Healing through Art, Music, Literacy, and Herbal Medicine: A Black Muslim Mother’s Legacy
My story couldn’t be told without my mother’s story.
My mother’s maternal grandmother was born into slavery on a plantation. My grandmother made the decision to migrate from Mississippi to live in the South Side of Chicago, where she met a man with two young daughters whom she soon afterwards married. My grandmother was a hardworking Baptist Christian woman who cleaned houses and hotels until her knees ached, and my grandfather got a well-paying job working for the railroad train station. They raised my mom and her two step-sisters. They were a loving, close family who went from a one-bedroom apartment to eventually buying a house in the South Side of Chicago.
My mom married and had a family of her own at a very young age. In those days, women and men married young, and my mother and her siblings were no exception. Early in my mother’s life, she developed a nurturing soul. She cared about people. Her family and other people's health and well-being became a mission for her and a part of her natural character. She was constantly studying and learning the various dimensions of holistic healing. This passion led her to become an herbalist who worked with holistic herbal medicines.
My mom also had an eye for beauty in design, cuisine, apparel, art, and more. She loved plants and had a green thumb heavier than a 10 oz metal piece of gold. She was an interior designer with little means and a true home chef who made meals that were a fusion of soul food and Middle Eastern, African, and Indo-Pakistani cuisines. Her recipe book, which was never published, was titled “Poor Girl’s Budget, with Rich Girl’s Taste.” My mom was also a seamstress, a painter, an artist of many sorts. By trade she was a food service manager, a dietitian, a cook and baker, and an entrepreneur.
I was about three years old when my mother was introduced to Islam and soon took the Islamic oath of faith (Shahada). My earliest memories of her praying were with a sheet of paper by her side, next to her in prayer, as she memorized the words in English and in Arabic. She loved Allah and the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) very deeply, and she had this yearning and this love of Allah in her heart and in her prayers.
I feel like my mom had many lives and transformed into many people from decade to decade. My mom became a single mother after divorcing, lost some of her children through childbirth, murder, and health conditions, raised two Deaf children and made sure they were educated in American Sign Language and Deaf culture.
Yet against the odds, my mother developed into a saintly, streetwise, strong Black Muslim woman who held her family down and prayed for them and cared for so many other people. If anyone in the family or the community—even a grown adult—needed extra care, my mom was there. I would hear adult men call her “Umm” (Arabic for “mother”).
My mom, a spiritual woman, understood the assignment, her heart open to the people of the streets. She was the secret philanthropist, a hidden humanitarian, a rare beautiful gem, and a phenomenal mother. She raised 7 children, some nieces and nephews, several grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and adopted my little brother. She was a foster parent, a shelter parent, and she became what I would call a professional mom to all who needed some love. If she couldn’t take someone into her own home, she would find ways to provide food and other essentials with or without them knowing. The awareness of Allah’s mercy and bounty to nurture those around her became a pathway for my mom to serve her community.
When I was growing up my mom made our home, especially during Ramadan, so special and unforgettable. My mother made the experience of Islam beautiful in my eyes, down to the clothes that she sewed for the family when I was little. I remember the heavy polyester and nylon dresses and hijabs my mom sewed for my sisters and me. The weight of the cloth was so heavy on my little body.
As time passed, my mom eventually started ordering and selling the latest Islamic goods, like hijabs, abayas, thobes, kuffs (leather socks), and perfumed oils for the Muslim women and men to purchase. My mother’s home became a little mecca for the Muslim community, with visitors gathering for my mother’s home-cooked meals or personal library or mini storefront. She stocked Islamic literature for people to study. Walking into our house was experiencing a synergy of smells and sounds, with the aromas of black seed oils, uod, musk, rotisserie curry chicken, BBQ beef, roasted lamb shanks, bean pies, and my mom’s traditional Ramadan date-nut bread baking in the oven. You would hear voices of children in the background and voices of those reciting prayers, telling stories of pious Muslims, and learning stories of the prophets of Allah.
The energy, the foods, the people, the colors, the sounds, the clothes, and the culture was amazing. The community that formed around my mother extended far beyond our own racial background. It wasn’t just the Black community who visited—I remember Muslims from the Middle East, Africa, Indo-Pakistani community, white sisters and brothers coming into our home.
My mother and her community were pioneers, and they were fearless. I have a vivid memory, from when I was around seven or eight years old, of my mother and I traveling with her fellow Muslim sisters and brothers. I remember them stopping to pray on the side of the road when the time of prayer came in, with their beautiful and colorful hijabs and kifayahs blowing into the wind as they made salat (prayer) next to the highway. It didn’t matter where we were, what we were doing, or who was around—praying to Allah always came first.
As an artist, my mother expressed her faith through her innate creativity. One of my favorite memories of my mom is her painting one of the walls in our home and turning it into a mural of Islamic art. She was painstakingly careful and detailed, taking time with each shape, each layer. She shaped my love of Islamic art of all forms—painting, literature, music, cooking, or interior decorating. For me, she exemplified Islamic excellence.
Zakkiyya’s mother Aziza in front of her mural with her family. The dresses in these photos were made by Aziza.
By the end of her life, my mother was the glue that held our family and community together. At her funeral, countless community members came to me with stories of how my mother had supported them. “I got my first hijab from your mom,”; “Your mom taught me how to cook,”; “I have had this bottle of uod from your mom since 1993, and I only wear a drop on special occasions”; “Your mom gave me my first book on Islam,” they told me. On that day, I realized how my mother had spread her love of Islam and her sincere and genuine concern for humanity far and wide. At Umm’s janazah (funeral), I remembered her words for my grandmother, who became Muslim toward the end of her life. My mom would always give gifts to people and say, “Sadaqah jariah, please make dua for my mother.”
Within the close-knit community that my mother had cultivated, my role from a young age was being entrusted with teaching younger children. I would care for my older siblings’ children, impressing upon them the value of education and literature that my mom had taught me.
Even though my family members and I were all intelligent, creative, talented, and motivated, some of us fell behind in the classroom setting. With too few early interventions, some missed out on key educational milestones and ended up struggling with literacy. Seeing this struggle made me passionate about early childhood education, which is so critical in setting up a child for future success, both inside and outside of the classroom.
I attended Minneapolis College’s urban teacher education program, and it was there that I learned the public achievement model, which instructed us to think of teaching as coaching and mentoring. So, rather than standing at the front of the classroom and giving instructions, we were to collaborate closely with our students and guide them in the process of self-discovery. This pedagogy aligned with my own belief that children are already brilliant—they just require some guidance from their educators.
Now, I assist in teaching kindergarten and first grade at a local charter school, and I also serve as a behavior specialist. My first instinct as an educator is to listen, to be sensitive, and to engage in learning alongside my students. That approach is key to ensuring that nobody is left behind, especially when it comes to literacy. When I notice that one of my students is falling behind, I sound the alarm to my admin and teacher colleagues, and the system we have in place allows us to work together as a team to take the necessary interventions.
I’m also passionate about linguistic diversity and language-learning. I work with students who speak Somali and Oromo. I’m trying to learn their language and share my love of American Sign Language with them—as someone who grew up with Deaf family members, I know firsthand what a beautiful, rich language it is. I’m always trying to be an advocate of Deaf people and Deaf culture in the schools where I work and in my own family and community.
Bringing kindness, love of learning, and real concern about the individual child in my classroom is my daily mission. I love to express this mission in the form of art, culture, music, storytelling, literacy, good penmanship, and even in assisting in creating laughter from children. For me, learning should be fun—to smile at someone is an act of charity in Islam, an act of kindness, and an act of faith.
My love for children came first when I helped my siblings raise their children and later when I became a parent. I am thankful for my own children and grandson. My daughter is a passionate and talented artist, writer, poet, educator, and humanitarian. My son is a brilliant, sensual/spiritual songwriter, musician, composer, who also is an outspoken educator/mentor to Black youth in tech. He is a software engineer raising my grandson as a single parent after my grandson lost his mom last year. It brings tears to my eyes to see how much they have taken what my mom and I have given them and run even further. My mother’s legacy of healing through holistic herbal medicines and through love; her love of beauty and Islamic traditions; her appreciation for Islamic Black culture, perfumed oils, flavorful foods, art, music, literacy, traditional education exceeds all that her enslaved grandmother could have ever imagined.
Life comes back full circle. In fact, it was my daughter who encouraged me to apply for the Small Business Incubation program at RISE and to invest in my own entrepreneurial dream, with my newly founded business, NURA ARTS, which is about healing hearts through the love of art. The support, the encouragement from all the women at the Sisterhood has been overwhelming to me, and words can’t describe how I feel about this new adventure.
I want to continue my mother’s legacy by sharing my love of Islamic arts, music, literacy, and Islamic black culture. I want to honor my family, those who were here before me, those who arrived here on slave ships. I stand on their shoulders. I am only four generations away from slavery.
Thank you Allah for my kind mother, my loving grandmother, my aunties, my sisters, my brothers, and my own children. Umm, you were an excellent mother, a wonderful role model, and I miss you so very much. I pray to Allah that He showers you with his ever-lasting love, mercy, and forgiveness. I pray to Allah to help us continue your legacy, the legacy of healing hearts through love, beauty, kindness, and hope, Ameen.