The Strongest Grandmother in the World

It started, as most great arguments do, with a boast.

"I am the fastest in this family," announced Yahya, who was eight, and who had recently won a race against his cousin (who is five, but never mind).

Inah looked up from her book.

Now, you should know something about Yahya's grandmother. She is nearly sixty-three years old.

She put down the book. She smiled a small, dangerous smile.

"To the lemon tree?"

She beat him.

Not by a little. Yahya arrived at the lemon tree wheezing like a broken kettle, and his grandmother was already there, not even breathing hard, examining a lemon as if she had been waiting all afternoon.

"HOW," gasped Yahya, "are you not DEAD?"

Inah laughed until she had to hold on to the tree.

"Because, habibi, I take care of the one thing Allah lent me. Come inside. I'll show you the whole secret."

Inah led him to the bathroom cabinet and opened it.

Yahya looked inside. Then he looked again, because surely he had missed something.

"…Inah. Where's your medicine?"

"I don't have any."

"But —" Yahya's brain was doing sums. Grandmothers had shelves of little bottles. Everybody knew that. "You're sixty-three!"

"Almost sixty-three," she corrected, "and I take not a single pill. No prescriptions. No diagnosis. And every morning I wake up with energy in my body and clarity in my mind — and I want you to hear the most important sentence in this whole book, Yahya:

None of that is mine. Every bit of it is a mercy from Allah.

I did not build this body. I did not keep this heart beating for twenty-three thousand mornings in a row. He did.

All I did was one thing."

"What?"

"I took Him seriously."

She sat down and took his hands.

"Yahya. Whose body is this?" She poked his arm.

"…Mine?"

"No, my love."

Yahya frowned. That seemed like a strange thing to get wrong.

"This body is an amanah. Do you know that word? It means something precious that has been lent to you. Given into your care. Handed over — by the One who built it, who keeps it running every second, and who will one day ask you what you did with it."

"Like… like when Kareem lent me his bike?"

"Exactly like that. And what did you do with Kareem's bike?"

Yahya went a bit pink. "I… washed it. And I didn't take it on the muddy path. And I gave it back better than I got it."

"Because it wasn't yours," said Inah. "So you were careful with it. And you were more careful with his bike than most people are with their own bodies."

She leaned in. "Listen to what the Prophet ﷺ said."

"A right, Yahya. Not a wish. Not a suggestion. It is not yours to run into the ground. It is not yours to ignore until it breaks and forces you to notice it.

It is a trust. Precious. Borrowed. And worth your most serious, most loving attention."

"Right," said Inah, standing up. "Now come and see what I drink every single morning of my life."

On the counter was a jar of something golden. Yahya sniffed it, and his whole face folded in on itself.

"That smells like a war."

"It is called Fihi Shifa," said Inah, delighted. "It means: in it is healing. I took the name straight from the Quran — Allah says it about honey."

"So what's in it?"

Inah counted on her fingers, and her eyes gleamed.

"Zamzam water. Black seed — about which the Prophet ﷺ said it is a healing for every disease except death. Fresh turmeric, and ginger beside it. Garlic. Lemon. A little apple cider vinegar. Cayenne pepper — and black pepper, which is not an accident, because black pepper makes the turmeric work far better. Cinnamon. Fennel. Ajwa dates. Manuka honey. Coconut oil. And fresh moringa leaves, from the tree they call the miracle tree."

Yahya stared. "That is not a drink. That is a potion."

"People tell me it's complicated," said Inah, and she drank the whole glass without flinching.

"I tell them it is not complicated. It is commitment.

And commitment, habibi, is simply love — made visible, over time."

Then Inah took him out to the garden, where there was a trampoline.

Yahya had always assumed it was for the grandchildren.

It was not for the grandchildren.

"Five minutes," said Inah, kicking off her slippers, "several times a day. Watch."

And Yahya watched his sixty-three-year-old grandmother bounce.

"But why?" he shouted over the boing, boing, boing. "You're not even playing!"

Inah stopped, and looked at him with the face she saves for very good facts.

"Because your lymph has no heart."

Yahya's mouth opened.

"You have blood, yes? And a heart that pumps it around, day and night, without you ever thinking about it. But you also have another river inside you — the lymph. It carries away the rubbish and the used-up bits and the soldiers of your immune system.

And Allah, in His wisdom, gave that river no pump at all."

"Then how does it —"

"It moves when you move." Inah bounced once, hard. "Every single bounce shifts everything inside you and pushes that river along. Five minutes of this does what an hour of sitting still can never do.

Your body was not designed to be still, Yahya. It was designed to be used."

Yahya got on the trampoline.

He did not get off for twenty minutes.

That afternoon, Inah did not eat lunch.

"Are you sick?" asked Yahya, alarmed.

"I am fasting, habibi. I do it every other day — one day eating, one day fasting. Do you know what that is called? It is the fast of Dawud, and the Prophet ﷺ said it is the best fast of all. He told us that fourteen hundred years ago."

She stirred her tea.

"And do you know what the scientists found, only a few years ago? That when your body has a rest from digesting, it starts doing something amazing. It goes looking for all the old, broken, worn-out little pieces inside you… and it cleans them up and recycles them.

They gave it a long name. But it is only this: your body knows how to repair itself — if you ever give it a quiet hour to do the job."

Yahya thought about this for a while.

"So the Prophet ﷺ knew… before the scientists?"

Inah smiled at the window.

"The Prophet ﷺ always knew, habibi. We were just slow to listen."

"But Inah," said Yahya at last, "I can't do all of it. I don't have a trampoline. I don't have — what was it — moringa. I'm eight."

And here Inah did the thing that made Yahya remember that day forever.

She did not tell him to do all of it.

"Then don't do all of it," she said. "Do one thing. Do one small thing, and do it every single day, and do not stop.

Because listen to me. This is the secret of nearly everything in this whole world:

Small things, done faithfully, every day, become enormous things over time.

You do not need to be rich. You do not need to be young. You do not need perfect anything.

You need a decision."

She looked at him steadily.

"And here is why I made mine. It is not about being pretty, and it is not about living forever — that is not for me to choose anyway. It is because of this:"

"And He did not only mean strong in faith, Yahya. He meant strong. Awake. Able. Present.

Because a body that is tired and heavy and hurting cannot stand in prayer easily. It cannot carry your little cousin on its shoulders. It cannot show up for the people who need you. It cannot serve.

Your health is not only about you. It is about what you are able to give.

And nobody, habibi — nobody in this world — can pour from an empty cup."

That night, Yahya lay in bed thinking about a borrowed bike, and a river with no pump, and a grandmother who beat him to a lemon tree.

And in the morning, before anything else, he did one small thing.

He drank a glass of water, and he said what Inah says every single morning of her life, before her feet even touch the floor:

Alhamdulillah.