The Teacher

The Teacher

One of my regular patients is an 84 year old retired school teacher.  She had been widowed a few years ago, and soon after that became wheel chair bound after a stroke. She lived in a nursing home. She had taught high school all her life. Her husband had run a successful motorcycle dealership.

She had two children, but her son had died of a heart attack in his 50’s a few years ago. Her daughter and grandchildren lived nearby. Despite her physical limitations, her mind and memory were quite sharp, and my conversations with her were always very illuminating. She had been a teacher after all.


On one visit, she was brought into the office by a young woman who was an aide working for the Nursing Home. My patient told me a story about when she was a young college student in the 1950’s. She and a friend decided to fly to Cuba for a weekend from Florida. The first night they spent there, fighting broke out with the communists trying to get control of the Island. She and her friend were able to evacuate on a flight out the next day. Apparently trips like these to Cuba were not so unusual in those days.


Intrigued, I asked her about more stories of those days. She told me that her life was otherwise unremarkable, but as a student she was president of the foreign languages club. One of her close friends and fellow club member was an Iraqi foreign student named ‘Fouad’, who eventually went back to Iraq.


She did not keep in touch with him and does not know what happened to him after he went back to Iraq. He had been one of two Iraqi foreign students that were active in the foreign languages club. She had become close friends with him at that time because of their mutual love of foreign languages.


At this point, the aide with her spoke up and said, “I have been to Iraq”. I was with the army for two tours there, she said.  She had been shot at, and survived an Improvised Explosive Device explosion that hit her Humvee amongst other experiences. Her direct contact with Iraqi’s had been limited.


To both of them, I remarked on the fact that their individual experiences with Iraqi people were so different. They both agreed.

A few months ago, our school teacher died peacefully in the nursing home. Around the time she died, travel restrictions to Cuba were being eased. Iraq on the other hand is a war zone and not a place most people would travel to. I thought about how circumstances change with time and history keeps marching forward. 

Cubana airlines from the 1950's.