Not Lost In Translation

Scott Waldman: ALBANY -- A little more of Wafa Khalil's hair is on the pillow every morning.

She can't sleep through the night. She's rarely hungry. She covers her heart to show where it hurts.

Khalil, who emigrated from Sudan to Albany a decade ago, is not sick. Her 6-year-old son, Abdulaziz, has a baseball-sized cancerous brain tumor. Today marks the end of six weeks of radiation treatment.

Khalil, 34, speaks slowly and softly. Her son has a 4-inch scar on the back of his head. The words that describe this are hard to find in any of her languages: Arabic, Nobin, which is spoken in Sudan, and especially English.

Sitting in her living room on a recent day, she speaks a language no parent wants to learn.

"It's on my mind all the time," she said.