Iāve always carried my death with me. perhaps saying so is trite, an observation the dying always make. But Iām not like other people, in this as in everything else, or so I like to believe. And I do believe it, truly. I said as much when Masood died. Our time was always borrowed. We werenāt supposed to be alive. We should have died in the revolution. In its aftermath. In the war. But I was given thirty more years. More than half my life. Itās a considerable length of time, something to be grateful for. The same length as my daughterās life. Yes, thatās one way to see it. I was allowed to create her. But she didnāt need me this long. No one did. You think because youāre a parent, youāre needed. Itās not true. People find a way to get by. Who says I was worth more than the trouble I caused? I donāt believe it. Iām not the type who gives more than I take. I should be. Iām a mother, after all. Itās my job to bear the weight, bear it for others. But I never have, not for anyone.
āYou have at most six months left to live,ā the fucking witch says to me. She says it like sheās delivering some trivial but unfortunate news. In the same tone of voice the daycare teacher used to tell me that someone hit Aram. A little bit sad. A little bit guilty. And the witch doesnāt even look at me while she says it, just stares into her computer screen. As if that contains the truth. As if the screen were the one being harmed. Then the tears start running down her cheeks, and she stares down at her lap. Now sheās the victim. She needs comfort.
Shut up! I want to scream. Who are you to tell me Iām going to die. Who are you to weep, as if my life has anything to do with you. But I donāt scream. Not this time. I surprise myself.
āI want to speak to your supervisor,ā I say instead.
She seems taken aback. Probably thinks that was the wrong reaction. Thinks I should be weeping too.
āI know this is hard . . . hard to hear. But it doesnāt matter who you talk to,ā she says. āThe CT scan, the test results. Theyāre indisputable. You have cancer. And itās . . . itās quite advanced.ā
She falls silent and looks at me. Waiting for my face to confirm that I understand. But it doesnāt, so she continues.
āItās stage four. Cancer. That means you donāt have much time.ā
āShut up!ā Now I do say it. āIām a nurse. Iāve worked in health care for twenty-five years. I know youāre not allowed to say that to me. You have no idea how long I have left. Youāre not God!ā
She backs up in her chair, upset. She must be in her thirties, with her hair held high in two childish pigtails. A photo of a baby stands on her desktop. I shake my head. She has no clue what she knows or doesnāt know.
We sit in silence, until she wipes her tears onto her sleeve and leaves. I sit frozen for a moment, then reach for my purse and take out my phone. I should call someone. I should call my daughter. Say: Hello, my cursed little crow. Now your mother is going to die too.
Damn. I try to write a text message to Zahra instead. But I erase it. What do you say? Hello, friend, so much struggle, and now itās over. I canāt.
I hear two voices approaching, the doctor and her supervisor. They stop outside the door. Whispering. Itās obvious they donāt face death often here at this GP clinic. Theyāre discussing who should go inside and talk to me. I understand. They want to get on with their day. Move on to the next patient. Not fall behind. The last thing they want to do is take shit from some dying woman. I consider my options. Should I just pack up and go? Spare them. Spare myself. I grab my coat. Itās red. I reach for my purse. Also red. I look down at my boots. Red. All the banalities I care about. Cared about. My hands start to shake, then my shoulders. I drop my purse onto the floor. Trying to hold back the sob rising in my body. At that very moment, they open the door. Step inside. Look at me. I see how theyād like to turn and go. I donāt want to scare them. I try to smile. But it washes over me. What they donāt know. What nobody in this fucking country knows, even when they know so much. About pain and loss and struggle. I start to cry. I cry, and I cry. She cries too, the first doctor. Poor thing. She thinks she has something to cry about.
Still, she apologizes. the older doctor. Says they have no idea how long Iāll live. Could be a few weeks, or a few years.
āBut you will die from this cancer,ā she says. āItās best youāre open about it, tell your nearest and dearest. Especially your children . . .ā
You tell my child, I think. But I must not say it out loud, because she continues.
āIt will be difficult, of course. Being honest with your children can be very difficult. But they deserve to know. They need to prepare themselves.ā
I look questioningly at her. She doesnāt understand what Iām wondering, but I assume she knows thereās no other way I can look at her.
āMasood just died . . . her father. He died very recently,ā I say.
She nods.
āHe died suddenly. Donāt you think thatās better? For Aram, for my daughter? Than having to live with this death. Wait for it. Wouldnāt it be better if I just up and die one day?ā
āI donāt know,ā she says. As if I were expecting a real answer. āBut youāre going to need your daughter. This wonāt be easy.ā
She holds out a brochure. How to prepare for death, or something like that. I shake my head.
āIām not going to die! Iām going to fight. I want to start treatment right away!ā
She hesitates.
āYes, weāre referring you to an oncologist. But youāll have to wait a bit to get in. Itās the Easter holiday soon. It may take a while before youāre in treatment, Nahid.ā
I lean forward in my chair.
āBut you told me Iām going to die. Iāll die if we do nothing. This is an emergency!ā
She shakes her head.
āCancer is not an emergency. A few weeks wonāt matter, Nahid.ā
āWhat do you mean, what is it if itās not an emergency?ā
āWell, cancer is considered a chronic disease.ā
I raise my eyebrows.
āChronic? How can it be chronic if Iām going to die soon?ā
āIām sorry.ā
She leans against the doorjamb. She hasnāt even stepped into the room. She stopped there, on the other side of the room. As if it were contagious. Cancer. Death.
āIām sorry.ā
I stand up.
āDonāt apologize. Iām not dead yet.ā
I pull out my lipstick and apply it to my lips. Show her Iām strong. Then I leave. Walk right past her. They call after me, but I walk on. Hurrying, hurrying to keep myself from turning around and throwing myself into her arms to beg for comfort. Beg for sincere promises and solace.
Itās only when I get home that I see the mascara running down my face. The lipstick smeared outside the edges of my lips. I look frightening. Like Iām the witch. A scarecrow. A dummy. A dead person. Someone who has no idea what itās like to be alive.
I have six months left to live. or a few weeks. Or a few years. I sit down on the sofa without washing my face. Just sit there with my hands in my lap wondering what to do now. What do you do when they tell you youāre dying.
Hampers of paper stand on the rug. Theyāve been there for months, maybe years. Iāve always supposed if I leave them out Iāll finally get around to sorting them. Solving them. Perhaps thatās what I should do now. Go through my papers. Make sure everythingās in order. Old phone bills. Account statements. Tax forms. It occurs to me there was never any reason for those hampers after all. Everything can be thrown away. Might as well toss it all.
Aram can do it. Later. Afterward.
I pick up a notebook and pen from the table. Start scribbling. Realize all my notes are in those hampers, too. Maybe I should throw at least the notes away. What will she think if she reads them. Sheāll find out how lonely I was. How angry I was. I should want to protect her, but I donāt. Let her! Let her feel my pain. I know itās wrong, that my maternal instincts should tell me otherwise. But they donāt, so I let it be.
My pen scratches across the paper. I want to know what Iām leaving behind. When I divorced Masood, he took everything. I didnāt get anything. Iāve been collecting ever since. Accumulating, building. Building up my security. My future. And now there isnāt one. I laugh out loud. There is no future. Think if people knew. You put so much time into planning for the future, and then it doesnāt even exist. Who would have thought.
Would I have lived differently if Iād known? Skipped all those back-to-back shifts? Lived on credit cards, left behind huge debts? Iām not sure. Maybe. Probably. I mean, why not. What would have stopped me?
I write it all down. The apartment I live in. The gold jewelry in my safe-deposit box. Those damn Telia shares they tricked us into buying. The money in my savings account. The emergency stash in the closet. I write it all down, count it up. It adds up to a lot. A lot of money!
First I think: Thatās a lot of money for somebody like me. But then, no, thatās wrong. There are plenty of people who were born here, who grew up in this country, who donāt, canāt, couldnāt gather that kind of money. Theyāre too comfortable, too lazy. They donāt have what I have. Theyāve left nothing behind.
Itās not just a lot of money for somebody like me. Itās a lot of money. A lot of money for Aram. If she doesnāt think so, she can shove it! A war baby. She should be grateful. She will be grateful, I know that. The money will do her more good than me. She has more of a chance to live, to be alive. Not just because Iām dying. But because I never had it. The ability to just live. What I was born with, born into, was the ability to survive. I grew up to survive. Thatās not the same as living. I donāt know if my daughter has the ability to survive. Maybe, she was almost born in an air-raid shelter. But not her friends. Not children born in Sweden.
That reminds me of the doctor at the clinic. And her tears. What does she have to cry about?
My mother was married off when she was nine years old. Itās difficult for me to even say those words. Iām ashamed of them. Itās like Iām condoning it just by mentioning it. So I donāt. She was nine years old, and my father was twenty-seven. That wasnāt unusual, back then. But I donāt think the fact that it was ordinary made any difference to her. That it affected what it felt like for her to be forced to leave her parents and start a sexual relationship with an unknown adult man.
I canāt be angry with my father; he did what one did. But I think of that little girl, who she was, and the thought of her evokes more maternal feelings from me than Iāve had even for my own child. I think of that girl, how if I could have saved her, Iād have also saved myself. If I could save her, I could save my daughter, too.
My mother was twelve when she gave birth to Maryam. My heart bleeds for both of them. A twelve-year-old with a baby in her arms. A baby with a twelve-year-old as her fixed point in the world. I donāt know what happened inside her. But I think she shut down. I think thatās the only thing you can do. A twelve-year-old with a baby in her arms. What good could we do her?
She ended up on her own, young. When my father died, she was only thirty-seven years old and the mother of seven. It made no practical difference that he disappeared. Heād been ill for a long time. Maybe he was just another child to her. I donāt know. She didnāt talk about him. She didnāt talk about men. In all our wedding photos, she holds herself up straight, the proud mother of the bride, but she never smiles. Men and marriage were a necessary evil in her eyes. Or maybe not even necessaryāmaybe just unavoidable shit.
My mother. How she suffered during the revolution. You think that a woman whoād given birth to seven daughters might get some peace of mind. No sons to send to war. No sons to mourn. But it was the wrong decade, or we were the wrong kind of women. We fought in the streets, and she sat up nights. Waiting, pacing, weeping.
A few weeks. half a year. a few years. does it make a difference? Iām not sure. They are different amounts of time. I understand that. But what difference does time make at this point? What will I do with time? Sick time. Alone time. Time spent waiting to die. What do you do with time, if youāre not building a future? I donāt know. And I think that might be why. Maybe thatās why this is happening to me, maybe thatās why the cancer chose me. Because I donāt know what to do with time. Because I donāt know what to do with life.
I canāt stand it, not that thought.
I get up and grab my phone. Dial a number. Itās the only number I can call.
āAllo!?ā
I see her in front of me. See her sink down on the stool by her landline, sighing deeply before picking it up. She expects bad news. She prepares for it in self-defense.
āSalam, Maman.ā I swallow hard, trying to push down whatās welling up.
āNahid? Nahid, is that you? Did something happen, is everything all right?ā
āEverythingās fine. Very good. I . . . I just miss you.ā
āThatās life, Nahid. Thatās life.ā
We both fall silent for a moment, then she starts telling me the usual. About her neighbors, the price of tomatoes, her rheumatism. I listen. Itās a conversation exactly like the one we had last week. Just like all our conversations. A conversation that is completely unaffected by this particular day, except I press a pillow to my face to stifle the sound of myself.
āNahid, are you still there?ā
I know my voice wonāt hold so I hang up. Sheāll think that the call was dropped, like so many of our calls have been dropped over the years. Next time I call, itāll be forgotten.
Itās getting dark by the time i finally pick up the phone again. I donāt know how I chose whom to call, why I call Zahra. But I do, and itās such a relief. Such a relief to tell somebody, to hear another human being weep. Iām glad it makes her sad. Glad sheāll miss me. It feels good to hear somebody react the way theyāre supposed to. To know you can react like this. I listen quietly for a bit while she weeps, and then I start to comfort her.
āItās okay,ā I say. āI havenāt had a bad life.ā
We fall silent. We donāt know if thatās true, but donāt say anything to the contrary. We just listen to each otherās silence, and thatās enough.
āHave you told Aram?ā she asks.
I shake my head.
āHello?ā
āSorry,ā I say. āI havenāt told her. Or anyone else.ā
She nods. I hear it.
āDo you want me to?ā
I sigh in relief.
āYes. Yes. Thank you. Can you?ā
āI donāt know,ā she replies.
How much can you really ask of people? Everything, I suppose. I can call in every favor now. Every single one.
āI would be so grateful if you would do it, please.ā
I hear her crying again. But she has to take care of it, somehow she has to do it.
āIām coming over,ā she says, and we hang up.
Then I lie on my back. Close my eyes. A few weeks, six months, a few years. Right now I just need to close my eyes.
and they come. my friends all show up. i lie on the couch and look at them through half-closed eyes. They allow it. They donāt say much. They sit with their chins in their hands. Look at each other sometimes, and shake their heads. Shake them slowly, strangely. Like you do when the sorrow is bigger than it looks. When a sorrow stands for all sorrows. I know what theyāre thinking. We have lost so much. We have already lost so much. Why should we have to lose mo...