Read the full essay by Jamil Jan Kochai:
Our Agha sprayed chemicals. Every workday, he woke up at five in the morning, put on his rubber boots and TruGreen ChemLawn uniform, and drove out to the wealthiest neighborhoods in greater Sacramento to spray and fertilize lawns. At home, in the evenings, Agha would devour enormous plates of rice and meat, and then he would lie back on the couch with a hot cup of tea, exhausted and aching from twelve hours of handling pesticide tanks.
Throughout his life, my father was shot at and bombed. He was beaten close to death by his half brother. His left hand was almost amputated because of infected blisters on his fingers. He was briefly blinded. He broke his arm chopping trees. He buried two murdered siblings, Watak and Gulapa, within a month of each other. He survived an apocalypse in Logar. And yet, of all the calamities that he had suffered in his life, it was a traffic accident, in 2007, that finally brought him to his knees.
As the weeks progressed, Agha’s pain only got worse. He felt a stabbing sensation in his neck and shoulders. He suffered near-constant migraines. His arms and hands alternated between numbness and burning. His skull felt as if it was swelling. He lost his sense of smell and his once pristine memory kept faltering. The slightest movement in his neck would send unbearable tremors throughout his body. The pain was so bad that it would make Agha dizzy. Sometimes he would pass out.
Agha’s only hope was the lawsuit—Kochai v. Nor-Cal Truck & Materials—through which he sought payment for his injuries, medical bills, and loss of earnings. It was an incredibly desperate endeavor. By legally proving the debilitating nature of his pain, perhaps Agha would finally receive proper medical treatment for that same pain. The lawsuit consumed his life, and, to a lesser degree, my own. I read legal and medical documents for my father. I filled out forms and explained test results.
Finally, she told me to sit down and give her my number. I was so upset, I forgot which document I needed to provide her, and she became frustrated and asked why I had come unprepared. I apologized again and hated myself for it. But I couldn’t return home having fucked up another trivial task. A few minutes later, she pulled up our case, typed a few things into her computer, and the issue was resolved. I asked for permission to leave, and she granted it.
I sat with Agha late into the night, watching him sleep, as he, no doubt, had watched me sleep on countless nights in hospitals all over the world, and he looked so peaceful in his dreams, I thought of locking the door and letting my father sleep through the night and day, and perhaps the next night, too. I thought of Boxer and the slaughterhouse.
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