Everyone Knew..

Exactly true! You can only expect so much in one day! Thank you and welcome our dear readers and friends from the US, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, India, Sri Lanka, Portugal, Taiwan, Turkey, Sweden, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Malta, & The UK 😉

Of course, you want to know Najat‘s story. Here’s how it goes, as she wrote it to us:

“Dear Sophie,

First I like to thank you for your everyday post which I would not miss for any reason. You have a style in writing I like a lot. Second Ginger’s situation has reminded me of an incident that took place many years ago when I was in middle school.

During that time, I was the Queen of my school, I was active and involved in every kind of activity or event. I was in the basketball team, the school music band, the school radio group, the baking & kitchen sales team. I recited poems in the radio, and I played an instrument for our morning school’s routine.

Oh! It was beautiful time and my school was a small one compared to other big educational districts, so everyone knew everyone. There were no surprises, and the only changes that could happen from time to time, was the new teachers to come, or the old teachers to leave, or that students finished and graduated and went to high school.

One morning during our school marching, while we were usually in lines going to our class, a new teacher stopped our class, pointing her finger towards “Najat”, instructing her to walk faster.

Najat was an extremely polite shy girl who had a terrible accident with her family. She tried to respond, but the teacher hurried up approaching Najat quickly and slapped her on her face, furiously thinking that Najat was making fun of her. All the faces were in a shock, but nobody said or did anything, except I.

I was angry and fearless. I stepped forward out of the line walked two or three steps towards the teacher and Najat, and I told the teacher that Najat was sick

and that she didn’t mean anything, she was trying to say “All right”. I also added that all the teacher knew about her medical condition and that she stuttered – the only way she could speak.

I don’t think I had other moments in my life, at that age, when I felt that power that came onto me.

The new teacher’s face turned red yellow blue all the colors in the world, and apologized to Najat who was weeping due to the huge injustice and the humiliation she had at the presence of her all classmates.

At that moment when Najat was crying, my heart was crying with her. Until this day, every time I remember what had happened to Najat, my tears rapidly cover my face. The magnitude of the pain she went through, made me limitlessly sympathizing with her.

Not only she lost her mom to the fire, but she had to be there watching that fire eating her mom alive. The rest of her family did not survive that accident of fire too, and since that day she was never able to speak normally again.

The point that Ginger raised was that bravery which might come to one person at a certain given moment, that was the one I experienced, because nobody else in my class did or say anything. They were all in fear! As if they became dumb.

Nevertheless, with all the sadness in the world that I had that day, that moment of defending Najat was one of the best moments of triumph that I had ever had, I was pleased with myself. Many years later, I was still proud to tell my kids about it, perhaps one day they would need to react the way I did that day.

Thank you Diane for sharing those moments with all of us. I was moved with many words you mentioned. I hope that everyone else would try to be the best s/he could. There’s nothing we should fear, but we are humans!