Thread by @TheRealDoctorT

The young doctor wonders how he got here, staring down the cold barrel of a gun.

The year is 1960, and he has a wife and little children.

The man with the gun tells him to change the autopsy report, or else.

The young doctor takes a deep breath, then exhales slowly.

“No.” 1/

But stories don’t begin at the end, do they?

Let’s go back to the beginning.

The year is 1926.

A boy is born into a large family in a village near Batala, in Punjab, India. His family lives in poverty, as farmers.

He is born with no hope, and no future beyond his village. 2/

Most of us follow the paths that are laid out for us throughout our lives.

We conform to expectations, and we go with the flow.

Every once in a while, some of us are seized by a moment of inspiration, when we see our choices clearly and realize where our paths could lead... 3/

This moment of inspiration comes for this boy one day, as he is helping his brothers with farm work.

He realizes that unless he tries to change it, his life and the lives of his family will be caught up in an endless cycle of poverty.

He is 8 when this realization comes. 4/

This boy doesn’t know it yet, but he has a great gift. The power of insight, and compassion.

The gift of empathy.

He knows in his heart he can’t just save himself and his family from this impoverished life. He must help others too.

His path to salvation?

Education. 5/

He tells his two best friends his plan.

He is too poor to go to school, but he has persuaded someone to help teach them to read.

He can’t afford books, but together, the three best friends can buy one book, and tear it into three parts.

Hope flares brilliantly to life. 6/

Working during the day, studying during the night, the three friends slowly and painstakingly build up their most precious treasure: knowledge.

They read book after book, one third at a time.

They quiz each other, as they fall asleep, exhausted, sore, often hungry. 7/

Finally they reach a milestone. They are ready to take exams for the schools in the big city nearby.

They can’t pay for an education, but if their scores are high enough, they can win scholarships.

Their families pray for them, and the three boys journey to the city. 8/

All three of the boys win scholarships. The school staff are amazed, nobody from the farmlands has ever been admitted.

The gifted boy, the empath, is more determined than ever now.

He is convinced that Fate has brought him here for a reason.

He chooses to pursue medicine. 9/

1947 comes, and the boy is now a young man.

During the Partition, he migrates to newly formed Pakistan and becomes one of the doctors in the first ever Pakistani medical school class.

He is a gifted clinician, beloved by his colleagues, his patients, and his community. 10/

For the first time in his life, he is not anxiously trying to scrape together enough money for food, books, everything.

He uses his new wealth to educate his family in the village and pull as many of his community out of poverty as he can.

He makes this his life’s mission. 11/

The years pass, and he gets married to a wonderful woman.

One day, many decades from their wedding day, she will be lying in a hospital bed, delirious, as her lungs fail from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Her son will hold her hand.

But this day she is young, and healthy. 12/

They have three children in the years ahead. Two boys and one girl.

The little girl will have her own children someday; my sister, and me.

The young doctor is my maternal grandfather.

And the day finally comes in 1960 when he faces a gun, and a demand he cannot accept. 13/

A powerful man has committed a murder. He has shot someone in cold blood. The doctor performing the autopsy is my grandfather.

His autopsy report will condemn the powerful man by the means and nature of the wounds.

The powerful man has hired an assassin. 14/

My grandfather faces the assassin with a look of sadness. He knows what the man with the gun wants, but he can never compromise on his principles.

To do so would betray everything he is. He must do the right thing.

He is told at gunpoint to change his report.

He says no. 15/

The assassin begins to pull the trigger...

But Fate isn’t done with my grandfather yet.

Perhaps it’s the sight of the young man making a last stand for his principles.

Perhaps it’s the photo of his young family on his desk.

The assassin doesn’t shoot.

Instead, he flees. 16/

My grandfather is wise enough to realize that sooner or later another man with a gun will come for him.

He takes his family into hiding. But he still shows up to court to testify on his autopsy findings.

That whole day his entire family prays for his survival.

It works. 17/

But my grandfather is understandably deeply shaken by the experience. He decides to leave Pakistan with his young family.

A United Nations mission is recruiting physicians to work in Africa.

My grandfather journeys to Maiduguri, in Northeast Nigeria, and sets up a clinic. 18/

Committed to compassionate care, he becomes well-known for his kindness, and treats everyone regardless of their ability to pay.

He continues to cherish education, and gets his Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, from the Royal College of Physicians, in London. 19/

My own memories of him are hazy, from my early childhood.

Two in particular stand out.

One, where he is greeting me and my parents at the airport. He reaches to embrace me, and I hide behind my dad’s legs feeling overwhelmed with shyness.

I remember his kind smile. 20/

The second, and last memory, is more concrete. It takes place in 1985.

I am five years old at the time.

My mother receives a phone call in the middle of the night. She is pregnant with my sister.

Her cry of anguish awakens me.

I watch her sob and start to cry myself. 21/

My grandfather’s death is sudden, unexpected. A heart attack, they say.

I don’t realize the depths of this loss until much later in life.

As I get older, people tell me I look like him. I smile like him. I have his nature.

I owe everything to his moment of inspiration. 22/

Without realizing it at first, I have walked in his shadow my whole life. Hoping to live up to the standards set by a person I’ll never get to know, that everyone loved so much.

One grandfather a warrior poet, one grandfather an empathic healer.

A secret, and a smile. 23/

I visit his grave in Pakistan in 2000, before I begin medical school.

It’s something I must do.

I can’t explain it.

In the soothing stillness of the cemetery, I feel a closeness. A comfort in a love that still calls to me.

I kneel down, and lay flowers.

And I understand.

(Note: This thread was about my maternal grandfather. The “Humsafar” thread was about my paternal grandfather. Each one is a part of me now.

In writing about them, I know them better.

In knowing them better, I know myself.)