assalamou 3alaykom brothers and sisters
I read this story one day, and I really enjoyed it. It shows how some people act as if they have no heart. They treat weak people as if they are animals!
"I visited him for the first and only time yesterday. He had never made a sound, but I was told that someone had taught him sign language along the way. Since I knew sign language, I was asked to try to communicate with him.
He was smaller than he should have been for his age. He was only about 15 years old, but he moved about his small bare room slowly, almost like an old and feeble man.
I entered the tiny room adjacent to his room and sat down on a small bench directly in front of him. I signed hello to him, but he just stared at me. His eyes almost seemed to look into my soul.
He didn't move a muscle, except for blinking his expressive eyes. I spoke softly to him. He continued to look at me, not with a blank look, but with a look that told me he was extremely intelligent.
Not one person had ever taken the time to give him a name. He was only given an identification number. It was tattooed on the palm of his hand. His identification number was MG-106.
His room was stark and small. It was only about 10 feet by 10 feet. The walls were concrete block and the paint was peeling. There were no windows to allow a view of the vast world outside his modest domain. There was a row of cold, steel bars across the front. An old cracked basin contained a little bit of water and there was a plate of untouched food on the concrete floor in the corner of the room. It looked like his meal consisted of ripened fruit, vegetables, and bread.
I was told, by another worker at the facility, that his mother had been murdered when he was an infant. He was torn wailing from his dying mother's arms, taken from his peaceful mountain home and brought here to the United States.
For most of his life, he had been housed at a scientific research facility. He was used for medical experiments and was now sick and dying from a virus that was injected into him intentionally, in the name of science. He had been sent to this place to live out his final days. It was apparent that he probably wouldn't live through the night.
I looked into his dark eyes. I saw no evidence of tears, but still I knew he was crying. The years of physical and mental abuse had taken a toll. He had numerous scars on his body. He was painfully thin, so gaunt that he appeared to be all hands and feet. His muscles were wasted and I could see skin covered bones protruding. It was very apparent that he had endured a great deal of agony in his short life.
As I looked into his sad face I began to weep, not silently like him, but with loud sobs. Tears ran down my face and dropped to the cold, gray concrete floor. I was not able to be as stoic and dignified as he was. I cried because he had never seen the blue sky and felt the gentle breeze or warmth of the sun on his emaciated body. He had never even walked through a forest and felt the wet earth under his feet. I cried for him and others like him. Those without hope and without voice.
I sat on that bench watching him closely for two hours. Still, we just stared at each other. Instinctively, I think we each knew that this would be the only time we would be able to connect like this.
I wished that I could touch him. I wanted to comfort him. At least, make him understand that this purgatory that he was living in would not last very long, even though it must have seemed like a very long time to him.
Slowly, I got up and prepared to leave. As I walked toward the door I heard him make a small pitiful sound. I turned to look at him and to say a final goodbye. He stuck his large gentle hands out through the cold steel bars and signed, "I must have really been bad because I have been punished for a long time."
I realized that he thought that he was being punished for some long forgotten crime that he had committed! I signed back, "No! You were never bad, the people that locked you up were bad."
Best wishes
