When you ride a rollercoaster for the first time you feel a surge of emotions that grab, terrify, and haunt you all at once – well, at least at the start. But once you get over that first drop, that first mind bending, gut wrenching drop, you suddenly realize that your life isn’t over. And not only is your life not over, it’s also exciting anticipating what else is around the corner.  When the adrenaline takes over, the fear of the impending disaster dissipates.

That’s what pregnancy was for me. I had the initial fear seeing the digital test flash “pregnant.” That fear wasn’t because it wasn’t planned – technically, we did plan. We got married, bought the nice house in a subdivision, and had a fantastic waiting period of five years so that we could explore married life without kids. The fear was the feeling of “oh no, what have we done?!”

And I wasn’t the only one who felt it! My husband had that look on his face when I showed him the test. He didn’t jump around with joy or even smile; he just looked at me with an expression of confusion and worry that settled somewhere closer to acceptance. You would have thought we were two fifteen year olds still in high school with no life achievements. But what mattered most wasn’t our initial reaction. What mattered was the journey we were embarking on together as husband and wife. The excitement hit us quickly enough, along with the extreme nausea and vomiting that plagued me for months.

My husband always wanted a beautiful baby girl. That was his desire from the start. I don’t have to explain how happy he was when the ultrasound tech told us what we were having. We decided to have a nice small and intimate reveal party, just for the grandparents. We got the idea to get cute pink build-a-bears to give to the prospective grandmothers and we revealed our daughter’s name along with the due date. It was exciting and wonderful.

But life always has a drop waiting around the corner. It never fails: impending doom lurks, waiting for its next victim. It wouldn’t be a journey if it didn’t have obstacles. So that is what I first thought when my OB/GYN called me to come to the office exactly one week after the reveal party. But I could have never prepared myself for the words “positive for Down syndrome.” I kept thinking, how could this be? My husband and I were both still in our twenties and healthy, with no family history of anything more than diabetes. This couldn’t happen to us! I stared at my husband, and he had the look of suffocation, as if the room had been stripped of oxygen. We rushed home to do research, to ease our minds into believing that the prenatal test was inaccurate or wrong. We even grasped at the straw of someone in a lab mixing my blood with someone else’s. Our parents reassured us that it was a faulty test, it happened all the time in the eighties and early nineties. My husband held fast to thoughts of positivity, but I ventured into the realm of realism very early because I knew that life always gives you something that you perceive to be unfair and unbearable. That drop was unbearable.

The twist and turns came in the next few months with the fantastic ultrasound test that showed no signs of Down syndrome at all on our little one. But of course, me being the president of the realm of realistic notions, I couldn’t allow myself to be too relieved. But could anyone really blame me? I mean if my child was to be born with Down syndrome, wouldn’t I, as her mother, need to be there for her? If the doctor pulled her from my womb and the true visualization of her features set in, and she bore obvious signs of that extra chromosome, I would still reach for my child and hold her tighter than a mother bear.

My husband and parents could step out of the room and regain their composures, while going through the stages of grief all the way to acceptance and unconditional love. But me, being momma, I needed to go through that ahead of time, so when my baby girl was handed to me the only thing she would feel was my undying and unwavering love for her.

I did the only thing I could do: I prayed. Not to take away any disabilities or deformities. How could I? How could I be so presumptuous to ask God to make my life any easier than the next person’s? No one has it easy. No, instead I prayed for a healthy beautiful baby girl. And I spent hours telling God “thank you.” I was grateful that I could conceive, and that I had a great husband who also would love our daughter unconditionally. I was thankful for the roof over my head and the qualities that my loving parents instilled in me, because during my pregnancy there was barely a week that went by without hearing about a woman killing or abandoning the baby she didn’t want. I was thankful to have compassion and natural human affection. I spent hours crying and speaking my peace with God, knowing that no matter how different she might be, my daughter was a direct gift from Him and I knew that I only wanted what was best for my child, which is to be better than me. That is what all parents truly want.

When the delivery was over, so was that ride of loops and drops. Because when they handed me my little girl all I saw were her perfections, no flaws. And my husband thanked me for bringing our child into the world. Even now, two years later he still thanks me, and I still thank God because he answered my prayers.

This entire ordeal taught me many lessons about life and our ability to make it harder than it needs to be. Sometimes we ourselves are the disasters we try so hard to avoid. It’s our thinking and our mindset that end up getting the best of us and turning something that can be conquered into a mountain of pain. I learned that you don’t have to be a saint to put trust in a higher power to guide you. I could have allowed the fear of the unknown to destroy me, to cause me to become so paralyzed that I lost my ability to avert a disaster. We all have that ability, regardless of what life sends our way. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but also what we perceive as a catastrophe is ultimately left up to our own interpretations.  

Now I am on a new rollercoaster ride. New twists, turns, and drops, each one filled with thoughts of fear and despair. But this ride is called motherhood. Every day I am forced to reset my thinking and my viewpoint on things. I remind myself that it is my choice as to whether something is a mountain or a molehill. Do I choose to wallow in negative thoughts of impending doom or do I look for the way out of the tunnel, the light that is always at the end? Because when I look at my life over the past couple of years, every disaster that has come my way has made my family and me stronger and more versatile. And every blessing that has come our way is received with gratitude and graciousness.

Do I see everything through rose colored glasses now? Not in the least. I was and will always be a realist. Seeing life for what it is will constantly require an endless readjusting of our minds. The truth is, we never truly stop riding the rollercoaster. We can only hope to learn how to enjoy it as much as possible. If we don’t, we are doomed to see every event as something to cower in front of. You don’t get to know when it is coming, and you don’t get to know what it will be, but you do get to choose how it will affect your life: mountain or molehill? I choose to see the twists and turns of my pregnancy as the blessing they always have been. My daughter has no real health issues or problems, no heart defects and no developmental delays. She is healthy and beautiful, with a smile that will bring the world to its knees. All that I truly wanted was for my baby girl to be healthy and smart. She is beyond everything I could have dreamed possible. When I look into her eyes, I am aware that she may have difficult days ahead, but she will have many happy ones, and on her worst day she is still better than I am.

Quite obviously, divine humor is not by me, as the title and byline may imply. I also sense a few wrinkled brows among our readers. Can humor be divine? The question is not unreasonable: the prophets of our Lord certainly had little to laugh about. Moreover, religion has hardly been the stuff to engender a smile or a giggle.

Enter the Dalai Lama, who is seen to giggle a great deal. One wonders why. A plausible answer could be that His Royal Highness is exceedingly nervous in the face of an impossible world. Hence the giggle. I also have a delightful book on my shelves by one Christmas Humphries. It is all about Zen Buddhism. Mr. Humphries offers a dedication to his wife who, I quote, “laughed in all the right places.” Mr. Humphries informs us of the concept of the sound of one hand clapping and we are reminded of our own Queen Elizabeth who exercises the notion at all times as she waves regally to her subjects when out driving in her state carriage. She may be giving half measure, but her subjects respond with two hands in full.

But divine humor…? Why not? We are informed that God is the sponsor of all life and all endeavor; thus, why not, indeed, divine humor?

It has occurred to this writer that we may wish to consider divine charisma. Naturally, one cannot actually purchase divine charisma, and nor can one use magic to conjure it up! However, and please bear with me, I would suggest, nay insist, that one can be instrument in manifesting it.

My explanation may hopefully point to something we adults are happy to make – or at least bring on a smile.

I speak, here, of babies, and would contend that they could easily lead us to a point of enlightenment.

Being a parent is in reality about as high as you can consciously go. I say in reality because we are talking about involvement with another human being. This not about me; this is about we. This means you, the aspirant, and your baby, your spiritual teacher.

I’ve been thinking about Zen. Don’t worry, that was the cosmic giggle you just heard, too. Zen is about doing what you do. Am I right? George Bernard Shaw’s, “He who can does, he who cannot, teaches,” just about sums it up (not that you are supposed to sum things up, but even so…). Forget teachers and teaching. Shaw obviously didn’t mean them, or that. GBS was into Zen, but he didn’t know it. The Japanese Zen master, Dr. Suzuki, may have been enlightened but could not have put it better. On the other hand, Dr. Suzuki would probably not have bothered.

Please consider the advantage of transcending this world. Your baby could help.

Obedience is the keyword, but it will go against the grain. Nobody wants to be obedient. We figure that to have a life, we need an opinion; we need to call the shots. But if having babies is what you do, you need to rethink, maybe unthink, the rules.

Did you ever consider obeying your baby?

“What can he mean?” you will be forgiven for asking. But that’s the point. Your baby is already working on you and is getting you nicely softened and shaped. Already your brain is dissolving in a mental meltdown. Suddenly you are feeling about things. Thinking is sort of a long way away, like your thoughts are down a deep well. You are no longer really thinking at all. It’s suddenly all a ghost-like echo of things learned, and all pretty irrelevant at that. Congratulations! You have a head that is full, however, of awful awareness. The trick is to turn the awfulness into positive action.

You are suddenly Mr. and Mrs. Awareness. You watch your baby because, let’s be honest, you can’t drag your eyes away, anyway. And that goes for visitors, too. Everybody is suddenly on their best behavior when a baby is nigh. Ladies utter goo-goo stuff, waggling fingers. Men stand around in the background, awkwardly, looking worried, thinking about doing a second job. The baby is socking out waves of something or other that is indefinable but real. This is charisma of the highest order. The baby has caught your attention, has got you focused and it isn’t even trying. One lopsided toothless grin, and you are going to fall apart. Your baby has got God on his or her side.

Somebody once said, “The real children of God know not what they do.”

Here is the message. Imagine your baby carrying that kind of charisma right on into adulthood. Well, we have all probably countenanced the notion of never growing up. But could you accept the idea that babies are already grown up, and that we adults have sometimes (sorry about this) simply hung around, done maturity in reverse, and accumulated a lot of juvenile junk?

It goes like this. You are gazing at your baby and you hate the idea of your baby growing up and having all of those “experiences” that the experts tell you are necessary for someone to become old and adjusted. An old Hindi proverb puts it thus: “Living life through experience is the most bitter of ways.” It means you are constantly reaching back into the past to find answers for today. Come on, can you imagine your baby smoking a cigarette? Do you want your baby to experience hardship, divorce, anger, being overweight? Do you want your baby to use bad language, or become a neighborhood flirt, or a kid who steals cars?

As an aside, this is not just social criticism I’m putting out because I must quickly state that this writer is as guilty as the rest in respect of just about all of the areas of human misdemeanor mentioned above. I feel better already.

OK, you don’t want your baby to have or experience all of the crud that makes life difficult. You don’t want your baby to smoke a cigarette because the idea is appalling. This is your baby’s way of telling you to stop smoking. Moreover, the baby hasn’t uttered a word. Hey, if that isn’t Zen, what then? It is all because your baby is not communicating in the usual way. Your baby has touched your feelings, nay, even your conscience. Babies are holy, that’s all. But they don’t know that they are holy and that makes them even holier.

Babies make us aware of what is bad for us. One exchange with a mystic I read went like this: “Do you love humankind?” asked the mystic. “Indeed I do,” replied the aspirant. “Then why,” said the mystic, “do you treat yourself so badly?”

What is happening, if you go along with the idea, is that the baby is helping you to clean up your act. This, by any reckoning has to be good. But there is an ongoing issue at stake and it is extremely appealing. If you can clean up your act you won’t have to give your baby any crud, or unmanageable appetites, later.

Right! Obey your baby and get transcended. Your in-laws may hate you, but you will not be adding a jot of personal chaos to our world. Your baby will grow up loving you, even if you don’t deserve it.

One thing I would counsel: never, ever, try to let your baby know what you know. Your baby won’t get it because a baby’s outflow of charisma is not of his or her own volition. Pressed to converse (assuming your baby has acquired a language before leaving the cot), the retort would be, “Oh, this is simply what I do.”

It all means that charisma from the right source, and exercised in a natural—may I suggest baby-like—way, could be the stuff of salvation.

We are all aware of the danger of walking the thin line between satire and sarcasm. Much of what we call humor is of the mind. It is calculated and often alludes to, and takes advantage of, the failings of others. One senses the sly wink and nudge when allusion is used. The certainty that the recipient of humor is part of the act, is in collusion. In such a case we become allies in negativity.

To be honest, a baby may not definitely make us laugh, although they often do, but they can easily bring about the rosy warmth that we love, which is, of course, the result of love. We are no longer talking about a jokey existence, but we must agree that a baby can lighten our day. A baby can, even, make humor possible. Babies have that special something that soon, unfortunately, gets lost to adults. Moreover, and as already mentioned, they don’t know that they are doing it. It means that their charisma must be the benefit of grace.

What if somebody came up to you and said the words, “you can’t do it?” What if somebody came up to you and pushed you down, kicked you, forced you to stop moving forward, and forced you to stop trying? What if this same person knocked you down time and again, reminding you that you are a failure, and that you can never do anything with your life? What if this person told you that you’ll never make it over this next obstacle, or that you can never climb that mountain, or that you can never cross that canyon? Well, look up, because that person is you.

Here you are. The mountain is large, and looms over you with such height and width that you start to second guess yourself. You stand at the base of it and simply stare. The snow hits you in the face, and you can feel the trembling cold that seeps in through your coat and gloves. Maybe you should turn back? Maybe you weren’t ready for this. You look at the top, and realize with a start that you can’t even see it. Clouds surround it so thickly, to the point that you aren’t sure if the top even exists. The doubts start flying in, and you have no choice but to listen to them. And, the more you listen, the more you start to believe them. Giving up, at this moment, seems like the best option in the world. The mountain seems too big anyway. Who even knows whether you’d be able to make it all the way to the top or not?

The problem with facing a disaster is not the obstacle, but our mindset. It’s easy to say, “I’ll cross the valley,” but harder to back up words with actions. It’s easy to say to a mountain, “get up, and move” without having the belief that it will. Soon, as we move through life, we understand that the obstacles and disasters are nothing compared to the problems that you pose to ourselves. It is us; it always was us. We continue to be our biggest obstacle. We are the disaster in our own lives. If we can face ourselves, our doubts and fears, then we can surely face any other thing with ease.

“I can’t get through it.” If you keep telling yourself that, you’ll soon believe it. Our perspective is severely flawed. When we look up and see an obstacle or hardship, that’s all we can see. We are unable, incapable, of looking beyond the negativity. It surrounds us, haunts us, and pushes us down, to the point where we believe we cannot ever stand again. We don’t see the reality of our situation: we are the ones holding ourselves back. What we see before us, that disaster we are so afraid to face, is only a single dot in the ever expanding timeline of our lives. Sure, that disaster may look big now, but soon, we will forget we have ever faced it. The important thing to remember is this; that not everything lasts forever. Our eyes have been deceived; they make the obstacles of our lives look bigger than they really are. So, let’s put the blinders on and go out there, face our fears, face ourselves, face the obstacle, and win.

So okay: you’ve managed to convince yourself to attempt and climb this huge, snowy mountain. You’ve begun to trudge up its side, your feet following the ridges so that your boots have something to grip. It’s harder than you imagined it would be: your fingers are already numb, you can barely see the hand in front of your face, and the cold has managed to find a way underneath all of your protective layers. You’ve already lost one bag of supplies, after an accident when you took to a ridge too steep and put the bag down for a moment to catch your breath. Now, it’s just you, a smaller sack, and your ever-weary determination. You hadn’t thought it’d be this difficult, and you start to make promises to yourself that you aren’t sure you can keep. “Oh, I think I should turn around and try another time,” or “I’ll get more supplies and training and come back in a few years.” You pause your climb and start to wonder if turning back is perhaps that is the best course of action at the moment. Besides, it’s too cold, you’ve already lost one bag, and a huge tiredness is suddenly overcoming you. Maybe next time.

Don’t make excuses. Another problem we face is the fact that we often try and get out of facing a certain obstacle. “It’s too hard,” or “I’ll never win,” or “I’ll face it some other time.” Something we must understand is that, when we procrastinate like this, we have already lost. We have given control over to the disaster and are content to sit there and let it attack us on every side. We’ve given up, became soft and lazy. Since when did we become content with doing nothing? Since when are we comfortable with throwing up our white flag every time we meet something we don’t want to face? Get up! This is not a walk in the park! These are our lives, and this is our time. We’ve been given an opportunity to face a disaster other people have been fighting for years. We need to take it into our own hands and believe in ourselves. Enough with the “do it later”’s and “not for me”’s. It’s time to climb harder than we ever have before. Strive to make it. Believe we can make it. Will ourselves to make it.

Without warning, you’ve run into another problem. You settle down on a flat part of ground to make camp for the night. Then you hear a menacing and intimidating growl from behind you. You quickly turn and come face to face with narrowed feline eyes. A giant snow leopard has followed you and, judging by its demeanor, it doesn’t look friendly. You can feel yourself starting to tremble, and your mind goes blank. You hadn’t expected this kind of threat at all, and with your unpreparedness, you are sure to die if you don’t act quickly. How do you act when faced with such an unexpected disaster as this?

In school, we are taught a number of things. We are taught to work with equations, to memorize dates, to know the steps of a number of different processes. We are expected to test on the curriculum, and to learn, memorize, and be familiar with the assigned material. But, I can promise you this: nothing taught in school can ever prepare you for the obstacles ahead. In math class, we are taught to solve for x, yet never taught how to solve our own problems, just somebody else’s. The truth is that you can never be truly prepared for a disaster. There is no textbook to read, no line to memorize, no equation to plug in. There is no single way to solve the problem. And that scares us. We face our obstacles, trying to solve them in the ways that we have been taught all our lives, but we can’t. We have to learn that sometimes, there is no answer. We can’t always solve the problem. What we can do, however, is to get through it. Face it, and then move on. We won’t ever be prepared for the disasters that are coming our way, but we don’t need to be. Everything we ever needed will not be taught to us in a classroom, or from a book, or even from this essay. Everything we will need is inside us, so use it.

I’ve got good news: You’ve fended off the snow leopard. Out of desperation, you took your last remaining bag, containing the rest of your food supplies, and threw it far away from you. Without hesitation, you ran in the opposite direction, abandoning your temporary campsite and every other thing you brought on this adventure. You are now alone, cold, on a mountain, with no supplies or rations of any kind. While escaping, the snow leopard managed to cut you. The blood has soaked through your bandage, and it drips to the ground below you. It stings like crazy. You finally have processed the predicament that you find yourself in, and conclude that there is no way to turn this into a positive. You tried, you failed, and now you will pay the penalty for it. You can’t help it: you press your cold face into your even colder gloves, and cry. Defeat has overtaken you, and you can think of nothing else except to sit and wait, hoping for a rescue of some kind, or, if not that, some kind of relief. Regardless, you’ve lost. It’s all over now, and the snow has turned red.

 Failure. It is the one thing that every person in the world can say they’ve experienced. But we mislabel what our failure really is. We view our loses as a bad thing. We mess up, we make mistakes, we don’t always make it. Anything that goes awry is a failure. We fear it. We always talk about how much we fail, how we just couldn’t do it. We fail to recognize our true error. Our failure is not messing up. Our failure is giving up. When we fail to try, when we get the notion in our head that we can’t do something, or that we can never get out of the situation we are in, these are the true failures. The belief that something cannot be done is the only mistake we could ever make. The disasters in our lives make it seem as though the impossible cannot be done. But this is not the time to give up. Don’t you dare quit. This is where you are your strongest. It’s not over until you allow it to be over. Stand up. Remember why you set out to conquer this disaster or obstacle in the first place. Find your motivation. You want to get over this mountain? Great, now tell me why. What is your why? Why bother setting out in the first place? You have gotten so far, that the only failure you could possibly have is giving up now. But you are not a failure. You can succeed. The final piece of advice I can give you is this: find your why. Once you can answer this question, you have already faced half the battle. Your motivation is your sword, so use it. Fear isn’t your biggest obstacle; it’s your lack of why, which becomes a lack of motivation. So find it and continue forward.

The snow is white now. The bleeding has stopped, as has your crying. You’ve managed to continue forward. Step after step brings you deeper and deeper into the unknown. You’ve fallen into a rhythm now. Step, step, step, pause. Step, step, step, pause. Step, step … an irregularity. You find you cannot go any further. You quickly lift your head up and your eyes are met with the sight you only believed you could achieve. The most wonderful scene is before you, and as you look around, you realize you know exactly where you are. The clouds have cleared, the snow is white, and you have made it. The top does exist after all. Your faith has become sight. Enjoy the view, for you have earned it. It is yours. You have conquered, you have overcome, you have won.

It was spacious but darkened by the shutters on the windows. The fluorescent lamps were on round the table in the middle of the room, but the rest of the room remained dark. There were already some students gathered round the table, talking in low voices, gesturing at the corpse draped in white. Some looked quite pale, other’s smiled coldly. Salih, his friend, seemed to be standing apart from the others, alone, so Selim took his place beside him. The room felt cold.

Laid out on the table, under a white cloth, there was the dead body which they were supposed to study. Selim realized that it was this corpse which made the room feel cold. The realization made him tense. He felt quite sick. In order to relax himself, he tried to say something to Salih, but the words would not come out.

Salih noticed and asked him: ‘What’s the matter? Are you frightened’?

Selim managed to find his voice, and said weakly:

‘No, no, I was just thinking…’

‘What?’

‘I was thinking,’ Selim answered, indicating the other students, ‘that here we are standing round a corpse… And we are unmoved. It’s just something ordinary. We are quite indifferent toward it.’

‘You are right,’ said Salih. ‘We are being trained that way. Death never becomes an occasion for us to understand the reality of our situation. As a scholar once put it, “Death is enough to warn people”. But we seem not to understand the warning.’

Meanwhile, the teacher had come in and started his lesson: ‘Today you are going to examine various parts of the body. You’ve looked at pictures and diagrams in your Anatomy Atlases-now you will see the real thing, as it were, in the flesh. Most of you will never have seen a corpse before. Don’t be alarmed or put off as I remove the cloth. You have to get used to such things. You will have to face them in the future as part of your job. There is nothing to be frightened about-what we have here is after all only a dead body.’

Soon the teacher was ready with his gloves on his hands and his mask on his face. As he moved to the head of the corpse and took hold of the cloth to remove it, a deathlike suspense prevailed in the room. Expressions were frozen on the students’ faces and, in the stillness, even seemed as if no one dared to breathe. Selim was still struggling with his thoughts when the teacher slowly pulled back the cloth from the corpse. When he saw what he saw, something like an explosion or a volcano erupting happened in Selim’s head and heart. The tears welled in his eyes, threatening to spill over. He was utterly confused and trembling all over. He was about to faint but with a desperate effort managed to rush from the room, spluttering, ‘No, no, no…’.

His fellow-students, unaware of what was going on, looked on bemused. They heard his footsteps in the corridor. One of them broke the silence: ‘He was frightened, I suppose.’ Then the others had some comment or other to make, except Salih who stood motionless, not sure what he should do.

Selim rushed out of the faculty building into the gardens outside. He stopped to lean back against one of the trees. He remained still for a moment, his eyes closed and his head pressed against the trunk of the tree. His muddled thoughts and feelings cleared as he slipped away from the present moment into childhood memories. As always, when he recalled his early years, he remembered his mother’s tears and his father’s shouting which was the cause of her tears and his father, for no reason at all, hitting his mother in the face. He remembered the mealtimes after which they still felt hungry. He was very young then, in the early years of school. Before that, what he could remember was happy and peaceful. His mother was a good, pious woman, brought up by a good family. His father was a teacher: they were considered well off on his salary. His father did his best to meet the demands of his family and everybody liked him. He hardly ever went to a coffee house to spend time with his friends, nor was he ever seen to quarrel with his wife at home

Unfortunately those happy days did not last long. The society was corrupting, and for some reason anything uncorrupted was to be rejected. Moral values were being made fun of and knocked down; good was considered bad and bad good. One had to struggle hard in mind and spirit to hold on to values and character in such a degenerating society. Selim’s father could not resist the pressures. He became used to attending coffee houses and made new friends who introduced him to harmful habits. Then he started to come home late and drunk. Sometimes, after he came back, he would wake his wife and demand a meal. Poor woman, when she would say, ‘But what can I cook? There is nothing in the kitchen,’ he hit her in the face. Selim hid under his blanket, sobbing as he heard the shouting and weeping. Once, when he took hold of his father’s legs and begged him: ‘Don’t, don’t do it, father’, he got a beating too.

After Selim’s father was banned from teaching he became an alcoholic. During that time, his mother did some work sewing clothes at home and, when the need was desperate, she even went out to clean houses for money. His father took this money by force to spend on drink. When his wife tried to refuse to give him the money, he hit her until she gave in. Over and over again, she would plead: ‘Give up drinking. Can’t you see that it is ruining us all? Can’t you see how unhappy we all are? Please give up drinking, then our old happy life will return. I can work to support the family until you are all right.’

The poor woman’s health was deteriorating day by day, and the mistreatment by her husband grew unbearable. So, one day, they left the house to go shopping and never returned. They went to live instead in the house of the widow of Selim’s grandmother’s uncle.

Selim finished school and wanted to go on to high school but he knew that his mother could not afford it. His mother wanted to get him an apprenticeship of some kind. For the time being, during the school holidays, he studied the Qur’an in the neighbourhood mosque and quickly learnt the Arabic alphabet. That did not take long. After that, Selim became an apprentice to a hair-dresser.

That was just before the schools opened. Selim was aware of the hardships his family faced. Even so, he really did want to attend high school. He said nothing to his mother. He only cried about it alone, to himself in his bed. One day, the imam of the mosque came to the hairdresser’s to have his hair cut. He was keen to find out if his former pupil whom he had taught how to read the Qur’an would go on to high school. Selim said quietly, ‘I would like to, but…’ He couldn’t finish the sentence. But the imam guessed from the tears in Selim’s eyes what the situation might be.

The imam asked where Selim and his mother lived and paid them a visit. In a long talk, Selim’s mother explained their story to the imam, weeping as she did so. Before he left the imam said: ‘Don’t worry! With the help of God, I will do everything I can to help Selim to attend school. Believe me! The only thing I need is your prayers.’ The mother and son were hopeful and happy.

The imam told his friends the circumstances and they all agreed to help. Together, they managed to get a place for Selim in a good boarding school whose aim was to bring up students dedicated to the service of their religion and their homeland. It was at this school that Selim met and made friends with Salih. Not many years later Selim sat for the university entrance examination. When he opened the envelope with his results, he gave thanks to God and hurried to give his mother the good news: he had won a place in the school of medicine. When he reached home he found his mother on her death-bed, drawing her last breaths. He held her hand and said nothing. She opened her eyes and looked at him. They were eyes full of a mother’s suffering and a mother’s love. ‘Well,’ she asked, ‘What happened? What were your results?’

‘I’ve won a place in the school of medicine. I will become a doctor and treat you. Believe me, mum! You will be the happiest woman in the world.’

‘I thank God that I have lived to see this day,’ his mother said, and wept a little with contentment and relief. Then, she went on: ‘I am so glad that I have a son obedient to God. Finishing school is nothing by itself, my son. Remember that your father was an educated man but his ignorance brought us to those bad days which we all suffered. It is ages since we heard anything of him. Who knows where he is drinking now, even if he is still alive? I don’t think you will be like him. Study, my son, study much and become a professor. But never lose your faith. Without it, you are nothing. I’d rather you had not gone to school if you end up following your father’s example, destroying both yourself and the ones around you, instead of being helpful to them. With the knowledge you have, feel the greatness of God. That is my wish.’

She held Selim’s hand very tightly. He kissed her again and again, and said: ‘You are very ill, mum. Don’t tire yourself! I will call a doctor.’

In a voice that grew ever weaker, she said: ‘I dont need a doctor now. You can stand up to any difficulty. I have always tried not to do anything bad, as God has warned us. I don’t feel any pain now. I hope I have managed to bring up a son who will pray for me after my death. Please don’t forget what I have told you. May God be of great help to you, God…!’ At this point, her voice failed her. She relaxed as if falling into a sweet deep sleep and so passed away.

Re-living these sad moments, Selim, leaning against the tree in the grounds of the faculty of medicine, shook with emotion. Absorbed in himself, he had not noticed Salih who had followed him from the lecture room.

‘Hey what happened to you?’ Salih asked, shaking him gently by shoulder. ‘I would have believed that you were frightened if I did not know you well. We believe in God and we know that death is certain. Why then did you run away like that?’

Selim looked up at Salih and spoke slowly and carefully: ‘You are my closest friend. We stayed in the same boarding school, we both won scholarships to this university and right now we have been living in the same house for two years. I don’t think I care much what other people might think, but I do care what you think. I know I can trust you to keep secret what I’m going to tell you. Do you remember saying to me today-“We are going to work on an actual corpse, a dead man. I wonder if he had any children, poor man!” Do you remember saying that?’

‘Of course, I remember,’ said Salih. ‘Why? Did I say something wrong?’

‘No, Salih,’ answered Selim ‘You said nothing wrong, but do you know who he was?’

‘How could I possibly know that?’

‘Well,’ said Selim with a sigh, ‘I don’t know if it is enough to call him “poor man” but I do know very well who he was. He was my father.’