Years ago, in my internship, rotating through psychiatry, I interviewed a patient who carried with her Pandora's Box filled with the most wretched heartache and evil humanity can spew forth. She alone had been bearer of the secrets of the Box for more than a decade. Her heart was torn apart by the knowledge she'd been protecting her community and family from. I have never in my entire life heard a more harrowing story and hope that I may never have to again. The truth of the matter is that many, many people suffer at the hands of their fellow man and the degree of evil and injustice on this earth is rattling.
My patient spoke broken English, mostly making herself understood by hand gestures. She had been born in one of our Northern African countries, in a place where civil war and terrorism dictated life. A rural village was home to her entire extended family: mother, father, brothers, husband and five children. This community had been spared much of the brunt of the war as it was mostly fought in the urban areas. News arrived from neighbouring villages that the gorilla fighters were coming. They were on their way to recruit the men and boys to join their ranks and increase their power in the countryside. Young girls and women were raped. The gorillas left death and carnage in their wake; fields were burned, houses ransacked, any items of value confiscated and food plundered.
My patient was there, she heard the warning of the coming evil and when they finally arrived she heard their war cries, now still screaming in her head.
She watched her house with her elderly mother and father still inside go up in flames. They were too old and thus of no use to the gorilla fighters. Her husband and brother refused to join ranks. They were decapitated in front of her.
My patient was in tears. I had some difficulty understanding the details of her description due to the language barrier but the depth of her suffering was blatantly obvious. I understood why she would be so shaken, anyone who had witnessed these things would be broken. Then she shared the next bit.
Her eldest son was still a boy, too young to be considered for active participation in the terrorist group. They were about to kill him as they had his father. His mother threw herself at the feet of the murderers, pleading for her son to be spared. With her were her three younger children, the baby still only a few months old. The group leader presented her with a choice: her life for the life of her first born son. I dare not imagine what I would have done. At this point in the interview, my patient hesitated. Up to now she'd been rambling, the account of the incident spilling from her memory. Here she paused. She'd never shared this story with anyone. Since her flight to South Africa ten years before, she had kept the nightmare of her family's brutal murder to herself. And this she did because the shame of her choice completely overwhelmed her.
Faced with the blood-thirsty vengeance of the terrorist, she made the worst decision a mother could ever be asked to make. Were she to sacrifice herself so her little boy may live, she'd have no guarantee that he would not also be murdered and along with him his three younger siblings. That's after being subjected to whatever other evil deeds the terrorists had planned for them. The mother chose her own life, and essentially those of her other three children, over that of her eldest.
The boy was duelly decapitated in front of his mother. Pieces of his flesh were cut off and my patient was forced to eat it. She was made to eat the body of her son.
She'd tried to rebuild a life for her three remaining children in South Africa. She set up a little cafe selling odds and ends. She put her children through school single-handedly. Never ever did she breath a word of what had happened to their brother. At night the blood-chilling cries of the terrorists still rung in her ears. She had not had a peaceful night's rest in ten years. Sudden movements made her jump, loud noises made her break out in a cold sweat. The smell or sight of meat made her sick to the core of her being. She had not touched another piece of meat since that day.
Being a foreigner in South Africa, she was brutally discriminated against by the local African population. Word on the street was that foreigners were depriving locals of job opportunities. During my internship, xenophobic attacks in the townships occurred frequently. My patient had been a target of such an attack and lost her cafe cart and the source of her income. Somehow she still provided for her own three children and another six South African orphans whom she had informally adopted over the years. A year and a half before I met her, a man she knew to be connected to terrorist activities in her old homeland, came to her house and took her eldest daughter from her to be his wife. She hadn't heard from her daughter since and did not know what had happened to her or how to help her.
I diagnosed my patient with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ( PTSD) and organised follow up visits with our psychologist. Our social worker could help her obtain grants for the orphans she cared for. I saw her once or twice attending her psychologist sessions since our original meeting and although she would obviously never be free of her harrowing memories, I like to think that she did look a little lighter. No medication could fix what had happened to her but unburdening her sorrow upon someone who did not judge was what she had been yearning to do for a decade.
(As I have no contact details of this lady and do not remember her name, she cannot be traced through this blog post. I have not mentioned the country she is from and have no recollection of that either. I have lost touch with her and do not know her or her family's current whereabouts.)
