Rising to the Surface
Readers of this paper may have seen a "short story" entitled "The Rising of the Dead", which appeared on April 23, 2016. Presented as a work of fiction, this piece sought to exploit the most tragic event that ever befell our family: the death of our beloved 19-year old son, Naveed. The characters had their names changed, but with alterations so thinly-veiled that anyone with even a passing familiarity with our family would recognize them. But most shocking of all, this so-called story was written without permission or warning by the author, Zeena Choudhury. She blithely wrote of my pain, though she clearly lacks the capacity to understand the depth of it.
The simple truth is that the pain never fades. Not when it comes to the most unbearable, unimaginable loss there is, the loss of a child. So when people say that "time heals", well that has just not happened to me--nor is it, probably, the experience of all the other mothers and fathers who have been forced to bear this pain. That is a wound that cannot heal, does not heal, and will never heal.
Of course the nature of the pain changes, as it must. In the initial period, the pain was overwhelming, as it suffocated me, enveloping every inch of my body, permeating every nook of my soul. There is a reason that literature is full of expressions of "drowning in grief"; the metaphor is apt. In those moments, when you're in too deep, it can feel easier to just swim down, but somehow you must find the strength to turn around, to try to rise to the surface. For my husband and me, that strength came bit by bit, supported by our families, who surrounded us with their love; by our friends, who emerged from every corner of the globe; by our faith, which helped us gain a grip on the incomprehensible; by our younger son, for whom we were determined to provide whatever measure of normalcy possible; and by each other.
There came a turning point, when the oppressive weight of absence began to coexist with the vivid memory of the happiness we had experienced. Our son, Naveed, was 19 years old when he died, which means that we were blessed with 19 years of his beautiful smile, his big laugh, his vivacious presence. Every moment of that is a treasure to be cherished. And in this regard, love would always be greater than loss—for no matter the pain, it pales in comparison to the joy he brought me, and that, that I would not trade away for anything.
Yet the pain persists, and the open wound can be pricked at any moment—by an innocent comment reminding me of a future our son will never enjoy, by a fleeting image on screen that embodies my greatest nightmare, by an unbidden thought into my mind in the middle of the night. So every day, in fact every second, we have to fight to rise to the surface, to learn to live with this new, unforeseen, unimaginable reality. We learnt to welcome new joys into our lives—as when our nephews, nieces, and our younger son got married, and then when we welcomed grandchildren into our family. We learn to honour Naveed's memory by living life as he would have wanted and appreciated, by laughing loudly and often, by enjoying the company of friends and family, by traveling the world.
Loving a child is innate, visceral; it embodies not just a basic social construct, but also the fundamental survival instinct of our species. That is perhaps one reason why so many people have opened their hearts to me over the years, whether friends whom I hadn't seen in ages, or family members both near and distant, or even strangers. A lady once came up to me when I was sitting on the shores of Lake Geneva, drawn by the sorrow etched into my face, and murmured words of support while pressing a prayer into my hands.
So it was all the more shocking for me to find that sorrow splayed across the pages of the Daily Star this past April, with some mish-mash of fact and fiction that appeared in the literature section. The story used thinly-veiled pseudonyms that would leave virtually everyone with a clear view of me as its main character, Sarah.
As I read the words for the first time, my eyes literally lost focus—I couldn't get past the opening lines, how could she possibly do this, so blatantly expropriate my darkest pain for no fathomable purpose? Her writing was far beyond simply callous, it was downright cruel. She indulged in fantasy surrounding the days following Naveed's death, not even bothering to personify him, leaving him only as "a boy [who] had died". Did she not remember the hundreds of times he had spoken with her? I kept reading with a growing sense of unease, and realised that it was due to more than simply the horror of the subject matter. The prose was strikingly cold and devoid of emotion— perhaps it counted on readers filling in with emotions of their own. I felt a shuddering convulsion across my entire body.
How could that same person, whom I had known and looked up to, have written such a piece, painting a caricature of the most devastating event to ever befall our family?
How could she possibly have been so heartless as to write so casually about this most profound grief, which she witnessed firsthand?
The answers are, of course, clear to anyone who reads the words she wrote. She may well try to claim a laughable defense of literary merit, saying that this is just a story published in a literature section of a paper; but that claim is belied by the frankly insensitive writing, which takes on tired themes and does not even try to hide the reality that forms the underlying substance of the piece.
As shocked as I was by the cruel and hurting words written, the fiction told about my family, and the mockery made of the unimaginable grief felt by my husband and me, so too have I been buoyed by the outpouring of support that I have received from my family and the many readers of the piece who understood the source of the story. As for me, I just do what I have done every single day since that unending grief first threatened to drown me—I kick hard, and I rise to the surface.
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