Interview by Spencer Miller
Have you ever gotten bad news from a doctor? In It’s Not Over Yet, fifteen-year-old Wali Khan wakes up in the hospital and learns he has an acoustic neuroma: a golf-ball-sized tumour pressing on his ear canal. Starting a new year in high school with a looming life-altering surgery date forces Wali, a passionate film buff, to look inward, at his family, friends and even himself. Why is this happening to him?
Salma Hussain grew up in the UAE and immigrated to Canada when she was thirteen years old. She holds a B.A. (Hon.) in English Lit. (with a concentration in creative writing), as well as a LL.B and LL.M in law. Her first novel, The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan, was a finalist for the 2023 Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction of Young People.
In this interview, Salma Hussain shares how she crafted a complicated (and at times contradictory) teenage character who responds to catastrophe,
confronts mortality, and learns to appreciating the ordinary moments in life.
Despite the extraordinary and unique circumstances of his life, Wali is a deeply relatable protagonist. How did you craft a character that feels so real?
This novel is based on universal emotional truths. Wali is dealing with something that many of my readers are hopefully not (upcoming surgery for a benign brain tumour), but his reactions to it–fear, anger, denial, humour, shame, loneliness, and the desire to feel ‘normal’/‘healthy’–are very human.
It was also very important to me that Wali feel like a complete person rather than simply ‘a character with a diagnosis.’ He has interests and opinions, flaws, friendships and family dynamics that are specific and unique to him. Early on in my draft, I wrote a scene of Wali getting shawarma late at night with his older twin sisters. After that, it was easy to imagine and build an internal and external world for a teen who is the baby brother in his family at home, but he puts on a tough-teen face for the outside world. I think those contradictions are what make him feel real. I tried to give him room to be messy and whole, because that’s what real people are.
I also had many deep conversations with a nineteen-year-old family friend who went through multiple brain surgeries as a child. Getting to know her as a full and real human being beyond her medical history no doubt helped too.
After his diagnosis, Wali experiences a range of difficult emotions, from fear to anger to despair. Which scene or chapter was the hardest to write, and why?
Most of Part VI and Part V were written with fluid leaking from my eyes. The chapters where we see Kamran’s bravery (Roots & Wings); Wali’s bravery (The Donut Machine); and Wali’s father being open to listen (Aba & Light & Lamps) were among my favourites to write, edit, revisit and polish. Were they the hardest? Not necessarily. I loved writing them, despite the agony in them, and loved letting these characters have those moments of (self-)love and growth on the page.
Really, the hardest scenes to write were the ones where Wali could no longer distract himself from what was happening to him medically. It was easier, in some ways, to write his anger or sarcasm because those emotions gave him something to push against. The quieter moments were harder – the moments where he needed to sit with and accept his fear and recognize that the future he imagined for himself may not look the way he expected.
Those scenes also required me to resist the temptation to make his emotions too neat or predictable. Grief, fear, anger, and shame are not linear. Wali can be devastated in one scene and joking with his friends in the next. I wanted to honour the emotional rollercoaster and ebb and flow of emotions rather than give him a simple progression from despair to acceptance.
With a Muslim father and a Christian mother, Wali is both comforted and confused by religion. What drew you to writing about religious belief?
I couldn’t envision a story about illness and mortality without a story about religion and spirituality. In this particular story, Wali happens to have a Muslim father and a Christian mother. He also just happens to feel closer to his father's faith (maybe because of the boys at the mosque), so Islam became quite central in how Wali understands himself, though his mother's faith is always in the background for him too.
I was drawn (almost despite myself) to write about religious belief because adolescence is a particularly interesting time to wrestle with one’s relationship with religion and the universe. I was interested in the way religion is both deeply personal and deeply complicated. For Wali, faith isn’t simply a question of believing or not. It’s inextricably tied to his parents, his family history, his upbringing, his fears of the life beyond and his desire to understand why this is happening to him.
When you’re confronted with something that you can’t control – what do you use to anchor yourself? Where do you look for meaning? Can you be angry with God/the universe and still want to believe that there’s a force that makes it all right in the end? Those are questions that extend beyond any one religion or ideology. Those questions are at the core of how we make sense of our lives, especially when we are moving through trauma and tragedy, and so I felt it essential to include them.
Even when he doesn’t want it, Wali receives amazing support from family, friends, and his therapist. Why is it important for young men to learn to ask for help?
There’s often a powerful pressure on boys (and racialized young men in general) to appear as though they can handle everything on their own. Asking for help can be interpreted as weakness, when we all know that in reality it takes enormous courage to admit that you’re struggling.
Support doesn’t magically make Wali’s problems disappear – that felt important for me to show, but it does give him people who can help support him through the journey. He doesn’t have to carry all his fears and anxieties by himself.
I hope young men reading this book understand that vulnerability, communication and honesty are superpowers. You don’t have to wait until you’re completely overwhelmed and broken before you reach out. Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is admit, “I’m not okay right now,” and let someone be there for you, with you.
An early (starred!) review from Kirkus called the book “a potent reminder that life is precious”. What do you hope teen readers take away from Wali’s journey?
Truly, I hope everyone reading this book comes away with a greater appreciation for the ordinary moments in their lives. Wali is forced to think about time and mortality in a way that most teenagers don’t have to, but for me, this book is about being more present for the life you actually are given. As far as we're aware, we’re only given one life. Let’s enjoy it.
I also hope readers see that there isn’t one correct way to respond to something catastrophic and/or devastating. You can be scared. You can be angry. You can laugh. You can need other people. You can have terrible days and still find moments of joy.
Most of all, I hope Wali’s story reminds readers that even when life is uncertain or painful, it can still contain moments of connection, humour, love and meaning. Both realities can and do exist together.
