Dear Hass,

Let me just preface that, in life, Hassan Wharton-Ali, there are only two absolutes: doing what is right/write and simply choosing not to.

I don’t see a way back this time for us, but in the spirit of how verbose and dramatic I can be, I am going to write this to you within the court of public opinion in hopes that you realize you have one shot at parents. Odd that I have to remind you when you have three of your own children and I have three stepchildren. Our religion has taught us to love stepchildren as our own and that heaven exists under your mother’s feet with your father needing respect after fulfilling that covenant. Seeing as we once shared the same parents, just as I always advise Khalid for the sake of his soul, this life is temporary: do the right/write thing. And start with the right intention, even if you mess up, God knows your intention and that’s all we’ve got. I wonder if Mary Redclay ever taught you that…probably not; you dropped out of Pali before you could have had her as a senior. Ironic that she taught English. Ironic that she and mom had variations of the same name: Mom was named Mariam because it was the Arabic version of Mary because Colonel Saab wanted to name her after his grandmother, Mary Allen and the blessed virgin, Mary. Nani agreed if she got to have a Persian middle name and that’s why so many people in Nani’s family called Mom Scherzad. Did you know that? Did you also know some people don’t like Mary Redclay?

Let’s be real and reel: Not everybody likes me and that’s perfectly all right. I am by no means perfect and can be a bit outspoken and opinionated. Not everybody liked Mom, but her detractors were in short supply, thanks to her dignity and support for every soul she encountered. Even though you have been indoctrinated by that family since you were 16 and three decades on firmly on the side of your in-laws, this might be a hard one for you to swallow: Not everybody likes Mary Redclay.

A woman in my post fires trauma group knows her for five decades, knows your wife since she was in pigtails, and even knows your children. Her exact words? “Now I’ve been thinking about the dislike that the Redclays had for your mother, Mary was a very old style revolutionary hippie type. In her world, there is always an ENEMY…I suspect that your mother may have embodied everything that Mary hated about the establishment, what she saw as upper middle class pretension.” On balance, one of the other women in my group adores your mother in law and shared Mary was highly influential in her development at Pali, so that’s great. The point I am making your marriage is your life. What it is not allowed to do is take from my brother, my father, and me because your wife and in laws justify their cruelty in how much they hated Mom. Nowhere was that more evident than your wife wearing clothes to a mosque she didn’t even wear in real life: tight black sweater, a sequined skirt with tassels and a slit, and black high heels as though out for chicken and waffles at Roscoe’s, one of your favorite romantic date nights. But, truth is, Hassan, you obviously encouraged that. Or maybe she didn’t understand how religious and bereft Colonel Saab was to be burying his daughter in his traditions that I don’t know how the hell he pulled it off the day before her burial. After she died, he refused to let the coroners take Mom’s dead and lifeless body, standing guard over it and insisting she was going from her death bed to the ground and not to the morgue because she would be scared to be by herself that he sat a tragic vigil….but I digress…

My point is Mom was completely justified in also being that protective of her children, especially you. You as the youngest got away with things Khalid and I could never have dreamed of. Such a small example but we NEVER slept in the same bed with our parents and for some reason, you didn’t want to sleep anywhere else, even when I moved downstairs and you had my room. She had you on her lap for years, another indulgence she didn’t afford us as she was very formal with us in the beginning, sending us to the lycée in Toronto, for swimming and tennis lessons, ice hockey for Khalid. She had high hopes for your life and it’s ironic that Mary as an educator couldn’t see that. Mom thought you were very intelligent, but willful. She took Scott Wagenseller to Pali when they requested a disciplinary review and Dad was working in Vegas. She saw a bright future for you. She appreciated that her mother in law, Edith, was a physician and a Harvard MPH and just as she sent her son to Harvard for mechanical engineering, Mom wanted that for you.

She said it to Mary. She questioned how as a mother Mary could be encouraging her 21 year old daughter to have a relationship with her 16 year old son. She didn’t want you dropping out of Pali and considered filing charges. She wanted you to have time to be young and free and not saddled with responsibilities. But, you and Alethea had other plans and when you had your first child at 21, even though Mom was beside herself, thinking your life was over, she embraced your children and Alethea. All was forgiven. I babysat them and had great relationships with the best part of the two of you: those three boys. But, when Mom died, it became all about the money and how you could control the estate. Protracted legal battles, The O’Reilly’s and Ron Bass supporting me when Colonel Saab said I had the right to sue for what was mine, all of the ugliness.

And I have let it go for ME: all the checks Alethea wrote when I wasn’t well enough to balance my life in grief, all the money that went to mortgages I asked her to pay, but then strangely when my properties with Mom were sold I received zero profit participation. You both walked into my place when I was in Toronto and took things as simple as Edith’s tea trolley as though it was yours, never to be seen again by me. You screwed me on money I earned and co-mingled with Mom that Colonel Saab couldn’t remember your name at the end of his life and was angry with me that I didn’t put you in jail for the illegal way you and Shamonki transferred my property, that anybody with BlockShopper can see. And when I saw screaming my truth was ruining my life so markedly that I couldn’t bring myself to be with a man like Tyler when his parents were so good to me and I couldn’t introduce Dad because you and Alethea would call the police when I tried to go to the office. I remember the time the guard at Sienna wouldn’t let Colonel Saab in as much as he was begging that Hamid has been his son in law for 40 years, he would never stop his father in law at the gate. You stopped him at the gate. I swallowed it all for your children, but the thing is Hassan, Khalid and I are also our mother’s children, and way more importantly than us, Hamid worked on knees that didn’t support him properly to see his patients until he was 80. He was all alone in Las Vegas and never replaced Mom, even though you told me (which made my skin crawl) that less than six months after Mom died you were trying to get Mary and Dad to get together. Gross…

It is all Hamid’s money, full stop.

I fought to get him back to The Palisades when you dumped him in some random place across from a tire shop in Anaheim. I didn’t move back in with Hamid to be his primary caregiver even though he repeatedly offered. His fall was completely your fault. Your family brought COVID to him (I taught online) I told you on May 17th, 2023, he was unsteady on his feet before I left and you let him fall in the shower when he was sick with the virus. I know it wasn’t intentional, but it was marked by neglect and you not listening to me yet again. You wouldn’t let me stay longer than what you prescribed. Sure that was an accident, but I had to pay to move back to the Palisades AT GREAT PERSONAL EXPENSE to be able to change diapers and take care of him now that he couldn’t walk anymore. And it was a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of riches he afforded me. We were rolling along before the fires and you said in the hotel after if I didn’t take him, you would put him in a home, so I did. And you still owe me some of the rent on the Culver City rental. And now you refuse to let him go back TO HIS HOME still standing while he languishes in that sh*t hole of a rehab center when he has the means to have a private nurse and his dignity? And you are trying to sell to Khalid and me that you’re MOM?

You’re not, Hassan Wharton-Ali.

My mother would never let this happen to Hamid or anybody else, frankly. She believed in justice, dignity, and caring for the elderly evidenced by the fact that she built a downstairs apartment in her Toronto home for her parents and after her mother died, your grandfather would live with us for a quarter of the year he wasn’t traveling in the path of Allah. That’s the family we came from, but clearly The Redclays think differently. They can hate us, but your wife happily spends money on her children my mother earned for hers. And that’s not right or write.

Hamid is slowly dying staring at a wall in the strangeness of his dementia that wasn’t that bad when he was with me, but is getting increasingly worse. And if he dies before I do, well, let’s be honest I will never forgive you or your family for precipitating this. He was thriving with me, but I couldn’t keep him when I went back to The Palisades because you are the POA and every lawyer I spoke to said I would lose challenging it. So, in fairness, even though breaking relations is a big sin, I will face my maker knowing I tried as hard as I could. Was I perfect? Absolutely not. Did I involve the whole planet and then some in this almost Shakespearean saga? I am guilty as charged and by the way, I don’t regret the arrest, either. You not bailing me out was one of the best and most painful realizations for me. You don’t love the only sister you had, which is one of the greatest heartbreaks of my life. I really loved you at one point and that love extended to your sons. But, you have made it amply clear where we stand and I can’t ignore it. I made my peace a long time ago for me because I thought you would take better care of my father.

I just didn’t think you had it in you to do this to Hamid when he’s so vulnerable, thereby destroying any chance of reconciliation. I hope Mary Redclay approves as that is the only approval you have ever valued. Maybe she will give you an A plus for your loyalty to her and her family. You’re probably her best student. Or not.

I suspect she appreciates her other son in law, Rich Robinson, more because he’s famous and The Black Crowes are pretty bad ass admittedly.

FWA