One's Journey

One's Journey



By Isabel Alvarez



         History had not done Safia any favors with regards to health. Her family had long been one of the richest Muslim families in Mumbai, India, which would be seen by most as a blessing but was seen by her as a curse. The Qur'an did not forbid consanguineous marriage, and so her ancestors had married cousins for generations. Her parents had met after both of their families relocated to the States, and so young Safia found the very idea of marrying her cousin repulsive, although this was partially due to the fact that she found all of her male cousins unbearable and could not even fathom having to marry one. Ignoring her own revulsion, Safia could not escape the glaring face of reality: generations of intermarriage had forced upon her a sudden and irreversible genetic abnormality: scoliosis.



         The knowledge of such a condition was devastating, and it affected Safia in such a way that she desired no happiness and as little social interaction as possible. She had not told a single one of her friends about her condition, which she had just discovered two days before at a routine physical. Even her best friend, Amira, did not know, and that was saying something. And so, Safia proceeded to mope around the house and school for the rest of the week until her appointment with a spinal specialist that Friday. Once Friday rolled around, Safia was poked, prodded, and x-rayed. She was forced to bend forward, backward, and to each side to see just how badly her spine was curved. Once the x-rays were revealed at her next appointment two weeks later, the doctors had already decided that the only option for her was surgery.

         Safia had been born in a small town in Delaware. She didn't know the name of it. She didn't particularly care. Her family moved out of the town when she was two years old, after her mother had been told that she could never have another child. Safia wondered if this was because of a miscarriage, as her mother had told her, or because of generations of inbreeding. She was not even supposed to know about that part of family history, but since she had been diagnosed with scoliosis, it became unavoidable, and her mother told her everything. Naturally, Safia was infuriated. She was fourteen years old and, not only did she have to deal with zits and fake friends and boys, but now she was deformed as well. It was shameful really. She still had not told any of her friends. Now that her family lived in a well-off suburb, how could she tell anyone? A lot of her classmates were beautiful, wealthy, and overall just perfect - and here she was, not even a normal "plain Jane" but probably a freak. That is what she felt like, a freak.



         Safia's mother did not view things with the same bleak light, however. Her infertility was actually due to a miscarriage, and she did not find her daughter to be a freak. Unlike Safia, Cubra's view was not narrowed by eighth grade society. Yes, her family had been marrying cousins for a while and that was probably what accounted for her daughter's genetic condition, for which her child's anger was justified, but it never made her any less of a human being. Cubra grew sad as she watched her daughter become isolated from, not only her friends, but from herself as well.



         Cubra had always adored her only daughter. She was born with a thick head of black hair, which had grown only more difficult to contend with as she aged. Her eyes had always been jet black as well, and Cubra knew that Safia would one day grow up to be beautiful, strong, and successful. She had, in fact, been named after Cubra's own grandmother, who she found impossibly strong and capable. As she grew, Safia had become ever more stubborn and independent, and it was the very fact that Cubra herself exhibited these traits that she knew her daughter's fatalistic attitude was unwarranted. She would survive. She was not a freak - if only she could realize this.



         On the day of the surgery, Cubra was easily more frightened than her daughter. Safia was rather calm about the whole thing, as though she wasn't about to get her back cut open and have her spine fused together with something like eighteen stainless steel screws and two rods. Cubra sat in the waiting room for the long seven-hour surgery with her husband Asif, who was exceedingly nervous as well.

         After Safia was released from surgery, Cubra couldn't help but feel relieved at the procedure's success. Her daughter's face may have been inflated like a puffer fish due to all of the liquids they injected into her and she may have been crying and complaining, but she was alive and she would, hopefully, be fine. One of the nurses in the ICU turned out to be the mother of one of the boys Safia went to school with, and with some odd strength, Safia stopped crying and told that woman then and there, with her face covered in tears and still puffed up, that her son was an absolute moron whom she deemed a terrible human being.



         Amusing moments aside, the next few days and weeks and months were not easy for neither Safia nor her family. The surgery had been immensely painful, and, despite three different pain medications, so was the aftershock. Safia had to wear a corset-like brace, at which she quipped that living in the 1800s must have sucked. After being released from the hospital, Safia spent a month home from school, during which her friends and teachers, whom she had opened up to, brought her presents and her schoolwork. Cubra had taken a couple weeks off of work to look after her daughter, and she rotated the responsibility with Asif, who also took some vacation time. Despite her prickly, though no longer puffy, exterior, Cubra knew her daughter was grateful and possibly even relieved to have such caring parents. No matter how much they may have fought in the past, or possibly the future, surviving something like this could not be done on her own.



         As it turned out, Safia and her parents did fight in the future. A lot, actually. After the mandatory six-month recovery period that Safia had adamantly shortened to five, she was back to light exercise and full integration with her academics and friends. However, Safia was in the middle of teenagerdom, much to Asif's despair. He used to be so close with his daughter, and yet now she had turned into a world-class bitch. She would mouth off to him and what he deemed reasonable requests. She would yell at him for not letting her wear something that was "in." She despised him for not letting her go out with her friends late on Saturdays. Sometimes, Asif would just come home to his wife and feel like crying. Was he that bad of a parent? Was he too harsh on Safia? Cubra always managed to cheer him up, but he wasn't convinced. What had happened to his sweet baby girl - the one who always glared at him looked adorable doing it? Now, she still glared at him, but it wasn't anywhere near adorable. Asif had to admit, however, that he probably wasn't meeting these challenges in the most effective way. He and his daughter were just so similar that it seemed as though they would always clash with every word they spoke.



         And so, Safia was left mainly to her own devices, as she was grounded all of the time. She wrote down a lot of her feelings in a journal, spoke to her few friends of her woes, and often would cry herself to sleep. Her back hurt her - both physically and emotionally. She wasn't able to do fun things that she wanted to do, like run and ski and ride rollercoasters. She felt as though Nature wanted her dead, as she would have failed the test given by natural selection. That was the worst thought of all, and it killed any remaining self-esteem she had.



         But then one day something changed. Safia went for an exercise walk outside with her mother. Despite originally complaining about such an activity, Safia enjoyed the fresh air and the cool breeze that played through her hair. Her mother told her honestly that she hated watching her daughter waste away in her room doing nothing with her life. It was summer, she said, and summer meant that one should be outside and that one should be happy. In truth, this was a bit of a gamble on Cubra's part as Safia could easily have reacted negatively and turned around to walk to other way. However, she didn't.



         "Yeah, you know mom," said Safia. "I was thinking the same thing."



         It was true, and Safia knew it. For a while now she had been thinking about, as clichas it sounds, the meaning of life, and she sure as hell knew that she was doing nothing with hers. Her grades were good but she was not. Safia told her mother that she was going to spend the rest of the summer working on herself - and that meant being happy with herself first. It wouldn't happen overnight, but it would happen eventually. Cubra was relieved. That evening, she told Asif everything Safia had said, and he shed a tear.



         Safia had been right on both counts: It didn't come easily but it did come. That summer, Nature, the very one Safia had deemed her enemy, helped to heal her emotionally. Throughout her senior year of high school, Safia kept up her positive thinking, and she began to exercise. There were a few pitfalls here and there, with boys being jerks and her occasional over exertion with exercise. Her mother even convinced her to start eating healthier, which had a phenomenal impact on both her mental and physical health. Soon, it was time for Safia to go off to college. Her parents had expressed a little disappointment in her not getting accepted into an Ivy League school, being from the Indian subcontinent and all, but they quickly got over it as Safia was accepted into her dream school. As her senior year came to a close, Safia was pleased to win a few academic awards and to reminisce with all of her friends. That summer, she relaxed and spent more time working on her mental state so that she would be adequately prepared for college.



         A few months passed and in no time Safia had adjusted to college life and she had also found herself. Her back, which had previously been a weakness, was suddenly a strength. She had stainless steel in her back, and who else could say that? Wolverine? She was also unafraid in sharing her story (it made for great conversation at parties - before 1:00 that is). And best of all, she was confident in herself. Bad things happened to her, but she had made the best of it. Her whole future lay wide open for her to accomplish anything she wanted, and she knew that, if she could overcome a seven-hour, life-altering surgical procedure, that she could overcome whatever came her way. Not to mention that the foot long scar on her back made her look, and feel, pretty badass.