Voice of Wisdom

Tuesday, 18 July 2006
By Sabria S Jawahar
The Saudi Gazette

THERE is nothing on earth more difficult than being in a hospital waiting area among people who are in pain while following the news of a furious war. The people’s reactions to the scenes of the Israeli war against Lebanon on televisions across the waiting area in a private hospital confused me. It was not clear whether those tearful eyes and concealed sighs were out of physical pain or psychological anguish.
The scenes of destruction, blood and body parts all over the places were too much for someone who is already suffering from severe pain and looking for a relief in a hospital. Sometimes it seems to me that the death scenes were more like a painkiller to those people.
They were gathering in the waiting area, watching the news and replacing their own pain with that of their brothers and sisters in Lebanon and Palestine. There was a complete unprecedented silence in that place.To me, it looked more like a graveyard in a middle of a winter night. Pale faces and concealed anger that had no channels to be released.
To my surprise, though, those people were looking for relief in the hands of a Lebanese doctor who was trying hard to hide his own pain and worries behind a wide smile.
Yet his eyes were red and tearful too. The polite doctor wore another smile to apologize for taking an urgent call from his young daughters in Lebanon asking a question that I wonder if he could answer. What to do? Where to hide?
In the other waiting area outside the hospital’s laboratory, another television was hung on the wall and another group of pale faces followed the news.
There I sat, waiting for the result of my medical test. To several people, that scene was nothing more than a day in a hospital waiting room. But to me, it was a sample of the reaction of people from different nationalities, backgrounds and ages about what is going on in the Mideast.
While I was sinking in my own thoughts, an old man who could hardly walk stood two meters away from me.
He hesitated about whether to keep standing, which would have been difficult for a man at his age, or to sit down on the seat next to me, which is unacceptable in the Saudi society.
I encouraged him and said, “come and have a seat uncle.” (It’s a title that Saudis use for all elderly out of respect.)After long minutes of cautious silence, my new neighbor opened his mouth with words that I could hardly hear but I realized spoke regret. He whispered, “Oh my God, I wish I were a bit younger or dead.”
I seized the moment to start a conversation with him. “What would you have done, uncle, if you were younger? Would you marry one of those beautiful girls?”
He looked at me in a way that made me wish I had never opened my mouth. He pointed at the television and at two young Saudi men who, for a while, seemed to be more like women than men. All the distinctive male’s features disappeared in their feminine appearance.
They were laughing and sharing the headset of what seemed to be an MP3 player, and seemed to be completely indifferent and unaware of the tense atmosphere around them as people were following the Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
The old man turned to me and said: “Those people are the ones who killed the Arabic and Islamic Ummah.”
“We were a strong Ummah that led the whole world during crises for a long time. But when the harvest season started and death took away our wise leaders one by one, only few were left to defend our dignity”, my new uncle said.
“Daughter, the real pain,” he continued, “is when you see that such children will be the leaders of our Ummah in the future.
The real pain is to know that a bunch of careless people are taking the region to the darkness of the unknown for nothing but personal interest.
Those people can see no farther than the tip of their nose. The Islamic Ummah is killed by its children. I wish it had died in its cradle, he added.
He noticed the confusion on my face, and replied: “You seem to be too young to be aware of the history of Israel in the region.
There is no doubt that it has always been a frantic wild monster that does not hesitate to attack its weak victim as soon as the chance comes. There was a sort of uncertainty about the extent of our solidarity and power. But when the veil was removed during the Gulf War, our weakness was uncovered. This fact has made that creature wilder and more aggressive. It has made him lurk for chance to attack us as it did.”
“At that time”, he elaborated, “we were too lazy to restrain the monster as we were comfortable with the luxurious life that was sold to us and made us nothing but a group of fat, lazy dullards. Our keenness to keep our maids and drivers, as well as our luxurious houses and cars, was much greater than our desire to keep our dignity and honor.
Now, when the scale of power is not equal and the monster has become stronger and we have become weaker, have we woken up and to claim our rights by force.
Listening to that man woke me up and brought me to reality. I realized that it is too late to face the flood by the force of power. Let’s face the truth and realize that holding false mottos of nationalism will lead to nothing but our destruction. Let’s use wisdom and learn our lesson, even if it is from our enemy.
Let’s learn the lesson from Israel and build a strong pressuring lobby that can convert the world’s leaders into sympathizers and supporters instead of denouncers. Why are we shy to point a finger of accusation at those to whom some Arab leaders refer to as “a third party in the peace process?”
Let’s hold them accountable for destroying a whole nation for the sake of their own interest. But let’s also keep in mind that this wont’ be done until we teach our children how to get angry and express their anger in a civilized way. Lets stop suppressing them even when their dignity is insulted.