The legacy of discrimination

It is hard to understand how people can spit into the plate that feeds them or bite the hand that reached out to help. I often wonder: How can a person turn against another who was by their side and still expect to get their help? How can one not just deny the support they once had, but rise even further, attacking with words that even an enemy should not hear? Where does cruelty come from? Is it learnt from the elders, passed down like a family recipe? Or does it grow within a person, slowly hardening until ingratitude becomes a muscle that no longer aches? For what I am about to recount has happened some years ago. I wrote about it back then but never published it. When the same story was repeated again recently, I thought putting my words to print might just be my way of getting over it. For I know I cannot change the hearts, nor the thinking, of those who choose to do otherwise. Read: Dr. Jabir Jassam: You hurt because you are strongIt was a few years ago that a man in his late seventies came to me. He requested morphine, so he could sleep. Respectfully, I refused. I tried to tell him: morphine is not for insomnia. It is addictive. It saps the memory and robs the focus. I wanted him to understand. I did not want him to feel brushed aside. But before I could finish, he cut me off. Abruptly. His tone sharp, his words leaden, he told me he had no wish to be lectured by a man from the Middle East. He said that since I had refused his request, I should stop talking altogether. I said nothing further. Instead, I thanked him for his courtesy and appreciation. He stayed under my care until he died three years later. I saw him many times after that, despite our encounter. I never raised the matter again; his age, his poor health, made me decide to let it pass.It was not long ago that his son walked into my office. (His wife, his children, his mother — all stayed with me in my care.) He requested three months medical leave. He was tired, he said. He wanted to go travelling with his wife to Africa. All he needed was my signature. But he did not speak to me as a patient in need. He spoke as one who is entitled. His tone was heavy with arrogance. He offered no explanation, no dialogue, no attempt at understanding. Only an order. I denied him. There was no medical reason for such a leave. I tried to—perhaps foolishly—explain my reasoning. But like his father before him some years ago, he cut me off. He got up from his seat and stated, rather abruptly, that he had no time for listening to someone with an accent. I looked at him. I looked into his eyes and told him the truth: “I cannot change my accent. But you can change your doctor and get one without an accent, and I encourage you to take your chart and do just that.”I carried those words with me, in contemplation. Twice, from the same family, I had been discriminated. Not for my lack of knowledge, not for my lack of care, but for my voice and look. For the accent that tells the story of where I was born. What I cannot comprehend: how people can weaponize cruelty, how they can let go of gratitude so soon. But I know one thing. I cannot control their words, but I can control mine. I choose not to respond to their hostility with mine. I choose to write, to reflect, and to continue caring for the ones who allow me to. For after all: The hand that feeds, can be bitten, but it will not stop feeding.Dr. Jabir Jassam is a family physician in Ottawa.

The legacy of discrimination

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