Leukemia in Lebanon, remembrance in Lahore: Part 3

I did end up calling her then which was three months ago. Dana was driving the car and the kids were sitting behind her. I could hear them, screaming and shouting and laughing aloud in the background…And Dana explained that they were going to see a saint just then.

‘We’re going to all the saints in the city, these days. Yes, yes, things are good, things are fine.’ And then in an undertone, almost a whisper, she added, ‘I will write to you …. I will write to you about everything. I have to go!…’

She never wrote back.

She never wrote and I just waited wondering. I never stopped thinking about Yasmin. I knew that while we were going on living our lives doing the rounds of the hospital, the Lebanese family had not been fortunate to have that second chance at health, the chance that perhaps we were getting, with my daughter’s life.

I wrote another email to her telling her that I hadn’t forgotten Yara. I could not forget Yasmin, ever. We had lived together, both Yasmin and my daughter…Dana and I, in the same room in the hospital for a week. They were our room mates. Our children had played together, laughed together through the pain, given each other hope and given each other something to be happy about through the agonizingly long days. They shared that little something to look forward to, some little story, some little cartoon to watch together or some little game to play together. I’m so thankful to God, that my daughter had those few days of happiness in the hospital because of that little girl Yasmin because my daughter was distracted from her own pain and her own suffering, her own needles being pierced through her, the pain of the chemotherapy, and the pain of not being at home like a normal child. I would have to be cruel to forget Yasmin…


Four months had passed since Dana’s family had left Italy to move back to Lebanon. There was this nudging feeling that I needed to find out what had happened to Yasmin. And I was subconsciously putting off calling her for fear that I might catch Dana in the middle of caring for Yara in her last minutes or last moments. And I didn’t want to disturb her. I didn’t want to intrude upon those last moments.

My husband urged me to call. Why aren’t you calling up Dana, don’t you want to call? And I asked myself, to hear about what? I know Yara was going to die but how do I ask Dana to confirm, that which I know is the inevitable?

I decided to send a one liner email asking how she was. The next day I got a reply...