Between Two Kingdoms : A Memoir Of A Life Interrupted

Never judge a book by its cover, they say. Not for nothing, I say. One of those rare books that I picked up by seeing just the cover, did not even bother to read the blurb. The girl on top of a mini van, a dog next to her and a contemplative look on her face, a travelogue – the judgement was swift as the download. Little did I know the kind of journey I was getting into and what a journey it was!

Suleika Jaouad was like any other youngster, just out of college, figuring out what to do with the rest of her life. A career in writing as a foreign correspondent is what she wanted to be, her Tunisian heritage had more than a little to do with it. After a very short stint of summer internship at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, she moves to Paris, ‘where people go to live out the fantasy of a different life.‘ Things settle the way she wanted soon enough, and with Will whom she met in New York deciding to move in with her, it was as if she was fast forwarding her way to a dream life. In the background was an itch that had started earlier now spreading fast and the inexplicable fatigue that she kept attributing to the insane working hours. Things soon some to a head, she has to travel back home for a diagnosis. At 23 years of age, comes an announcement that might have sounded like a death knell to many in her position – leukemia, with 35% chance of survival.

What follows is an excruciating three and half years, more often in than out of hospitals through multiple rounds of chemo and experimental therapy before she is finally adjudged cancer free. Jaouad writes in detail the diagnosis, the treatments, the hospital stays and the immense struggles that she has to go through. However, it is the emotions and the relationships that she analyses that stands out and makes her story as remarkable as it is.

You cannot but love Will, the young man who had just fallen in love with this girl when their life turned upside down in more ways than one. He doesn’t think twice before deciding to move back from Paris and be with her, whether at her parent’s home or by her hospital bed. He takes charge along with her parents and becomes the solid rock that she learns to lean on. As months turn into years and as her health turns for the worse before it could better, their relationship also takes its twists and turns. Jaouad is painfully honest as she analyses what happened, in retrospect.

“Suffering can make you selfish, turn you cruel. It can make you feel like there is nothing but you and your anger, the crackle of exam table paper beneath bruised limbs, the way your heart pounds into your mouth when the doctor enters the room with the latest biopsy results. But I wasn’t the only one whose life had been interrupted by illness; my loved ones all faced a rupture that was similar in kind, if not in degree. That I wasn’t the only one in the room meant I was one of the lucky ones, I knew.”

She was indeed one of the lucky ones that her job in Paris and her father’s insurance covered most of the costs which otherwise would have broken the backbone of a family like hers. That her mother could afford to be with her and rotate the time with Will was no small blessing. Most importantly, her brother who had to turn his life upside down to be the donor for a bone marrow transplant. As the author realized later, the physical pain her body was being subjected to, the need for depending on others even for basic matters and the all pervading frustration of life possibly passing her by made her turn blind to the struggles her loved ones were going through. She shuts them out of her life, one after another.

What gave her solace, in fact maybe the strength and will power to withstand the negative after affects was her daily journal that soon turned into a column and video series for the New York Times – ‘Life, Interrupted’ . People from all walks of life who had gone through similar experiences themselves or with their loved ones started reaching out to her. She also discovers her own group of cheerleaders in the hospital corridors and treatment rooms. Young people with cancer, just like her.

I was not disappointed in my original expectation of the book seeing the cover. She does go on a road trip, after she is pronounced well enough. A hundred day journey, to meet some of the people she had come to know during her years of illness. A sort of giving back, being grateful and reaching out just as others had in her times of need. Yet, setting out on it was a struggle by itself. As one of her friends warned her, it was getting back to ‘normal’ life that was going to be even tougher than overcoming the cancer.

“To stay is to consign myself to refrains of brokenness forever. To leave is to create a story of self. Really, it isn’t much of a choice.”

It’s a story of triumph , not survival. Of spirit and body, of stretching your self beyond limits that you never would have thought you could surpass.

More than anything, it is a story of human connections, of the all pervasive magic of love.