Excerpts from the works of the 2024 Whiting award winners
The winners of the 2024 Whiting Awards were announced Wednesday night. Below are excerpts from their work.
From "Janaza" by Aaliyah Bilal
I made it to the Everlasting Arms Mortuary that Friday afternoon, only to learn that I'd shown up on the wrong day for the wrong thing. Early that morning, just half an hour before my departure, I got an email from the Temple listserv my mother signed me up for years earlier, saying the man I grew up knowing as Captain Michael 2X was dead. In my haste to leave home, I must have skipped over the details. I had thought, based on the Islamic custom, that the captain would be buried the very same day. I only started to question my thinking as I walked up the block to the funeral home—a gray stone mansion at the corner of Western and Twenty-Second Street. I was brushing off my suit, wrinkled from the long drive south, and noticed that all the other men out front were dressed casual. When a grave-looking man in a kufi and a long beard, who must have been the Imam, handed me a booklet titled, "Principles of the Burial Ghusl," I realized my mistake. The first surprise in a day of odd occurrences—I learned I had shown up for the washing of the body, a full day before the actual funeral was set to occur.
I was confused and a little upset by the mix-up, and sat myself on the parlor stoop, just feet away from the small crowd of men who'd been waiting to be let inside. I pulled out a chocolate bar I had bought a few exits up the interstate, the likes of which I hadn't had in years—chocolate and peanuts mixed with caramel. I was halfway thinking I should leave, maybe head to the Crosswinds Casino another hundred miles south, but stayed put, fumbling with the pamphlet the Imam gave me. I cracked the spine and spread it flat at the gutter to a series of photographs of an actual washing. On the left-hand page, the corpse, its face and private area covered in white gauze, was bathed in a mixture of water and camphor. On the opposite page, the orifices—nostrils and ears—were packed tight with small tufts of raw cotton.
Inside the wrought iron gates of the mortuary grounds the other men stood closer to the street. I hadn't paid them any mind, until one began talking loudly about the circumstances of Captain Michael's death.
On the previous night, the captain corralled all of his and Sister Frieda's children to celebrate her birthday at the house on Euclid, where they'd lived for as long as I could remember. After all the food was out and she blew out the candles on the cake, Captain Michael stood to speak. He addressed each of their children and the grandchildren. "I know how it looks, with all the changes this family been through in recent years. I just want y'all
