‘I’m going to write your story’.
Yaseen was sitting on the hospital bed after a treatment session when I made him the offer. Granted I’m not a brilliant writer, but I figured what I lacked in skills, his amazing story would make up for in content.
At that moment I didn’t know that Allah (SWT) had planned an unusual journey for me and for him. We faced a road that was filled with more challenges than either of us ever imagined. I dealt with more emotions in the space of a single year than I had in my entire lifetime and I reached a point in my life that I can only describe as ‘make or break’. And all thoughts of writing a book about his journey faded when I realized I would never be able to do justice to it.
Now it’s more than two years later and I find myself writing. I feel like it’s something I need to do. There’s help in these words for others, I tell myself.
Those first few days of writing and the words came so easily, it just flowed and flowed. Yet something didn’t feel quite right. It was nicely written words that looked good on the page, but reading it I was left near emotionless. And as hard as I tried, I couldn’t seem to communicate the essence of the message I was trying so desperately to.
And then one day, while feeling anxious about this story that I wanted to share but that made so little sense, clarity hit. I was writing Yaseen’s book. I needed to be writing my own.
My words, seen through my eyes and lived through my experiences. I couldn’t do justice to his story, but if Allah SWT wills, I would do justice to my own.
And so begins my story of heartache and hope, with a question.
When did it all begin?
Human nature makes us want to know. Whether it’s a love story, an illness, the decline of a business. Even death. What was the beginning of the true story that led to such an end?
I spent some time reflecting on this. For Yaseen, it could have been the day we noticed the lumps in his neck, or maybe the day that he was diagnosed with cancer. For me though, I wasn’t so sure.
There were little tests that came my way, ones that I never even realized were tests. I just instinctively reacted to them and made decisions that I felt, in those moments, were right. At that time I didn’t know that these tests and my reactions were ultimately Allah (SWT) preparing me for something much bigger that was heading my way.
But there was this one particular moment that stands out for me with some significance. It happened long before Yaseen was diagnosed and took place thousands of miles from home. This moment that unfolded in Istanbul, Turkey.