Few Words of the Mute

Listen to this story of a mute teenager from Iraq with her mother:

In the psychiatric ward a beautiful teenager girl in her 15 lies silently in her bed. While me and Dr. Abbas were entering her room, she stayed still without motion, only her big beautiful eyes followed our entering. Her mother seems depressed and also did not move when we entered the room. The girl did not answer our greeting. We asked the mother about the problem. She told us that her daughter, who is mentally retarded had become mute again before few days. The girl who had a deformity in her feet was diagnosed as having a mental retardation since she was 8 years old. And because of there is no special school near the place she lives in, she stayed at home with her mother. She was the only child of this woman. The mother told us also about the birth of this girl. When the mother was in the last days of her pregnancy, she new that her husband whom she had lived with only for 2 months had died in the gulf war in 1991, and while she was shocked by that news she felt strong abdomenal pains. After few minutes she was having a difficult labour that ended with this handicaped beautiful girl. The mother had not been married again. We asked the mother about the last words said by her daughter. She told us that when they were coming to the hospital, a mini-bus had exploded just few meters beyond them and no shell had hit them. At that moment the girl said just few words:" mommy, if we were just few minutes late we would have been lucky to be dead both of us and get rid of our lives"