My first school was my mother.
She didn’t teach me from books. She taught me through life.
I was the second of nine children she carried herself, and the second of twenty between her and the two other mothers in our household. Babies were not theory in our home — they were life. Crying, feeding, sleeping, being carried on backs and hips.
From my mother I learned many things — discipline, care, order, patience — and yes, also the practical science of babies.
She taught me nappies. She taught me baby bathing and gentle massages with warm water and careful hands — the kind that would quiet a crying baby almost instantly. She taught me boiling water to sterilise everything that touched a baby — bottles, spoons, nappies, and cloths. She taught me how to fold tiny clothes like they mattered.
My mother would even wash before breastfeeding. I remember watching her clean her nipples before feeding the baby.
I have never seen a cleaner mother. And I had never seen a sick baby in her care. Alhamdulillah.
If you had the sniffles, you didn’t come in. Period. And you certainly did not touch her baby.
My mother ran a tight ship. I was ready a long time ago.
But pregnancy does strange things to your confidence when someone is whispering fear into your ear.
“You’re big for nothing.” “You’re not strong.” “You’ll probably give birth to a sickly child.”
These were the words said to me while I leaned over the toilet, vomiting for what felt like the thousandth time.
Maybe somewhere, quietly, I half believed him.
Still, every time I finished throwing up, I would walk straight to the kitchen and find something to eat. I had developed a private calculation in my head — if I could keep it down long enough, maybe forty percent of the nutrients would stay by nightfall.
Exhausting.
But Allah’s ways are not our ways.
Before that time, while we were trying to conceive, I used to meet a Somali sister on the 141 bus. We didn’t know each other well, but we recognised the longing in each other.
Two women hoping for the same miracle.
Sometimes we would hug and make dua together, praying for the day we would each hold our babies.
Around that time my mother had advised me to start reading Surah Maryam.
So one day on the bus I told my friend the same thing.
“Read the first five verses of Surah Maryam,” I said.
She shook her head emphatically.
“No.”
Right there on the crowded bus she pulled a Qur’an out of her bag, opened it, and said, “Read this.”
“Read the first ten verses,” she told me.
She pointed to the beginning:
Kāf Hā Yā ʿAyn Ṣād. Dhikru raḥmati rabbika ʿabdahu Zakariyyā…
I was very aware of the stares we were drawing — two women sitting on a bus with an open Qur’an between us.
But I listened.
From that day, I never stopped reading the first ten verses of Surah Maryam. Not once. Not until my wish came true.
I didn’t see her again for a long time.
Not until I was seven months pregnant.
I am very tall for a woman, so my bump was easy to hide. When I saw her on the bus again, I just kept smiling and lowering my eyes until she noticed.
And when she did…
She screamed.
Right there on the bus.
She hugged me and began rubbing my stomach in awe. We had to get off the bus because she was so overwhelmed.
Holding her hands, I told her quietly, “Since that day you showed me those verses, I never stopped reading them.”
She began to cry.
“Wallahi, Faatimah,” she said, “the day I told you was the day I stopped reading them.”
For a moment I didn’t know what to say. I felt both sadness and shock at her words.
She had given me hope… and kept none for herself.
I held her while she cried, and when she could finally speak again she promised me she would start reading them again that very day.
Allahu Akbar.
Sometimes Allah places people in our path for a moment — just long enough to change the direction of our story.
And sometimes those same people carry a piece of our hope while quietly laying down their own.
That day on the bus we held each other — two women, two prayers, two futures only Allah could see.
And I have never forgotten it.Welcome to Sisterlink. A Digital Village.Because even the strongest women were never meant to do this alone.