Phiroza: Child of God

I remember the first time I saw you. It was in a dispensary near Sealdah Station, a half-hour tram ride from my room at the YWCA. I was in Calcutta, India, with a group of seminarians volunteering with Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. Three days a week several of us came to Sealdah to boldly offer our ignorance to those seeking some relief from their suffering. Sadly, our ignorance soon became irrelevant as the enormity of Calcutta's grief made itself known.

We were there in that stifling, little low-ceiling compartment that was generously called the dispensary. The iron bars in the few windows gave it the look of a cage, and we Western liberal volunteers were the animals on display. We knew as many came to stare at us as to be treated. Those poor whom we had come to touch for Christ would laugh at us, point out our foolishness, and converse with those Sisters who spoke Bengali. The oppressive heat and noise and the smell of sweat and open sores remain lodged in my memory of that summer in Calcutta.

I guess I had been working there for three or four weeks when you arrived. I thought that by that time I had seen it all, that I'd become objective. At least I hoped I had. That is what hope had become, a silent prayer for an end, not to the irredeemable misery, but to the seeing of it.

Faith had also changed by the time we met. It had faded, gone sour, and remained intact only through witnessing the sheer power of the Sisters' devotion. Your presence would forever shatter that fragile, vicarious faith.

Phiroza, little one, you were five years on this earth but your face was old. You weighed 18 pounds and could barely hold your head upright, a head obscenely large on your wasted body. Your mother brought you. She seemed to know there was no help for you. But she brought you. The volunteer physician simply shook her head and returned you to your mother's arms. There was no help, no help for you.

I'm not sure who decided to take you to the nearby government hospital. Perhaps it was that same Belgian woman whose later gesture would change my life. I know there were three of us. We took turns carrying you, sighing in turn at the weightlessness of death. I remember fighting an urge to hand you over to your mother, to hide myself from your sad gaze.

We marched into the hospital. Your mother followed hopelessly. I see now that she knew more than we. Taking advantage of our color and caste, we walked to the head of a long line of poor, desperately sick people. They sat on the floor, listlessly accepting our rude and careless behavior. I am ashamed as I remember my thankfulness at the white man's advantage, that odd mix of imperialism and compassion which took us to the head of that line. We demanded and received a bed for you.

The Indian physician explained that your mother would need to remain in the hospital with you if your care was to be guaranteed. There was a shortage of nurses, he said. And so came that awful choice that only the truly poor understand. If she were to remain with you, your brothers and sisters would be without her care. They were still healthy. You, small girl, were not. Could she do otherwise than go home and tend to the healthy? Again shame grips me as I recall the anger I felt as she walked out and left you there.

So we all left you in that hard iron crib. The doctor promised to do what he could. We returned the next day. Seeing you we somehow knew that there would be no time for future visits. You were about to leave.

I DID NOT CRY for you then, Phiroza. I could not. I was angry, enraged at my impotence. I was angry and cursed the poverty that was killing you. I hated myself and my wealth and power as an American, both of which were mocked by your suffering. And I despised and rejected my God, my white, masculine God who grew fat while you starved. In my mind a question raged: Is there no mercy, no justice? Good God, aren't you, too, outraged and ashamed?

Flooded with hatred I wanted to leave, to run away, to go home. I had had enough. No, no, I had had too much.

It was then that I noticed the Belgian woman return from the hallway. In her hand she held a clay cup filled with water. Looking at me she dipped a finger in the water. Then she touched your forehead, making the sign of the cross. She began to pray.

I could not pray for you, Phiroza. Bowing my head I looked at you with your arms outstretched, crucified on that iron bed. My heart broke at last and anger poured from me as from a broken jar. For in looking at you, suddenly I saw Jesus. Not the blond, male son of the God I had brought with me. No. Looking at you I saw Jesus for the first time: Jesus the crucified, Jesus the suffering child of the suffering God. And there, at the foot of that iron bed, in that place where hope and faith died, hope and faith were reborn.

Now I know that God took me to that place of hopelessness to find hope. God took me to the cross, where faith in false gods of wealth and power was itself proved false and replaced with a faith in the God who lay in that bed with you. It is that God I will preach, Phiroza. And it is toward that same identification with you that I feebly walk.

Looking back over these few years, I have often pondered our meeting, frail Muslim child. I have sought your forgiveness time and again as I consider how hard a heart must have been to require the death of an innocent child for its final breaking. I sometimes see you in my dreams, sitting with that Jesus whose cross you shared. You are glad now and at rest.

But I dare not find comfort in such dreams. You will not allow that. Instead you draw me back again and again to that iron bed of sorrow where the question echoes still: Is there no mercy, no justice?

Ronald Adams worked with adolescents at Philhaven, a Mennonite psychiatric hospital in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, when this article appeared.