“Did you read the Post yesterday?”, SM-loyalist Deepa asked me over AIM. I replied negatively and she sent me the link to a love story…
The two were as opposite as could be. Saqib is tall, olive-skinned and athletic. Susan is tiny, fair-skinned and delicate. Saqib is Muslim, the son of immigrants born in India. Susan was raised in a conservative Christian family from a small town in Pennsylvania. He’s a door-knocking community activist who hopes to run for public office someday; she’s soft-spoken and cherishes her privacy. He’s a perpetual pessimist, always managing expectations and planning for the worst; she’s an eternal optimist who’s always smiling.
Though both of their families initially balked at a desire to be with someone so “opposite”, eventually, all the in-laws came around.
After a few years together, Saqib and Susan wanted to become parents. Surely they might have thought that after the considerable struggle they survived just to get married, this next phase of their lives would be less fraught with turmoil. One would have hoped.
“It’s a girl!” the technician announced, to a round of cheers. Susan squeezed Saqib’s hand. The couple had already settled on a girl’s name: Leila. Her middle name would be Daine, a tribute to Susan’s mother, Diane, who had died suddenly a year earlier, two weeks after learning she had a brain tumor.
Leila Daine Ali. It was a name that Saqib knew he’d never tire of saying — introducing her to the world, chastising her for trying to poke her pudgy toddler fingers into wall sockets, exclaiming over her good grades in school. It was a name he knew he would scrawl countless times on the “memo” line of his checkbook. “For clown at Leila’s party.” “For Leila’s tuition.” “For Leila’s wedding dress.”
“Let’s look at the head,” the sonogram technician continued…Puzzled by the sudden shift in the technician’s mood, Susan and Saqib grew quiet, feeling embarrassed that they had taken up so much of her time with their excited banter.
They were quickly ushered from the sonogram room to meet with Alan Gerber…”We have a serious problem,” Gerber told them. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but there is something very wrong with the baby’s brain.”
What follows is an extensive, gut-wrenching look at one couple’s tragedy; Susan and Saqib suffered a heartbreaking loss which threatened to become a chasm between two people with different yet equal desires for love and life. The feature is not a quick read, nor is it an easy one, but it is definitely worth your time. It left me amazed; despite bitterly disagreeing about how to handle their situation, the two emerged stronger than ever.
Pundits can spend every cable-broadcast hour on long-winded debates about what constitutes life or how to end it, but it’s imperative to remember that every decision has actual, tormented humans behind it. To that end, the Ali family was generous (IMO almost too generous) enough to agree to one of the Post’s “Live Chats” at 1pm today. Reading that transcript gave me the same goosebumps the article did.
It’s worth noting that Saqib Ali frames Leila’s story in terms of the “end of life” vs the beginning, that he understandably does not want his daughter to become a political football in the exhausting abortion debate.
I’m just sorry for both of them, for a father who will never get to write a check for his daughter’s tuition or wedding dress, for a mother who has lost two women with one precious name, for a family that ultimately, barely survived a loss that will haunt them forever. No matter how it’s framed, Leila is gone. At least because of this article, people besides her family will know that she was here at all.
What follows is an extensive, gut-wrenching look at one couple’s tragedy
Yes, but what happened?
A truly heartbreaking story…and very moving to see how the couple stuck together and worked through things. Had their parents not come around after their marriage, I’m sure this would have gotten a lot more press and we’d have certain op/ed writers frothing at the mouth over the horrors of interracial/interfaith marriages (“evil foreigners corrupting good Christian values or some such silliness”). 😛
They faced the impossible and are still together. That’s what marriage should be all about. Clearly meant for each other. I wish them the best.
I have an exam tomorrow, but I couldn’t stop reading this long article.
sigh
That’s when I started crying… and couldn’t stop till the end of it.
That’s the first time a newspaper article has ever made me tear up.
More extraordinary since I’m the (now) hypocritical asshole journalist who beleives there’s too much human interest stories in U.S. news and not enough ‘real’ news…
Kudos to the other sepia connection in the story, Reshma, the journalist who did the story. She writes some powerful stuff, she first showed up on the wider radars after writing a peice titled “I am not the Enemy” after 9/11. (sorry you’ll have to google it, no time to hyperlink right now…but she writes a lot of good literature.)
like i wrote, the entire story is well worth reading. indomitus is right– reshma memon yaqub did an excellent, sensitive job.
the entire story is well worth reading.
Come on, that is ridiculous. I have a full reply, please read to the end of page 5.
yeah, last i checked, the bloggers here are under no obligation to create cliff’s notes for the lackadaisical. the amount of energy you expended posting twice and going to wikipedia is probably MORE than what you would have used, had you merely clicked the link and skimmed the story.
as other people who commented between you pointed out, it’s a remarkable story, if you don’t want to read it, frankly, it’s your loss.
it’s a remarkable story, if you don’t want to read it, frankly, it’s your loss.
It’s an Oprah kind of story, and I want a summary. I thought the point of this blog was to inform us. If you only want to post teasers, then you might as well just be advertising.
i can understand your desire for something quick and dirty but two thoughts motivated my decision to post this way:
1) the subject matter deserved more than a cursory retelling. sorry if you disagree.
2) i didn’t want to reveal what others might want to discover on their own. it’s clear that a few people DID choose to go and read the entire story, i wanted them to have the same opportunity to be as affected as i was. their comments demonstrate that they were moved, as i thought they might be.
it’s easy to disparage something as fodder or content for “oprah”, but this was in the washington post (not that WaPo is consummately substantial and flawless). it had meaning, conflict and an interaction between two seemingly irreconcilable faiths/people. it discussed abortion, terry schiavo and a host of other salient topics. that’s a little bit more than “makeover” or pontiac-giveaway fare, IMO. 🙂
i did inform you; i informed you that there was a story worth your time. it’s not my job to summarize to the point where you do no emotional or mental weight-lifting. as a mutineer, i see my responsibility differently– i let you know what’s out there, so you can do what you will with that information.
i don’t agree with your call wrt “teasers”. this post and the story it’s based on have nothing to do with something as crass and annoying as advertising, but then again if you just read it you’d probably know that. if you’re so interested in what happened to baby leila, why not just skim the article? i’m obviously not going to tell you what happened, nor am i going to continue this tangent, though i thank you for the dialogue. 🙂
My God … what a horrible way to start the morning..
Spoilers:
Bah! Anna and her high horse. If even she won’t write a summary, I will. For those with real, actual lives that revolve around things besides traversing every link mentioned on sepia, ali and his ‘oh God told me to do it’ wife disagreed on the fate of their daughter after ultrasounds revealed the daughter will likely have terminal birth defects. Details can be painted on how else ali and the ‘when is rapture?’ chick differ, but the story isn’t significantly different from any of the trans-masondixon-line marriages. The interfaith/interrace aspect is more happenstance than anything.
The details that might distinguish this episode from another include the decision being the mother’s since she gets to decide whether to abort or not, even though it would affect the father. The ‘oh crap, I have no say?’ father, meanwhile, tries to stay afloat in a wave of ‘ooh, you cold bugger, you’ sentiment by qualifying his stance with the opinions of the doctors who told him the mother was at disproportionately high risk in going ahead with the delivery. In the end, Leila, the kid with a life eleven hours shorter than a 12hr fruit fly, gets buried and the mourning parents still can’t reconcile what to do if their next kid pulls the same stunt and mucks up its genes. Oh yeah, and the couple says their staying married; but people are eagerly awaiting when they fall apart. November carries a premium, but you can get fairly good odds calling December.
When will these kids learn, the only real way to have babies is to splice genes in a petridish. Anna, you can be the surrogate if you want.
errata: If even she won’t write -> Even if she won’t write
says their staying married -> says they’re staying married
anonymous coward (though i sincerely wish someone nefariously appropriated your handle):
when i grow up, i want to be as cool as you. somehow, even though i know that isn’t possible, i’m not even remotely upset. huh.
anyway, the part where you gave me permission (how kind and benevolent of you!) to be the surrogate…i mean, WOW. put-downs are even better when they are totally pointless. go you! does your charitable offer extend to other decent humans who were moved by this story, or is this an exclusive for elevated-steed-riding me?
i remain in awe of your ability to be anonymous, craven and unnecessarily rude, since i am merely a lowly, obfuscating blogger who knows the difference between possessive pronouns and contractions.
Since when is ANNA the target of choice?? Why to you pansy anonymous haters have to pick on her? Not that she can’t handle your light-work jabs and stabs, she surely can. But does it really make you feel like a man to hide behind a handle and hurl insults at a GIRL by calling her fat.
I bet you pee sitting down, too…
Have to pick on a smart and pretty girl (I know you probably can’t understand how one can be both at one time…) and take the easiest, lamest, most base line to insult her and call her fat? No originality. What’s wrong? Couldn’t loot some lines from Russel Peters? Or didn’t figure out how to modify those yo’mama jokes that the cool neighborhood kids throw around?
I’m really really fucking sick of all the Anna-Bashing that cowardly weiners seem to think is a side-show at SM.
Anonymous Coward, did you even bother to read the last line of Anna’s affogatto post? Or do you need another executive summary?
Mmm…affogatto…
Anna said, i did inform you; i informed you that there was a story worth your time. it’s not my job to summarize to the point where you do no emotional or mental weight-lifting.
It’s reader-friendly to put the point of the post in the frickin’ post, no? I read the the whole thing, of course, and was irritated at finding that I’d much rather have read the summary.
anonymous coward, thanks for the roundup, but lay off the gratuitous personal insults. You’d get laid more. P.S. that was an example :o)
What a powerful story
i hear you, but i also heard from readers who were glad i didn’t “put the point of the post” in…so if i had done things your way, then THEY would be unhappy. i can’t please everyone, that is patently obvious.
i’m sorry that your reaction was different from theirs, i’m sorrier that i bothered posting on this entire, gut-wrenching affair. yes you were needlessly irritated and i was needlessly disparaged, but a baby was buried. that’s the REAL disappointment.
i’m closing comments now, on the following, apposite note that returns attention back to “the point” you are so focused on– may leila’s memory be eternal, as we say in the orthodox church. may her family know peace.