{"id":429,"date":"2011-11-21T23:51:32","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T22:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/?p=429"},"modified":"2017-08-24T13:54:04","modified_gmt":"2017-08-24T12:54:04","slug":"ayesha-ahmad-%e2%80%9cstories-are-all-we-have%e2%80%9d-reflecting-on-an-imperfect-offering-by-james-orbinski","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2011\/11\/21\/ayesha-ahmad-%e2%80%9cstories-are-all-we-have%e2%80%9d-reflecting-on-an-imperfect-offering-by-james-orbinski\/","title":{"rendered":"Ayesha Ahmad: \u201cStories are all we have\u201d- reflecting on ‘An Imperfect Offering’ by James Orbinski"},"content":{"rendered":"

In \u2018An Imperfect Offering<\/em>\u2019, a memoir written by James Orbinski on his travelling tales as a doctor working and bearing witness in some of the world\u2019s most death-ridden and hostile regions, he writes of a man he met in Afghanistan who once said to him:<\/p>\n

\u201cNo scars, no story, no life. Sometimes, the best story is the space between the words \u2013 a space that is a window onto a different way of seeing. And when there are no easy answers, stories are all we have<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dr Orbinski, also a former elected President of M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e9res, practices medicine with an ideology; a view to obtaining justice. He says that the \u201cfirst act of justice is recognising the victim<\/em>\u201d in the bodies of these extreme lands of wars and crises.<\/p>\n

This is the light of Dr Orbinski\u2019s work \u2013 he reminds us that the person\u2019s eyes are where we find a life or a death \u2013 we see the \u201clast remnant of a fuller life<\/em>\u201d. Dr Orbinski captures this final moment; and reflects to us how we are to find a person\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

Could there be a story without scars? Could there be a life without a story?<\/p>\n

Dr Orbinski describes that \u201cit is into this silent place that the humanitarian acts, and in speaking from this place, the voice of outrage is raised. It is a voice that bears witness to the plight of the victim<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

And Dr Orbinski does not look the other way \u2013 he stares into suffering and chooses to enter, wandering through the annals of a suffered life.<\/p>\n

Some stories merely suffer. They are words of a life flailing, feeling the ground but finding flight, taken from the graves of their birth. A story that cannot be contained, held in arms that remain closer to the death than the life.<\/p>\n

Why do stories matter? Because suffering survives whilst shrouded in silence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn speaking, one recognises, \u201cI am and I am not alone<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

So, the nomadic words of the Afghan, are indeed the roots of our humane-ness.<\/p>\n

In our medicine, we can perceive, we can embrace the hurt, the sick, the dying; the elements of the human heart lost in our bleeding world, and we can hear the mind of the suffered.<\/p>\n

We speak stories.<\/p>\n

Dr James Orbinski will be speaking at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, November 24<\/strong>th<\/strong><\/sup> 2011.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018An Imperfect Offering<\/em>\u2019 is published by Rider, an imprint of Ebury Publishing, UK, 2008.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In \u2018An Imperfect Offering\u2019, a memoir written by James Orbinski on his travelling tales as a doctor working and bearing witness in some of the world\u2019s most death-ridden and hostile regions, he writes of a man he met in Afghanistan who once said to him: \u201cNo scars, no story, no life. Sometimes, the best story […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2965],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}