As you clicked on this link to open it and read this post, you breathed, right? You just did it again. And again, right there, you did it again. Breathing, it’s so natural, so taken for granted.
Today a little 1 day old baby couldn’t find those breaths, and she couldn’t get the help other babies are afforded to find it. The thing is, after I got the news that she had died, I stopped to think what went wrong? What had I not done? What wasn’t enough?
I received a message this morning at 07.18 saying: “Nelly quick, we need help. We need an incubator for a baby born yesterday or she’ll die.” Thankfully I was up early because I had to go with a family member to hospital as they were getting tests, and I saw the message 12 minutes later at which point I started tweeting and posted a Facebook status asking people to put me in touch with a doctor or hospital who could help us. At 08.26, less than an hour later, a doctor and hospital had been identified, a few minutes later, the exact needs were identified and an ambulance was on its way. But the hospital the baby was originally at, had no support, so from last night this little human was struggling for her life, with no life support machine, no incubator, no nothing. They didn’t even have a pediatrician who could accompany the baby on her journey so she had to wait some more till that was arranged.
What was incredible was that in the 56 minutes it took to get a volunteer doctor and hospital, I got offers of donations from around the world, people I know and those I don’t know. A friend tried to call three private hospital emergency numbers, they didn’t pick up. One charity, we were told, could only accept kids of a certain religion. The only movement we were getting was from people who value life equally.
But what went wrong? Till now, Nada’s mother doesn’t know her baby has died, she’s not doing too well after the birth and everyone is too worried to tell her. What will we tell her? Won’t she, like every other mother want to know who’s to blame? Who’s fault was it? Was it my fault that there was a 12-minute delay? Was it Egypt’s fault because it lacked a fundamental infrastructure that could really and practically help the poor? Was it mere negligence on part of the hospital?
This baby’s mother was very special to me. She was one of the girls from the shelter I had previously written about. The only virgin girl at the shelter who had sparked the controversy of whether the girls should continue to be divided according to virginity. Her presence in the shelter had aggravated the girls there, most of whom bore the scars of their rape, not only in their spirits, but in the form of a fleshy piece of meat hanging from their cheeks, a result of a carving with a pen knife street girls get after their first gang rape. The girls, having convinced themselves that the staff there had more respect and love for her because she was a virgin, had planned that a taxi driver and some street boys kidnap and rape her. We found this out just in time and sent her to another shelter telling her we needed help with the younger kids there. She, in her sweet nature was unaware of the conspiracy and unaware of the efforts made to protect her from it.
After I’d written a blog about this, an interesting thing happened. I got help not only for her, but also for the girls who had planned this attack; after all they too were children who had others conspire against them. A reconstructive surgeon offered his services, clinic and staff for free to help my street girls have the rape scars removed and an incredible lady offered to pay what was left from Laila’s fiancé’s debts so they could get married and she could find a way out of the shelter and off the street. I remember how Laila found a way to call me from Cairo after I had returned to London, to tell me she was getting married on that day and that she was thinking about me even though she knew it wasn’t me who had paid the money. This gesture of gratitude was not only characteristic of Laila, but of street kids in general, you do one thing for them and they would happily lay their lives for you in return; one of the many things they taught me.
Laila was one of the “lucky” ones because she went there with a husband. The girls who’ve been raped get humiliated when they go there to give birth alone, usually used for training, as one girls said “because we know they’re doing us a favor, we can’t really say no to the 20 students they bring in to put their fingers in us to learn what it is for a woman to be dilated. You know, they have to learn and they can’t do that with daughters of real people (welaad naas)”. Can we not get together and have a place for these girls to go to give birth where they are treated with dignity and a respect for their life?
Though little Nada’s life was ever so brief, only taking with her the few breathes her tiny lung managed on it’s own, she was special in how she got people to work together from all sorts of backgrounds and places. She didn’t make it, but in a world where her breaths were not as valued as other baby breaths, then maybe this world didn’t deserve her after all.
