I’d spent my life trying to please my dad. After graduating, I decided to build my career.
But he snapped and said, “You don’t need a career, you need a family.” We argued.
A few days later, my world shattered when I found out he had been lying to us for years.
It started when I got a job offer in Barcelona—an incredible design firm I’d dreamed of working at since college. I’m the first in my family to go abroad for anything other than vacation, so I expected them to be proud.
But when I told my dad, he just scowled and said, “No man wants a wife who’s off chasing jobs halfway around the world.”
I blinked. “Dad, I’m not even dating anyone.”
“That’s exactly the problem,” he snapped.
I thought maybe he was just being dramatic. But over the next few days, he wouldn’t drop it. He kept saying things like, “You’re wasting your best years,” and “What about kids?” as if I couldn’t do both—build a career and have a family.
We got into a huge fight the night before my flight. I told him I wasn’t his property, and he said I was “turning my back on everything he built.” I left the next morning in tears.
But then… two days into my new job, my older brother Adil called me.
“Don’t freak out,” he said, “but Baba’s in the hospital.”
I dropped everything. I was on a flight home within hours.
By the time I landed, my mom had already brought him back from the hospital. Mild heart attack, the doctor said. Stress-related. But that wasn’t the part that broke me.
While he was being treated, they ran a few other tests. Bloodwork. Imaging. That’s how we found out he had early-stage cancer.
Pancreatic.
He knew for a while. He just didn’t tell us.
My heart sank. Suddenly, our argument felt like the dumbest, pettiest thing in the world. I would’ve dropped anything to be by his side.