A Few Minutes with an Emirati Sheikh

The phone call came from Uganda while I was in Dubai.

My mother, Hajjat Hadija Nakkazi, had been diagnosed with cancer.

This was not good news.

It frightened her. When I spoke to her, I could hear something changing in her voice. She sounded as if she had already begun making peace with death.

“If I go,” she told me, “you have to be strong. Take care of your sisters. Take care of the others.”

I was working as a journalist in Dubai, where medical care was good. I took my mother’s diagnosis papers and X-rays to a doctor there. He studied them carefully.

“Yes, the cancer is serious,” he told me. “But it is not an immediate death sentence. Thyroid cancer can be treated. From what I see here, there is a good chance we can manage it.”

Then came the part I did not want to hear.

“It will be expensive.”

“I don't care,” I told him. “I will take every bank loan I can get.”

The doctor looked at me.

“I cannot advise you to do that.”

“Why?”

“Because treatment can be successful and she may still not survive. Then you could be left with a huge debt and no mother.”

I hated him for saying it because I knew he was right. My mother probably would have agreed with him too. She was the kind of woman who would rather suffer herself than watch one of her children drown.

But I had already seen her make sacrifices for me. More than once. She had carried my problems on her back when I was too young to understand how heavy they were.

If there was a chance to save her, I was going to try.

Then the doctor gave me another idea.

“Talk to the sheikh who owns the hospital,” he said. “Tell him you are a journalist. Show him the stories you have written about the hospital. He may help you with the treatment.”

It sounded simple.

It was not.

The man was not just any sheikh. He was one of the most powerful men in the emirate from the ruling family.

“How do I see him?” I asked.

The doctor knew him personally, but even he could not simply walk me into the sheikh's office.

So, I began hunting for a way in.

I called journalists who had interviewed him. I searched through old contacts. I looked everywhere for his phone number or email address. Eventually, I found an email address and sent him my message.

Nothing.

I sent another.

Still nothing.

I never called. What was I supposed to say on phone?

“Hello, Sheikh. You don't know me, but my mother has cancer. Can you please save her?”

No.

I needed to see him in person.

I was prepared to get on my knees if that was what it took.

Every morning, I drove to his office and waited around like a man who had forgotten where he was supposed to be going. I watched the entrance. I watched the cars. I watched for his convoy.

Maybe I could catch him before he disappeared inside.

I never did.

I went to his personal assistant and asked for a meeting.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can't give you one.”

So I kept coming back.

After a while, I probably looked less like a journalist and more like a security problem.

One day, another staff member saw me and finally asked, “What are you always coming here to do?”

I told him everything.

I told him about my mother. The cancer. The hospital. The treatment. The money I did not have but was willing to borrow. I told him I only needed a chance.

He listened.

Then he told me to wait outside the sheikh's office.

He went inside.

A few minutes later, he came back.

“The sheikh will see you in thirty minutes,” he said. “Go to his office and tell them you have an appointment.”

Thirty minutes later, I was sitting in front of the man I had been chasing for days.

He did not have much time.

Maybe his staff had already told him everything. Maybe he had read my emails. Maybe he simply understood the desperation on my face.

He looked at me and asked one question.

“Where is your mother?”

“In Uganda,” I said. “But if you give me permission, I can bring her immediately. The next flight.”

He wrote something on a piece of paper.

Then he handed it to me.

“Take this to the hospital CEO.”

That was it.

He had agreed to treat my mother.

For a moment, the world seemed to open a little.

Then another door slammed shut.

I had to get my mother to Dubai.

I thought that part would be easy.

It wasn't.

Because she was very sick, I had to arrange special clearance for her to travel by air. The hospital prepared the medical papers for the airline. There were forms, approvals and arrangements I had never imagined would be necessary just to put my mother on an airplane.

And I still had to pay for her ticket.

I was ready to do it.

Then, before I could pay, my mother had another attack.

My sisters called me.

She had been rushed to the hospital.

They told me she was slipping in and out of consciousness.

But every time she woke up, she asked for me.

“Where is Yasin?”

They said she kept asking.

It was as if she had something she needed to tell me.

I abandoned everything.

I flew back to Uganda.

I arrived believing I still had time.

I didn't.

That weekend, my mother died.

— Yasin Kakande

Author of The Missing Corpse