Shame - 2

Chapter 2 

At a big hospital in the heart of Cairo Dr Nader was rushing through the emergency department. He was told that a patient’s life was in danger due to a drug overdose. Doctor Nader was racing time to save the life of the patient who was screaming and refusing to have alife-saving medical treatment. Some male nurses were helping in controlling the drug addict but he was still very violent.

The addict kept kicking and screaming not knowing that his life was in danger. Dr Nader was one of Haj Ali’s sons. Today’s patient is one of the regular ones they saw every now and then at the emergency department. Dr Nader managed to control the drug addict and went out of the ward heading to his office to do some paperwork. He talked to a police officer and started filling in an incident report about the aggressive patient.

Dr. Nader felt sorry for all those foolish young people who used illicit drugs and put their lives in danger. Dr. Nader felt that all drug dealers should be hanged in a public square to pay the price for all the lives lost every day from drug overdoses. He always read stories in the newspapers about families shattered by drug problems and children who ended up in the streets instead of going to schools and having good education. He knew exactly how big the problem really was.


Dr Nader felt angry and frustrated at how easy young people could buy drugs even in poor areas in Egypt. After finishing the paperwork, Dr Nader gave his mother a call telling her he would be on time for dinner. Dr Nader was not married and still lived in the family home with his parents and his little sister. His sister was about to graduate and get married to a policeman whose name was Ahmed. It was clear to everyone how madly in love they were. It was a matter of weeks until she finished her study and then they would have a big wedding. She was planning for the big day for quite some time.

Some members in Ahmed’s family were policemen too. Ahmed’s parents didn’t seem to have much money to cover the costs of the wedding and that was why he accepted more dangerous tasks at work to get more money. Ahmed was very professional and did not discuss his work with his fiancé. He wouldn’t tell her that the sort of work he did. This only meant that his life was in danger in every minute.


Today all the family were having dinner late because Haj Ali was travelling on business driving his own late model car. He even refused to let his own driver drive the car for him saying that the driver was a family man who didn’t spend enough time with his kids and gave him a day off. Moustafa did not travel with Haj Ali who asked him to stay at the shop and take care of the business.