The only similarity to before was his droning on until the sun rose about all the harm America had done to the rest of the world, how America controlled everything, from the world economy to global culture. He used words like “hegemony,” “neoliberalism,” and “cultural toadyism” like he was a social science textbook. But who cared about any of that crap? I just wanted to hold him, to fold every inch of my body and soul into his heat and heartbeat. Totally oblivious to such feelings, he brought his lecture to an end with this indictment:

—Mr. Young, you can’t imagine what kind of world I’ve lived in.

As if you knew anything about my own world. Or even tried to. These words came up to my mouth, but I couldn’t let them out. I had a feeling that they would kill what we had in an instant, that such words would only drive us further apart.

◊

While I was obsessing over him, Umma was obsessing over her own goal of achieving “complete remission” and using her characteristic diligence to achieve it. After a couple of surgeries, both big and small, she had become (in her own mind, at least) one of the foremost world authorities on cancer. She read every popular science book published on the subject, joined an Internet community that continuously uploaded the latest information on cancer treatment, and memorized the names and hospitals of every cancer specialist and their national rankings. It reminded me of how she had put together my college entrance strategy when I was a high school student, and of the devastation on her face when she saw my national college aptitude exam results. Just as she promptly gave up on me as soon as she saw my grades, my mother completely accepted the fact that she needed surgery once she heard that the cancer had metastasized to her lymph nodes. She said she would give up everything to the will of the Lord.

The Lord was in a whimsical mood, as this third operation, unlike the others before it, did not have a good outcome. Her biliary tract got blocked, and there was an infection in the surgical spot, which caused her temperature to rise up to 104 degrees. Her weight dropped to 99 pounds after she threw up everything she ate for two weeks. Taking care of her also made me lose weight, and with her vomit and diarrhea happening at ten-minute intervals, I came to the realization that life was merely the forward motion of going from one’s first hospital room to one’s last.

Being stuck with her all day gave me zero chance to meet up with him. I called once in a while, when I could, and even then it was mostly me listening to his metaphysical bullshit. During his series of weird stories, I conducted a psychological analysis of sorts as I listened, wondering if his propensity to ignore the problems of the real world stemmed from his feelings of helplessness in the face of his mother’s daily drinking and subsequent shopping. I tried to learn from this by thinking: You’ve got to grow up a bit in the face of suffering.