Exordium

Life paraded its bloodied fangs in my face for the first time when I was 11, it was its way of letting my parents and I know I might have lymphoma. 

Up until that point, life was more than generous to me, I was cruising down my first decade like a king who was just anointed by God; vacations in Marseille, pool days under the sun, weekend road trips to Dubai, I wasn’t denied a childhood at all, if anything, it felt like life was trying to cover up a cock-up I still wasn’t aware of. 

Cancer’s disgusting, especially when it finds a home inside a kid. There aren’t any silver linings to make things any brighter; I just appreciated all the love and support catapulted my way every day of the week. Suddenly, my stutter stopped being a punchline. Suddenly, I started having friends. Suddenly, that phone my mom’s boss got me was always ringing. It didn’t matter that my new friendships happened under life-threatening circumstances, I was relishing every moment of it as I pushed all the other stuff to the back of my head.

Right around that time, a rumor started going around school about me dying, had I known it would lead to the whole city calling my parents to let them know that I was in their thoughts, I probably wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of starting that rumor.

All I wanted to do was stock-pile more attention for when things inevitably go downhill.

That was when my parents decided to pull me out of school, more so to prioritize and better schedule my frequent visits to the hospital for lab tests and consultations. At the time, it just made more sense for me to associate that with a subjectively more dramatic reason.

Being 11 years old with all this attention shoved down my throat, I didn’t really want to ask too many questions, I just wanted to stay on the receiving end of things.

Pseudo friends and positive thoughts could only take my blissful ignorance around the corner of the block. Life finally started speaking plainly to me when it sat me down with a caped surgeon. I felt so vulnerable and lost, even with my dad sitting right beside me, the surgeon just kept talking and talking, and I didn’t want to interrupt him, say no, or ask him to repeat himself. I was taught to never interrupt grownups, especially when they had all the answers. 

I didn’t really understand what was going on with me until doctors and nurses started recognizing me in the hospital. I had hoped I’d become a regular at some upscale cafe or restaurant later on in life, but instead, I became the boy people told other people to pray for, saying, ‘poor him, he still has his whole life ahead of him.’

While my mom was making deals with God to fly me off to Mecca if He kept an eye on me, I was comparing myself to prophets and their biblical struggles while riding shotgun with my dad on our way to shave my head off.

At that point, my parents had crashed through several waves of bad news. My dad stepped back from work to be around me more, letting me sleep on their bed while he read out verses of the Quran over my head. It must’ve been so hard, being a hero isn’t all that great after all.

Chemotherapy was another monster altogether, I heard it was like any other kind of medication but this one caused hair loss. All the grownups kept throwing in half-chewed words of encouragement and pairing them with a firm hand on my shoulders to reassure me. They purposely left out all the other nasty stuff, the nausea, vomiting, pain, loss of appetite; it was just too awkward to talk about, especially when you’re looking into the eyes of a little boy trying to disappear behind his father.

From what I witnessed during my brief time in the post-op ward, this Goliath really robs your body of every shade of life, leaving you colorless and broken. I didn’t let that get to me, my mother never let go of my hand from the start. She sought out a victory in everything she did for me, even the little things mattered. That day, she had to make sure I had cable TV in my room. Yes, I was miserable, but I was illiterate towards that emotion, I couldn’t comprehend it, so she took advantage of that and directed my focus towards the simpler things in life. 

I never ended up undergoing chemotherapy. My parents claim divine intervention stopped the nurses from prepping me for surgery, but it was hospital negligence on top of doctors biting their nails trying to cover up their misdiagnosis before a lawsuit materialized, so much so that the medical director kept asking about me for years.

The story goes, the medical board signed off on the chemotherapy treatment plan after glancing over all the lab tests and CT scans; they all agreed the swollen lymph node on my neck was malignant, but it was relatively baseless. Fortunately for me, another group of doctors in Abu Dhabi came in clutch. 

Everyone was left red-faced at what had happened with me, the news climbed to the top of the chain, prompting the Emirati government to offer me an all-expenses-paid medical trip to Germany. 

To my parents, this was a step in the right direction, a way to be sure that nothing was wrong with me. For me, it was free trip to Europe with Emirates Airlines. 

Turns out my tumor was benign.