Each of our rehabilitation centres has dormitories for people who come from far away. They’re not palaces: bunk beds to save space, little metal closets and unbreakable plastic cups, spittoons placed in strategic positions (indispensable). But the centres are warm and clean and serve three meals a day. When the treatment is finished and the prosthesis has been received, it’s immediate discharge to make room for new patients, of which there’s no shortage.
Hamidà should have gone back to her village several weeks ago but she’s still with us. She’s four years old, and has polio, and has to come back every three months for a check-up. As she grows the crutches and splints she uses for walking have to be regularly adjusted or replaced. Hats off to her father, who brought her to us when she was tiny – it’s easier to prevent deformity and get good results when you start in time. It’s a great blessing to have attentive parents.
But this time it’s a cousin who has brought her. Because Hamidà has no one else any more, apart from her little sister, a burns victim, who is in hospital. Her grandmother is with her. The cousin says Hamidà doesn’t know anything about this yet, but Zarminà, the physiotherapist, is sure she has guessed. She’s very quick, and she was deeply attached to her daddy, a corpulent man with very light-coloured eyes and pitch-black beard and hair, dyed, like many people’s here.
Every time, he kept asking us to speed up the little girl’s treatment. We laughed with him: “You don’t want to give us time to see the regrowth? She’ll stay here until your beard has turned totally white”, we threatened.
He was from the province of Khost, on the Pakistan border. Many of the Taliban came from there. He was a farmer. The bombs falling on his village, looking for suspects, made no distinctions. Hamidà’s family had all come together for dinner. Seven of them died. The house was set on fire. Hamidà was visiting an uncle, that’s how she was saved.
Today her grandmother has come. She’s slightly bent over as she walks, with a wrinkled face and blue eyes. Her son’s eyes. Gently stroking my bearded chin with her hand, she thanks us for having kept Hamidà for a few extra days for her. She says a peasant has offered them hospitality until Hamidà’s little sister is discharged from the hospital. Then they’ll go back to the village. And then Hamidà will find out everything. We tell the cousin to bring her back to us regularly for her check-ups. He promises he will.
Off they go, weighed down with sorrow. Seeing Kabul so changed, full of foreigners and nice cars, you delude yourself that everything is all right. Then you meet Hamidà and you wake up. You understand how easy it is to forget other people’s troubles, especially if they’re far away. And a war is never very quick about coming to an end.
Alberto Cairo
