February 19, 2006

One of my favorite places in Cairo is this new development named Azhar Park. Mahmoud and I took the kids there last Friday. We arrived around 3:30pm, while there were still a lot of families there enjoying the early Spring weather, but I wouldn’t have called it crowded. The park itself is quite large and rivals other botanical gardens in its beauty and landscaping. It’s a quiet green refuge in the center of the largest city in Africa.
We spent about an hour sitting near the large children’s play area waiting for Aliaa and Tariq to exhaust themselves. Periodical infusions of ice cream and popcorn made the wait longer (tip to parents- don’t refuel when you are hoping for them to run out of gas!) The weather was just perfect for me in my woolen cape; there were beautifully sunny skies and cool Northern breezes. A perfect park day.
As we sat on a bench in the playground, I watched some children climbing up a curved ramp by holding onto a knotted rope. It’s a very normal children’s playground activity and they all seemed to love the challenge and rise to the occasion, conquering the hill, elevating themselves up onto the raised platform, returning to ground level via a nearby slide. After a while the ramp area quieted down and I saw a girl in a plaid jumper of about 9 years old, slowly walk up to the start of the ramp, and attempt to mount it. She would get about half way up and then start to slide down again. Her struggling caught my attention and when I started to watch her more intensely, I noticed she had Down’s Syndrome. I watched her stand still half way up the ramp, frozen by fear and indecision. She would slide one foot up, and the other would slide down. She’d so carefully slide one hand up the rope and then not be able to get leverage to pull herself up in her slippery shoes. She so patiently kept trying to climb up the ramp, but just could not figure it out and after watching other children go up the ramp around her, I realized I was crying.
I wanted so much to get up and go to her side to help her, but I was frozen as well by my own fear and indecision. Would she understand my Arabic? She was physically larger than my own children, hence I wondered if I would be able to push her up the ramp, or if that was even the right thing to do. I thought to encourage my husband to get up and hold her hand to help her up, but again, same concerns- is this something she needed to do on her own? Would helping her out make her even more conscious of her inabilities? (I guess this is proof that I think about things too much.)
My prayers were answered by a tall adolescent girl who came up and called Ayah by her name and stood along the side of the ramp and encouraged her with a smiling face and kind words that I couldn’t make out from where I sat. After about 10 more minutes, Ayah gave up and walked around the structure to a set of steps leading up to the platform where a group of other children all welcomed her. I realized Ayah must be part of a group on an outing together- I imagined they were from an orphanage or special needs school. One other child wore a hearing aid and there was a younger girl with Down’s Syndrome as well.
I always cry when I consider mental disability for too long. I don’t know why it bothers me so much than other challenges that God throws at us. I guess it pains me to think that the rest of us take our abilities for granted. We all think a million thoughts a day; we’re faced with dilemmas and we solve them; we calculate, estimate and ponder all day long. But for people with limited mental capabilities, our world must seem so complex and baffling. Every new situation is a puzzle for them. How frustrating to live in a world that is designed for “other” people. And the pain of the cruelty of those others who ridicule people who are different. I found comfort in something. I saw the mercy that is present here in Egypt. I saw the mercy of her peers, who all treated her with love and accepted her and didn’t make any big deal out of her differences.