A personal, historical vignette

By Cainnech O Sullibhain

Everyday, we go about our routine totally unaware of the lives of people around us. But sometimes our lives have been changed because of the circumstances.

So, I’ll begin my story. In early 1937, I was only four years old, and it was at lunch time that my father came home. Both my mother and father were sitting having lunch, and I was in the next room. The conversation between my mother and father was about the death of Sgt. M. Orchard of the Royal Artillery, 3rd Battery who had died in the British military hospital the night before. My father, an army doctor, had been responsible for that death. The colonel in charge had ordered my father to treat Sgt. Orchard for malaria, when in fact he had pneumonia. The reason for the misdiagnosis was that the colonel had been sweet on the wife of Sgt. Orchard and wanted him out of the way. My father had been forced to commit murder. I listened in to the whole conversation and was shocked. Little Jimmy Orchard was my friend. I was so angry that I could not even cry. So, I went out of the house and sat in the garden thinking about what I had heard. Being so young, I was not able to face up to the issue, so I blocked all of it out of my mind. One day in 1997, I awoke in the middle of the night. I was perspiring profusely and the whole story of what had happened on that day in 1937 came back with a bang. Everything in my life had been guided by an unknown hand.

I thought back to all the things that I had done, and realized that for some unknown reason, I had been guided to do all those things, because it was to atone for all the evil things that mankind had done to his fellow man. Every time someone was in trouble, I would sacrifice anything to make sure that the person was cared for and safe. You see, I could not forgive my father for his actions. In August 1998, when I visited my father’s grave in Surrey, England, for the first time in my life, I was able to forgive him, and let go of the past. I realized that I had unconsciously despised my father all my life, because something inside of me kept telling me that he was not a good man. I was totally unaware of this because it was in my subconscious mind, which though blocking out everything about the matter of 1937, was still working.

Every time I did something, it was to alleviate the distress of others around me. All those people whom I had met during my lifetime; I did not meet them just by chance; they had been led to me for some unknown reason. At first, I could not understand myself, why things happened in such a way. That African man, the Japanese priest, the Irish priest; all those acts of kindness, was a way for me to make the world a better place.

I once went to a bar in Alexandria, Egypt along with some friends. In those bars, if you bought a drink for a hostess, it was usually coloured water, but it meant that the hostess was to have sex with you. I sat down and a hostess in her late thirties came and sat by me. So, I bought her a drink of rose water.

When we started to talk, we drifted into our personal lives, and I learned that her husband, an Egyptian soldier, was killed in 1948 during the war for Israel’s independence. At that time, she had a child of three years to support, and had become a hostess (another name for a prostitute). When she said to me, “Let’s go up to the room,” I told her that I could not even think of having sex with her. I then bought her another drink of rose water and vanished into the night. My shipmates asked me if I had had sex with the woman at the bar, and I avoided the conversation. I asked myself then, and many times after that, “How could I demean some other fellow human as chattel?” I had another similar experience before in Singapore.

One day we stopped in Singapore for oil bunkers and a lot of Chinese women came aboard. They asked if we had clothes to repair or wash. A shipmate pushed one of these women into my cabin and said to me, “Grab her and have sex with her.” I was absolutely shocked with his statement! I had never been able to think of humans in terms of goods, and just could not bring myself to do so ever. I would not be party to such a demeaning deed. When all these things passed through my mind, I wondered why I had not reacted to the beast they say that we all have in us. There it was: that unseen hand, which like it or not would not allow me to act inhumanly toward anyone.

I was pleasantly surprised in communist China. There I was told that you are not allowed to talk or have any relations with Chinese women, because they are not there for your pleasure. It meant that Chinese women were treated with respect. I knew some shipmates who had been on the Chinese run (shipping) during the days of the Kuomintang, who had bought young girls of 13 -18 for a measly $5.00 - $10.00 from poor Chinese parents in Shanghai. They kept the girls aboard ship, and the whole crew forced them to have sex. Any resulting children were put ashore when the ship sailed. Those who boast of such deeds should not be proud of their inhuman acts on children — this was pedophilia gone wild. “How,” I have asked myself, “could any human do this to children?”

In all the things I did during my lifetime, I have never had to feel that I was responsible for demeaning or exploiting another human, including those that I did not like. That is what I still hold as my guiding principle in life. The other day, I defended a man I disliked, and afterwards thought to myself, “Why did I do it?”

All of what I learned in life was to treat a fellow human with compassion and respect. Some people have called me a wimp, but they have never been in my shoes, to understand why I am who I am. When they have walked a mile in my shoes they might be pleasantly surprised at what they can offer in their lives to make a better world.

Are rich people any happier because they have money? Are people who gorge themselves with all the rich foods any healthier? Thank God that I could never walk away from someone in any kind of distress and say to myself, “It’s not my problem?” On the good side of things, I have had happiness from sharing whatever I have with those in need, not just now, but all my life. If you have inner happiness, you will also inherit health with it. That can only come from being contented and caring. It takes a lifetime to learn to live with meaning, and I have lived it.

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Related: Society, Southeast Asia, History

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