Whoever Saves a Life: Heroics and Humanities

About this book

(Behind the curtain.. where life is born from nothingness's womb.) There are professions granting you a front-row seat to watch "the great play"; the play of life and death whose acts unfold every second on roadsides and in hospitals' cold halls. This book is no mere short-story collection, but the "diaries of a warrior" who did not choose the weapon, but chose the first-aid bag and racing heartbeats. Between "Whoever Saves a Life's" covers, writer Ahmed Heiba opens his heart and memory, taking us on a journey behind the sirens we grew used to hearing without realizing the ruin they leave behind. Here, you will find "the man who carried his intestines upon him" in a scene testing mountains' steadfastness, and you will hold your breath with "the basement's riddle" wrapped in mystery, and you will weep with "Youssef" who held on to his childhood amid blood. They are tales that do not content themselves with describing the accident, but dive into the "humanities" sprouting in the hardest moments; the story of the grandmother hiding her secret in a wrap, the father embracing his son's head in the last farewell moments, and the hero "Kamel" defying his fear of heights to save a life from a lofty height. This work is a long confession that the paramedic is no "unknown soldier" as the saying goes, but a human who trembles, grieves, and sometimes fails before death's majesty, yet rises every time to give "life" another chance. It is an invitation to contemplate those decisive moments making us realize the value of inhale and exhale, and the value of mercy turning strangers into brothers in a moment of calamity. Read to discover that heroism does not always need bullets; a "tender hand" extending in time suffices.