A (Non)Comprehensive Guide to Northwestern Flora or Grief or Something.
March 15th, 2021 – Senior Year, Childhood Home, Denial
The ash falling from the sky clung to him. It was under his fingernails and beneath his shoes. It coated the screams that erupted from his dry throat.
The little olive house on Prairie Street was burning.
Upon the arrival of a harried neighbor who drove to Rasheed’s job to deliver the news, Rasheed had torn off his apron and started running.
As he stumbled closer, Rasheed saw fire licking the house—to think such a beast had originated from a stove he accidentally left on in his hurry this morning. Rasheed had nothing but his own stickly body and tattered clothes to douse the angry flames, but he convinced himself that would be enough.
Rasheed approached the front door and immediately doubled over, a sudden sense of uprootment pushing him to the ground. He knew with certainty then that it was too late to save any part of this home. This home that was the sole witness to the life Rasheed had shared with his mother: the make-shift botany lessons—a task accompanied by guides for flowers that she had kept like prizes from her brief time in botany school—
Flowers1.
Oh, God.
Rasheed ran toward his mother’s garden.
Hope was growing like a weed in his chest. It will be safe, it will be safe, it will be safe, he chanted. Yet, he kept his eyes shut, not having the guts to see it from a distance.
When he finally opened his eyelids, his burning eyes registered only a rusted door half-scorched and fallen on his right. The rows of carefully watered deep-blue California lilacs2, wild pink roses3, and purple hyacinths4, were nowhere to be found. In their jarring absence, he forgot what they looked like exactly—were there veins on the hyacinths, and were the roses even pink?
He puked, wiping his hands on his tattered jeans, wishing his mother was there so she could run her hand down his back as he cried into her long black jilbab. Or was it dark gray? Or had she finally made up her mind to switch to dresses because she “wanted to feel young”? He couldn’t remember, and panic rose up high within his chest.
He had reached the end of the garden, and the only thing he saw were weeds5. The pesky organisms he never managed to get rid of, no matter how many days in a row he pulled at them as his mother puttered about, watching him through the stained kitchen window (if one looked through the window at an angle when the sun was hanging like low fruit, it was as if gazing into a church at a rendition of Maryam (A.S.)).
If Rasheed was a philosophical man, he might have thought it poetic that the weeds had also managed to thwart the fire’s attempts at eradication.
But he was not. And he hated weeds.
There was a hand-painted pail by the fence. Rasheed grabbed it.
He started watering the singed flowers so something might sprout from the ashes. But the heat of the water only ruined them further.
Amidst all of it, Rasheed was screaming.
He screamed and screamed for hours, through the firefighter’s concerned questions and the hose they aimed toward him and the garden until the sky turned dark.
But no one came to say it was a joke, and the pain intensified, sticky, like honey.
At last, he threw the pail down and turned around.
On the horizon, smoke was rising like a soul being pulled toward heaven. If there was such a place. Rasheed didn’t believe anymore. Not after Walidah was taken in a car accident because of a driver going too fast on a residential street earlier that month, and now this, the only piece of himself that still stood outside his body, gone too.
He felt a hand on his right shoulder, but when he swung his head, there was no one there, just the smell of his mother’s perfume—amber and musk and a hint of cardamom6.
Rasheed gasped, a shaking, drawn-out breath.
For a second, he wondered if the fire had distorted his sense of smell, just like it had distorted his vision, the world too bright, flickering in and out like an old horror film.
Rasheed knew one thing, though: he needed to leave now, or he would never find the cowardice to abandon the garden his mother taught him about the world in.
As he traced his steps back, head hung low; he didn’t notice the singular weed sticking to the bottom of his shoes, clinging to him all the way to the firetruck, the ER where doctors tended so gently to his mild burns, and then the closest inn.
I felt something there, a hand on my shoulder. Maybe she’s there—if souls exist or something. He didn’t say it aloud. His father wouldn’t understand. “It’s nothing but ashes. I’ve made up my mind. I just wanted to tell you.” There would be no convincing him it seemed. Rasheed’s next words weren’t ones his mother would approve of, “Don’t ever contact me again.” Rasheed got up with such force that his chair fell over. He walked out and went back to Prairie Street, but he felt no hand on his shoulder—just finality; the house was a death flower18,. Its time was gone, and it would never be back.
January 1st, 2022, Abdullah’s Mechanic Shop, Anger and Bargaining What an odd thing to emerge into adulthood, or the pretense of it, in a state of such impermanence and feebleness. Not a man as strong as a cedar tree7 nurtured over decades, but a shell. Rasheed, unlike the cedar tree, did not belong to a family at all anymore, with nowhere to go back to and no seedlings to nurture. Last year, after he got tired of sleeping in cheap inns, he had packed up his belongings—the clothes on his back, a prayer mat his mother had put in his locker at work in hopes that he may pray on it one day, $500 from his shitty job at a local burger joint, and a new flip phone because his old smartphone along with all the pictures it contained was gone—and left LA. “Will water tulips?” Abdullah, his gruff, elderly boss, whose long grey beard was only outmatched by the length of his hair, asked. His hands were on his hips, and a washcloth covered in grease hung over his shoulder—a homely sight that sent a pang through Rasheed. Abdullah went on, “I tell you earlier, you should take today off, spend with family, your sour energy infect this place, rotting from inside.” Dramatic but not wrong. If one believed in spiritual entities being connected to the sack of bones and meat we were forced to carry around with us on this spinning globe. All within a universe not capable, perhaps, of spanning the entire width of a beating heart. A contradiction to have created love in such a world. When Rasheed finally spoke, his voice was rough, “They aren’t tulips.” He knelt down, running a finger along a velvety petal, shivers erupting down his arm and bile rising in his throat, “They’re African irises8. Can grow under pretty much any conditions. Unless they’re over-watered.” Rasheed dusted off his overalls as he aimed his hose at the soil around them. “Yallah, these new generation veird.” Abdullah turned away, his heavily accented grumbles eventually fading into the back of the shop. Rasheed kept his aim sharp, like the pine cones 9that used to fall on his head during early winter in his mother’s backyard. Soon, the only sound around him was the gurgling of the soil drowning in crisp northwestern water. No flowers, no weeds, he thought as he went back to ripping out chunks of weeds with his bare hands. Destruction was the only thing that put the anger at ease. That, and fear were the two warring emotions he felt constantly. After everything, he had moved as far west as he could in search of water and a rural town. Now, he lived in a dingy cabin so close to the Santa Barbara beach that if anything were to catch on fire, he could jump into the water quickly. But he saw reminders of his mother everywhere. For example, Abdullah, who had offered him a job on the spot when he interviewed–Rasheed had minimal interest in mechanics and picked this shop only because it was close by—was determined to nurture him. Rasheed didn’t want that; he only wanted his mother back. So Rasheed drank. His mother would be scorned, not just because he drank but because it was her memory that drove him to present his fake ID at the bar by the beach every day after work. But it was a never-ending cycle because there would be some other trigger that came up—like the soft, buttery flatbread the bartender always brought out for free when Abdullah visited. The bartender’s name was Lilah, and she was standing in front of him now. “Same old?” She asked. The scar on her cheek that looked like a dimple when she smiled made an appearance. She was an obvious California sunflower10, but her bright countenance seemed trapped in the tightness of her deep-neck top and the carefully blank look in her eyes as she served drunk men throughout the night. Everyone except him. He liked to think she actually liked him. Rasheed ducked his head, grunted an affirmation, and settled into the booth. “You can’t even look at me when you answer?” His eyes popped open at the directness of her question–the anger crackling beneath it. He’d been coming in here for months; there was a frankness about their interactions now, a sense that they knew the other’s habits enough to develop a steady rhythm. But this was new. His lips curved involuntarily, but he didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. After a tense couple of seconds, he heard her walk away, shoes stomping on the ground louder than before; like the sound of branches hitting the dirt. When Lilah came back with a scotch on the rocks, there was no flatbread accompanying it. Thud. The cup hit the table, liquid splashing out and dotting his shirt. He knew she was angry because she wanted him, but she didn’t know that he only wanted to destroy her, to snuff out that flame she carried so close to her heart. It was dangerous; they would both be better off without it. Later that night, he ignored the hurt in Lilah’s eyes as he grabbed the hand of a girl who looked too much like her. At the cabin, he let himself pretend it was Lilah who was coming apart under him, her pleasure a tangible, raw thing, the sound of it ricocheting off the walls, cocooning him in a singular moment of bliss. As soon as the girl fell asleep, he crawled out, landing on the prayer mat at the foot of his bed. He turned towards the House of a God he didn’t believe in, finding comfort in the silken threads and remembering the curry his mother used to make from plants her job gave her for free—mint11, and parsley12, and overripe lettuce13 — that they would eat sitting crosslegged on the mat, their bowls clinking together. He curled up, resting his palm on the indents made by hers, the anger fading into something worse; seeping out of him, puddling like syrup from a bigleaf maple tree (Acer macrophyllum) 14. He wished his mother was buried underneath him so he could dig up her body and memorize the color of her hair and the length of her fingernails —he remembered reading that those were the things the Earth swallowed last. For the first time, he wanted to know whether or not souls existed, on this plane or the next, and if they did, he wished his mother would bargain for a taste of his tears, and when she got her bargain approved (she was a great barterer), he wished his tears would be sweet and comforting; the way being a single mother to a teen boy probably never was.
March 2022, Los Angeles, Bargaining Continues It was the anniversary of his mother’s death or the loss of his childhood (home). Rasheed’s long-term memory was non-existent, so he couldn’t remember when exactly each had occurred, just that there was still a break along the seams of his heart; it had been stepped on like inconsiderate shoes often walked over the leaves that fell from oak trees15 in the Autumn. Rasheed’s boss was negotiating, “Take one more shift.” “I have to go now.” “Why?” Rasheed hesitated, and Abdullah’s strong voice filled the silence, “You run? Here too..eh..too family to you now?” He meant familiar, but Rasheed didn’t correct him. “No.” Although he had thought about running, the more he found himself falling into routines—looking forward to Lilah’s smiles, going to the same farmers market every Thursday, and even coming in to work on cars and engines—the more skittish he got. Getting attached was a mistake. But he didn’t have time to contemplate it. “I’m meeting my father.” “You say, ‘I have no family.’,” Abdullah was hurt, his shoulders caved. “I don’t. He just took part in my making and then left, never to ask after our fates.” Rasheed grumbled. Abdullah put a hand on his shoulder, and Rasheed sank under it. The weight of his love was too much, too stifling. Rasheed didn’t want it. “He wants to talk about the house,” Rasheed said. Abdullah stilled. He knew what that meant; in a rare moment of weakness and perhaps too much intoxication, Rasheed had confessed the story to him. “Go, habibi. Go.” Those were the words that bounced around Rasheed’s head as he drove, and then stayed a night in a rundown hotel, ignoring the need to have someone warming his bed, and then made his way to an expensive-looking shop in downtown Los Angeles, the doors of which were bright yellow like a monkeyflower16. He looked around, not knowing what he was looking for; he had never known what the presence of a father felt like or even if his father had curly hair like Rasheed did or if he was old enough to have wrinkles on his face. Upon finding no one in the cafe who called to him, he sat down with relief. Not for long, though. “Rasheed,” A brown-skinned Indian man with a tall physique and a receding hairline approached, “You are so tall now, my son. Like me.” Rasheed got up, “Why did you call me here?” His father laughed nervously, “Why don’t we sit down? I can order us some chai.” “I don’t drink chai, only qahweh.” Then he added, “I didn’t recognize you. Walidah never told me anything about you.” His father’s face shuttered before he tried again, “Coffee then?” “I don’t want anything.” His father sat down awkwardly, “Listen, I haven’t been present in your life, and I feel badly about that, especially in light of your mother’s death, Allah yerwamo…” he shifted, the mispronounced prayer falling from his lips unconvincingly, “I wanted to tell you that someone wants to buy the land.” Rasheed’s heart sank, but he needed to confirm, “What land?” “On Prairie Street.” “Burned down. Wouldn’t expect you to know, considering your absence.” “I found a seller. I wanted you to know in case you ever wanted to go back to it.” Rasheed pulled back in shock, “Why can’t we keep it? You can certainly afford it.” He pointed to the distasteful diamond watch that adorned his father’s wrinkling body. “It is of no use to anyone just sitting there.” “I’ll..I’ll buy it from you.” It does have a use, Rasheed wanted to yell. How could the house his mother put her blood and sweat into running (on a low income, too; his mother said his father’s purchase of the house was enough of a blessing) belong to someone else? Did her existence mean that little? And what if there was something in there that he needed, like a flower seed his mother hadn’t planted yet? That last thought surprised him, he hadn’t allowed himself to think of growing any plants for a year, but he found himself missing it with such intensity that his stomach cramped. “You?” His father asked incredulously. Rasheed had to save the house, “Yes. I might not have enough, but,” he counted the rumpled bills, like rockrose17, petals, in his hand, “I have $400…$420. For the deposit.” “The property is worth two and a half million dollars.” “I can work and make more money. I promise. Just give me some time. Just don’t..don’t sell the house.” “Rasheed.” “Please. It’s…it’s the only thing I have left.”
I felt something there, a hand on my shoulder. Maybe she’s there—if souls exist or something. He didn’t say it aloud. His father wouldn’t understand. “It’s nothing but ashes. I’ve made up my mind. I just wanted to tell you.” There would be no convincing him it seemed. Rasheed’s next words weren’t ones his mother would approve of, “Don’t ever contact me again.” Rasheed got up with such force that his chair fell over. He walked out and went back to Prairie Street, but he felt no hand on his shoulder—just finality; the house was a death flower18,. Its time was gone, and it would never be back.
July 12th, 2023, Lilah’s Bar, Depression “I’m cutting you off.” Rasheed was so deep in his drink that he didn’t register the voice until his glass was being whisked away and replaced with hot, bitter coffee. One sniff, and he said, “Bad, bad coffe bens.” “You have bad manners.” He ignored her and continued, “Frm bad Calfrna Gsh19.” A coffee plant that had recently been introduced to California. New species were tricky, and the question of where they belonged was even trickier. Perhaps memories of their home stayed with them no matter where they immigrated to. For Rasheed, memories came in random bursts these days and in great quantity. It was relieving to know he hadn’t forgotten anything, that maybe someone had been waiting for the right time to unlock the vault, but he couldn’t face it sober. What haunted him was that although he could recall almost everything about his home and mother in chronological and thematic order, he still couldn’t remember what she smelled like. And so, he never felt at home. “If it’s so bad, maybe you should grow some yourself. Instead of complaining.” “Sto. Stop talkng now.” His voice was low, slurred. He got up. Then he fell back down. “Why? God, you’re so insufferable. People around you exist, you know that, right? We have opinions and voices and a right to live; just because you refuse to doesn’t mean we have to act dead around you.” She got haughty like that sometimes. “I…I can’t grow anthng. I nevr will. I hate plants, espcially flowrs.” “Well, you sure talk a lot about them for someone who hates them. Everything is always a metaphor or a comparison with Armenian irises, maple tree—” “Afrcan irisss.” But she wasn’t listening, “Oh, and weeds.” “I hate weeds,” he was pouting. The fight was childish, but it felt good. Nothing had felt good recently; the dark cloud of melancholia hung over him so suffocatingly low these days. Trying to accept for certain there was no physical remnant of his childhood, or his mother, or even a father to go to, was so fucking hard. “I think weeds are strong; they hold their ground.” Her words were final. He suddenly felt sober. He needed to have her in his life, he felt it like a punch to the gut. So he said, “Co…Come with me.” “What? I am not one of those girls you can just fuck and forget about.” “No, just..I…can you sleep with me? Not in that way, but…actually, forget it.” “No, say it. The entire thing.” Demand something of me, of this world, she seemed to say. “I can’t fall asleep sober. Having company might help.” Your company. “I get off at two.” She said rather quickly and then hurried off. He lifted his mug with shaking hands, taking a sip to hide his nerves. The coffee didn’t taste so bad anymore. A heaviness lifted off his chest, and he could have sworn he saw it grow wings and fly out the open window into the freckled night sky.
July 2025, Acceptance “Baba, here. Here,” Rasheed and Lilah’s two-year-old daughter was starting to speak, and her eyes were filled with light, especially when he would play with her in the grass20 of his garden when he had time off from his botany classes at UCSB and from writing a journalistic guide to flora from Lebanon and India, which was to be his thesis. Today, she was especially energetic, pulling his hand along. He and Lilah let her guide them. Some weeds caught his attention, and Rasheed paused to admire them. Lilah continued at his side, “I know you said you went through the five stages of grief to get over that time in your life, but did you know that theory was disproven years ago? Scientifically anyway. I was reading a think-piece about—” “No, baba. Come,” his daughter interrupted, giving Rasheed no time to respond to Lilah’s question, although maybe that was for the best. He wasn’t fully convinced of the validity of her deductions or how to answer her. His daughter led him to an area near the backyard fence by the resurrection plants21. She let go of his pinky, walking straight into the weeds and moving them apart. “Don’t go th—” he began to say. “Look,” she yelled excitably, pointing to a single sprouting rose. He knelt down in awe. How had she found it? He felt that same hand on his shoulder from years ago, spurring him on. So he closed his eyes and, hesitatingly, leaned closer, sniffing the petals. The flower smelled like amber and musk. A hint of cardamom. His daughter smiled at him, clapping her hands. Rasheed fell to the ground. For the first time in his life, he put his head in his hands and cried. His life was complete; he was home. His mother had always been with him, guiding him; he just needed some time to bloom on his own.
[1] Magnoliophyta, of which the most vital part is the reproductive unit that holds and protects the seeds until they are ready; in Walidah’s garden, adorning her head as a crown, scattered carefully through their home; “Why do you love flowers so much?” “Tsk, you might as well have asked why I love you, my son.”
[2]Ceanothus,
[3] Rosa californica,
[4] Dichelostemma multiflorum; northwest corner of Walidah’s garden; the third of her three most favorite flowers, the ones she never bought in pots, but cultivated from little seed packets herself.
[5] Digitara Sanguinalis; everywhere, all at once; “I hate these stupid grassy weeds.” “God made everything with a purpose, you must do tawbah for such a dismissive utterance against His creation.”
[6] Elettaria cardamomum; grown only when Walidah ran out of homemade perfume; “This plant comes from India, like the word, ‘walidah’.” “Can’t I call you ‘Ummi’ instead? I’m not Indian, only my sperm donor was.”
[7] Cedrus, Pinaceae family; the southeast corner of Walidah’s backyard, lives a long, almost immortal life. Useful because of the ability to repel rot and insects and provide shade for those that need it.
[8] Dietes iridioides; a small flowerbed at the front of Abdullah’s mechanic shop where he let Rasheed pass the time on his lunch breaks by ripping out weeds; no memory with Walidah (Authors note: I debated even including these in the beginning of my endeavors, but thought it unfair to the organism to forego them because Walidah passed away too soon).
[9] Pinus; along the British Columbia coast when Rasheed’s Walidah had driven them there a few years ago in search of new plants to write about in her notebook; “These trees grow in India too, I saw them in the Himalaya’s when your father took me. Interesting that one can belong to many places at once.” “I suppose.”
[10] Helianthus californicus; after going to Lilah’s bar for the first time, drove 30 minutes to buy them from the only florist in Santa Barbara who sells these flowers and put them in a vase on my porch where they died a few days later; Need the pressure of direct heat to thrive. Come from a family of hyperaccumulators, so are also adept at absorbing heavy toxic materials and had been planted on the Chernobyl and Fukushima sites to aid in soil restoration. Give and take, take and give.
[11] Mentha; potted on Walidahs porch, then spread to the backyard; “Let it grow anywhere it wants.”
[12] Petroselinum crispum; washed and laid on paper towels in the fridge; “It will last longer this way.”
[13] Lactuca Sativa; brought home in a re-usable tote, then eaten within a day; “my favorite vegetable.”
[14] Acer macrophyllum; standing tall on both sides of Praire street; “Look, this tree never changes color, walidah.”
[15] Quercus garryana; in the playground at my elementary school; “You know, that big tree was once a seedling, even smaller than you, and all alone? Now look how many friends it has.” “But the other kids will never be my friends, they call me “paki.”
[16] Mimulus brevipes; a bouquet of colorful flowers Walidah bought on my 15th birthday; “But I’m a man,” “That is why. How many little joys will you give up in life because you think they are not for you?”
[17] Cistus; a botany textbook Walidah once made me read during summer break; “Eugh, why are the petals wrinkled?” “If you had read the book, and tried to understand why some things must shrivel to survive, you wouldn’t ask me that.”
[18] Amorphophallus titanum; blooms only once, and just for a few days, then it leaves this earth forever.
[19] Ethiopian Gesha; cultivated in the Santa Barbara fields (ones that no one knows I went out of my way to visit and take notes on after that night); “Don’t you think they would thrive more in their original habitat?” “I don’t know dude, I just work here.”
[20] Poaceae; In his garden, in Walidahs garden, lining the steps to his job, these grasses make the Earth walkable and inhabitable; “Baba, look, I tore grass for you,” “We don’t tear grass, my daughter. We meet it only where it grows.”
[21] Lepidophylla; southern-most corner of Rasheed’s garden; “Babe, did you know these plants can survive near total dessication and that they are known for blooming, then wilting, then blooming again.”
Umiemah Farrukh is a writer from Los Angeles. She studies fiction at Columbia University and serves as CFO for a multinational education non-profit.