Sameer, 1962
Sorrow is slippery, crafty, and cruel. It sometimes acts coy and allows us to hope, imagine, and envision a life free of its clutches. Only then, after it ensures a modicum of happiness has entered, does sorrow descend to finish what it had started.
Sameer’s line of thinking was occupied. He was rational- izing, evoking different memories, trying not to listen to the man in the white coat.
“We are getting good reports about Vincristine; it’s a new drug, but I am hopeful...”
Sameer, a man of very few words at the best of times, sat dumbstruck and silent. He stopped paying attention after the word ‘hopeful,’ although he’s fairly sure five or six other words succeeded. His wife, Lubna, sat beside him in the util-itarian office. The last time they sat on this exact sofa, about a year and a half ago, in front of this same doctor, they had received good news, excellent news, in fact. They were told that their daughter Faten was in remission and that her bone marrow was back to working properly. After several cycles of treatments, after losing her hair, after losing almost half her original weight and becoming a ghost of her previous self, after spending sleepless nights retching and shivering in one, or sometimes both, of her parents’ arms, her bone marrow had finally started producing normal blood cells instead of only one type of defective cells.
Unlike her husband, Lubna was not a quiet woman; she had questions, she was angry, wanted to lash out, wanted to exact punishment on whatever and whomever had caused this.
“We have never missed a check-up appointment. We have done everything like you said, every test and every exam. Faten was doing great; her last exam was not two months ago. They said she was doing well, she was healthy. What happened?! What did we do wrong?”
“You did nothing wrong. First, she was doing well, now she’s not. These things happen. It’s called a relapse...”
“I know what it’s called!” she snapped at him. “I know what a relapse is.” Then, her voice calmer but still reproachful, “I want to know why?”
“It happens. I’m sorry, and I know it’s a difficult time for you. I understand what you are going through...”
“No, you do not!”
“About fifteen percent of children treated for acute lym- phoblastic leukemia who achieve remission will have a relapse. It’s no one’s fault and certainly not yours.”
Silence prevailed in the room. Sameer was diligently inspect- ing a crack in one of the floor tiles. Lubna’s teeth were metic- ulously working on her cuticles.
Minutes passed. The parents, regardless of temperament, were both resigned. The doctor carried on, “Like I said, this new drug is promising, reports are favorable, and we will start the treatment as soon as Faten’s lab and bone marrow aspira-tion results are back.”
***
Everything happened too fast. Faten was doing so well, they even dared to start planning again for the future, for holidays and birthdays and graduation.
Big House was experiencing a period of festivities. Suad was getting married in less than three weeks. Her friends, much like Suad herself, were rowdy and over at Big House almost daily since the date was set. Every evening, the girls would congregate in Suad’s room under the pretense of help- ing her arrange and pack her belongings in preparation for the move to her new home, and the reality was they were using this as an excuse to dance, eat, and laugh until late into the night, later than they’re typically allowed to stay out, but not too late that eyebrows would be raised. The parents of the young ladies knew the formidable Um Sameer, whom all respected and admired, and none of them opposed her chap-eronage of their daughters. Um Sameer was thrilled over the boisterous bunch, although she might not have been too obvi- ous in parading her delight. She had no objection to them coming over every evening, and her only condition was that her daughters, her twins and the bride-to-be, who were still living at home, would clean everything up after their guests had left and return the house to its spick-and-span status before they went to bed each night. Her girls agreed, and each carried out her chores thoroughly so as not to be deprived of the recurring celebrations.
Faten heard of the festivities in her grandparents’ house and begged her mother and father to take her there. “Please, Mama, just once. I just want to see what they’re up to. I’m sure it’s so much fun. Please. Please. Please!”
“Habibti, my love, are you sure? There won’t be girls there your age. You’ll get bored.”
“Bored! No way. Besides, Mama, have you forgotten that Aunt Feryal and Aunt Fatima are only four years older than me? Please!”
“Ok, we’ll ask Baba to take us tomorrow evening to Big House.”
Tomorrow came, but when the time came to go, Faten said she wasn’t feeling well. Lubna told her to go lie down for half an hour, and if she wasn’t better by then, there was always tomorrow. Half an hour passed and then a full hour, and Faten didn’t feel any better. By the next day, Faten developed a high body temperature. By the evening, the fever had spiked. Alarm bells started to go off when Lubna noticed faint bruising on Faten’s thighs in the days following.
***
Mona and Laila, Sameer’s sisters who lived in the United States, were scheduled to come home to attend their younger sister’s wedding in a week. A year and a half previously, and after Faten’s diagnosis, Sameer and his wife and daughter had trav- eled to the United States and stayed at Laila’s home in Houston while Faten was treated at the Texas Children’s Hospital.
After the recent fever and the bruising, and following an abrupt emergency consult, the overwhelmed parents were told that the cancerous blood cells had returned. Stupefied by the news, Sameer made what he thought at the time, and under the circumstances, the only rational decision: to return to Houston.
“Please, Mother, I beg you, don’t telephone them.” His tone, tired and drained of emotion, revealed that this conver-sation was the last thing in the world he wanted to be having at this moment. “There is no need for the girls to know.”
While he was loath to do so, Sameer had to share the bad news with his parents. The twins were inside, and Suad was out with a friend on a last-minute spree in preparation for her upcoming nuptials, so the three of them sat around the table in the kitchen.
“The doctors have assured me that Faten could receive her treatments here, but I feel that going back to Houston will be better. For her to see her original doctors, they know her case better...” Sameer trailed off, not knowing what to say any-more. He just wanted this nightmare to end.
“That’s why I should ring Laila and Mona. How will you manage in America alone?” Um Sameer said, still insisting that her daughters should know. She felt trapped; she wanted to help her son but didn’t know how.
“Mother, please, I beg you,” Sameer repeated his earlier appeal. “There is no need. I won’t get lost in Houston! The only thing you’ll be doing is spoiling the girls’ fun, and there is nothing they can do for me there. We will manage.”
“But...”
His father interjected, “No buts, Roqaya. He is right. It is bad enough that her brother won’t be at her wedding. Think of Suad; her wedding will go ahead as scheduled. There is nothing we can do about it. So leave it at that.”
There were very few people that could render Um Sameer silent. In fact, there were only three: her parents, both deceased, and her husband.
Abu Sameer was a man of few words, a trait his only son had inherited and perfected. As long as Abu Sameer did not speak, his wife reigned supreme in their home and among their acquaintances. But, conversely, his word was final; Um Sameer had learned a long time ago that the finality of her husband’s words was not to be tested.
“They are bound to notice that their brother is not around. What do we tell them then?” she asked.
“Delay telling them as long as possible,” Sameer answered his mother. “And when you can’t keep the news any longer, tell them we’re there for a check-up and not that the cancer is back. Then, after the wedding, maybe... hopefully, I’ll have better news by then...” Sameer rested his head in his hands and wept.
On that late autumn afternoon, while the three of them sat around the kitchen table in Big House, neither mother nor father knew how to console their only son, so they looked at each other impotently because nothing could prepare a par-ent to deal with this kind of tragedy—the sickness of a helpless child and the hopelessness that ensues from carrying such a burden.
***
The only one who raised any formidable objection to the plan was Faten herself. She demanded to know why it was so necessary to go right now on a trip before she was to see her Auntie Suad dressed in white. And what about the dress that Um Ahmad had labored over especially for her? And all the hours spent on the intricate beading of the bodice will be wasted if she doesn’t get to wear it.
She begged and she pleaded with her parents, “Can’t we wait for another ten days, Baba, please?”
It seemed like a reasonable request; what were ten days in the scheme of things? But the problem that both her par- ents noticed, but neither was willing to express out loud nor acknowledge to the other, was the rapidity of their daughter’s health deterioration. She had been lethargic and experiencing increasing joint pain that worsened each day since the fever began about a week ago. Even while arguing her case, she had difficulty breathing.
The trip was set for two days hence. Theirs was a long and arduous itinerary; they would travel from Amman to Beirut and thence to the States via London. Sameer tried unsuccess- fully to use Faten’s love for flying as an incentive, but to no avail. Instead, Faten threw a terrible tantrum as a last resort to make her parents see it from her point of view.
“It is so unfair; please, Mama, I’ll be good, I promise,” she had told them. Sensing that this whole upheaval in her life was connected to her health issues, she added while lifting her forehead so her father could check her temperature, “I’m feel-ing better already, Baba.”
It ripped them apart and added to their misery. Her anguish sliced through their beings. Telling her no was the most diffi-cult thing either had ever experienced.
Decades later, in another life, Sameer would tell another daughter about the day he refused Faten her last wish. He would explain how it felt when his heart was torn in two and how, with every passing day, the tear grew deeper, not shallower, and the pain got worse, not better.
