On
the first day of 1995 in Baghdad’s central hospital, a group of nurses
huddled together in tears: “When shall we tell Aphra that God has given
her a blind son?” This was Saddam’s postwar Iraq: resources were scarce,
I was suffering from hypoxia, and my father was forced to bribe the
doctors for more oxygen to keep me alive.
After I was discharged, my overjoyed mother took me back some 200km to our rural village in the heart of the motherland. When my older brother was born – my dad’s first (sighted) son – scenes of jubilation broke out in the village. Thirty lambs were killed to celebrate his arrival. But no lambs were killed for my return from the capital; I didn’t even get a chicken. After all, I was disabled. For the three months before we fled to the UK, the old women of the village – the gossips – would fall into my mother’s arms and sob: “I’m so sorry for you, Aphra.” “Don’t be sorry for me,” my mother assured them. “Without him, we wouldn’t be allowed to leave.”
For those were the days when refugees didn’t have to drown in the Mediterranean in search of a better life, the days when immigration officers smiled at the borders. We were given permission go to the UK, so that I could undergo surgery; Iraq was no place for sigat (Arabic for “crippled”) like me, whose disability brought shame upon the community. Of course, like the fleeing refugees today, we still had to sell everything we owned.
After I was discharged, my overjoyed mother took me back some 200km to our rural village in the heart of the motherland. When my older brother was born – my dad’s first (sighted) son – scenes of jubilation broke out in the village. Thirty lambs were killed to celebrate his arrival. But no lambs were killed for my return from the capital; I didn’t even get a chicken. After all, I was disabled. For the three months before we fled to the UK, the old women of the village – the gossips – would fall into my mother’s arms and sob: “I’m so sorry for you, Aphra.” “Don’t be sorry for me,” my mother assured them. “Without him, we wouldn’t be allowed to leave.”
For those were the days when refugees didn’t have to drown in the Mediterranean in search of a better life, the days when immigration officers smiled at the borders. We were given permission go to the UK, so that I could undergo surgery; Iraq was no place for sigat (Arabic for “crippled”) like me, whose disability brought shame upon the community. Of course, like the fleeing refugees today, we still had to sell everything we owned.
No comments:
Post a Comment