Matthew Bell

Matthew Bell

Matthew Bell is a Jerusalem-based Middle East reporter. He has been with The World since 2001 and has filed stories from cities across the US and abroad.

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Jordan Welcomes (Mostly) Libyan Medical Patients

March 2, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment

Cartoon: Emad Hajjaj

Cartoon: Emad Hajjaj


When I mentioned to Jordanians this week that I was doing on a story about Libyans seeking treatment at Jordan’s hospitals, most of them grumbled a bit.

“The Libyans are taking up all the space and now the taxpayers of Jordan,” the complaint went, “well, we have to wait!”

There is no shortage of vicious divisions in the Arab world, so it has to be said that this is mostly a story about people helping people in need.

Post-Gaddafi Libya had huge numbers of injured people. Beyond that, medical services in Libya were lacking for most of the population for years.

Then there was plenty of damage from all the fighting that hit important infrastructure, such as hospitals and clinics. So, Jordan – highly respected for its medical services capabilities – stepped in. The country has taken in more 50,000 Libyan patients since last September.

Several Jordanians I spoke to about this seemed genuinely proud of the way health professionals have taken the lead on this. And for good reason. But still, people are human.

The cartoon here is by Emad Hajjaj, (by the way, I interviewed him too in Amman for a planned profile story). And it plays on the sentiment that’s behind the kind of complaints I heard from some Jordanians.

Remember the speech Gaddafi gave last year, in which he used the term “zenga zenga,” that was used in ruthlessly mocking online videos that went viral? (See another version of this reported on by my colleague Daniel Estrin.) The expression refers to something close to “alleyway” or “cramped space.” The Colonel was using it to say he would hunt down all the “rats” that dared to seek his ouster.

In the cartoon, the guy on the right is a Libyan patient.

The guy on the left is Hajjaj’s creation, whose name is Abu Mahjoob, meaning “Father of the Hidden.” He represents sort of a Jordanian “average Joe.”

So, Abu Mahjoob is saying: “No of course not (you’re not bothering me), you are most welcome, I hope you feel better, may God heal you. Because you got rid of the ‘zenga zenga,’ now you turn our hospitals into one? Welcome uncle!”

The Libyan patient responds by saying the equivalent of, “peace out brother.”

(Thanks to Dunia Kamal for translation!)


Discussion

One comment for “Jordan Welcomes (Mostly) Libyan Medical Patients”

  • International Patent

    The HIV trial in Libya (or Bulgarian nurses affair) concerns the trials, appeals and eventual release of six foreign medical workers charged with conspiring to deliberately infect over 400 children with HIV in 1998, causing an epidemic at El-Fatih Children’s Hospital in Benghazi, Libya.[1] The defendants were a Palestinian medical intern and five Bulgarian nurses (often termed “medics”).[2]