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FRAGMENTS OF MEMORY
Habeebie Saif,
I want to share with you my experience of growing up without a father in the Muslim world. In many
ways it is similar to growing up in an environment where you are an outsider to what seems to be a
homogenous community. Without a father, at an early age you become suspicious of those who would
usurp your absent father’s role. You are fearful and protective of whatever you are sure about. You
prefer not to trust because you know that not trusting will take you further than trusting. In fact, when
you feel you cannot trust anyone, you become aware of the positive power of trust and its force in
society.
In Islam, we are given three days to mourn the passing of one of our own. After that, life goes on.
Graves are generally unmarked—but if marked, then only with a stone—presumably to avoid
unearthing the remains of others in preparation for a new grave. It always struck me as strong and
courageous to leave the dead behind. For me, however, it has been impossible to leave my father
behind. I have carried his memory with me through the years, always imagining what he might have
said to me, or done in my place. And inevitably, I spent many years more than the permitted three days
mourning his passing.
In all the years since my father’s death in 1977, I have been collecting fragments of memory and
weaving together a threadbare picture of the man. One of the key lessons I took from contemplating
my father’s life was the power of imagination, even in the most desolate of starting points. It has
opened my eyes to how we build pictures of ourselves and others, to how we construct our
personalities and those of others, to how we write our histories and the importance of doing so.
My father, Saif Ghobash, lived a short but fascinating life trajectory. He was born in 1933 to an
elderly father, Saeed Ghobash, and a very young mother, Fatimah al Owaidh. The age difference
between them may have been forty years or more. The environment in which they lived was extremely
harsh, as it was across the area covered by the Emirates today.
Food was simple. Dates for breakfast, rice and fish for other meals, although since food was often
prepared communally, this meant that there was a battle between the stronger and the weaker to get
the fish.
His siblings were much older than he was. The youngest was older than him by twenty-five years.