On October 12th, 1992, an earthquake struck Egypt in the middle of the afternoon. The 5.9 magnitude earthquake killed 370 persons, wounded 4,000, and left more than 3,000 families homeless. To my (admittedly selfish and unapologetically biased) heart and mind, a much greater disaster struck the country exactly fifteen years later:
My mother died.
Linda Oldham was a social anthropologist. She spent her life improving the lives of others in Somalia, Uzbekistan, the West Bank/Gaza, Yemen, Vietnam, Rwanda, Jordan, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Zimbabwe, and, of course, Egypt. She helped to improve their lives by dedicating herself to helping to provide them with better jobs, better health care, better living conditions, and by simply standing up for them against all comers. She was fearless: she traveled Rwanda while hostilities continued, Upper Egypt during the peak of Egyptian terrorism, and was planning to go to Iraq. She improved the lives of such a number of the poor and needy that it would take many earthquakes to undo her work.
My mother loved Egypt. She did more to improve the lives of Egyptians than anybody else I know, and more than she did for the people of any other country. She lived there from 1976 to 1993 and, after she left, she visited as often as she could. In late summer 2007 she returned to Egypt to live (and, in hindsight, to die). As she was preparing to travel she said to me: "I never should have left Egypt" She died less than two months after she returned.
On October 12, 1992, the earth shook for a few seconds. Since October 12, 2007, my world has not stopped shaking.
I love you, Mom. Everybody does.
Jake Lester, AKA Osama Nadir
October 17, 2007
1 comment:
Jake,
Though I never met her, through you I feel like I lost someone that could have been a great friend. Thank you for your friendship, and my deepest sympathies to you and your family for your irreplaceable loss.
-Mitch
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