By Seif El-Islam
I remembered that day. It was about 5 pm, I dragged myself from under the rockslides of sleep after a long dreary night of mind-numbing video gaming when I woke up to an odour that prickled my olfactory receptors.
What’s that peculiar ghoulish smell? It certainly wasn’t a scent my nose has ever trodden before at that time. It was alerting and it grew stronger as I was finding my way to its source with eyes half open.
I remember that this odour was a mix of scorched material of some sort, neither textile nor wood. As I approached, I noticed it was of an edible substance. Offensively pungent and peppery but unlike garlic, steak or vinegar, it was as if someone was overcooking road kill with a lemon scented washing liquid. Despite all, it had one distinct pleasant scent that I recognised eventually, not by my olfactory receptors but rather my emotions: my late father’s first cooking attempt.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Lunch! Your mom is a little bit blue today so I told her to rest and that I’d take care of everything,” he replied cheerfully.
A mix of happiness and curiosity I have almost never seen seemed to be jolting from his eyes as he was stirring a yellowish substance in one of many cooking pans. They looked like Germans tanks gliding through the freezing desert of Russia during World War II, except that it wasn’t a desert nor was it a battlefield, it was our cooking stove.
“Why can’t we just order food?” I protested as the smell started to take over my body like the aliens in the movies.
“Don’t you trust your old man’s cooking?” he replied without even looking at me.
“Not when it comes to food,” I said.
“You shall be my assistant then!” he raised the wooden spoon he was stirring the yellow substances with and it leapt and landed on my nose.
“DAD!” I yelled.
“Come on, it’s just curry,” he said, barely able to say the words while laughing so hard that he was almost knocked down.
“It’s not funny,” I grumbled.
“It is! You’re just missing the point here”.
“Do you have any idea how meaningless these two would taste together?” I said, pointing to the chopped tomatoes he was now soaking in the bubbling curry soup.
“We wouldn’t know unless we try, would we?” he said, continuing to pour the tomatoes in the yellow pool of death.
“Dad, I have news,” I said.
“I’m all ears because my nose wouldn’t be working well, as you can see,” he joked.
“My results came yesterday and I failed maths”.
“Honey, come here,” he stretched his arms while wearing mom’s pink flower apron and I found myself flooding tears on its water-proof surface.
“Please tell me you can at least draw?”
“Dad!”
“I’m just messing with you. Don’t worry about it, whatever it is, we’ll fix it and soon enough you’ll be debating Hawking effortlessly! You’ll get a job you’ll love like me and you’ll marry the man of your dreams! After my consent of course,” he pulled me tighter toward his chest as if he was trying to jam me into his ribcage.
His never-ending supply of love and compassion has planted seeds of selflessness all over the lands of my soul, which would later become the source of my misery. I wouldn’t trade it for all the peace of mind in the world. I grew up to be the person I am today because of the love I’ve received.
After almost an hour of slashing, stirring, and boiling the food in the kitchen – because I wouldn’t dare to call what happened cooking – we managed to come up with different types of food. All of it tasted like what the witch in Hansel and Gretel would cook if she was having Hannibal over for a romantic dinner.
It took the pizza place about 30 minutes to deliver the most delicious pepperoni pizza I’ve tasted in a while.
“Next time we’ll make a pizza with special ingredients!” my dad said out loud to us in the living room, laughing hard.
The next morning I woke up to the sound of my dad singing in the living room and asking me to get his phone from right beside his personal laptop.
I groaned like a caveman who doesn’t know how to speak but who wanted to complain anyways. I reached next to his laptop looking for the phone and accidentally hit a button on his laptop that brought it to life. I tried to switch it off by moving the mouse cursor frantically across his desktop, not knowing what I’m doing. I ended up opening an outlook email minimised at the bottom of the screen that instantly caught my attention.
“It’s unfortunate for us to inform you that after checking your x-ray and blood test results, it shows you are in the fourth stage condition. Cancer has spread in your body and in such cases, chemotherapy and radiation will not really be effective. I’d suggest your next visit should be as soon as possible to discuss further details. Meanwhile, enjoy your every day as much as you can.”
