hear my brother’s barely audible voice now that I had some distance from it. Since his passing, I’ve felt his peace. And this was going back to a betrayed body.

On the recorded video, Dr. Elham asked him what he needed or what the objective was for their discussions as she brought evidence in support of Islam’s right to end suffering.

My brother answered her in his quiet, strained, gentleness that it was to minimize any adverse response his family would have to endure.

He exerted his limited energy to protect his family and think of everyone as he left us. That’s who he always was during his time in this realm.