Brave Muslim Children

Last week, my four-year-old daughter was operated for tonsillitis and adenoids. I had been putting off this surgery with oral medicine for the last six-months or so because I felt that I did not have the strength to cope with the psychological pressure of having my four-year-old in an operation theatre. However, one fine day, I got a call from my child’s school which finally made me understand that I could no longer put off what I had been putting off for months. ‘This is it’.

The morning of the operation was poignant for my husband and me. We were waiting outside the operation theatre to hand her over to the surgeons while she played in our arms. All despondent episodes from other people’s lives were chirping at my head; episodes of unexpected deaths, deaths during operation and deaths in post-operative care.

When they finally summoned us, I questioned my husband, ‘You or I?’ meaning who will go into the operation theatre with her till she dozes off with the anesthesia. My husband gestured for me. I felt peace. As the nurse beckoned me, I started towards the inner door of the operation theatre, only to realize that the nurse was taking my daughter out of my arms.

‘What?’ I looked quizzically at her.

She smiled to assure me. My daughter was still holding on to me.

‘Won’t I go in with her?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she smiled again.

‘… but she won’t stay without me … let me stay with her until she becomes unconscious … ?’ I pleaded.

But she allowed me not, and expertly took my daughter out of my arms.

Dumbfounded, I mumbled something to my daughter about bringing something favorite of hers right away.

Tersely, I sat outside the operation theatre.

Fifteen minutes after the nurse had taken in my daughter, a doctor came out and apparently looked around for me. I rushed to her.

'Are you the mother?’ she asked.

 ‘Yes,’ I said.

 ‘Is your daughter normal?’ she inquired.

 ‘Huh?’ I was stupefied. ‘Yes of course she is normal. Why? Something wrong?’

 ‘Well,’ she stated, ‘its just that she has been sitting so quietly and pliantly in there for the last fifteen minutes that we thought maybe something is wrong with her … normally children throw a tantrum’.

In a piercing moment, I felt so proud of my daughter. She had been so brave. After the number of pre-operation visits to the doctor, she had understood that this was the hospital and these are the doctors and that she is brought here for a purpose.

My poor darling … she is basically of a shy nature; shouting and hooting and running mad when the family is around but going into a shell when a stranger is around. She hides behind her father or me or her nanny if a stranger looks at her. She would never be alone with a stranger. Yet she managed. She managed being alone inside the operation theatre, conscious and with total strangers around her, for a full fifteen minutes and more.

She understood the situation and braved up to it.

Children are brave. It is we who underestimate them. It is we who do not let them grow up. Which is why it is about time that we stopped fooling our children by making them live in oblivion. It is time we stopped cheating our children by making them live in a religious seclusion, close enough to monasticism.

We teach them, ‘Be a good Muslim and forget about what is happening around you’. How can a good Muslim forget about what is happening around him? We have a history where our heroes were the saviors of not just their own nation but the saviors for the weak and oppressed of other nations as well!

It is about time we told our children about who we are and what is happening to us. It is about time we told our children of our past and of our future. It is about time we shared with them the news of their siblings in Palestine, Syria, Burma, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Let them know that Superman, Spiderman and Batman are actually nobodies. Let them see the world, as it really is. And they can. If they can see blood spilling in Tom & Jerry, horrendous fights between ugly characters and bursting bodies in video games, surely they can see a little real blood out of their own windows?

Raise brave children. Teach your children about Faith, worship and ethics and the foremost of them is not turning a blind eye when someone is in trouble. Coming back in a full circle, it is that Faith, that we initially teach our children, is what will protect our children when they try to protect others.

“

They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

And then ... they came for me ... and by that time there was no one left to speak up…

”

[Martin Niemoller, German Anti-War Activist]