{"id":429,"date":"2011-11-21T23:51:32","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T22:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/?p=429"},"modified":"2017-08-24T13:54:04","modified_gmt":"2017-08-24T12:54:04","slug":"ayesha-ahmad-%e2%80%9cstories-are-all-we-have%e2%80%9d-reflecting-on-an-imperfect-offering-by-james-orbinski","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2011\/11\/21\/ayesha-ahmad-%e2%80%9cstories-are-all-we-have%e2%80%9d-reflecting-on-an-imperfect-offering-by-james-orbinski\/","title":{"rendered":"Ayesha Ahmad: \u201cStories are all we have\u201d- reflecting on &#8216;An Imperfect Offering&#8217; by James Orbinski"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In \u2018<em>An Imperfect Offering<\/em>\u2019, a memoir written by James Orbinski on his travelling tales as a doctor working and bearing witness in some of the world\u2019s most death-ridden and hostile regions, he writes of a man he met in Afghanistan who once said to him:<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>No scars, no story, no life. Sometimes, the best story is the space between the words \u2013 a space that is a window onto a different way of seeing. And when there are no easy answers, stories are all we have<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Dr Orbinski, also a former elected President of M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e9res, practices medicine with an ideology; a view to obtaining justice. He says that the \u201c<em>first act of justice is recognising the victim<\/em>\u201d in the bodies of these extreme lands of wars and crises.<\/p>\n<p>This is the light of Dr Orbinski\u2019s work \u2013 he reminds us that the person\u2019s eyes are where we find a life or a death \u2013 we see the \u201c<em>last remnant of a fuller life<\/em>\u201d. Dr Orbinski captures this final moment; and reflects to us how we are to find a person\u2019s story.<\/p>\n<p>Could there be a story without scars? Could there be a life without a story?<\/p>\n<p>Dr Orbinski describes that \u201c<em>it is into this silent place that the humanitarian acts, and in speaking from this place, the voice of outrage is raised. It is a voice that bears witness to the plight of the victim<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>And Dr Orbinski does not look the other way \u2013 he stares into suffering and chooses to enter, wandering through the annals of a suffered life.<\/p>\n<p>Some stories merely suffer. They are words of a life flailing, feeling the ground but finding flight, taken from the graves of their birth. A story that cannot be contained, held in arms that remain closer to the death than the life.<\/p>\n<p>Why do stories matter? Because suffering survives whilst shrouded in silence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>In speaking, one recognises, \u201cI am and I am not alone<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>So, the nomadic words of the Afghan, are indeed the roots of our humane-ness.<\/p>\n<p>In our medicine, we can perceive, we can embrace the hurt, the sick, the dying; the elements of the human heart lost in our bleeding world, and we can hear the mind of the suffered.<\/p>\n<p>We speak stories.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dr James Orbinski will be speaking at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, November 24<\/strong><sup><strong>th<\/strong><\/sup><strong> 2011.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2018<em>An Imperfect Offering<\/em>\u2019 is published by Rider, an imprint of Ebury Publishing, UK, 2008.<\/strong><!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In \u2018An Imperfect Offering\u2019, a memoir written by James Orbinski on his travelling tales as a doctor working and bearing witness in some of the world\u2019s most death-ridden and hostile regions, he writes of a man he met in Afghanistan who once said to him: \u201cNo scars, no story, no life. Sometimes, the best story [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2011\/11\/21\/ayesha-ahmad-%e2%80%9cstories-are-all-we-have%e2%80%9d-reflecting-on-an-imperfect-offering-by-james-orbinski\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2965],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ayesha Ahmad: \u201cStories are all we have\u201d- reflecting on &#039;An Imperfect Offering&#039; by James Orbinski - Medical Humanities<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2011\/11\/21\/ayesha-ahmad-\u201cstories-are-all-we-have\u201d-reflecting-on-an-imperfect-offering-by-james-orbinski\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ayesha Ahmad: \u201cStories are all we have\u201d- reflecting on &#039;An Imperfect Offering&#039; by James Orbinski - Medical Humanities\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In \u2018An Imperfect Offering\u2019, a memoir written by James Orbinski on his travelling tales as a doctor working and bearing witness in some of the world\u2019s most death-ridden and hostile regions, he writes of a man he met in Afghanistan who once said to him: \u201cNo scars, no story, no life. 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