Amina Bugaje: Remembering a great sister

Aisha Idris Bugaje This tribute has been over two and a half years in the making. I have always managed to escape it, there is so much to say it’s hard to imagine a beginning. My father had written a beautiful tribute, our sister has done so, as well as some friends. I have always […]

Aisha Idris Bugaje

This tribute has been over two and a half years in the making. I have always managed to escape it, there is so much to say it’s hard to imagine a beginning. My father had written a beautiful tribute, our sister has done so, as well as some friends. I have always felt indebted to her to tell her story, and for someone who was so fond of words, this is the only time they managed to elude me.
When my precious 5 year old sister Ikram passed away in December 2009, I naively thought that I had experienced the worst of grief, until Almighty Allah decided to call my elder sister, Amina, at 25 years of age. We had always been close because she was only 14 months older than I was. Our parents decided to pair us, same class, same everything since birth. We shared everything too from clothes to veils, room and friends.
We were admitted into the same university, in the same year to read the same course (but we changed courses later on). We also, largely, shared the same interests, you could not have a relationship with her and not with me, we were a package deal. Only recently did I recognise the nature of our unique rapport, our brains were wired just different enough to enable us have separate identities.
 My sister was full of creativity, dreams and love for her friends and family, she was a hard worker with a flamboyant personality, typical of a right-side dominant brain, I was more left sided, cautious and conservative with attention to details and order. In other words, she was the accelerator and I was the brakes, an amazing synergy neither of us really knew or understood.
We went through all the things that normal average girls go through while growing up; including puberty, parental authority, teenage angst, suitors, break-ups, academic turmoil and many other blissful memories. The only thing that threatened this unity was my marriage. We had wanted so desperately to get married together and possibly live near to each other, have kids and raise them together but Allah had other plans. Her wedding was postponed at the eleventh hour.  
When my marriage date was finally set, it jarred us out of our fantasies, I remember many a night when we stayed up talking through the night with only a dim light on(she was terrified of the dark)  planning our future and even planning our future children’s future. We had convinced ourselves that we will make it work, after all how many times had we conquered the odds?
We got busy with my wedding preparation, and everything went smoothly. But on the Saturday I was taken to my husband’s house, I found it difficult to cry (Its customary for brides to cry as they are taken away to their matrimonial home). I was subdued but without tears.
My friends and family stayed until Monday and in the end I was left alone with my sisters. Amina was concerned about leaving me behind, and I could sense her trying to be strong. She made a list of some small things I needed around the house and went to the market to get them while I dealt with the constant stream of visitors coming and going from the house.
She came back and unpacked all my suitcases, arranged everything in the wardrobe, washed my bathroom, arranged the mirror and put on the traditional incense. It was almost Asr by the time all that was done and the driver was at the door to take them back home. I dragged my feet a little and when I could not stall anymore I kissed my younger sisters goodbye and they piled into the car, the most difficult was saying bye to Amina, I refused to look at her in the eye, just held on tight, while the emptiness in my heart echoed hers.
And for the next two months she came to see me every week for five weeks. The day before the fateful Sunday of the air crash, I managed to convince my husband who was going to Abuja for a friend’s wedding to drop me home in Zaria before proceeding.  Amina cooked for us a delicious meal, the last I will eat from her. We sat down on the veranda and talked, Maghrib came and the sunset was so beautiful but our mother soon called us inside to pray.
After dinner, we sat in the room while I watched her pack a bag, she was leaving early Sunday morning for a flight to Lagos to attend a visa interview at the German embassy.  We talked well into the night, each of us blissfully unaware that it was the last chat we would have in this world. I could vaguely recall her movements around the room in the morning, as she brushed, showered and got ready. She tapped me on the shoulder on her way out, she leaned down the edge of the bed to put her arms around me and whispered ‘talk to you later’.
 I woke up around 12pm, and the first thing I did was to call her and find out if things are going as planned, she answered, said they were boarding, and promised to call when she’s landed and settled.
The call never came.
Around 1:30 pm, my husband called me from Abuja and said I should find out what flight she was on, I sensed something bad, but he reassured me. I went to the kitchen and asked my mum who answered ‘She’s on Dana air, in fact they must have landed by now’.
I relayed the information to my husband and I was met with ominous silence. Thinking the connection bad, I called again, and that was when he told me there were rumours that Dana air had crash-landed in Lagos, very close to the airport. I frantically dialled my sisters phone as I told my mother the bad news, her phones were all off, I groaned in frustration and when I looked up at my mother’s face, she was just reciting ‘Innalillahi wainna ilaihiraji’un’ over and over again.  I ran upstairs to our room and kept trying the phone, I called my cousin who was supposed to meet them at the airport in Lagos, She confirmed it.
And that was when it started, the panic, the disbelief, the confusion. My heart was racing faster than it has ever raced. I refused to believe my sister was anything but alive and okay, I just talked to her this morning. People who heard the news and could not reach her phone started calling me to hear what actually happened. I sat for hours transfixed, too stunned to react. Then I jumped up and entered the bathroom, performed my ablution, and started praying, harder than I have ever prayed for anything in my life. I was over and beyond desperate.
Someone sent me a message saying there were 14 survivors and my heart jumped, I rushed downstairs to tell my mum and then realised people have already started coming to our house for condolence, I told myself they were overreacting. I peeked into my mum’s parlour, she was sitting still, surrounded by people, mumbling prayers, her eyes unfocused but still composed and I told her there were survivors. She gave me a look I can’t quite describe, almost a look of absolute certainty and I knew without an inch of doubt I will never again lay my eyes on my sister.
As this was happening, Maghrib was being called, and up till now I still get a weird feeling when Maghrib prayer is called.
And then utter chaos.
I was a stranger to that kind of loss, so terrified that I heard myself screaming as some people rushed to hold me. And for the rest of that fateful evening, I remembered nothing else. I had vague recollections of being taken to the hospital in the dead of night and being sedated, and for the next two days I remained sedated. Friends and family were telephoning and coming to the house those days, and I found myself listening to the endless litany of the clichés of death:
‘Think of it this way, she’s at peace……’
‘God called her darling…….’
‘She’s in heaven smiling down at us all…..’
‘She’s joined the angels….its fate…accept it dear’
I wanted to scream!
It felt nearly impossible to completely accept that I was never going to see her again, or talk to her, or hug her, or fight with her.
After eight days it was time to return home, and on the last night managed to summon the courage to pack her things and put them all in order. I did not want our mum to have to be the one who would do it, because as can be imagined, she was also going through a lot even though with graceful acceptance. I kept imagining Amina in her grave, knowing how much she was afraid of the dark, of being alone. The nightmares are endless and gripping. May Allah bring endless light, mercy to your grave and may He accept your shahadat.
I love you with a deep abiding love that only our parents are capable of understanding. And will miss you till Allah by His grace calls me back to be with you In sha Allah. This is my only consolation.