Gathering at Dawn

My mother gathers us before the sun thinks to rise

We stumble from sleep, pulled by the smell of something sweet frying in ghee. My sister's dupatta is inside out. My brother has mismatched socks. No one cares. This is Eid.

Dadi sits in her corner, shaped to her spine over forty years, already dressed, already prayed. Her fingers work prayer beads like she's counting secrets—all those years gathered into grooves on sandalwood, smooth as river stones.

"Come," Mama says, and we come.

kitchen is small for all of us, but we press in anyway. Shoulders touching. Elbows in ribs. window fogs from steam and breath and all our bodies in one room, and through it, the world is soft-edged, gentler than it really is.

Daddy gathers the men—my uncles smell like aftershave and attar, their kurtas crisp in a way that won't last past noon. They speak in that low rumble men use when they think women aren't listening, but we always are. We gather everything.

At mosque, we line up in rows that stretch and stretch. All those backs bending together, rising together, like wheat in wind. Like we're one thing made of many things. Someone's crying baby. Someone's off-key voice. It doesn't matter. We gather anyway.

Afterwards, chaos.

Cousins suddenly taller, suddenly engaged, suddenly fathers. Aunties comparing jewelry and asking why I'm not married yet—I'm twenty-two, Auntie, please—and loading my plate until it's heavy as their questions. Children gather coins in small fists, counting like the numbers might multiply.

But here's what I gather:

Way my grandmother's hand weighs almost nothing when she touches my face. How my mother hums the same song her mother hummed, neither knowing they're doing it. That my nephew says my name wrong—"Mapa" instead of "Maira"—and I never correct him because his wrong sounds more right than anyone's right.

I gather the sound of my father laughing, really laughing, the kind that creases his whole face into joy.

I gather the moment before we eat, when we're quiet, when even the children stop squirming, and someone says a prayer I don't fully understand but feel completely.

Later, when everyone's gone and the house smells like cardamom, rose water, and too many bodies, my mother gathers the dishes. My father gathers scattered shoes by the door. My grandmother gathers her prayer beads again, gathers the day into memory.

And I stand in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, between the day that was and the night coming, and I gather this:

The way love looks when it's loud.

Way belonging tastes like my mother's sheer korma.

The way family feels like too many people in too small a space and somehow that's exactly the right size.

I gather these moments like my grandmother gathers prayers—one by one, each a bead on a string I'm making, long enough to wrap around all of us, to hold us even when we scatter, to pull us back when it's time, again, to gather.