When a mother faced death through writing

Sulaiman al Maamari
The writer is an Omani writer, poet and filmmaker

On August 9, 2024, social media circulated news of a tragic road accident involving an Omani family returning from Salalah to their home in Bahla.
The accident claimed the life of a young boy in the bloom of youth, while the rest of the family sustained injuries ranging from moderate to severe.
The news was accompanied by images of the crushed vehicle, revealing the sheer impact and another of a smiling boy in a football shirt, holding a ball in his hands.
As often the case with such devastating news, we respond with shock, utter a prayer and offer condolences — praying for the deceased and wishing the injured a swift recovery.
Perhaps we carry that sorrow for a day, only to be drawn back into the routines of life. In time, we forget. That is exactly what happened to me.
A month later, I received a WhatsApp message from a number saved in my phone as ‘Jamah School, Bahla’.
It turned out to belong to a teacher who had once brought her students to participate in my radio programme ‘The Young Reader’. She introduced herself as Azza al Shaibani, a school principal and wrote: “My son, Al Yusuf, passed away a month ago at the age of fourteen. I have written a few words for him. I was hoping you might be able to read them in your voice”.
I was momentarily stunned. My fingers froze over the screen, unsure how to respond. If I, a distant observer, felt such sadness at the thought of a mother losing her son — especially one so young — what must she be enduring, only a month after his death? The very act of writing, I realised, was itself an extraordinary gesture of resilience: an attempt to push through grief and reclaim life from the grasp of death. I replied with condolences, followed simply by: “Of course”.
When she sent the text, I found a lament saturated with pain — yet composed with remarkable sensitivity. Its sorrow did not overwhelm; rather, it flowed quietly into the reader, carrying what I would call a ‘noble grief’: a sorrow capable of contemplating loss while also transcending it, grounded in faith and acceptance of divine will.
In his novel ‘A Man Hunted by Crows’, the Saudi writer Yousef al Mohaimeed imagines a wish that death might give us warning before it “slips in like a trained thief or a professional killer”, allowing us time to finish what we began — to take down clothes from the washing line, switch off the stove, repay a debt, or simply kiss those we love.
But death gives no such notice. It leaves behind only faint signs, often recognised too late, when loss has already taken hold.
In her book, Al Shaibani revisits these final moments through her son’s voice, recalling how he insisted — just days before his death — on packing his own travel bag, an unusual request she granted without question.
Later, such small details acquire a haunting significance. Even an innocent phrase — “We have arrived at God’s paradise on earth”, spoken upon reaching Salalah — transforms, in retrospect, into a quiet premonition of another paradise altogether.
The mother goes further, giving her son words of farewell he never spoke, yet which resonate deeply: “I have only a few days left before my soul ascends... I made sure most of my photographs were taken with my head lifted towards the horizon — towards eternal life”.
Through such imagined dialogues, writing becomes a space where absence is reshaped into presence.
Al Shaibani structures her book as a series of letters from her son to her — a literary form that allows the bereaved to momentarily restore the lost to life.
Messages from the departed, whether in dreams or memory, soften grief and give it an intimate human rhythm. They remind us that love does not end with death; it transforms into another, quieter form of presence.
Through this experience, the mother appears to have arrived at a deeper awareness of mortality — one reminiscent of Leo Tolstoy, who wrote that to live without awareness of death is a kind of illusion and that recognising its inevitability is essential to living meaningfully.
This awareness is reflected in her earlier words to her husband, after their daughter narrowly survived drowning: “Our children’s lives are not in our hands; they are a trust God takes when He wills”.

Her resilience is evident not only in writing, but in action. In the aftermath of the accident, she moved from grief to strength — rescuing her daughter, comforting her injured son, overseeing their treatment, even travelling abroad for their care.
She returned to her work in education, determined not to surrender to sorrow. She faced life’s painful milestones: the first meal without her son, the first exam results without his name, the first Eid without his presence.
Yet beneath this composure lies a quieter struggle. In one imagined passage, her son gently questions her silence: “Why do you hide your pain? Why not allow yourself to weep in front of those who love you?” It is as if the book itself answers that question — transforming private grief into a shared human experience.
Through writing, Al Shaibani does not simply mourn her son; she confronts death itself. She reshapes loss into a story of courage, faith and endurance, offering a profound meditation on how pain can become a meaningful part of life.
The book reminds us that death is not an end, but a moment of awakening — a call to recognise the enduring presence of those we have lost and to find, within sorrow, a form of quiet, compelling beauty.
Translated by Badr al Dhafri
The original Arabic article was published in the print edition of the cultural supplement of Oman newspaper on March 26.