Jordan Comes To Garden City

Chris and Bobbie Coray are hosting their friend Osama Al Ghanam from Madaba, Jordan.  He will be opening boxes of treasures from Jordan on Friday, February 8 at the Bear’s Den in Garden City from 2-3:30 many of the pieces will be for sale.  This is his story. 

A Sign with a Story

From the Blog Lifestyles: Mosaic in Madaba-The Other Osama http://lifestylesabroad.wordpress.com Author not stated.

“A life lived in fear of losing your child…not from bombs, violence or unrest. But from a genetic disorder. As I’m handed a cup of tea and sit down, the streetlights cast shadows around us. The narrow streets of Madaba are slowing down, shops closing as night grows deeper.

  I had passed Osama’s and Malik’s mosaic shop earlier that day. Just another curious wanderer, I stopped for a minute to admire the brother’s workshop. Malik stepped out, greeted me and after hearing I was from America hurriedly rushed inside.

He returned moments later proudly holding a framed document; a letter from the American ambassador to Jordan, thanking Osama for his mosaic gift to the office, saying it had drawn many compliments from visitors.

He asked me to stop by later. So I did. And this is the story he and his brother shared with me:

Osama (Malik’s brother) grew up in Jordan and worked as an engineer in Jordan’s Air Force. After marrying at the age of 22 in the traditional Muslim manner, he and his wife decided to have their first son. Two years later. Mohammed, as he was named, was born with a rare form of cystic fibrosis and autism. Mohammed had trouble speaking and walking and had to be fed through a tube.  Doctors did not expect him to live long.

I would use the term “sadly,” if not for how Osama viewed his son’s condition. But I’ll save that for the end.

Desperate to do anything he could to help his son live, Osama and his wife took Mohammed to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Kids in the U.K.  They stayed there for one year, where Mohammed took 12 medicines a day. Osama found a job working night shifts in the hospital and he and his wife lived in a basement flat. Osama continued to ask for financial support from his tribe and community in Jordan. He struggled to pay the 1,200 pound weekly fee.

It became clear that Mohammed, if he lived, would need someone to look after him if something happened to Osama and Huda. So Osama and his wife decided to have another child, one that would hopefully be able to look after his/her older brother as time went on.

Before he was born, they named their second son Bashir – an Arabic name meaning “bringer of good news.” At the sixth month of Huda’s pregnancy the doctors advised the young couple to “get rid of the baby” because the fetus had stopped growing. Osama and his wife could not do it.  And after Bashir’s birth they found he had the same rare combination of disorders as Mohammed.  It was a genetic disease.

Throughout this time Osama’s brother, Malik, was working back home in Madaba, Jordan. He had struggled financially as well, trying to pay for his tuition at the University of Amman where he was studying business. Malik realized that one way to make money was working in the main industry of his hometown: mosaics. After two years of observation, study and apprenticeship, Malik gained professional certification as a mosaic artist. He graduated from university and opened his first mosaic shop outside of Madaba.

Back to Osama – after putting both of his children through two more years of treatment, he returned with his family to Madaba. As his kids grew, they still took daily medication. Their symptoms didn’t change much. But Osama remembers when Mohammed was 6 months old; one day after being breast fed whispered “Al-hamdu lillah” which in Arabic means “Praise be to God.” They were the first and last words Osama has heard his son say.  But since then, Osama has seen his children play with an iPad, quickly figuring out the basics of the tablet computer and operating it easily. And though Mohammed cannot speak,  his youngest is speaking some sentences in English for some reason, Osama thinks it is because he spent the first three years in the London hospital where the nurses would spend a lot of time with his little one. It is simple actions such as these that give Osama joy every day. But he also lives with the knowledge that his children may die soon.

He says, “I’m happy. If you ask why, it’s because my God, He is like me. Because He gives me something special, something He doesn’t give to all people. I’m happy because He knows me; He had a plan for me and my kids before we were born.  He gives me a weight, knows I can carry it. At the hospital, when I was given kids, He knows I take care of them. For me and my wife, He gives kids to take care of.”

He doesn’t waver in his present day happiness and love. Limited with language as we were, he used a very simplistic example to explain it to me. He asked what I would do if a friend ran up and asked me to look after his treasure. “Hopefully,” he said, “You would look after it and take care of it until the friend came back”. Osama compared that to how he viewed his situation: God had given him two beautiful children to look after…and when God came to take them back, Osama would be able to God that he loved them and took as best care of them as he could.

Having only met me an hour ago, at this point I heard Osama speak to me with pure raw emotion, having come to terms with the reality that his children may die in his arms someday, potentially in the near future. But he had accepted that grief, letting it live within him alongside the love he felt and expressed to his children every single day.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Having learned from his children that handicapped people can still interact and thrive in their own way, Osama was inspired to act on that knowledge. So he approached his brother Malik with a simple idea: Why not teach handicap people how to create mosaics? Why not teach them to be mosaic artists? And so they did just that.

Malik started teaching handicapped people in his community. Here is one of his favorite recollections from the past years:

Hassan was a 35-year-old dwarf (little person) with hobbled knees. He couldn’t afford education, so he came to Malik and said “I need help from you.” Thus Malik taught him.  Three years of hard work passed by, and Hassan now has a wife, a child, and a car. He has reached the point where he is proudly piecing together mosaic table-tops.

A few years passed and the brothers noticed that many of the people they were teaching were unemployed. So Osama approached Malik with the idea of opening a mosaic workshop to organize the now growing group of handicapped artisans. And so they did just that.

PEACE Mosaic Workshop is now three years running and stands across from Malik’s 2nd shop in downtown Madaba. Osama employs around 35 artists, all handicapped in some way, 25 of whom work from home.  13 of the artisans are women.  Malik has taught every one, free of charge, buying completed pieces from them and reselling them in his or Osama’s shop. They work at their own pace, sometimes 4 to 5 hours a day, as assembling mosaic pieces is tiring for the eyes.

Both brothers emphasize that when they first meet many handicapped people, they find them to be shy, ashamed of their conditions and lacking in self-confidence. Osama and Malik believe their work helps these people fight depression.

Working alongside Malik who teaches the art of mosaics, Osama shares physical therapy exercises he learned while in London.

Osama has been asked to send his medical blood tests to research centers in Singapore since his sons’s disease is so rare. He thinks it won’t change anything for him or his family, but that it might help the global community eventually find a cure for cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy. He sends it as a case study, to prevent future patients with similar rare scenarios from going through the extensive tests he endured.

A spontaneous meeting of strangers.  Tales over tea.  A pair of new friends that I’m so grateful to have and look forward to staying in touch with.  But most of all, a lesson of love I hope to learn from, hopefully never having to experience the same grief.  An inspiration, a proud father, one that I will now forever remember when I hear others speak of 'Osama.' "