I saw something yesterday evening when I was out giving rideshare rides.
I was driving a man to a mosque. The man was white, middle-aged, and dressed in something on the upper end of business-casual attire—in other words, he didn’t look like my preconception of someone whom I would drive to a mosque. But, this being a town with a sizable population of socially liberal, middle-aged white people, I didn’t think much of it, figuring it was either for business or an interfaith event.
The mosque was up in the farther reaches of North Austin, on North Lamar, only a couple miles from where the city formally gives way to its few suburbs. It took a while to get up there, especially in the thick of rush hour, with traffic flowing north from Downtown. The passenger, who was experiencing his first rideshare ride, was particularly interested in the navigation—asking questions, pointing out where to turn, and keeping an eye on my phone, which was directing us via Waze. I’d told him our ETA was close to 6:15 at the beginning of the ride, and he was content with that, but the routine continued: if I was late in changing lanes, he pointed out that I would want to change lanes; when I made a turn, he made a note of what road we were now on and where we would next want to turn; when Waze had us cut through a neighborhood, he reacted audibly and positively. This isn’t particularly unusual or noteworthy, but it did result in my being particularly aware of the exact route we took. Which is how I know that it was right after Caddo Street broke off from Hornsby, after the two briefly intertwined, that the road suddenly became packed with parked cars. And all around the parked cars, like water passing the pillars beneath a bridge, were pedestrians, all of whom were walking in the same direction: towards the mosque.
And at this point, whether because he noticed my curiosity or because he wanted me to know I could just drop him off somewhere close—as opposed to directly in front of the mosque—the passenger told me he was there to attend a funeral.
It turns out Sheikh Mohamed-Umer Esmail died yesterday, though he was just in his mid-40’s. I didn’t know who he was, and there’s a good chance that you, whoever’s reading this, don’t know who he was either. But if you want to read about him, you can do so in this piece from the Statesman, which will tell you more about him than I can. From the sounds of it, and from what I saw yesterday, his was quite a life.
As I was driving back towards more populated areas, I was pinged for another ride: this time for a young couple who seemed to have left their car in the parking lot of a grocery store a mile south of the mosque. They, too, were going to the funeral, and while they chose to catch a ride, dozens of people, even that far away, were making the same trip on foot.
I can’t give a good estimate of how many people attended this funeral. My best guess, though, is that in just those ten minutes I saw well over a hundred souls walking that mile-long stretch of road, across the dead grass and gravel that bounds its five lanes, pouring out of side streets and waiting patiently for officers directing traffic to wave them across. I don’t know when the funeral started, so I don’t know how many minutes or hours before its beginning this was. All I know is that a huge number of people changed their plans in the midst of yesterday to go pay their respects to this imam. People wearing all sorts of clothing. People with varied skin tones. People across all ages.
I drove back towards downtown, not getting another ride request until I was near home in East Austin, at which point I took two women visiting from Pennsylvania to the next stop on their self-designed mural tour of the city. East Austin looked the same as it always does on a Tuesday night. So did Downtown, where I dropped them off. And so, I’d imagine, did the better part of this million-person city, where those who did not know of Sheikh Umer (as my first passenger called him) went about our lives, unaware of the fact that in 100-degree heat, nine miles north, our neighbors were walking across all sorts of dirt and rubbled asphalt to mourn.
So, while I didn’t know this man existed while he lived, I felt like I should tell someone he passed yesterday, and his passing moved a population. Which is why I’m telling you.
