Thursday, June 07, 2007

A Finnish In Iraq


It was late in that afternoon when Mr.S, the new client in our ward, whom I did not take history till that time from him, came asking for a pencil and a paper. Usually, our clients don't do that. I searched for him and found a paper, give it to him, he said that that paper will not help, because it contains lines on it, he needed a blank one.. I found one for him with difficulty and then gave him my second pen and asked him to give it back to me when he finnish..

Went to lunch… back in the evening… I saw Mr.S had drawn a symmetrical shape looking like a flower in that paper… full of details…I told him it is nice.. he told me if he got colors it will be nicer..

We managed to find coloring pencils and this is a sample of his work…

We went to the room of the resident doctor (me) and start together to collect the history of the psychiatric problem of Mr.S. and it came as this:

In 1991 he was a solder in the Iraqi army his duty was in the borderline between Iraq and Saudi (KSA).. at war a plane came suddenly and through something on them.. he did not know about his 2 fellows, but he also did not know about himself till he woke up in a clean room in a hospital and start to cry… a man came to him and told him in Arabic language that he is in Finland….in a hospital and he was unconscious for 3 months... the man knew our client's name, from the identity card which was with him….but when ask our client about more details of his personal history.. Our client found that he cannot remember personal information about himself... he was told that after that bomb he was found by UN workers unconscious and with dry blood on his ears, nose and mouth… and covered nearly totally with soil… he was taken to KSA then to Finland to receive treatment... on the account of the UN…
He gradually start to become better.. but his memory was very bad regarding his past history and also regarding his everyday life… but that problems in memory become less after 3 months when the medical staff of the hospital he was in (in the city of TORKO) adviced him to stay in hospital in the morning but go at the night to an apartment they helped him to found it… when he did that, he start to feel frightened and start to feel that others may harm him and that maybe a persecution against him and started to hear voices commenting on him…he was advised to stay in the hospital 24 hr/24 hr and start to receive psychiatric treatment…but voices keep following him and finally was advised to draw when hearing voices and when he did that he found it helpful more than all the other drug he took (the finally used drug was LEPONEX)… stayed for one year in TORKO.. then moved to hospital NIVA NEMI in the city of KOPIO where he stayed for 5 years… then move to hospital of LIPAKOTI in the city of KALAKOSKI where he spent more than one year and a half…start to work in LIPAKOTI as a cleaner… took the Finnish Nationality in 1998…he gathered some sum of money in the bank as a retire salary….but he know nothing now about that sum of money because he was sent back to Iraq in 2001 without his agreement where he was imprisoned by the intelligent security forces for few months in Baghdad just because he was treated abroad without the agreement of the government and they took his nationality identity card from him and also his passport… and sense then lost contact with anything in Finland which he belong for it too much and hope that he goes back to it and see again the sea of Balteek…

under this last picture he wrote that: life is a long way full of roses and thorns...so those who do not know how to enjoy smelling the flowers....will not know how to get away from the thorns.. these were his own words as he said

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful, beautiful pictures from a very talented individual...and I really love the quote.

Best alwasy, tracy