by John Moore
Staff Writer
The largest community of leprosy patients in the Middle East may soon be dispersed.
Yolande Knell of the BBC, in a One-Minute World News report from Feb. 7, informs us that Abou Zaabal is the last leper colony in Egypt. While built by the government in the 1930s to house leprosy patients and to treat them, it is now likely going to be closed. All treatments for the disease can now be given at local hospitals.
Good news: after nearly 80 years, all lepers may now return home. Bad news: those who live there are not in favor of the closing of Abou Zaabal; it has become their home.
In the 20th century, many lepers were forced to come here, isolation being a primary treatment of leprosy (Hansen’s Disease), for which no medical cure was known. Now, Abou Zaabal has become something of a “refuge” for its residents, said one man interviewed by Knell.
The effects of leprosy are noticeable, especially in patients who have been ill with the disease for years. Affecting the nerves, the disease causes loss of feeling in which- ever areas of the body it resides.
Pain, in effect the one thing that so often reminds us that we are human, is stolen. The feeling of touch, perhaps one of the most basic human expressions of affection, is taken. In many cultures, compounded with these things is the social stigma often attached to leprosy. More than half of all new leprosy cases are found in India, a Hindu culture. In this culture, contracting the disease is one of the worst imaginable for anyone. Those who contract the disease literally become “untouchable.”
While modern medicine has given us the ability to treat leprosy and the potential to one day exterminate the disease entirely, modern medicine has not been able to cure injustice nor our own distortions of our humanity.
The social stigma that lepers have been given in cultures throughout the world still remains. As one man Knell interviewed said, “Anyone who goes back to his home village from here will still get strange looks. People will wonder how he came to look like this.”
Within leper communities, there is no fear, at least not of the disease; the worst has already happened.
“People used to run away from us because they were scared. Here my mind is relaxed,” one Abou Zaabal resident told Knell.
As we peer into the lives of people like ourselves around the world, even those we do not find great commonality with, we find ourselves staring curiously. Often we ask simple, factual questions about what we see, as we are given information upon information. With information overload (something considered to be news from nearly every corner of the world), we often fail to subjectively ask questions. Yes, subjectively.
In the past century we have been taught to think objectively; now we fail to subject events, ideas and information to the subjectivity of humanity, outside and away from objective progress.
Our intended goals become what we can produce; our focused methods are governed by how efficient we may be; our vision is for progress. Seen through a Darwinian evolutionist’s eye, this may be both concurrent with reality and sensible. Perhaps.
I ask, is being human more than being merely something biological? If so, do we divorce ourselves from key parts of our humanity if we only look to progress and the course set for us by our fathers?
At Abou Zaabal, the problem is greater than disease; the needed answer is far larger than sufficient medical treatment.
Leprosy does not merely redirect the lives of those in its grasp, but ruins them. A leper is ruined and he knows it; that truth cannot be hidden. He lives in a community that is also ruined. I too am ruined, but I do not see it. In my community, we attempt to tell ourselves that we are complete, that all is worked out by a simple (or complex) equation. But we too are sick. Lepers know a truth hidden from the eyes of those who appear well.
The world is looking for a cure. To those who would promise an answer that extends only into the material realm or to nothing beyond the spiritual realm, I say we are better than that.