A warrior bends her knee in prayer

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 because I took the best cooler with me and I could find it in the dark, 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 … dear Dhameera

for a life well-lived

Dhameera-Ahmad-300x200, A warrior bends her knee in prayer, Culture Currents
Dhameera Ahmad

I am at Lighthouse Mosque for El Hajjah Dhameera Ahmad’s Janazah or prayer service Wednesday afternoon, July 26. 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 Jermone 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 42nd 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 prayer to guests inside Lighthouse. He explains the three Takbir or Allahu Akbar[i] 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, precede 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.

Dhameera’s-father-Joseph-Bunny-Simon-Sr.-at-burial-daughter-Veronica-at-his-side-072617-by-Wanda-225x300, A warrior bends her knee in prayer, Culture Currents
Joseph (Bunny) Simon Sr., Dhameera’s father, is seated at her burial, with his surviving daughter Veronica at his side. – Photo: Wanda Sabir. All the other photos come from Dhameera’s family.

As the women pray outside on the lawn, the mosque full, my baby 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.

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[ii] (1-5):

“Alif, Lam Meem[iii]

“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 are upon [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.”

Dhameera-Ahmad-Saadat-Azizah-Yusuf-his-wife-Nisa, A warrior bends her knee in prayer, Culture Currents
Dhameera Ahmad, Saadat, Azizah, Yusuf and his wife, Nisa – a family photo

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

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 etched on a plaque

“Dhameera Ahmad”

January 11, 1950-July 24, 2017

Her anniversary a day of Black liberation

Juneteenth

Brother Sadat + Dhameera

4 children:

2 daughters

2 sons;

Brothers

A sister

A dear father

Grandchildren

Nieces

Nephews

Friends

Dhameeras-family-Azizah-and-Nisa-front-Yusuf-and-Ismael-rear, A warrior bends her knee in prayer, Culture Currents
Azizah and Nisa (front), Yusuf and Ismael (rear) – another family photo

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 Sabee Shakir (1949-2015).

She was Marilyn Buck’s friend, Yuri Kochiyama’s, Sekou Abdullah Odinga’s, and friend to so many other 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 50th 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.

Dhameera-Ahmad-family-300x199, A warrior bends her knee in prayer, Culture Currents
Dhameera Ahmad is surrounded by her loving family.

Sadaqa is giving without strings attached.

We went to the Oakland International Film Festival’s 50th 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 “Eclisped” 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 Sadat’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. Dameera 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[iv] – Oya, guardian of the cemetery, spirit of the winds or transformation and change.

I wore a blue dress, the color of Yemanja[v] 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.[vi]

Ashay, Ashay … Ashayo

Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at wanda@wandaspicks.com. Visit her website at www.wandaspicks.com throughout the month for updates to Wanda’s Picks, her blog, photos and Wanda’s Picks Radio. Her shows are streamed live Wednesdays at 7 a.m. and Fridays at 8 a.m., can be heard by phone at 347-237-4610 and are archived at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks.

[i] God is great!

[ii] 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).

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

[iv] Oya is a “proud, self-willed woman. She is described as a tall, comely woman, 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).

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

[vi] Kwatakye Atiko symbolizes the “hair style of an Asante war captain,” the “symbol of bravery and valor.” “This symbol 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).