Amongst the myriad of people who appear and disappear on the curtain of life’s theatre, there are some whose lives become so tragically epic, so far removed from the ordinary experience of many men and women leading “normal” lives, that one is beckoned to think of them again and again.

It is said the worst often befalls the best. I had a darling uncle once, named Chicha Zulfiqar. Cancer lays him to rest eight feet under the ground now, but when he was alive, I always liked to think there was no person on earth more sweet of habit and patient in nature than he. He was also strikingly handsome, the most, in fact, among my father’s siblings. Back then in the 1980’s he was employed as a doctor in Saudi Arabia. Little could he have known that 20 years later, he would be roaming the same hospitals he used to work in for therapy of his own tumors.

With cancer, the treatment is just as painful as the disease. His was the sarcoma type that attacks soft tissue and doubles in size every two weeks. It all started on that fateful day when he dropped an iron rod on his foot, which gave him a painful bruise that wouldn’t heal. Biopsy showed a malignant tumor to have formed, for which amputation of the foot was necessary to prevent the tumor from spreading into the vital organs of his body.

Two years later, the tumor reared its ugly head in his lungs.

The first lung operation was scheduled. My wedding was put on hold because my father had flown in to tend to Chicha Zulfiqar. The surgery was successful. Great, we had bought time. But for how long? Exactly two months later, the tumor was detected again, and another operation was underway. When Chicha Zulfiqar came to visit us in Pakistan, he was still in good health after two surgeries. No one could have guessed cancer was hollowing out his lungs from within. And he had that rare and remarkable ability one sees in Indian movies sometimes, of putting up a stoically happy front for other family members lest they worry too much. He was intent that he would suffer alone till the end.
If death had decided to slowly fade out the light of his life, he did not want it to cast shadows on the lives of his loved ones; perhaps he felt that his deathbed alone would be memory enough for his old mother. Thus he left his children in Pakistan and flew with his wife to the US for a course of chemotherapy that promised little hope of curing him.

Still, it is human nature to keep hope – hope in miracles, in God, in the Prophets and Saints who would cure all ills with their blessed touch. Nights found that old mother praying and reciting holy verses, invoking divine mercy. Brothers and sisters combed the country for faith healers and herbal medicines. And yet, undeniably, though he would not say it, chemotherapy was weakening him by the day. No miracle was in sight.

Ultimately, when the end seemed near and the American doctors gave up on him, we were beginning to get intimated with some untold stories of suffering…

The distant cousin whom Chicha Zulfi stayed with in Los Angeles confided how edgy and intolerant his wife’s behavior had become, that she would not tend to him adequately, and spent more time touring shopping malls or working on her flawless nail enamels instead. Among his last phone calls, when he was completely bed-ridden, Chicha Zulfi called his wife “a companion of good times only”. At that stage, both his lungs were completely covered with tumors, he had difficulty breathing, he was coughing blood, and with each cough the wounds inside him agitated so painfully that he had to be put to sleep with anesthesia.

How does a man feel waiting for that final hour, with no sympathetic face nearby, no friendly hand to hold, no one to give him a gulp of water in that final ordeal? His sister happened to call him that very minute. He answered so wanly that she started to weep and wanted to know if anyone had given him water.

“Don’t worry, Bibi, nothing is the matter...nothing is wrong…”

And thus he passed away, leaving Bibi and us all with painfully sweet memories to haunt us…of the man who never complained, of a brilliant intellect, a sense of humor death could not defeat, and of a noble soul. Ironically, he was buried on his wedding ceremony. Perhaps fate had preserved a truth to posterity in this, which he had never been able to say…

The second scene in the entire saga that I keep returning to is the scene of that old mother who was sending off her son to the graveyard. Her hands were raised to the sky, tears were streaming from her face, and she was reciting the last verses of the Quran. How difficult it must be for mothers to say that final prayer.

“Bibi, I am not afraid of Death, but I fear the darkness in the grave”.

Dear Chicha, your grave could not be dark, for you were a Light, and there is Light even around your resting place, so that it seems less like a graveyard and more like a carnival, as if a celebration is just due, or a congregation of angels is coming to pass.