Between Two Kingdoms

The mention and practice of writing and reading symbolize growth and sustenance for many characters. Journaling enters the narrative in Chapter 1 as a form of connection with the self. Suleika’s journaling practice is a throughline from her pre-diagnosis self to the post-treatment self and represents power and agency. Writing’s symbolic nature is enhanced through her first 100-day project: “I decided to return to what I had always leaned on in difficult times: keeping a journal. I promised myself that, no matter how sick or exhausted I felt, I would try to jot something down every day” (106). Although writing demonstrates continuity, the 100-day project also marks a development in how Suleika understands herself. Her words and topics focus more than ever on the experience of her body, whereas before her writing functioned as a place for dreaming and telling other people’s stories. Jaouad writes, “Illness had turned my gaze inward” (107). Suleika’s inwardness articulates itself through her desire to share her experience with a larger audience.

The blog and then the New York Times column, “Life, Interrupted,” mark Suleika’s desire to reach beyond herself and connect with others via her writing. Jaouad writes, “I wanted, in my own way, however small, to contribute something to the world. To leave more than I took” (115). The columns are a contribution, but they are also an antidote to the unknown future, a way to reach beyond the boundaries of her isolation and mortality. Publicly sharing her cancer journey gives Suleika the unexpected gift of “conduits to the outside world” when she is in isolation at the hospital (126). The power of words, she finds, is that her unique experience touches on the isolation, pain, and purgatory of those struggling with infertility, homelessness, suicide, and grief of all kinds. The readers reach out to Suleika through letters and emails, and though these communications are often limited during her days of treatment, she defies space and time by forging ties during one of the most isolating periods of her treatment.

Letter writing plays a significant role not only in Suleika’s sustenance and survival during isolation but in her path toward healing. She plans her 100-day road trip itinerary largely based on the letters that she received from people who read her column. Jaouad risks connection with these people who wrote her months and years before, declaring, “We will go where the letters take us and see what we find” (226). These letters and email exchanges throughout the book become a symbol of deepening intimacy between friends and lovers. Will and Suleika, too, deepen their relationship through writing letters and emails when he still lives in the US, and she has moved to Paris. Howard and Meral recall the same kind of courtship when Suleika visits them. When Suleika visits Katherine in California, she tells Suleika how her son Brooke often reached out to people through letters. He formed connections and received opportunities through this practice so often that their family now calls letter writing “Doing a Brooke.” His letter to their family upon his death now acts as a living document, a way for them to see him even after he’s passed away. Suleika mentions words and art as a form that defies death: “Whenever I wake up missing my friends, I visit them through their words and watercolors” (344). The words cannot revive her friends, but they allow Suleika to commune with dear ones even when they can’t be with her.

Bone marrow represents Suleika’s life and sense of mortality. It wasn’t until Suleika learned about her diagnosis that she became intimate with the function and purpose of bone marrow:

Up until this point the extent of my knowledge about bone marrow came from French cuisine—boeuf a la moelle, the fancy dish occasionally served with a side of toasted baguette. Dr. Holland explained that the marrow, an organ at the very core of the body, was a living, sponge-like tissue that filled almost every bone (59).

Bone marrow is the source of her cancer, and its malignant cells force her to face the purpose of her life and what she hopes to do to change it. Later, when Suleika is in remission, bone marrow is the source of both life and uncertainty: “I can’t know if there is a rogue cancer cell lurking somewhere in my marrow. […] But I’m beginning to understand this: We never know. Life is a foray into mystery” (265). Cancer plunged Suleika into the seas of not knowing about life and death much sooner than most. The bone marrow symbolizes for her the continuance of life and the reminder that life contains no certainties.

Jaouad repeats sets of two in Part 1 and three in Part 2 to symbolize Suleika’s character growth. In Part 1, Suleika characterizes her thinking and actions based on binaries: alive and dead, sick and well, fertile and infertile, love and hate, and staying together or breaking up. Sickness splits Suleika in two—before illness and after—and forces her into situations where she feels stuck and uncertain about how to move forward. Sets of two establish a character wrestling with the expectations she has for her life and what’s possible now that she faces illness.

In Part 2, Suleika approaches situations with more complexity and learns to live in between. Sets of three denote an expansion of thought, representing Suleika’s ability to expand beyond the binary and find a new, often uncertain, path forward. When Jon and Suleika meet in California to discuss their relationship, Jon asks Suleika three questions: “Do you like me? […] Do you like being with me? […] Then why does everything need to be so dang complicated?” (315). Suleika finds that she’s been thinking in terms of two possible outcomes: staying together or breaking up. Jon’s three questions illicit a new possibility—they can stay together and figure out how to care for one another’s needs.

When Suleika enters isolation for the first time, she names her room “The Bubble.” The Bubble symbolizes the land of the sick. Describing the Bubble, Jaouad says, “Anyone who entered my room […] had to wear the mandatory protective armor—face masks, gloves, surgical gown” (74). This coincides with her chemotherapy treatments and side effects becoming more intense. She fantasizes about escaping and tries to, only to find that her fear mounts when she is around people. The Bubble represents safety and security from the outside world while it also cocoons and isolates her. Her body begins to take on this walled-off character, a hell that she can’t escape. No matter how many people surround Suleika, she realizes that the Bubble and her illness are her experience alone: “I knew how lucky I was to be surrounded by such love […] but even with my parents and Will by my side, I felt achingly isolated” (77). No one besides her can fully enter or know the confines of her body and its illness.

Early in Suleika’s treatment, she realizes that a side effect is infertility. This is the first of many plans to topple because of her diagnosis. Her eggs and a desire to preserve them represent her attempts to preserve a “normal” future or at least its potential. Jaouad writes, “Although I wasn’t planning for a baby anytime soon, preserving my ability to have one felt like my only lifeline to an uncertain future” (65). Cancer imposed a new timeline and thwarted assumptions about the future. Eggs symbolize hope, seeds of potential. Suleika’s insistence to preserve them demonstrates her will to live.