Once there was a boy... by Veronica Bright

Photo acknowledgement: Dr Waheed Arian: The refugee who treats Afghans via Skype - BBC News

… a boy whose earliest memories were of bombs exploding, people injured and killed, and fear. A deep, deep fear. Waheed Arian was born in war-torn Afghanistan 42 years ago. He says,’ I spent much of my childhood amongst death and fighting.’ The family escaped to Pakistan, and as refugees lived in camps, often cramped and without basic sanitation. Waheed contracted TB and suffered from malnutrition, which almost killed him. When he was fifteen his parents gave all they had, to get him to the UK. He arrived alone with 100 dollars in his pocket, and very little English.

He became a boy with a quest.

He worked at various jobs to support his family in Pakistan, learned English and studied for his A-levels, because he wanted to be a doctor, making a difference to people’s lives, just as the doctors did in the refugee camps. Waheed says, modestly, ‘I did well enough to be accepted into Cambridge, and I gained additional qualifications from Harvard and Imperial College.’ He qualified as a doctor, and now works for the NHS. His quest hasn’t stopped there, though. This is not the end of the story. He’s developed a pioneering global charity that connects doctors in war zones and low-resource countries with their counterparts in the US, UK, Europe and Australia. During the Covid pandemic, Dr Arian was concerned that Covid has impacted people’s mental health, and he has now launched an online mental wellbeing service. (Read more at https://arianwellbeing.com/about/)

As an aspiring children’s author, I read a lot of novels for young people. In many of them the hero, male or female, sets out on a quest. For a really exciting and convincing story, I reckon the hero needs several, if not all, of the following:

• compassion and a strong personality
• a big problem to solve
• a place that strange and new
• the ability to keep on fighting even when bad things keep happening
• loyal friendships made or strengthened on the way
• a willingness to attempt the impossible and win through in the end 

When you think about it, all those points apply to Dr Waheed Arian’s true-life story. And what about Greta Thunberg, David Attenborough, and the England football team perhaps?

Quests are not just for heroes on a grand scale, in books or in life. They’re for us. 'Stop!' I hear you cry. We can’t take on all the concerns of the world — the overuse of plastic, climate change, the destruction of rain forests, the refugee crisis, the homeless on our streets, wars that tear lives apart, etc.. No, but we can keep on keeping on — maybe buying a homeless person a coffee or a sandwich, maybe picking up a plastic bottle some-one has tossed into the countryside, maybe something as simple as feeding the birds or planting some flowers which attract bees.

At choir we rehearse a song which always reminds me that however small we feel, we can do something, and together our efforts will have a positive impact on our beautiful planet. The song’s called ‘I am a small part of the world.’ You might like to hear a children’s choir singing it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jzNv2d673w

As you and I know, whatever it is we choose to make our personal quest, we need the whisper of God to keep us on track.

Veronica Bright loves telling stories. As a former reception class teacher in a Cornish village primary school, the best part of the day was gathering the children together and making up all sorts of amazing things. Her pupils probably believed there was an elf living in the cupboard, and that the spider who frequented the sink had the power of speech. They inspired her non-fiction books for collective worship and many of her prize-winning short stories, now self-published in three collections.

She blogs monthly on her website at http://www.veronicabright.co.uk