My First Time

A five-minute, no-note, true story told by Rahma Dutton at a Southern Rights & Wrongs Event

Saturday, the 18th of August of 2018, was the first time I washed a dead body. The body was my grandmother’s and the washing is part of our Islamic practice. Thursday the 16th, so two days before, she’d turned 96 – so it was a good run – and Friday the 17th, my mother and sister tucked her into bed. And on the morning of Saturday the 18th, she passed away peacefully and politely in her sleep (which was just her style).

The washing is called a Ghusl. And, for those of you who don’t know, there are two ritual washings in Islam that get you prayer-ready. The first is Wudu, which is a washing of the hands, face and feet, and we perform that after minor bodily functions like farting, sleeping, going to the loo. Then the Ghusl is a wash of the entire body, all of your limbs, and that’s performed after major bodily functions like menstruation, sexual intercourse and, as in this case, death. The tricky thing is that when you’re dead, you can’t perform the wash yourself. So that was how I found myself in my parents’ living room, with newspaper on the floor and my grandmother’s body under a sheet on a large metal tray table – exactly like the ones you see in the post-mortem scenes in Dexter and CSI.

I had mixed feelings about it, if I’m honest. Part of me was really honoured to be performing this and being a part of this for my grandmother as a final send-off. The other part of me just wanted to run out of the door and never come back.

We had a Toekamanie, who is somebody who is experienced in the practice of washing the deceased. She was guiding us through the whole process. She started out by laying out these sheets of cotton wool, and sprinkled camphor over them and into the buckets of water as well. That smell completely filled the room. Then she said she needed someone who would just make sure that the buckets were always full. I jumped at the chance at having a defined job that I knew I could do. She’ll just pass me the empty jugs and I’ll fill them up with water and give them back. It also meant that I could back off a bit and stand by the buckets. So that’s what I did.

So they started to wash my grandmother. Nothing was exposed the whole time. The only thing we ever saw was her face, and everything else happens under the sheet. The women started to wash her body and applied soap and poured the jugs over – and I just made sure that they were full.

Towards the end of the whole process, the Toekamanie indicated to me to go over and join in. So I hesitantly moved over and washed my grandmother’s left leg from the knee down. Gently separating her toes to make sure the water touched every bit of skin.

It was the most bizarre thing. It was shocking and overwhelming but it was also peaceful and soothing. And, as I held her cold foot in my hand, it was like my body understood from her body that she was gone now, and one day I would be too.

A few years before, I had taken a seat on our sofa in our living room and my grandmother sat on her chair in the corner. She’d asked, ‘Who’s that?’ and I told her, ‘It’s Rahma.’ Sometimes she would know who I was and sometimes she wouldn’t. But this time she said, ‘Rahma, my little Rahma!’ And I said, ‘Yes! I’m not so little any more, but yes it’s me!’ Then she just repeated my name over and over a few times. ‘Rahma, Rahma, Rahma.’ And then she just stared at me in this intense way and said, ‘Your name has been engraved on my heart since the very beginning.’ I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by ‘the very beginning’ because sometimes she didn’t know where she was in time. But I understood that it meant something about how much she loved me.

Her name was Salma Irene Dutton and that name will be engraved on my heart till the very end.

And, as I held her cold foot in my hand, it was like my body understood from her body that she was gone now, and one day I would be too.