The Last Prayers: The Last prayers, #1

By AZIZ Y YACOB

One Life

Many Experiences

Book One

These are stories about my life which details my connection with God. I am in my sixth decade of life, and have lived in America for over twenty-five years. Prior to coming to America, I went through lots of ups and downs in my life which probably prevented me from pursuing my ultimate dream. This memoir details my experiences prior to coming to America as well as my later life and tribulations as I dealt with my past. I wanted to share these specific experiences so that others can realize their dreams despite setbacks and come to terms with their lives and understand there’s always hope ahead.

About the Author

Aziz Yacob lives in Virginia and is currently working on the second part of his memoir.

Published by

Grand Street Press

www.grandstreetpress.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: AZIZ Y YACOB
• Release date: Jun 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9780997289206

Book preview

Dedicated in Memory of My Grandparents

Yussuf Yacob Keval and Amina Kasim

Preface

As a boy grows up, there are many people who influence his development into manhood. But the most important of those figures is of a father to his son. The relationship between a father and a son can be expressed as perhaps the most important relationship that a man endures in his lifetime.

This is the relationship that influences all other relationships that a man has throughout his life. A strong father figure is important for a man to be able to mature with strong character. In this day and age, many children grow up fatherless and are left out to tackle the world without proper training and guidance. This is definitely not the case of my father. Although he had a rough upbringing he gave 100% to the upbringing of children. Most fathers in my culture will tend to guide their daughters towards dolls, cooking, and home economics, but this is not the case for my father. There was no discrimination when it came to having girls do anything that boys could do. Most of us look at life as a three-stage process where we need to see ourselves in a certain stage by a certain time in our lives. We see society doing the same and as such we need to follow. The three stages I am referring to is the process of growing up and living the so-called American dream. We grow up go to college and try to attain that great job. With that comes the need get married, buy a home, and raise a family.

The next stage is to climb the corporate ladder, nurture family ties and provide an enriching environment for a set number of children. The final stage is to prepare for the time to settle down and for a resting moment after the hustle and bustle of a career, children, mortgage and other daily stresses of life have subsided. This is and has never been the case for my father as he did not really follow these stages per-se because there was always a need to pursue and move to bigger and better things. His thirst to explore new places and experience new things was far too great. But this book is not really about his children, or about the stages in his life, but more so about a journey through his life. His story begins very early in life from the transition of being raised by his maternal grandmother instead of his biological mother, all the way to his struggles and successes in adolescence to his failures and accomplishments in adulthood. Growing up and hearing his stories really made me thankful that I have had such an easy upbringing and that it not been traumatic. I hope that this book will inspire its readers as it did me when I was growing up—to influence my actions and experiences in life.

Sajid A. Yussuf

Tampa, Florida

May 2016

Chapter 1

It was year 1825 when British Empire was conquering and colonizing very many countries in Africa. My great-grandfather joined the British Army and in 1925 a family of seven brothers Yussuf, Mumoo, Omar, Hussein, Ali, Ibrahim, Aboobaker, joined the British Army and they came to the Horn of Africa. Originally these brothers were from India. Since India was a colony of the British Empire, most of the squadrons in the British Army were recruited from India. They participated with the British Army colonizing East Africa which was later subdivided and named Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. After the war was over, all these three countries on the Horn of Africa claimed their independence from the British Empire and were granted their independence. At that time the British Empire offered all their loyal soldiers to either go to London or claim their British citizenship and enjoy British rights but if they chose to stay in East Africa they had to give up their British citizenship. So these seven brothers decided to venture more in Africa and see if they could raise a family. They all gathered up and started discussing among themselves as what to do. The elder brother Yussuf was wise and smart and he said instead of all the brothers staying at one place they should scatter and see which place would be better to raise a family. So they all agreed. Some went to Kenya, some went to Uganda and some went to Tanganyika—while Yussuf who was the older brother decided to go further into a neighboring country called Ethiopia.

In Ethiopia, Yussuf started a small business. Since Ethiopia was a landlocked country Yussuf traveled to the port of Djibouti which was part of the French Empire located in Horn of Arica—open to the Red Sea. This port was a vital port for all tradesmen traveling from the Red Sea to the rest of the world. So for Yussuf, it was fifteen days’ journey traveling from the mainland to the Port of Djibouti via horseback and mules as well as camels which was the only means of transportation back then. There were no modern roads like today. He would go and buy khaki, china silk, poplin and related textiles. He bought it in bulk and used to bring these goods to inland cities and sell it to the locals. In those days there were no measuring tapes so everything had to be done by guesswork. In those years there were no ready-made garments like today so everyone had to buy their clothes and have it tailored. The business took off and eventually Yussuf prospered and monopolized the textile market in Ethiopia. He grew successful, while the other brothers who had started similar types of businesses failed as their host countries were full of rebels and thieves. In the end they all joined their older brother Yussuf in Ethiopia.

Yussuf got them started in the same business he was in and they all started getting prosperous as well. When time came for Yussuf to get married as was the custom—he went to India and got married.

He later sent the rest of the brothers one by one to get married in India and they all settled permanently in Ethiopia.

Life was good until a pandemic of diseases exploded—Smallpox, Polio, Measles and more. The remedy for these diseases was none. Lots of people started dying and it was chaos. Luckily none of the brothers or their families was affected by these diseases but a tragedy struck Yussuf’s family nevertheless.

He had five sons and they all died in infancy from a rare genetic disorder where males didn’t survive—only females.

So out of his seven children, he had three daughters by the name Sikina, Zerina, and Zeenat who survived. Luckily, the rest of the brothers had healthy children and they all had mixtures of boys and girls in their family. Culturally boys are preferred in any family and those days the more boys you had the more you were respected. Now as the days went by the wives of the younger brothers taunted Yussuf’s wife, who was named Amina. She was strong-willed with a strong personality—they would tell her that she was a witch, and that she ate all of her sons. Amina kept her anger to herself. But inside her heart she would suffer and privately cry without ever showing her emotions to her husband or daughters.

But Amina’s eldest daughter Sikina eventually noticed her mother crying because she didn’t have a son who she could rely on when she got old. Now Indian culture is as such that sons are considered like strong pillars in the household. When the parents get old, sons are to support them and also when they get married they have to stay together with their wives in one household. But females were always considered as outsiders because once they get married they belong to their husbands and the parents didn’t have any claim over them. So Sikina, the oldest daughter told her mother when she grew older and got married—and if God-willing, she had a son she would give the baby to her mother to raise him as her own son. After a couple of years Sikina got married and promised again if her firstborn was a son, she would give the baby away to her mother and never claim him back.

I guess the almighty God heard her prayers and her firstborn was a son so as per her promise she gave her firstborn son to her mother to heal her old wounds. Amina and Yussuf were so happy that they took this boy and started raising him as their own son.

The young lad looked like a doll. Sometimes when the younger brother’s wives would come to visit they would get jealous saying that the new member in the family of Yussuf and Amina would inherit all the wealth, so out of jealousy they shook the baby and did anything else they could so the baby wouldn’t survive. Regardless, Amina was devoted in this child and she never gave them the opportunity to harm the child—who started growing big and handsome and so they named him Aziz.

When I was growing from infant to childhood all the female cousins of my age liked me—but my male cousins were hard on me. They were all much older and in those days the seven brothers had a huge family.

Most families had cultural customs that during special religious holidays or occasions they would arrange matches of strength for their children where males were told to wrestle each other and there were light sport activities for females. Every time this competition took place I would get beat up by my older cousins and would go to my grandparents crying. My elder cousins taunted me by telling me I was a crybaby, and did everything they could to demoralize me. My grandmother encouraged me and told me not to give up and that one day when I was older I would beat them all. By now I was attached to my grandparents and didn’t know who my real parents were. I called my grandparents ma and pa while I called my biological parents big brother and big sister.

Chapter 2

The motivation from my grandma was good and soothed my frustration for a while. The other thing was that I didn’t have any elder siblings or someone I could rely on for helpful advice—I was stuck in a family feud which felt never ending. One thing I realized was that I was all alone and whatever I had to do I had to do it by myself. My grandparents were old and I didn’t feel talking to them about my growing pains and every little thing in my life.

There were times when I would get out of bed and practice wrestling or any combat that could help me win the family matches against my cousins. Academically I was smart in my classes and got good grades—and even though this type of success was not known by my uncles, they were jealous about it when my grandparents would brag about my success academically. Life went on however, and one day not long afterwards it so happened that one of our (female) maids didn’t show up for work so my grandmother started looking for a new maid. They soon found a (male) maid who was about 14 to 15 years of age—and it was first time my family had hired a male maid for household work since it usually would be only women hired with males being hired for guards and landscaping work outside the house.

I was like 12 years old at this time and found a companion of my size and I started to practice my moves on this poor maid. The maid’s name was Tesfaye—which in Ethiopian language means hope. He was from the rural parts of Ethiopia and knew lots of moves because where he came from it was customary that the kids wrestled, did stone throwing, and fight. Because most of the people from rural side of town were cattle dwellers, they tended their flocks and practiced stone throwing so they can chase wild animals away. So Tesfaye became my best friend and taught me some moves which he learned from his people.

Sometimes when they would graze their cattle with lots of different men, fights would erupt among the herdsmen so they had to know how to defend themselves. I didn’t just learn the wrestling moves but I also learned how to throw stones and hit a target as small as a tea cup and Tesfaye also taught me how to fight with a stick. As time went by, the day came when we all had to show our talent as usual Eid al-Fitr time. This