With his brain in disbelief and his heart dropping to his feet, he cried, “I don’t know.” The doctor, who was asking him what she was supposed to do, obviously didn’t know either. You might guess that Mutaz is some kind of a senior doctor who didn’t know what to do. However, Mutaz is a decent writer whose wife of two weeks was in the operating room for a so-called minor surgery. This wasn’t his first-time feeling fear shattering and breaking his heart into hundreds of pieces since his previous wife, Nesreen, who died, had suffered from cancer attacking her body multiple times as if it was its indigenous habitat. He thought that now he was not the only one who needed help; even doctors needed assistance. Confusion dominated the situation of his wife, Ghada, whose opened abdomen was supposed to be closed half an hour after the beginning of the “minor surgery.” Surgeons from all over Amman came to figure out a way to solve this surgery’s puzzle. Finally, after nine hours of constant stress, feelings of horror, and a mind wandering in possibilities, the surgery was over, and Ghada was going to be fine.
Back in 2002, a rainy, cold day came along with big news. In his humble office, he was drinking his hot tea since he wasn’t really fond of coffee. The phone rang; it was Nesreen. She had done a breast cancer test days before, and today was the result. He hesitated whether to accept the call or just decline as if this was the ultimate solution. He had spent the previous couple of days thinking that he now had three boys, including two-month-old twins, who were in their deepest need of their mother. If their mother drifted away and left not only them but also him alone, he would be left in the dark. Nesreen was his light, his partner in every aspect of his life, including raising and caring. He touched the green button on his screen. “Mutaz, I have breast cancer,” Nesreen murmured. Mutaz always found hope. I have always wondered why; I even once asked him. “Belief. It is always the belief of a person that gets him out of the darkest places on this scary Earth,” he spoke. Even with the absence of Nesreen, he had a light he could always lean on, a rope that could never be cut, Allah.
Yet another day, in the middle of the summer of 2009, Nesreen, who was by then a cancer survivor and a mother of five, was preparing for dinner. Mutaz was in his new office, an adequate office that provided him with enough money to pay the bills for five children and a wife. His work was then exactly what he wanted, an essay writer for a decent website. His life back then, after Nesreen had a breast surgery to finally beat cancer and after having his two daughters, Layan and Sama, was good enough for him. It didn’t really matter to him how many sons and daughters he wanted to have; it was Nesreen who cared about having many children. What made her happy made him happy as well, so he didn’t have a problem having as many offspring as she wanted. Nesreen sat on the couch; she suddenly felt tired. She had a seizure. An ambulance was called, and she was taken to the hospital. Then his mother called him. Nesreen had cancer again, this time all over her brain.
This time, Nesreen suffered for two years. Even with her physical existence, her body couldn’t help her fulfill the needs of her children and husband. In 2011, Mutaz hurried to the hospital. His heart was pounding like never before, and his soul was with his five children who were at home and too young to be aware that they now had a dead mother. Ahmed, his oldest son, was only 12, and Sama, his youngest daughter, was 3.
You might ask, how is Mutaz a hero? What did he do? I wasn’t there. Therefore, I don’t remember. However, the story begins now. I’m Layan, Mutaz’s first daughter. Such stories detach emotions from people. Hopeless, negative, and desperate is what they become. However, it is different with my father. His heart rather softened and became a home to us.
The death of his beloved wife made him fear the possibility of his family falling apart; this has always stressed him out. “I want us all to be together in heaven,” he always hoped. Therefore, his number one heroic work was bringing the family to unity. Family was always his priority. One of the first steps he took was that he figured he couldn’t take the role of the mother, so he got married to his second wife, his children’s second mom, Ghada. Even after that, Mutaz didn’t leave the whole job of motherhood to Ghada; he also played a double role in raising the children, taking on the job of both mother and father. Furthermore, he made some family traditions and habits. For instance, he always brings the family together at any mealtime. He never hesitates to spend every penny he has on a vacation for the whole family.
At dawn, he would sometimes wake his children up to perform the Fajr prayer and go to the outer world, explore nature with them, and sit on the wet grass together to make connections and eat breakfast. He is a great speaker and professional lecturer; he knows how to choose his words wisely. The good part is he never keeps his words to himself. In addition to using them in mosques and gatherings to educate people, he unlocks his best words and lectures first thing to his children to brighten their paths and open their eyes to the outer world, then he unlocks them to the whole world because he always believed that family comes first. Why bother educating the world when his children aren’t educated?
Selflessness is his second heroic work. His love language is acts of service. Starting with family, he always prepares his children’s, who are not children anymore, lunch boxes for work or school. He drives them to their workplaces and schools when it’s raining or extremely hot, or when he just wants them to know he loves them. He dedicates his whole life to them, and if he could wrap his life up like a gift, he would indeed give it to his children. Yet his selflessness doesn’t stop there; there are doubts it even has a limit. Financially, Mutaz has always struggled. He has always wanted to be more, have more, and accomplish more. Not for himself, but for people around him. His lack of money prevented him from donating to charities, even though he knew many people in desperate need of financial help. His nature of selflessness wondered and looked for ways to help them. He came up with the idea to be the medium, a person who can take money from the rich and give it to the poor. “I pray to Allah to gift us two cars, one for Ghada, and the other is a car for all of us to make it easier to help the poor,” he said, driving his old car.
“Every girl is fond of her father.” That is what everyone says. But my father isn’t a hero just to me; he is a hero to lots of families who wait and long for their only income every month. He is a hero to the children he volunteers to teach Quran to. He is a hero for being able to put his shattered heart together and develop such a soft, empathetic, understanding, supportive, and selfless personality and inherit it to his sons and daughters. My father can be a hero for every person in need.