If life were to be driven solely by the logic of strength, the weak would have no chance of existence. And let this Nazi Darwinist mixture of ideas be realized, where the weak will die out ceaselessly, and in the end we reach the full-fledged man ... the next Superman over the corpses of millions who did not stand up.
My friend sarcastically said to me, feeling his eyes:
- "Praise be to God, I chose the right time .. If I had come a million years ago, I wouldn't have won a house, wife, or food. The powerful would have conquered me, and I would have spent the rest of my life in terror on a branch of a tree. Forget that my eyes would be smashed in the first three minutes!"
Of course, it will stay on the tree branch for some time until a monkey comes to kick it and take its place.
When I was a resident physician, I had a friend who gave birth to a baby girl who had a mild case of neonatal jaundice, and it required some blood transfusions for her. It was three o'clock in the middle of the night when I was visiting her in the hospital nursery after a blood transfusion, and exchanging jokes with her father, when the pediatrician, a mutual friend, appeared and asked me about my blood type. So I said indifferently:
"Or positive .. Why do you ask?"
I only turned with the pediatrician dragging me by the forearm towards the blood bank, then telling the technician that I was tired of staying up late, and opening his eyes with difficulty:
- "His health is as good as ox .. Do not be afraid of anything .. Take whatever blood you want from him."
The blood was matched with a blood sample that the technician kept in the refrigerator .. This was before the era of conducting hepatitis and AIDS research, of course, so the patient received blood as soon as it was donated.
The thick blood donation needle got stuck in my vein ... I ... and I saw the bright red blood flowing into the bag ... If only I could understand!
I went back with the pediatrician to the nursery, and saw a baby girl the color of lemon, next to her a ticket bearing the name (Shaima). I watched the nurse as she attached the bag of blood and began the process of transferring it to the small body .. My blood runs in this body, which only spent a day or two on the ground ..
Now I have a right to understand, so the pediatrician routinely told me:
- "An advanced case of anemia. Cracking anemia .. We nearly lost it and I was looking for a fool with the same type .. Praise be to God I found one at dawn."
All this is beautiful, but where are its people?
- "We do not know ... they left and disappeared ... they just called it Shaima."
The little thing was rumbling and looking at us with two wandering eyes, and I swore that I felt that her jaundice was gradually fading. I felt that I was proud and that my day was not wasted .. Who cares about this blood? .. I have a lot of it, but for it a quarter of a liter is sufficient for her at most, which is what they really took ..
The next day, my friend came to inspect his infant daughter, Shaima’s classmate in the nursery. He found that she - Shaima - had contaminated her clothes and the nurses could not find a sponsor, so they took from the coiffures that he had bought for his daughter. With time, Shaima had a share in everything: coiffeles, breastfeedings, clothes, money also because he left money for workers to buy what they needed, such as medicine or milk, etc.
Her family never appeared, but she became a sister to my friend's daughter, and everything was divided between the two. I don't know her fate after that, but I had an unquestionable shudder.
Why did I enter nursery on that day and at that date? .. I was just a tool to keep this baby alive. It's about the size of this magazine's page, but God made fun of it for me, my friend, the nurses, and the pediatrician. You want blood, so do not search for it in panic in the Ministry of Health’s blood banks. Rather, he comes to it while she is resting and carefree .. She wants a coiffel so she does not buy it, but simply brings it where it is .. There is a greater and greater power that takes care of this little one, otherwise she would have been lying and devoured by dogs in the nearest pile of garbage.
When I worked in the pediatrics department of a large general hospital in Tanta, there was a baby in the ward lying in bed alone, and on her ticket this sombre name was written: (bastard - unknown father and mother) ... This is not the title of Abdel Halim Abdullah's influential novel, but it is Truth. Another child they found on a garbage heap next to the hospital. There she lies and looks at the ceiling, unaware of the dilemma in which she is, not knowing how pathetic it is. One of the cruelest things is that one does not realize the enormity of what he lost while others realize .. She has no support of any kind in life .. She is a discarded being who came by mistake in a moment of forbidden pleasure, and the price of fixing the mistake was her life. When you write a silly poem, you tear the paper and throw it away ... the parents did it on a bigger scale. Only the poem will not be tormented and will not spend a lifetime unable to know its identity.
In our hospital there was a famous specialist in pediatrics whom mothers believed as a tribal wizard, and he used to pass with us on the beds in the ward, here I saw mothers chasing him, asking him to examine this child as he examined their children. I saw them surrounded him fiercely to make sure that he was performing the examination (edema). Later, I learned that there were those who took care of breastfeeding the child from her breasts, who changed her clothes, and who took care of her raising her to sleep .. This delicate misfortune has become the possession of a thousand mothers.
Has anyone adopted her? Has she found salvation? .. If she were still alive, then she is in her thirty years old today.
Do you want another example?
The unfortunate, dirty little cat that I found under a car on our street, so I bought him some milk and carried it to our house feeling iniquity and sin .. This scenario is repeated with the letter every year, and my wife cannot stand any chaos in the house .. She cannot bear to see a matchbox out of place. And every time I tell her:
Then you get rid of it as long as you find it easy.
And who said it was easy? Soon she discovers that she does not have the cruelty of Attila, the king of the Huns, or Abi Lahab .. Moments later, as happens every year, she hears the sound of water pouring into the bathroom and the screaming of the little devil while she is bathing him, and she asks me to buy a bottle of (Lycid) to kill the fleas, and put a drop of antidote Vital in his inflamed eyes, then she pretended to him (a stool) from a medicine dropper .. She dried him and embraced him to give him his first meal and she never stopped blaming me and bashing me about this obscene habit .. The habit of taking street cats home.
After days, the cat becomes everything in its life, and fills the refrigerator with frozen fish, and the kitchen becomes always foul-smelling boiled fish. Of course, scrub from the cat's excreta container ..
The cat becomes the most important member of the family over time, and will often run away by itself when it matures, so we never dare to expel it.
This fragile little cat has succeeded in enslaving two adults, to do everything for him, to feed him and to dispose of his waste. This sweeping force for which I can not find an explanation ..
This is what I mean by the power of weakness .. There are fragile beings that are as weak as they are very strong and capable of taming the apostate. Powerlessness can amount to moving mountains. In the world of literature and art, I have great examples. There is for the great American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne a witch story - I don’t remember her name, unfortunately - about an ugly, frail, poor girl, who drowns herself in the river .. A strong handsome master saves her, dries her and carries her to his house by the fire. You look at him steadfastly and repeat: "You're going to love me ... won't you?"
This hope was repeated and he did not reply, "You will love me ... will you not? ... heh? ...". Until he finally falls under the influence of her wide, penetrating eyes and her weakness ... and the story ends with him as he joins her to his chest. He surrendered!
In Stephen Zweig's gorgeous story (Beware of Pity), we see another fun story. The quorum of the Jews deceives a naive and innocent woman to make her give him all her possessions to him, claiming that he is investing them for her, and she thanks him that God sent him to her .. This fool does not realize that she has become destitute and that she will beg for her bite tomorrow. The worst is that she thanks him for his nobility and tells him that he is a saint. She has completely destroyed him! ... He looks at himself in the mirror, at his pale yellow face and his sunken eyes, then he sees her morning face full of happiness, realizing how much God loves her and blesses her innocence, while he is cursed as the devil .. He finds nothing to fix his mistake except to marry her to take care of her !!
There is a wonderful American TV movie (Realistic Story) about a writer who suffers from the dreaded Alzheimer's disease - his name is Alzheimer's please and (the) is not an identification tool !! - At a ceremony honoring her, her mind is permanently paralyzed and she forgets to read .. She stands confused looking at the audience with two amazed eyes, here her husband approaches to join her to his chest and he continues reading the speech. You will cry while you see her shrinking and confused looking at people, and she has no support in the world except love .. You have no doubt that this husband will redeem her with his life itself if necessary.
The strength of weakness .. This is what I repeat ...
Of course, this is not an invitation to be weak ... but an invitation to remember the power inherent in love and affection. Tenderness runs in both directions, and just as we give tenderness to others, we receive it in the same moment, like the two-way equations that we were studying in chemistry class. There is a supreme divine power that protects and nurtures the weak, on the condition that love and mercy do not disappear from the hearts of others..I cannot find a better explanation than this for the hospital girl (Shaima) who received my blood and the sponsorship of my friend's daughter, nor the baby who won a thousand mothers, nor the cat who mocked an adult couple for her service . Perhaps I can write this idea better and more coherently later.
A translated story for the writer Ahmed Khaled Tawfiq
It is good to have strengths that arise from weaknesses.