Between Two Kingdoms

Mortality and death are ever-present realities in Between Two Kingdoms. Even though Suleika is a recent college graduate, the seriousness of her illness and the hospital settings contrast with her youth and weave a narrative of questions and purpose. The first mention of death occurs when Suleika enters Mt. Sinai for her first chemotherapy treatment. The woman in the room next to Suleika sleeps often: “She was so skeletal she looked almost cadaverous” (72). One day Suleika hears a guttural cry. She says, “grief pierced the wall between our rooms,” and notes that soon after “another patient had taken her place” (72). This shuffle of life and death, its odd normalcy, brings mortality into Suleika’s view. Death becomes personal several weeks later when she learns from Younique that Dennis and Yehya are “gone.” Death is no longer anonymous. Jaouad writes that all she could think is: “I’m next” (89). The moment Suleika finds out about Yehya and Dennis coincides with a near-fatal fever and infection. Mortality pushes her and Will toward decisions that they otherwise would not have considered. Suleika tells Will that she would like to get married, and Jaouad reflects, “I worried that if we waited, we’d never get the chance” (88).