Try to picture it: It’s 2014, and first-time father Bassam Tariq is on the streets of New York City looking for breast milk for his newborn. The filmmaker’s wife, Aisha, had just given birth to their first son when she developed a serious infection and was admitted to the intensive care unit.
Unfortunately for Tariq, their newborn wouldn’t take to formula, leaving him to navigate those early days of parenthood on his own. With his baby strapped to his chest, he frantically searched the city for breast milk while confronting the possibility that his wife might not recover. It was one of the first, and hardest, tests of his newfound role as a parent.
“At that moment, you’re a first-time dad, your wife’s in the intensive care unit, and you can’t speak to her,” Tariq recalled to me. “You don’t know what’s going on with her, if she’s going to make it or not.”
“It’s that desperate moment,” he continued. “I found myself really feeling angry at God, because I was like, ‘I’m trying to do everything right, and this is what you do? You’re taking away that one person that could actually help this child.’”
Today, Tariq says his son is healthy, and so is his wife. Once she recovered, she could finally nurse their baby. But the haunting memory of nearly losing the person who would have left him to deal with parenthood alone has stayed with the filmmaker ever since, if his poignant drama “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” is any indication.
