WAR HAS A FACE. When war and suffering has looked me in the eye

I glanced down to see his mother writhing on the floor in pain. She was pregnant and in labour.

I looked up and continued to ventilate Malachi’s failing malnourished body as a nurse did chest compressions. We gave antimalarials, IV fluids, antibiotics and blood.  He recovered a little, but his condition was critical.

Meanwhile, a colleague assessed the mother. It was at least her 8^th pregnancy and the baby was lying incorrectly within her uterus, so needed to be removed via C-Section. Very soon, in adjacent theatres our team was operating on the mother and resuscitating her son.

‘Why didn’t you come earlier?’ I asked the father in my broken Arabic as I continued to work on his son. I had little hope that Malachi, head in my hands, would make it much longer.

‘We were hiding in the bush for 8 days due to fighting,’ the father replied.

I checked my understanding of the statement and the local staff verified the facts. There had been fighting about 50km north of the hospital town I worked as part of a hospital team. It served Woman and Children from the surrounding region.

At that time the town was fairly stable, but there was conflict in surrounding areas. This family were the face of it – They were the face of war: A mother who almost lost her own life, her unborn baby and her son who was in a critical condition.

Sadly the 2-year-old passed away the following day with complications of severe malnutrition and malaria.
Thankfully the mother and baby survived.
They received the care they needed, but just in time.

A few years later, and a few hundred kilometers north of that hospital, I sat with Minallah, my neighbour in the refugee camp we called home. Together we shelled peanuts and chatted. There’s nothing like ordinary tasks that require minimal thinking to foster an environment for good conversation.

She started to share about being 14 years of age and walking bare-foot for 7 days from her home town, down to where we sat in the Camp. She described how huge and swollen her feet were by the end of her trip. She shared about the bombs and fighting in her home town. She reminisced about her home and the orchard her family once had. I wished that my Arabic was stronger to ask more questions and go deeper with words. I had to accept the limitations of my vocabulary and treasure the glimpses into her life and her heart that this simple moment of shelling peanuts had availed.

Minallah was another face of war. Arriving in the camp at 14. Education cut short. Separated from many family members. From orchards to ramshackle huts in the wilderness. Married and pregnant with her third child by 20. She longed to have had more education. Occasionally she would sit with me and show me the little Arabic that she had learnt to read. I would often wonder what was deeper in her eyes and heart. What did she no longer dare hope for? Another face of war.

Too often when we hear of wars and famine and suffering we picture a faceless, nameless mass of people. Rarely do we hear the deeper stories of the individuals involved and their ravished lives and dreams. Perhaps it’s too painful for us to think of them with faces and names and families and dreams. Or maybe we are overwhelmed by endless images of suffering that our news brings that we grow cold to another image.

I have found coming closer to the brokenness and looking into the faces of those suffering has helped me to understand what war looks like.

War looks like the mother who cannot get the safe pregnancy care that she requires.
War looks like the 2-year-old with malnutrition and malaria cut off from medical care.
War looks like the 14-year-old who watches bombs be dropped on her homeland and flees her country barefoot.
War has a face.

May we dare to look at their faces and listen to their stories and try to help in some small way to show we care.

Remembering,

Hope

*Please note names may have been altered to protect privacy