He had tufts of cottony white hair, and was quite tall, and he was sort of professor-ly, and he had some type of head and neck cancer, but after all of this time, his face is a blur in my memory; I’d been assigned to the gentleman for several days and thought that we had developed somewhat of a rapport as he and his wife lit up whenever I entered the room and we would joke amongst ourselves about silly inconsequential things.
I was that safe person to whom you could confide almost anything, at least this is how I like to justify the incident.
I’d just walked in and closed the door, about to conduct my assessment, (breath deep, how much have you urinated, what is your level of pain) when he asks, and the tightness in his voice let me know right away that this wasn’t some “and how do you like the whether today?” question, but something deeper, something accusatory, something that pained him and that somehow I was supposed to assuage.
“I mean I fought in Vietnam for this country only to have those bastards take pot shots at me and my country and my way of life,” and you’re one of them he said, but didn’t say.
I don’t remember what I said, only what ran through my mind as I stood frozen in place as the room shrank and my heart quivered behind the shell of my ribs, when I heard about the attacks and saw those images on television, I was so afraid and I tried to call my grandmother who lives in New York to make sure that she was okay, but the lines were busy for two days straight; and I’m American too; and I have never killed nor condoned the killing of anyone except maybe a child molester, who deserves every worst death, and why do you think this scarf makes me spokesperson for the wrongs of these people?
Don’t ask me why I stayed there while he rambled on instead of just walking out the door, or why I tried to responded to questions for which I had no answers, because I wasn’t guilty of anything except wearing this scarf and praying five times a day and being American too.
I wish I knew why Islam, out of all the world religions, excites so much hostility in people of Western European cultural heritage. Maybe it's a historical thing - Jerusalem, Charles Martel, Barbary Pirates and all that. People tend to have long cultural memories, even when they can articulate no real reason for feeling the way they do.
ReplyDeleteThe shocking ignorance of some people is revealed in the fact that your patient didn't even consider that you're not an Arab. You share a religion with many Arabs. Big deal. A lot of the Vietnamese your patient fought were Christians, but I doubt he came home and renounced Christianity. The Germans we fought in WWII were Christians, too, but look at the horrible things they did.
When I was a child, my father told me that we might disagree with another country's government or with a few fanatics, but the average person, no matter what their religion or ideology, just wants a peaceful life. I wish more people understood this. The world would be a much nicer place.