When Silence Scares You

Rahimahum-Allah

I’ve never written like this before. But there’s a first time for everything.

It has been months since the crash. Akeel, Hannaa, and little Sara are gone in a way my mind still struggles to accept. There are mornings when I still wake up expecting a message or a call, and for a split second everything feels ordinary, before the memory returns and the quiet settles back in.

I have been coping the only way I know how, by keeping myself busy and never allowing too much silence to settle. When my mum passed away, avoidance helped me survive, so I have trusted it to help me again. I fill the space with work, meetings, phone calls, or noise of some kind so that my thoughts do not have room to breathe. I’ve taken up writing blogs, because it feels therapeutic, a way to release the stresses of my brain, because papers can carry burdens the human heart can’t manage. I promised myself not to get too attached to anything or anyone since she died, to make the inevitable separation easier — I failed. Such is the attraction of the Dunya.

When my mum died, Maulana Saleem Dhorat told me something that I have never forgotten. He said, “They have just taken an earlier flight to Jannah. They have reached where we are all heading, and they would not want to return to this dunya.” He also told me to look at things from the perspective of the Hereafter, to see it through their eyes rather than our own, because we suffer loss while they gain, and they now prefer the company of Allah to the company of any of us. If we could speak to them, he said, they would tell us not to grieve but to be content with their outcome.

Those words have kept me steady. I know they are true. I even repeat them to others who are grieving. But knowing something and feeling it are not the same. The mind understands what the heart cannot yet bear.

The fear of silence

My wife knows this, but others do not: the silence is what frightens me most. I cannot sit in it for long without needing something to fill the space. There is always a sound, a voice, or a distraction somewhere in the background. I tell myself it is harmless, but I know it is a kind of protection. Because when the silence comes, so do the memories.

When alone, and usually before bed, I sometimes scroll through the videos of them smiling, alive. I look at the photo of Hannaa clinging onto my son on Eid, giving him the kind of hug only she could. I reminisce of our holidays together, the picture of Sara and Sulaym with their cheeky smiles sitting in front of me and Akeel, stood in front of the Dome of the Rock. And then I remember these are just fleeting memories we will never experience again.

Sometimes I find myself replaying that Thursday morning: the uncertainty, the hope, the helplessness, and the pressure to remain composed while my own world was coming apart. I remember breaking down and sobbing in my office, my staff having to comfort me and insisting I leave work. I remember trying to stay calm for everyone else, managing messages and emotions that were not my own, and holding back the panic that kept rising. I relive it more often than I should, as though by remembering it I can make peace with it, but all it ever does is exhaust me. I don’t enjoy the things I loved before — I’ve stopped sports, and I can’t even properly enjoy my team being top of the league.

There are moments when my thoughts drift to those who are still here, and I imagine what it would feel like to lose them. I tell myself that I am only preparing, that thinking ahead might make it easier if it ever happens, but deep down I know it never could. It is simply my way of trying to protect myself from future pain, even though it never works.

I have written my will. Not because I am afraid of dying, but because leaving my affairs undone feels worse than the thought of death itself.

The weight of responsibility

Since the crash, the paperwork has been mine to carry. I am the one who speaks to the lawyers, visits the banks, completes the probate forms, and tries to hold families together when every conversation feels like walking through a minefield. It is a lose-lose situation in every sense, because no matter how hard I try, someone feels wronged, someone feels forgotten, and I am left in the middle, exhausted but still trying to do what is right.

There is no satisfaction in any of it. It is not something you can finish and feel relief, because every task, every signature, every meeting is just another reminder that they are gone. Still, I carry on, because someone has to, and because doing something, even something painful, feels safer than doing nothing at all.

Then I look at both mothers, and the brothers carrying a burden far greater than mine, and realise, I am just a cog in the machine of life and death. I cannot imagine their pain, and the patience they are having to endure, all with smiles on their faces.

Faith and fatigue

The Quran says,

ٱلَّذِينَ إِذَآ أَصَٰبَتْهُم مُّصِيبَةٌۭ قَالُوٓا۟ إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّآ إِلَيْهِ رَٰجِعُونَ

“Those who, when disaster strikes them, say, ‘Indeed we belong to Allah, and indeed to Him we will return.’”

It is not a command to silence emotion, but an invitation to bring that emotion back to Him, through du’as, through sadaqa, through reflection. The Prophet alayhis salam wept when his son Ibrahim passed away and said,

إِنَّ العَيْنَ تَدْمَعُ، وَالقَلْبَ يَحْزَنُ، وَلَا نَقُولُ إِلَّا مَا يُرْضِي رَبَّنَا. وَإِنَّا بِفِرَاقِكَ يَا إِبْرَاهِيمُ لَمَحْزُونُونَ.

“The eyes shed tears, the heart feels sorrow, but we say only what pleases our Lord.”

I remind myself of this often. It is not disbelief to cry, nor weakness to feel sorrow. What matters is the direction in which the heart turns when it breaks. I know that, but I still find myself running from silence, unable to sit long enough to let the pain move through me. Perhaps what I need now is not more distraction, but the courage to allow the grief to exist without fear.

Writing helps me remember what I am trying to learn, even if I am far from living it.

What I miss

I miss how much they cared for us, how they checked in without needing a reason, how they loved our children as their own. I miss Akeel’s cheeky humour, how together we were inseparable but insufferable, and I cannot forget his beaming smile which made everyone around him feel at ease. I miss the comfort they offered, like a warm cushion you could lean on when you need it most. I miss the way Hannaa’s kindness softened everything around her, how much zeal she had for Deen and how she doted on my boys. I remember being abroad and Hannaa, forever selfless, taking personal responsibility for a 4 tonne delivery of dates I had left behind, even duping her mum and brother to join the taskforce. I miss the way Sara’s laughter filled a room and made the world seem lighter, and how she was the perfect best friend for my son, in whose eyes I see Sara’s twinkle, and who is now alone, dealing with the big bad world on his own.

When I think of them, I make du’a for them. In every tawaf, in every du’a, they appear in front of me. It is the only form of love left now. I honestly believe that the purest du’as often come from the most broken hearts, and perhaps that is what makes them reach furthest.

Living with the ache

I know they are in a better place. I believe that with all my heart. Most days I live as though I am fine, and in many ways I am. Yet there are still moments when the quiet returns and everything feels fragile again. I am beginning to accept that grief does not disappear with time; it simply finds a quieter place to stay, next to faith and memory. It’s the same with my mum, for whom it will be 5 years in a few days.

Maybe this is what healing really is: not the absence of pain but the ability to live with it and still recognise it as part of love. Perhaps this ache itself is a mercy, a reminder of how deeply we were connected and how deeply we will meet again.

My Shaykh said they simply took an earlier flight to Jannah, and I still hold on to that. Perhaps it is true. Perhaps I am just waiting to board.

Through my son’s eyes

My son remembers them constantly. He writes Sara’s name everywhere, he talks about her often, and sometimes he tells us that he wants to go to Jannah so he can see her again. He replays the plane crash with his toys and says he wishes he had been on that plane too. There is no prompt to his words, and a kind of innocence in his words that breaks me, because I do not know how to guide him through something that I myself have not understood.

He misses her in the purest way, without layers of distraction or denial, and perhaps that is what makes it hurt so much to watch. The helplessness of not knowing what to say or how to ease his pain is the part that stays with me. It is a reminder that grief does not only live inside us, it echoes through those who love us, and through the ones who are too young to name what they feel.

Sometimes I think Allah allows me to see his grief so that I remember to turn mine into du’as and humilty, to make my patience mean something, and to keep walking the path of life, even when I no longer know where the path leads.

In memory of Akeel, Hannaa, and Sara. May Allah forgive them, raise them, and reunite us in Jannah, together again.