Volume 197 - Issue 11
Colourless Christmas
Author: Manda Kaled
Med J Aust 2012; 197 (11): 667. || doi: 10.5694/mja12.11558
Published online: 10 December 2012
Published online: 10 December 2012
Christmas may be a state of mind or a memory, to carry with you wherever you are“What is Christmas?” a 3-year-old boy eagerly asked his father. “Christmas, my son, is the time of the year when we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ”, answered the father with a smile on his face. “But”, he then continued, “we also celebrate how wonderful life is by showing ...
Christmas may be a state of mind or a memory, to carry with you wherever you are
“What is Christmas?” a 3-year-old boy eagerly asked his father. “Christmas, my son, is the time of the year when we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ”, answered the father with a smile on his face. “But”, he then continued, “we also celebrate how wonderful life is by showing how much we love each other”. It was with these words in mind that a young boy used to celebrate Christmas with his family on an isolated rice and date farm in Iraq.
His family lived in an old cottage without electricity, gas or running water. They used wood to cook and keep warm, and brought water from a nearby lake. Various farm animals kept the family company. Although it was a hard life, everyone in the family loved each other unconditionally. Despite the cold weather in December, they would celebrate Christmas, always with much joy, and with faith and prayer. They gave each other presents, usually made by hand from simple materials on the farm. But the greatest Christmas present of all was a big family hug. Christmas undoubtedly was, to the young boy, the most colourful part of that family’s life.
When the Iraq war started in 2003, the young boy lost his Christmas — his family, his home and his faith — and was forced to leave Iraq. Near Syria, the boy was labelled a “refugee” and sent to live in a place located 80–90 kilometres inside Syria, away from the border with Iraq.
That place was an abandoned prison with no facilities, neither electricity nor water; surrounded only, for as far as the boy’s eyes could see, by a dry, barren desert. The many hundred cells of the building were poorly lit through small windows set with thick metal bars. Old, wrinkled walls were sprinkled with words, names and dates, put here and there randomly, to try to tell a rather indiscernible story of whoever had occupied this cell or that in the past. A square yard was the single place in the prison that was open to the sky — the only place where the boy, and the thousands of refugees who lived there, felt alive, if only to a very limited extent.
Inside the building, an incomparable smell resided along with the inmates, reflecting countless years of dreadful living circumstances. In the prison, the boy first experienced what the term refugee actually meant — someone without home, hope or faith — a non-human being.
How many Christmases did that young boy spend in the prison? He and the other refugees, despite their plight, tried to rejuvenate Christmas using whatever they could. But sadly, it was just impossible to celebrate Christmas the way they remembered. Their life in the prison carried neither a meaning nor a purpose. Their incarceration extracted the Christmas spirit from their souls, rendering this magical time of the year another passing period, devoid of emotion.
In this place, the colourful family Christmases on the farm became a memory. Whenever Christmas came in the dull and lifeless environment of the prison, the boy remembered his final Christmas on a cold and rainy day at the farm, the final family hug. He and the other refugees tried to sleep all Christmas Day, so they could dream of how vivid Christmas once was.
Years passed, and the boy turned into a man, with a perspective that told of the difficulties he had experienced and the injustices he had witnessed. That man came to Australia in early 2009, and after a year of hard work, he began studying medicine in 2010. His first Australian Christmas was just last year, when he was invited to join his boss’s family Christmas gathering. It was the first time in many years that the man felt the true warmth of Christmas — how it felt to be surrounded by people who love you, to eat, to laugh and to thank the Lord for everything. The man remembered the young boy on the farm, and some of the colour of Christmas returned to him.
Regardless of where he is, and no matter how old he becomes, he will always remember his big family hug on the farm, under the leaky roof of their old cottage, on that last rainy day of Christmas.
Competing interests
No relevant disclosures.