A professor and a soul-mother

How a maternal figure is indeed embedded in every woman

“There’s a mother embedded in every girl and woman. In fact, a woman is a perennial mother. Even as a beloved or a wife, it’s the mother in her that guides her other instincts and roles,” wrote Khalil Gibran.

I experienced this when I met my late professor and soul-mother Dr. Zaifa Ashraf at Al-Azhar, Cairo where I went from Oxford at the age of 20 to pursue my PhD in Arabic linguistics under her tutelage.

I lost my biological mother as soon as I was born. So it was obvious that I longed for someone who could give me motherly love and guide me through hardships and happiness that life offers so routinely.

She was a very elegant and stately woman, who taught Arabic literature and linguistics at Al-Azhar, Oxford and Cambridge. Hailing from a royal Muslim family of Pakistan, where her dad was a very high-ranking air force officer, she left Pakistan and Islam for good and turned an atheist at the age of 17.

Though I was fluent in Persian and Arabic, having studied in Tehran, my Urdu was not that good. Apart from guiding me in my PhD thesis in Arabic, she made it a point to teach me the nuances of Urdu, which she spoke with admirable felicity.

She got to know that I never saw my mother. So she became all the more protective and affectionate towards me. When she realised that I was a pure vegetarian and getting vegetarian meals was rather difficult at the Research Students’ Hostel, she’d bring home-made vegetarian food for me. I loved her

aloo matar and mushroom, which she cooked for me with motherly love. She found a department store in Cairo run by a Pakistani-Punjabi expatriate, where tinned

sarson da saag was available. She would cook

sarson da saag, which I’d have with naan and dollops of butter as

makke di roti was not available there. I soon got to know that Dr. Zaifa was also a vegetarian like me.

On Mothers’ Day, I gifted her a shawl and wrote in Urdu: Ammijaan ke liye Sumit ki jaanib se (From Sumit to his mom). She cried like a baby and hugged me. We both cried. From that day, I stopped calling her ma’am/Professor Ashraf. I started calling her ammi (mom) .

Two and a half years just glided by. I finished my PhD with an A-1 grade. She was immensely happy and proud like a mother. Meanwhile, I got an opportunity to visit India and pursue research in the lost dialects of the sub-continent.

I asked her, “ Ammi, aap Hindustan chalengi?” And she said, “ Mera beta mujhe jahaan le jayega,main chaloongi” (I'll go wherever my son takes me). I came to India along with her in December 2003.

She lived with me in Pune. In July 2009, she was diagnosed with cancer, and after a year breathed her last on December 24, 2010 at the Marsden Royal Cancer Hospital in London.

Her last wish was that her body be draped in the shawl that I had gifted her on Mothers’ Day. She passed away holding my hand. Since she didn’t belong to any particular faith, her mortal remains were neither burnt nor entombed. She donated her body to the cancer hospital for medical research.

I still remember her every day. There was no blood relation with my Zaifa ammi but she was much more than a biological mother to me. She was my soul-mom.

Mama, I love and miss you every second.

sumitmaclean@hotmail.com