Muslim up close

This post has been on my heart for awhile. I'm a slow thinker and an even slower typist. Thankfully I have a few quiet hours tonight.
********************************************************************************

It was the morning of my daughter Liberty's second birthday. Early in the day the news came that Al-Zarqawi had been killed. I jokingly said, "Well, happy birthday, baby girl. They killed a terrorist on your big day!" And I didn't think another thing about it until later that day...

Many of you know, I'm a nurse. I specialize in Intensive Care nursing, but specialize within that in oncology (cancer) ICU nursing. I treasure few things as highly as working with people who are living and dying with cancer. I rarely get to work in my favorite area because other departments are busier and more needy. But that evening I was sent to the oncology unit.

My assignment was pre-determined. I sat taking report from the offgoing RN. Patient #1 was a bone marrow transplant patient. Doing well, slated to be discharged to the floor soon. But patient #2 was a problem. She was from Syria, non-English speaking, brought here by her physician brother to treat an aggressive recurrence of cancer. She was not doing well AND she couldn't communicate with us. "She's sweet, but almost impossible to understand. We're working on getting a translator hot-line number." Muslim probably, I thought. I've never taken care of a Muslim.

I readied myself to go in and meet her. We have to wear masks and gloves to protect our fragile patients from easily transmitted infections. But I was glad for the mask because as I entered her room I was nervous. In the front of my mind I knew she wasn't a terrorist, of course; she was probably a mother, a worker like me. But the uneasiness remained. I think I was nervous because I was afraid to be found as ignorant as I felt, and I was afraid I would unwittingly insult her culture and her religion. And this old evangelical quip kept flashing through my mind: Christians and Muslims are enemies, aren't they?

She was sitting at the foot of her bed with her hijab covering her head, drawn, pale, quiet. Her brother and sister-in-law were in a full-blown conversation. I quietly turned on the monitor, assessed her, took vital signs. I'd never really listened to Arabic before. In other languages I occasionally hear a word or two that I understand, or at least think I do, but in Arabic there was not one thing that sounded familiar. It was soft and filled with sounds I might use when calming a crying child or telling a secret. It was beautiful. I spoke to my patient through her brother: Did she have pain? Nausea? Any trouble breathing? No, she told him. The brother and I sat and made a list of basic yes/no assessment questions that we could use in his absence. I could point to the Arabic writing that followed my English question. But how could I really ask what I wanted to know? How can you leave your home, your country to come here to gamble getting better? Do you understand how very sick you are? Are you afraid? Are you lonely? As I turned to leave the room , she caught my hand and said, with a thick accent, "Thank you, thank you." And then she kissed my arm.

It was a good thing I wore the mask because I'm not much of a hugger, let alone a kisser. My mouth was probably hanging open. I know I blushed. I felt the heat in my face. I did something and excused myself, taken aback by her gentleness. Something in the back of my mind began to come forward. Prejudice. I was prejudice because she was Muslim and I was not. Yet she didn't represent Al-Zarqawi, just like I don't represent the screaming, yelling TV evangelists that you see on cable.

Later that evening, after her family had gone I reviewed my notes. She was required to bathe twice a day, according to doctor's order. It was standard care for leukemics to keep the potential bacteria from infecting their body. I leafed through the notes. No bath. She'd been there a few days and it didn't look like she had been in the tub once. I went into her room and tried to pantomime a bath. She wasn't getting it. She was waving me off, expressions that looked like No, no I don't need one. Too tired. Too sick. I picked up the phone and called a relative that had agreed to translate. "Please tell her that I need to give her a bath, ask her if she's had one. She needs to be clean." The family member was very kind, spoke with her for several minutes, and then told me, "No, there has been no bath. She says she will go with you."

I readied the bathtub and towels. She slowly began to pull her hijab off, and stopped. She looked directly in my eyes and said, "Sorry. So sorry." As her scarf came off I saw the thin little whips of hair that I've long associated with the disease. "Con-ser, con-ser" she said slowly. Conser... oh! Cancer! Yes, I whispered and rubber her shoulder, I know, it's from the cancer. It's okay. Syrian or American, women still grieve their hair. We steadily shuffled arm in arm to the bathroom and I helped her undress. She began to shiver violently from the cold. I eased her into the tub and began to carefully and quickly wash her. My mind was buzzing. Am I doing anything wrong? Have I offended her beliefs at all? The bathing of another person is always a holy moment for me, but none so much as this one. In that humble position, kneeling before her, my mind and heart wrestled through thoughts: Muslim vs. Terrorist, American rhetoric vs. Middle East, Mohammed vs. Christ, friend vs. foe - and then... she quietly leaned over and kissed the top of my head. "Thank you, thank you, " she whispered. With my head bowed, I tried not to cry. God had brought the image of Al-Zarqawi and my patient side-by-side, I heard my glib comment to Libby replay in my head, and then He said, "Who's judge are you? I created both. I love both. Don't let your over-exposure to the radical Muslim mislead your understanding."

I still think about her. We sat on her bed later that day and shared pictures of children, showing age by the universal "hold up the number of fingers" technique. I didn't learn Arabic, and she didn't learn English, but she bridged a gap for me that no article or special interest story could. I was changed by that night. Part of redemption is allowing God to work out areas of darkness in us that we don't even know exist, like prejudice and ignorance. It may have been Liberty's birthday, but the gift that night was all mine.