-part 2-
Salaam aleikum va rahmatu Llahi va barakatuh. My dear readers, today I wish to continue telling you about my life inside the refugee camp in Syria. I have told you before that the medical system inside the camp was almost non-existent. I cannot begin to tell about the lack of dentists and dental care services.
When I was inside the camp and my son was 12, he developed a cavity. I had nowhere to go with him in order to treat it. Outside, it was starting to get cold and, on top of all that, my son got a cold, most probably because he was not dressed warm enough. His bad tooth started hurting really bad and, in the end, became infected and developed an abscess. We could not afford to go to the hospital and I did not know what medicine to give him, especially since the people from in the international humanitarian organizations had not been inside the camp for quite a while. How to treat him? With what medicine? I was panicking completely. I invoked a Dua to Allah, I prayed and prayed and, after a few more days, the medicine vehicle from the humanitarian aid organization was allowed access inside the camp. I ran with my son to the car, in order to ask for help and the proper medicine to treat him. They gave them to us. However, even though I administered the medicine to my son as I had been instructed, the abscess did not subside.
For a short while after he started taking the treatment, my son started to feel better and the abscess began to get smaller. However, after a week, it reappeared, and my son was again in severe pain. Nothing helped. I was very worried it could get worse. We struggled like this for two weeks, until one of the Muslim Sisters from the camp (an acquaintance of mine) came to our tent and told us to start administering a different medicine. The next day, the cars from the humanitarian aid organization came again to the camp so I went and asked for the medicine the Muslim Sister told me about and, blessed be Allah, it was available and they gave it to me. After my son started taking it, the tooth healed, and I could finally sigh with relief.
Sometime after this trial, my children and I were transferred to a different camp, in Al-Roj. There, Blessed be Allah, the state of medical and hospital care was a little bit better, there was even a dentist, even though it was very hard to get access to him. One day, my son had another abscess and I requested for us to be taken to the doctor. When we got there, there was a huge queue, and the children were crying, many of them in pain. The doctors passed between the people waiting with cold, stern expressions on their faces and, the soldiers continuously kept yelling and shouting at everybody. Eventually, after two hours of waiting, we were received in the dentist’s office and he took out my son’s bad tooth. Alhamdulillah, this trial was finally over for us.
While I was inside the camp, I witnessed another case involving an abscess but, unfortunately, that time the ending was not a happy one. There was a Muslim Sister in the camp that would offer massage services for the other Sisters. She had a 20 year old daughter.
One day, the girl began to have a toothache and started taking some pain killers. But they did not help her. After a few days, her whole cheek began to swell up. During the time that this happened, the medicine car from the humanitarian aid organization had not been allowed inside the camp for a very long time. The older Sister tried to reach the hospital, so that at least she could receive some proper medicine for her daughter, but the soldiers did not allow her and did not even want to hear her pleas. And so, the days passed, and the said Sister’s daughter began to feel worse and worse. She even started developing a fever. After a week she was non-responsive, completely comatose. After a few more days she went to Allah Almighty. The pain her mother felt had no ends. She was her only child, and the Sister was no longer young, so she could console herself with the thought that she could still bear more children. I believe the loss one one’s child is the most terrible thing that can happen to a person. I do not wish upon anyone to have to see his or her child wither away and die. I, myself, have gone through such a loss, and I can fully understand how that mother felt at the time.
May Allah Almighty protect all children, and may their mothers never know what it means to lose what they hold most precious and dearest in this world.
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