A Dead Body Talks
My grandfather is remembered fondly.
When he left, I was not born yet, he never held me in his arms,
Never touched his nose to mine,
Never talked to me or told me bedtime stories,
I've only ever had a washed-out picture of him with tears near his face.
I wouldn't even be able to tell him apart from another man in his 60s.
He had never been in my life but I remembered him,
The same way I've grown to forget about my birth father,
I've grown to remember the ghost of a man I never met.
I remembered him because my mom told me how he loved her, loved her children, loved her freedom, loved her smiles, loved her wits, loved her life, her spirits, her voice. How he could ruin himself if it was just to make sure she was a bit more at ease in 1970s Mauritania where women, especially the black kind, never had it easy in marriage.
I'd never heard the sound of his voice, the sound of his footsteps, but somehow still I could hear him. His presence had always been deafening, like a slow, calming tempo.
In late November 2025, we visited his grave. It was my first time going. I have an aversion to the dead. I think they sometimes can get through you, louden your inside voice with theirs, their sadness with yours, so much so that, sometimes, they make you scream.
That day, however, I didn't mind screaming, if it meant I could steady my mother a bit. And maybe, in fact, it was me who needed the steadying. We drove there in a taxi, it was on the outskirts of Nouakchott. Not too far from where my estranged aunts and uncles lived.
I got out of the car to a sight that made my stomach turn.
I didn't like looking at cemeteries. I was always afraid the spirits would know, if I looked their way, that I didn't like them hogging the space, so I usually averted my gaze. I didn't want to offend… Plus, no one could see the dead so why acknowledge their resting place?
Still, however, being near all these graves made it very hard to breathe.
It's fine, Houria, you cannot accidentally breathe in a ghost. You can't offend what's not there. But there were so many that there was a pathway for cars to go at the back of the cemetery to greet their lost ones. On foot, it would've been too much.
So many dead bodies, underneath.
When we entered, there was a sign reminding visitors of a prayer to make for those who rested. Like, even ten feet under, they could still hear us.
It took us a minute to find my grandfather's grave. A worker there recognized my mother and helped. We had recently paid for the stones atop to be upgraded and for a cleanup. So my only thought was that, at least, my grandfather was "neat." Good enough for me to feel like at least he wouldn't be too ashamed if I was there. Our first encounter, and he was dead. Shame.
I cupped my hands clumsily like I always do in prayer and tried to make duaas for him. I lied to myself when I thought it didn't matter that I was there that day. I still couldn't explain it, but the sight of him, though he wasn't there, the strength of his voice, though I couldn't hear, made the silence so heavy with tears and longing. I didn't have the words, I still don't, so instead I said:
"Ya Allah protect him from the punishment of the grave."
I continued praying, and after a moment, I stopped, took a step further towards him. And I could swear on my life and anyone's life that the wind picked up. Like he was embracing me. And I could hear him talk, like he could tell me "it's okay." I had never met him, but I heard his voice.
And it felt wrong then, as I'm sure it always was, to say he had left this earth, when he was just held a few feet below. Because there crouching at his grave, afraid to smear death all over my face, I heard him.
I heard my grandfather's voice in his silence.
There is, in this world, only a few people like that. Who are able to make silence be heard. To hold you in it. Deafen you with it.
I don't think we die and it ends there. I think there's some of what we are that guards us atop, that responds to us. And I think that is what the wind carried to me, that day.
Why do we silence our dead? Why make them lose their voice when we know we can hear it?
I thought of this often, after that day. What it would be like for someone to be near me, and be convinced my voice was just the wind speaking. Of losing your body and your voice too. And it occurred to me that this is not so far off from how I'd been living my own life. As a black woman.
Even amongst the living, some of us have bodies that work like placeholders. It's the usual normalized bigotry that makes it clear we were not "fully" human, not "fully" breathing, violence can happen to us — and it does — but we are still expected to survive through it because, in their minds, we occupy a space that's borrowed from them. We live on mountains of institutions that took centuries to craft a system that would ostracize and use our bodies, systems that didn't see us as more than goods or property and that had wagers on our expiration dates. So, no, we are not amongst the living.
Ever seen how black women everywhere are notorious for their death stares? I think it is part of our lived experiences to feel like speaking is too much.
The world won't fully hear us. We're treated like our lungs already carry dirt within, like there are worms on our skin. And no one wants the dead to talk, so we speak in silences.
In high school, I had a level of anxiety that could only be brought by severe trauma. I had shifted my voice into something akin to the slap of a wind. No one could hear me. But my body spoke for me. Loudly, when I felt uncomfortable, it'd start to shake. When I didn't want to be in a space, I'd get sick.
My body was louder than any sound. But still, I didn't trust it. Somehow, that synchronized mechanism had molded my understanding of myself. Why would I trust a dead person's feelings?
And I think in my silence, my body still left a few thoughts around, here and there. It's when I retrace my steps that I hear them. But the trick is, you may lose parts of yourself, but as long as you're on earth you will be heard. Even in your silence.
A dead body talks. A dead woman walks.
I think when you're stuck in that phase for so long, you learn to hear differently, to be differently.
I wonder if that is why some songs can really move you? Why we traditionally have griots and heralds in family trees to sing the dead. That only certain sounds can express loss.
I know my grandfather loves me, because I heard him. I lost part of myself to his absence.
Maybe my mom could hear him too.
"There is nothing mysterious or natural about authority. It is formed, irradiated, disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive; it has status, it establishes canons of taste and value; it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it dignifies as true, and from traditions, perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces." — Edward W. Said, Orientalism
"Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilisatrice." — Edward W. Said, Orientalism
