Folded Between Us

Ofia Beghum Ali — Folded Between Us

We asked our next storyteller to tell us about a time where you had a wake-up call. And they said they were smoking so much in their room, just getting high in their room so much, that at one point, the blunt fully burned off their right eyelash. And that’s when the family had to stage an intervention. Please welcome Ophea Begum Ali. 

I keep a paper boat on my desk. It’s signed and dated July 2025. And my father folded it when he was in the emergency room. And by the time he made that boat, I had been translating for my mom and dad most of my life. And the first time this responsibility falls on my shoulders, I am about 10 years old. And I am wearing a mustard yellow velour tracksuit with little princess written across the chest.

Nothing says ready for court like rhinestones and anxiety. My mother and I take the E train to the Queens Criminal Court and we hold the same cold metal pole in silence. And we hold on like it’s the only thing that’s keeping us from falling apart. And in the courtroom, the fluorescent lights make everyone seem more miserable than they already feel. It’s the first time I see my brother in handcuffs and his lawyer walks up to us and she starts talking really fast. The translation back and forth is a bit slow because I am translating from Sileti to English and English to Sileti except I can’t find the word for Raymond. The closest translation I can come up with is he stays in jail unless we come up with the money for the judge. Now I don’t understand the criminal legal system but I do understand my brother is not coming home. So I cut her off and I say, look lady, I am only 10 years old and my mother doesn’t understand what you’re saying.

So she squats down so her eyes meet mine. And this time in a softer voice, she explains where my brother’s going, what is bail and how much we have to pay. And I just nod as if I am comfortable using legal jargon in everyday life. In that moment, I learned a rule. If I don’t stand up for my mom and dad, no one else will. But the truth is, I don’t want this role. I want to sink into my couch and I want to watch Saturday morning cartoons with a giant bowl of cinnamon toast crunch because everyone knows the milk is the main event. Instead, my weekends are filled with doctor’s appointments, visiting a juvenile jail, and translating adult problems. My childhood felt less like a playground and more like jury duty.

At school, kids would talk about Disneyland, and Six Flags. And I want something to add without killing the vibe. But nobody wants to listen to stories about correction officers yelling at my mother to remove her burka. So I stay quiet. My family is from Bangladesh. So that means I speak Sileti at home, English at school, and survival in between. My parents never sit me down and explain the Bill of Rights. But they teach me the rules of survival in Queens. My mother teaches me how to move without asking for permission. And my father teaches me how to fight without raising my voice. And those lessons follow me into every room I walk into. 20 years later, I am at my legal internship. And they hand me an assignment on something called an outlay hearing.

And I go all in until it makes sense because behind the case law is a 19 year old kid looking at prison time. Then I get a call from my niece. She tells me that my father’s in the emergency room and he’s diagnosed with cancer. I don’t know what kind, how bad it is, or how much time we have together. So I go to the hospital to get the full story. And when I’m on the R train, I replay everything my niece told me. When the doctor spoke to my dad, it’s all in English. No one bothers to call an interpreter. And I know my father. He nods his head the way immigrants do when the sounds feel familiar, but the meaning never lands. He catches words like his name and his birthday and hopes the rest will work itself out. And I hope that he misunderstood the diagnosis or maybe we caught it early.

But the truth is, I am terrified that this one time I am not there to translate is a moment everything falls apart. So at the hospital, I wait hours for updates. Visiting hours end and nothing changes. So I leave the hospital and I start working on the assignment. It felt safer to work on a legal memo than to imagine a life without my father. And I don’t sleep. The next morning, I set an alarm to call the hospital every hour. And every hour, the nurse gives me the same response. The doctor will call you. But that call never comes. By the time I submit my assignment, my exhaustion turns into anger. And at first, I feel helpless. But then I realized, I’ve been doing this my whole life. And then I pull out my phone and I start Googling hospital policies. I start throwing out words like duty of care and patient rights like I am starring in a reboot of Ally McBeal.

I’m not an expert, but I’m exactly who my father needs me to be. So I go back to the hospital to visit my father and to speak with the patient advocate. And I am careful not to lose my temper around him. And I explain everything from the silence to the language barrier. And all this man did was send one message to my father’s entire care team. And that’s when things started changing. They finally call an interpreter and is someone who speaks my father’s language. And for the first time, my father understands what is happening to his body. And for the first time, he has a voice in his treatment plan. The doctors also call me regularly, and they explain the diagnosis and the next steps, and I have nothing left to say. And that’s when the doctor pauses and asks, How are you feeling?

For a moment, I imagined myself punching him in the face and yelling, how the fuck do you think I feel? But instead I just breathe because this time I choose to be the advocate. But here’s the thing I never saw coming. Advocacy gave me something unexpected Moments to bond with my mom and dad. These moments weren’t just about paperwork or appointments anymore. They were real conversations about their dreams and their fears and things they never said out loud. As a kid, I was zoned out while my parents were running errands. I would tap the buttons on my Game Boy or feed my Tamagotchi. Meanwhile, my parents were just trying to hold everything together. They never understood what it meant for me when I would miss school and fall behind on my assignments.

And I never understood what it meant to leave a community that knew how to hold them up and start over in a country that never spoke their language. One afternoon in the hospital, I asked my father about his favorite memory of school And he tells me that he dropped out in the third grade after his dad died. And like me, he carried his family on his back when he was just a kid. He smiles and says, I liked making paper crafts. So I rip off a piece of paper and I say, show me. He carefully folds the creases until it forms into a paper boat. And I pretend I don’t know so he can take the lead. And when he’s done, I asked him to sign it, and he forgets the date. And the advocate in me will never allow him to skip that detail. So I remind him, never sign your name without the date next to it to avoid any legal issues and avoid being duped.

Now, if I can explain or translate my father’s annoyance with me, it would probably be, Even on my deathbed, you’re giving me legal advice? He hands the paper boat back to me, and that paper boat sits on my desk. It is evidence that being heard can change everything. And it takes me years to realize this, but every single time I was translating for my mom and dad, I was also translating myself, trying to find my place in their world and mine. Back then, our lives depended on how well I could translate, and that’s still my job now. I make sentences sit up straight. Paper may sink in water, but words, if we make them strong enough, they can carry us. Thank you.