I think there is a very particular mercy in being born to a woman who writes, or at least to a woman who sees a world worth writing about. It was Arabic that I first learned, writing along the page in a direction I would later fight to un- learn-from the right to the left. I like to think that I learned to write first from her, though she didn’t teach me English in my earliest youth. My mother wrote, as you wrote and still write. Malik was your only, and I was my mother’s youngest. How he held on for eight hours before finally succumbing. I had read the stories of how there was an older twin, Mikal, born into the world mere seconds before Malik was born, suffering from the same kidney afflictions. I had read the stories about how Malik was born with his kidneys half the size of a normal kidney-begging Him for mercy from the moment you brought him into the world. You are not obligated to believe this, of course, but I imagine there are ways in which specific types of loss make kin out of folks who are not kin. When I heard the news, I do admit that I thought first of you. You, a mother, now longing for a living son. I know what it is to be a son and long for a living mother. We are maybe each other, through two different mirrors. Phife Dawg passed away in March 2016. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest is now available for purchase. This letter is addressed to the mother of Phife Dawg (Malik Izaak Taylor), member of A Tribe Called Quest, along with Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammed.
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