Her constant smile

I imagined that we would never see that permanent smile again because of the horror of what I heard about five surgeries to correct the effects of stubborn germs that infected her in the operating room, and infected her body after an endoscopic operation, so eroded the skin, ate the flesh, and pierced the pelvic bones, hence the doctors had to cut parts of Skin and tissue to use them as grafts to restore the body to a more natural state.

What a bad luck! That endoscope was to follow up on another operation years ago to remove cancerous metastases in the intestine, which necessitated cutting out a large part of it, and those metastases in turn, are complications of three operations that were performed in the seventies to remove a cancerous tumor, which necessitated a hysterectomy at the time. But to our surprise, she met us a few days ago with her usual winning smile, without complaint, heartbreak or self-pity.

Isabella, or as they call her Itsa, was born in the fifties in a poor family in a city of Romania, within the minority of Hungarian origin. She is the youngest of three children and still remembers how she used to bring buckets of water from a public tap to the house to take a shower, and she found it frozen due to the frost of winter, and how they were igniting the wood to warm the bricks they put under the bed to keep warm from the bitter cold, and how in her childhood she was forced to pick fruits and mushrooms to sell them for Pennie’s enough to buy pocket-wrapped sweets to distract her for minutes from the hardship of living. And how, with that simple work, did she complete her high school studies, and even aspired to study at the Faculty of Pharmacy, had it not been that her family forced her to settle for a nursing diploma due to lack of means.

Fate did not give her a long rest from struggle and hard work. After she married a descendant of a family whose properties were confiscated by the Communists, and she gave birth to an only child, she contracted uterine cancer, and she underwent three failed operations to remove it and correct the mistakes, until the authorities agreed in the seventies for her and her husband to travel to Austria to complete treatment, but the husband insisted on requesting asylum to Austria, leaving the daughter with the aunt in Romania, according to the law allowing travel for treatment.

In Austria, as refugees, they were kept in a closed camp for weeks with the minimum amount of food, then they moved them to a poor, neglected hotel for the elderly, so she volunteered to clean it, and was given a little money in return, before she found work as a property guard in a neighborhood inhabited by embassies in Vienna, and the owner allocated to her, against her will, a spacious, expensive apartment for rent, so she furnished it, and began renting her rooms to others to meet the rent and save. Thus having work and residence she was able to bring legally her daughter, and the family’s life was more relatively stable after she found work in a pharmacy that she performed with efficiency and honesty, and could attract many foreign customers to the pharmacy due to her dedication and mastery of the Romanian and Hungarian languages as well as German until she became trusted and loved by colleagues and the owner of the pharmacy, but the complications of cancer returned to her as before and increased her pelvic pain, so she retired to perform the last operations.

I asked her how she was able to maintain that positive, active spirit despite the difficult situation and the serious surgeries over decades, and how did she continue that struggle relentlessly and endlessly until she and her family became well off? She said that it is faith and work, ambition and hope despite crises and disasters. Rather, I think that she accepts life with open arms without conditions or guarantees, and that her arduous life since childhood did not leave her the luxury of indulging in any self-negative feelings. As for ambition, it fuels those who challenge the impossible, just as affection and a smile are the method of the authentic faithful soul, with generous love and pure dedication.

All in all, life is nothing but attitudes and she knew how to choose, with absolute ease, because she is a mature and responsible soul, a strong and beloved personality, and an adult and conscious mind that knows how to determine situations, persevere to the end, and how to direct her personal energy to what is useful and happy.

Sometimes we think that their lives across the Mediterranean are easy, but we may not know the stories of those who have the ethics of hard work, the integrity of peaceful dealings, and respect for self and the other. They are common and many, and they know that the reliable governance of their countries and their compliance with the law will ensure success for the efficient and give opportunities to the serious, and reward the distinguished as usual. Adhering to the coherent core values is the easy way that makes the struggle fun, guarantees the hard worker a share, and paves the way for excellence away from evasions, doubts and games that waste energy and undermine psychological and social harmony.

Isabella's smile is an expression of ardent hope, her affection is the companion of a pure soul, and her biography is the title of the heroic struggle that inspires all the desperate, for there is no life without hope, and there is no hope without action.

Dr. Hadi Eltonsi - Medical Doctor and Former Ambassador