A Druze father and the question he stopped asking
Kamal Abu Shakra lost his daughter to leukaemia at nine. He talks with Nadia about Druze beliefs on reincarnation, the comfort and the cruelty in them, and the question he finally let go.
The forty days, and what came after
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Show notes
When the visitors stop coming
Before asking anyone else, Nadia tells her own story. Her brother Elie died on 4 August 2020. The forty days of Maronite mourning gave her something to do each day. This episode is about the long stretch afterwards, when the visitors stopped and the prayers felt like talking to a wall.
- What the forty days are for, and why the structure matters
- The first Mass she could not stay in
- Anger at God as a form of prayer, according to her confessor
- The small ritual, a candle at 6:07pm, that she still keeps
Nadia asks listeners to send in the ritual they kept, however strange, for a future episode.
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to What the Candle Knows. My name is Nadia Boulos. I am a grief counsellor in Beirut, and I came to this work the way most people in it do, through a door I would never have chosen. My brother Elie died in the port explosion on 4 August 2020, at seven minutes past six in the evening. This show is about grief and faith, and about what happens to each when the other is in trouble. I am going to start with myself, because I will be asking other people to be very honest and it would be unfair not to go first. The forty days of mourning held me up. It was the eighteen months after that nearly took my faith. I will tell you what I kept, and what I lost. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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