It was by sheer accident that I ended up at Masjid Ar-Rahman, the first mosque built in Jamaica. After a last-minute booking and some frantic WhatsApp exchanges, I was set to meet a friend of a friend outside a mosque in Spanish Town. “Sister Farnaz from Guyana” were the only identifying details she disclosed after a few voice-note pleasantries. “Aina, are you SURE you’ll be OK?” Giovanni, my host, gripped the steering-wheel tightly as he parked outside the mosque. Tesha Miller, one of Jamaica’s most notorious gang leaders who was on trial for murder, hailed from Spanish Town. A State of Emergency had been declared in St Catherine, the parish Spanish Town belonged to two months before. None of this crossed my mind as I flung the car door open and dismissed Giovanni’s protestations with a naive wave of my hand. “Don’t worry Gio. My friend is going to meet me here in ten minutes”, I assured him. An hour later, there was no sign of Sister Farnaz. - Except for two small minarets topped with a crescent and moon, the mosque was inconspicuous. It was painted white and emerald green, a homage to the prophet Muhammad’s favourite colour and the Jamaican flag no doubt. A cloud of mosquitos hung over me in the 30-degree heat, ready to nose-dive into my flesh as I sat on a plastic chair inside the deserted mosque. Who built this mosque in the middle of nowhere, I wondered? A woman from the school next door, the only sign of life, passed by the mosque window. I asked if she knew anything. “The mosque's leader, Naeem Khan and his wife live across the road”, she said. “But he just left for work. Why don’t you speak to his wife?” - Her name was Zanifa. A large, gregarious woman with a sweeping brown hijab that reached the floor, Zanifa wore orange-tinted glasses with round, elongated lenses that made it look as though she was constantly peering at you. She spoke with relish about the small, thriving community both her and her husband had built, he as the religious leader of the mosque, and she as the community cook, spreading her culinary magic with a fusion of recipes from her beloved home-land, Trinidad, her father’s Indian heritage, and Jamaica, her adopted home. “I’m Trini first, Jamaican second my dear girl”, she puffed with pride as she gestured to her daughter Bashira to bring the honourable guest (me apparently) pholouri - Trinidadian dumplings - ackee – which looked and tasted like a yellow variation of avocado - salt-fish, and a side of sweet onion chutney. "Warm dem properly, ya don't wanna poison our guest!" she shouted as Bashira bustled around the kitchen. Spreading out old newspaper cuttings about the Khan’s family history in front of me, Zanifa divulged the story of the mosque. After enslaved Africans were emancipated in 1833, sugar-cane plantation owners in Jamaica turned to 'indentured labour', a legalised form of slavery. Naeem’s father, an Indian migrant named Muhammad Khan, was one of those labourers. He built the mosque in 1957 when Jamaica’s Muslim population was non-existent. Almost 60 years later, it had grown to 5,000, a mix of Indian diaspora and Jamaican converts. By this point, Sister Farnaz finally made her appearance. “Come now Zanifa, ya stealin’ ma British friend?” she said accusingly. Zanifa laughed jovially. “Come back tomorrow so I can stuff you good, ya hear?!” she said to me, dismissing my British humble-brag of “I don’t want to be any trouble” with a comical roll of her eyes. Like a moth to the flame, back to Zanifa’s I went. Over the next week, I sampled her mango curry, corned beef, freshly barbecued jerk chicken, pomegranate molasses juice, deep-fried red snapper fish, and even her chocolate spong cake. I arrived at Aunty Zanifa's doorstep, a mosquito-bite ridden Londoner, gaunt from millennial burnout. The maternal spirit that she was, she enveloped me in the cocoon of her warmth. I left her home with so much more than a rotund stomach. For what did I know that I had been inducted into the Khan family, my Jamaican kin who shared the same surname.