At the funeral of her father, a little girl climbs onto the coffin to say goodbye and whispers three shocking words to him. Then something astounding happens and makes the mourners scream.
Everyone in the village attended Kofi’s funeral, not only because he had been a popular trader when he was still healthy, but mostly because many people had stories to share about his positive attitude and great generosity. These comments comforted his wife, Salma. She was still shaken by the news of his death, even though she had been preparing for it for months. The truth was that she couldn’t forgive herself for the last words she’d uttered to him and desperately wished for him to come back, even just for a few seconds, to tell her she was forgiven.
But there was someone else who wanted Kofi back more than anything else in the world. Little Adba was not even seven, but for the entirety of her life, she had been Kofi’s shadow. She, too, had known for a long time that her Baba would be leaving soon. To her mother’s utmost surprise, she had actually taken the news better than herself and behaved like a little angel for the whole funeral. But as the ceremony drew to a close, Adba would do something that shocked all the mourners.
As everyone gathered around the grave, Adba said to her mother, “I want to say goodbye to Baba,” and then she walked solemnly right up to her father’s open casket and climbed right on top of it. Some of the people gasped in shock, while others smiled at the little girl who was honoring her father with grief. Everyone could see how much Adba loved her Baba, but her affection was not surprising at all. She had been showered with love from the very moment she’d appeared in her mother’s belly, and probably even before that day, because Kofi himself was the kind of man who loved hard and forever. That was one of the reasons why he was so appreciated in town, but certainly not the only one.
Even though Kofi had been just a humble roadside vendor who catered mainly to laborers, he had always taken his work as seriously as if he were preparing his food for the highest office in the country. When he was still healthy, he got up every day long before the sun rose, and by the time the first workers arrived by foot or on the early morning buses, they could already see his brightly colored handmade little canopy and smell the delicious aroma of his wares. Kofi baked injera, which was also what his grandfather and father had done before him since the very beginning.
One of his favorite customers had been a young woman who came by every day just after the lunchtime rush for her order of injera. Because it was quieter by the time she came, Kofi and this young woman often shared a bit of conversation. They chatted about the weather, or music, or even about food preparation. Kofi learned that she was the youngest daughter of the family and presently cared for an older aunt who had fallen sick months earlier. Soon, he began to look forward to their encounters. He considered her more than just a customer and sometimes dreamed about the possibility of sharing his life with her. But while it was easy to chat about everyday things, he was reluctant to open up his heart and tell her of the love he had begun to feel for her.
One day, the opportunity came at last. That morning, the sky had been overcast and gray with the promise of rain. As he was preparing to pack up his stall for the day, he realized that the young woman had not yet come by. For a few moments, he wavered.
If he stayed, the rain might catch him, but if he went now, his friend might arrive and find him gone already. He decided to wait. As the first drops of rain began to fall, he saw her walking towards his roadside stall. He had made the right decision. He took out the container in which he had kept her injera warm. She quickened her steps and arrived at the stall just as the downpour got heavier. Grinning, she said, “I wasn’t sure whether you would still be here.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure I would stay, but here is your injera.” She opened the container and took a whiff, then she turned to Kofi. “Yours are the best, even better than my mother’s recipe.”
It rained for two hours. Kofi and Salma stood under the little canopy, sometimes laughing at the weather that had brought them together. Salma ate her injera right there, licking her fingers when she was done. She was so close that he could smell the shampoo she had used to wash her hair. By the time the rain was over, he offered to walk her home. He had never been so happy in his life, and when she offered to cook him a meal just for her over the weekend, he accepted gratefully.
Eighteen months later, Salma and Kofi got married and then welcomed a beautiful baby girl into their lives. With Salma’s help, Kofi’s roadside stand thrived. She even organized for him to take on catering contracts, which increased his business. But the greatest joy of Kofi’s life was the arrival of his daughter. As soon as she could walk, Adba followed her beloved Baba everywhere. He taught her the folk stories and traditional songs he had grown up with, and whenever her father had to go off, Adba would cry, “Baba, Baba!” until he turned around and picked her up.
But one day, when he wrapped his hands under her arms, something terrible happened. Kofi’s knees buckled, and down he went. Fortunately, Adba was not hurt, but as Kofi tried to get up, spasms of sudden pain shot behind his eyes. Salma helped him up and ordered him to go to the doctor, no matter how vehemently Kofi protested that he was fine.
The doctor frowned when Kofi and Salma described the symptoms. To Salma’s exasperation, it turned out that Kofi had been feeling unwell for a while, and he was sent to the city hospital for tests. There, the little family’s worst fears came true. Kofi had cancer, and because he had not had it checked out at once, it had already begun to spread throughout his body. By this time, Adba was six years old, and she was alarmed and frightened when her beloved Baba failed to come home.
Although the hospital was far away, they traveled to visit him every day, and Salma could not fail to notice how her once strong and cheerful husband had visibly weakened in just a matter of weeks. But her greatest concern was for her daughter. How would a little girl like Adba handle the death of her Baba?
One evening, when she had finished playing with her beloved animals, Adba came to her mother with a very special request. Her mother noticed that she was picking at her fingernails, which was a sure sign of nervousness. “Mama,” she said, “tomorrow I do not want to go to school. I love my teacher, and I am always very happy when I play with my friends. But tomorrow, I will not do that. I want to visit my papa. It hurts me to think about him all alone in the hospital with no one to talk to and nothing to do. I think he must get very sad lying all alone in his bed without us. That is why I want to visit him tomorrow.”
Salma said, “But your father is very ill, Adba. He gets tired when people visit him. If you go to school and do your schoolwork in the morning, I will take you to see him in the afternoon.”
Adba thought about her mother’s words. They were reasonable, but she felt an urgency to see her father that she could not explain to her mother. Since he had gone to the hospital, Adba had missed him profoundly. She missed his presence in the morning, and she missed the soft, gentle voice singing as he cooked breakfast. She missed the way he gave her that little child-sized broom that he had made for her himself and then told her to sweep by the door. She remembered how profoundly she always felt walking down the street holding his hand or going to feed the pigeons, as if it were a sacred duty to take care of them. For the first years of her existence, her father’s presence had filled her life. Now, it felt empty without him.
As Adba thought back with longing on those days when her father had always been nearby, she realized that the only way to recreate those days would be to go to him. She spoke emphatically to her mother, pleading with her with the seriousness of a much older girl, and Salma finally relented.
The next morning, Adba and her mother got up very early and set off on a long bus trip to the hospital. The aging bus moved slowly and stopped often along the way. When they were almost in the city, they encountered an overturned truck, which had spilled some of its load onto the road surface. There were laborers in the road busy clearing the spill away, but this meant a further delay of almost half an hour. While they sat in their bus seats waiting, the first rays of sunlight peaked across the tops of the mountains to the east. A tear glinted in Adba’s eyes. “I wanted to be there to watch the sunrise with Baba,” she said softly. “Now it’s too late.”
These words, spoken with a little girl’s sadness, touched Salma’s heart, and how she reacted to her daughter’s sadness would have a profound effect on the next few days. Swallowing down her own strong emotions about this very stressful period, Salma bent down to offer her daughter some words of comfort.
“Baba knows that you’re coming
,” Salma told Adba. “His hospital bed is right by the window, and at this very moment, he’s also looking at the way the sun is lighting the sky. His heart always rejoiced to see it, and as he is looking at the sky, he’s remembering all the moments when he held you, and you looked at it together. He’s thinking to himself, ‘My beautiful daughter, Adba, is like the sun who shone into my life and brought so much happiness.’”
At these words from her mother, Adba wiped her tears and smiled. “To me, he is like the birds, always singing and happy,” she replied, and Salma realized that this was true.
After the spilled load and the upturned truck had been cleared away, the bus carrying Salma and Adba finally made it to the hospital. Kofi was sitting up in his bed, sipping a cup of tea when Adba ran into the room and hugged her father tightly. She immediately told him that she had come to spend the whole day with him in the hospital. Adba told her father all about the bus trip, and he then confirmed that he had been thinking about her just as the sun touched the roof tiles of the opposite building.
Salma watched thoughtfully as Adba unpacked the food basket containing the injera and perfectly baked sambusas. “So much food,” he said. “I won’t be able to finish half of it.” She was quiet as she noticed how gray her husband’s complexion was from all the months inside, and now he worried about not being able to eat a few snacks. In the past, he would have devoured it all and then asked for more.
Salma wanted her daughter to have one-on-one time with her daddy, so she spent the day with her sister, who lived in the city and whose husband was healthy and had a good government job. The visit served only as a reminder of how far their lives had diverged. But when she went back to the hospital and found Adba happily eating her honey cake until only crumbs remained, she only noticed how spent and pale Kofi was. She left the room to buy herself something to drink, and when she returned, she found Adba happily asleep next to her father.
“Thank you for bringing her,” Kofi said. His voice was hoarse and ragged, but at that moment, all Salma felt was her own anger at the unfairness of it all. Why could Kofi not be healthy like her brother-in-law? And what Kofi said next only made it worse.
“I am going to leave you very soon,” he said. “I have been trying to hang on to see you both one last time, but the doctor said that I will die very soon, perhaps even this week.”
Salma was crushed by those words. “How can you leave us?” she ranted, her hands trembling with rage. “How can you leave me and that beautiful little girl who loves you more than life itself? I cannot forgive such cruelty.”
At these harsh words, Kofi’s dark eyes filled with an oppressive sadness. “I love you,” was all he replied, but Salma turned away.
“I would have given you the moon if I could.”
“I don’t want the moon,” Salma said. “The moon is nothing. I want you to stay with us. I want you to see Adba growing up into a woman.”
At that moment, perhaps because she heard her own name, Adba woke up. She looked up at her father, his eyes big and brimming over with sadness. Then she looked down at her mother, who was frowning. This puzzled the little girl—was her mother mad at her for falling asleep? But both parents patted her hair with gentle affection, and she soon forgot she’d ever seen that frown.
Soon after, this little family said goodbye. Kofi was exhausted from having spent the whole day together, and Salma and Adba needed to catch the bus to get home before dark. As they left, Salma felt something holding her back.
She wished now that she had asked her sister to let them sleep over that evening, but it was too late. Adba chatted happily about everything her father had said and what they had done together. The bus rocked gently, and Adba soon fell asleep, but Salma couldn’t find peace. She stared down at the half-eaten honey cake Kofi had left in the food basket, the marks of his teeth still visible. They were young and very much in love. Kofi and Salma had often shared food, eating from the same plates and sharing a pastry back and forth until it was finished. But now, her appetite for life was gone.
The next day, Salma received word that Kofi had died in the night. Her mind was filled with uncomfortable thoughts. On the one hand, she was grateful that Adba had the chance to spend the whole day with her beloved Baba, but at the same time, she hated herself for those angry last words she had spoken to him. The body was soon transported back to their village and prepared for burial. Above all, Salma was worried about how Adba would react to the news. But to her great surprise, her daughter reacted with calmness.
“I knew that Baba would leave us,” she said. “And we spoke about that too. But he also told me that he would love me forever and that he would watch over me.”
That’s what the little girl was thinking when she climbed into her father’s coffin. Adba looked down at Kofi, who seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Bending down to his ear, she whispered three words that made mourners cry: “Baba, wake up.” But Kofi did not move, and his eyes remained closed. Perhaps he had not heard her.
“Baba, wake up,” she repeated, this time hugging him. Many people were crying. Someone shouted, “Get that child away from there!” But then, before anyone could act, something truly amazing happened.
A white dove fluttered down from the sky and settled on Adba’s shoulder. It sat there for a moment, and then it pecked at her cheek. Its beak did not hurt the child, and it only made the lightest imprint on her skin. The mourners screamed, but Adba simply looked down at her father, lying so still in the coffin, and at the dove that had come to her just as she spoke those words to her father. And that was when she finally understood the concept of the afterlife.
The dove opened its wings, and Adba followed its path across the sky. Her beloved Baba was gone, but he would look down at her from his new home. The vision of the white dove that had come to her remained with Adba until she was a grown woman with children of her own. The memory of her father would stay with her forever, just like the love she felt for him long after she was gone.
