Preez's Kite Runner

And at 12.50am, as I read the last sentence in the pages that opened before me, I wept. I had just finished reading The Kite Runner.

I wept for those I had known and those I would never know who had suffered at the hand of injustice. The injustice that prowls like a lion seeking who it might overwhelm and or overcome in every life, every family, every city, every town, and every nation. I wept for the very apparent lack of simple humanity in the hearts and mind of many who wage deceit and war in the name of God and or ‘Me-ism’.

What had happened to our world? What had happened, I pondered again? What had happened to me?

Cancer
Raw on the emotions side, I was distressed and disturbed. A few days before I had heard news that a dear friend, with who I had looked forward to sharing decades with in friendship, had passed. Cancer.

There’s a word for you. Malignancy, growth, tumor, malignant cells. All words used to explain the evil. I wept for my friend. Wept for the solitude with which she had come and gone; and I thanked The Lord nevertheless that she was at last in a place where there is no more sorrow. I thanked God that she had died in Him.

In my numbness at the weekend I picked up The Kite Runner. An acclaimed piece of writing. I had bought a copy of the book over a year or two ago but was yet to read it. Once I read the first paragraph, I found it difficult to put the book down.

The Kite Runner
I deliberated at the apparent ease at which life could sometimes deal you a deep blow; a deep injustice.

As I read through The Kite Runner, I guessed that I may just as well have been reading about a family in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Zimbabwe or Angola. For although the setting of the pages that lay in my hands was Afghanistan, I knew that a similar injustice, a similar cancer, had permeated through individual lives, families, towns and nations all around the world.

The injustice in the decisions made by national and international leaders to claim and or reclaim a nation; to attain and or remain in power illegitimately; to overthrow a legitimate government; to deny a people asylum in a safe country because their ‘papers’ are not intact even though the very apparent reason someone might want to receive asylum was precisely because their very perpetrators were those in authority and who they could never approach for legitimate papers.

I thought of families broken and separated. I thought of family generations thereafter suffering deep mental and emotional trauma as a result of the very negative and very deep externality of physical war and conflict on a parent. The broken relationship that such a parent might then have with their spouse and or their children – for which man or woman would not be broken having suffered rape, having suffered the violent and sudden loss of all the things that gave you surety and comfort, having witnessed the murder of members of your family, and having lost hope in amidst of all of the above?

Visiting cancers of the fathers to the third and fourth generation
The children who then grow up not knowing the love of a parent, nor the comfort of a ‘normal’ family home where mother or father is not suffering from schizophrenia or any other mental or emotional illness which means he/she cannot hold down a wage and thus a living. Children then traumatized by the world around them as a result. Looking to comfort and acceptance in the awkward places of the bottle, the brothel; pot or needle.

The broken children that they themselves might then bring up within and without marriage....

A friend who is a psychiatrist once told me, having just returned home from a prison visit where he was assessing mental health of inmates, the world might be a better place if all those who had serious mental illnesses were denied the right to reproduce.

And all the human rights lawyers cried out: ‘foul play.’

Foul Play
Foul play it is. But foul play it also is when such offsprings, perhaps following years and years of counseling which has given them some respite, then seek to make a better life for themselves in a second country and all they get in response from the officials at the other side is a firm: ‘I am sorry.”

Worse still, they get thrown in a detention center. Worst still they are fortunate enough get out of the detention centre and secure employment as a menial labourer and all the people of that nation cry that foreigners are taking our jobs. We don't want foreigners.

Cancer confronts the abused and confused immigrant yet again. Better to, I say, for those who don't want foreigners to confront their political leaders and demand that their foreign policies and international relations promote peace, not war. Peace has many synonyms: justice, responsiveness, transparency, accountability, democracy.

Yes I cried for the injustice all around us. The cancer all around us and the cancer that had taken away my friend. The cancer all around us that, if not detected early can spread to other vital organs of the body – particularly the mind and soul, rendering the body to succumb to a life lived in iniquity, misdemeanor and malignancy, for indeed sometimes the cancer we fight, the war we wage is not in battles fought with all forms of missiles, bullets, shells and AK47s.

Deliverance and thanksgiving
And I pondered yet more. I had a deep need to appreciate God for all the misfortune He had ensured that I escaped. For all the misfortune He had protected me from; and for all the misfortune He will pull me from. I thanked Him that in every situation I have always known peace and hope in Him, and yes: I always knew mercy.

I was reminded that there could always be a meeting place, a respite and a rest even in amidst cancer of all forms. For me that respite has been Him, Christ Jesus. He was also my late friend Priscilla’s respite.

Many times in the midst of her pain whenever Priscilla called me or I called her on the phone she always, always, always comforted and encouraged me. Forgetting all of herself, all of her pain and all of her needs, she always focused on and enquired about me, my wellbeing and the well-being of my family. She joked once when I had called her that she couldn’t really talk right now and that I should call some hours later - so many people were with her in the hospital room, but she knew that I was driving home from work in the Lagos traffic and she would have loved to have kept my mind off the Lagos traffic in conversation.

Christ Jesus: Priscilla's Kite Runner - He can also keep and numb your mind and pain off the traffic of the world that threatens to envelope you with all sorts of cancer.

Resilience

I’ve been particularly upbeat this week, but for no apparent reason – actually perhaps it was because someone I liken to the young Omar Sharif unexpectedly popped into town this week.

I see you smile!

But honestly, it’s been a week full of joy.

My Christian Scriptures had laid unread for a while and I remembered that this ought not to be the case. So I began my read of it, I believe, on Sunday evening. Jonah 2 verses 8-9: they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving….salvation is of the LORD.

I smiled. Faith leapt up. Hope stirred within, and yes the love of The Almighty God encompassed all around me.

Better not to observe, better not to dwell on, the lying vanities that surround. The lying vanities and false gods that say to you day in, day out that you life is without purpose and fulfillment; that you and your spouse are ill-matched; that your marriage is failed; that your life is a failure because your bank account cannot even smell let alone purchase a Birkin bag and yet your contemporaries and friends carry them like you carry your beloved, what is it now, DKNYs. Your life is a failure because you can only afford a holiday abroad every three years.

Hmm. The list goes on.

I have concluded that I cannot, quite literally, emotionally afford to observe the lying vanities all around me for indeed I would be forsaking the mercies of God to date on each and every area of my life.

Is it the vanity that says that at this time I ought to have had at least 3.2 children? Or the one that screams: if only my income afforded me the extra finances to have liposuction on my thighs, butt, stomach – erm, you name it. Or the vanity that yells, what now, erm, that I should be my own boss by now? If you care to observe them, there are scores of lying vanities that threaten your sanity day in, day out.

But you know what? Forget that, I say. What I have I am grateful for and what I will have and I will become, by the grace of Almighty God, I look forward to with exuberant expectance. Oh yes.

Then this afternoon in doing some work related research on Leadership I stumble upon this wonderful piece:

Learning from Jonah's in the Belly of the Fish Experience
Aha! That’s what Jonah was talking about. Resilience. In these tough times? Better be resilient.

Don’t go off the wagon, I say. Weeping may endure for a night, but but but but but - joy comes in the morning.

In the above piece, Jim Murray puts it like this:

resilience is the capacity to "bounce back” after disappointment, setbacks or even disasters. It is a leadership attribute that is crucial in unpredictable times or in the face of tough circumstances. It is rightfully acknowledged to be a critical component in one’s emotional health.

He goes on to say:

Resilient people can detect the seeds of opportunity and the enormous potential for learning in difficult and trying situations. They can resist being swept up in the anxiety or panic of the moment and are more willing to adapt as creatively as possible to seemingly daunting challenges.

And when this adversity is conscientiously dealt with and subsequently overcome, resilience is strengthened

Aha – I say again. Rejoice.