Every time I have to "let a patient go" (And by letting go, I mean listening to their story and admitting that I can't do anything more than that: Scuchar) I think of Ignacio García May, One of my teachers, And in the thousand times I heard him talk about "the hero's trip": In every dramatic work the protagonist has to move, Things have to happen. It has to grow.
And I think I know several heroes that could well star in novels or films. People whose stories can be distant, But they happen. They are happening. Now. Here. I have decided to start sharing pieces of life in order to turn these people into heroes during the two minutes you use to read their history. Because I feel that I can't do more: I can't change your life, I don't want to change your life, But I want to write it.
Smiles without teeth are also smiles
Grace had 16 years when he agreed to be the second wife of Eric. He was an orphan and until then he had lived with his grandmother, selling soft drinks in Mombasa Road To survive. A rainy afternoon a car stopped by his side. He drove a guy with a very divened smile that Grace envied (She had lost several dental pieces and the ones she kept seemed dotted with the same mud that stained her clothes). The man bought two soft drinks and one of them offered it to the girl. Then he left and left Grace smiling above his possibilities. He had never felt so pretty.
After a month of road meetings, Eric went to the girl's grandmother's house and asked for her hand. He promised that he would pay him a school so he could finish high school. And that would buy cows. The only condition is that Grace would be Eric's second wife. Of course, This clarified, He would live in his own home and treat her like a queen. Grace swallowed all his romantic dream of Catholic wedding and exclusive love, He took Eric's hand and began his new life.
A rainy afternoon a car stopped by his side and a man with a very low smile offered him a soda. Grace had never felt so pretty
The girl adapted quickly to reality: He shared a house with Eric's first woman and the children of this, There was no money so he could go to school and he never returned to his grandmother's village. The other wife was the one who cooked and cleaned, and ignores Grace; He treated her as if she were one of the goats that were part of family assets. So Grace spent the day sitting as he nibbled, With difficulty, sugarcane. The house consisted of a single room that had divided into two parts with a fabric. Eric slept during the week with his first wife and on weekends with Grace.
Time passed and Grace became pregnant, But in the fourth month he suffered an abortion. Being at the health center was diagnosed with AIDS. He 18 years. Eric's first woman accused her of having infected the whole family and her husband expelled her from home.
Now he works as a prostitute at night and during the day he makes colored accounts
I met Grace in the Coptic Hospital the Nairobi. Now he works as a prostitute at night and during the day he makes colored accounts. Wants to save to open a small bracelet and necklaces store. It is happy, And he says, convinced and smiling, that it was wonderful that Eric would throw her out of that house to be able to start her own life. She feels lucky.
The story of a refugee copy in Kenya
When Mena He offered his forearm to an old Muslim from Alexandria (Egypt), To be tattooed a Christ, He did not think that Islam would be the cause for which he would have to escape from his country. Much has changed Egypt Since the years 60, There is no trace of that clean and free country that was, Everything tends to be extreme and radical. But life consists of dumps that one has to be able to integrate and Mena knows that there is no luck or justice, Life works like the body: pure irregularities to try to balance.
Fifty years after that tattoo, A group of Muslims raped their daughter, He burned his house and threatened them with death. Then he did not ask "why me", Because life is, says: things happen. They arrived at Kenya as refugees in 2011, without speaking English and without knowing absolutely anything in the country in which they were. They rent a small house, The two older children found work at Coptic Hospital (uterus of all the stories that I have been collecting) And his condition of expatriates began to be the center of his identity.
Fifty years after a Christ on the forearm, A group of Muslims raped their daughter, He burned his house and threatened them with death
They still don't speak English, And both Mena and his wife barely leave home. They have taken cardboard boxes that they use as tables to eat. On the walls of the living room there are paintings of San Jorge killing the dragon, one of the preferred saints of the cops.
-¿Sabes? - Mena says –When you are an expatriate, A refugee, When nobody understands your tongue, The roots begin to rot. Death begins there. Transplant a tree from north to southern land, And as much as I laugh will starve.
«When you are an expatriate, A refugee, When nobody understands your tongue, The roots begin to rot »
One of the afternoons I spent at home learning to cook, I finally learned what had happened exactly in Egypt: His eldest son left a Muslim girl and married her. That a Christian marries a Muslim is an attack on Islam and revenge is death. Both fled as refugees to America and, then, The price for "having stolen a daughter of Islam", fell to the family.
-So we can't even think about returning, And it's fine because life is like that and it can't be otherwise. Alright. We are happy. We are alive.
While writing these two stories I have thought about the trend that the human being has to judge, To decide how one must be happy and what the tragedy consists of. To qualify everything and to categorize. Then I thought that I don't want to save anyone because there is no one to save. Can, perhaps, participate in the lives of others, Without adopting the role of saving (that entails superiority). I can learn. I can listen. I can write. Started an NGO wanting to be a hero and now just want to be happy, less so happy as people who wanted to help.
