A Reply to Hate: Forgiving My Attacker. David Tucker
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all. I told my son we needed to send a message right now. It needed to be simple, clear and explicit; we did not want anyone to retaliate or to promote anger or hate. I remember that the message ended with “My father is not angry; he doesn’t want anyone to be angry on his behalf.” I just asked Oaiss to pass it to his friends and let them pass it on. By now, that air of contemplation and calmness was gone, and I felt very early on that I was already being forced to take a stand. If there was anger and frustration surfacing that evening, it was because of that. It just did not seem to me to be the right time to have to deal with that sort of behaviour, but there was little I could do about it. On reflection, and despite how I felt, I am grateful that this surfaced early as it had the effect of resetting my mood. Whether I liked it or not, my stabbing was somehow bigger than just ‘me’ and I felt I needed to step up. This changing perspective may well have had a big impact on how I started to think and behave.
Later that night we were visited by two police officers checking to see if we needed any help, probably just before midnight. We assured them that we were fine. We didn’t feel scared or vulnerable and by then we were again feeling calm. It may have seemed strange, but there we were like any other day ready to go to sleep. We switched everything off and went upstairs to bed. After all, it was Monday the following day and we needed to get ready! As Syrsa went upstairs that night, she literally hit the bed and fell asleep. So did my sons. But I could not sleep. Whichever position I took in bed, within a couple of seconds I was in agony. Even though I knew how to handle my pain, still I was in agony. I tried resting on my back, my side, curling the pillow and so many other positions, but the pain just kept on banging through. To some extent I now empathise more with my patients. Previously, I would perhaps wonder what they meant by “agony”, but now I knew. I think I took another couple of codeine tablets in the middle of the night and this at least eased the pain enough to allow me to think. I was trying hard to remember what this man said to me. But also, I was thinking through what could have happened if that knife had touched my spinal cord. The overwhelming sense that I had was of being grateful to Almighty God. The Arabic phrase is الحمد لله (“al-hamdulillah”), an expression meaning “All praise be to Almighty God”. These two words roll easily off the tongue. Throughout the night I was repeating الحمد لله. It somewhat temporarily distracted me from the pain, until I moved again. All night I was thinking “Thank God I’m still alive, thank God it wasn’t worse”. But one other thought that occurred was that since the moment I was stabbed, I had not done anything good, anything thankful. To simply say “Thank God” does not really cut it, so I promised God that as soon as I woke up in the morning, I would make a donation. But before that, I still needed to fall asleep. I remember I asked God, “Help me sleep”, “Come on God help me sleep”. But pain is pain, and no matter what I did, I could not get into any comfortable position. My head felt so heavy and the pain went on throughout the night, until finally, about 7:00am, I dozed off.
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