‘Definition of a miracle’: A book review

Farida Bedwei, author of 'Definition of a miracle.'

Last weekend, I met Farida Bedwei, an awesome woman. She is a miracle. Although young, she is an old soul, oozing wisdom. She ignited in me deep feelings of expansiveness, of the strength of the human spirit, and of the many possibilities. Without a doubt, Farida is the courageous pioneer of her destiny. Her life teaches that human ingenuity is such that regardless of your disabilities (which we all have in one form or the other), if you are resilient enough, you can transcend your challenges.

Farida is one of the top software engineers in Ghana!

Her novel, ‘Definition of a miracle’, presents a perceptive testimony of someone who knows about the subject matter she so expertly writes about: disability. You see, Farida was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when she was only ten days old; a baby who was not conscious of her existence on mother-earth. Her life journey was therefore solidly paved before she knew who she was. She got stuck with a disability that causes the average Ghanaian, suffering from the awful sinking sickening diseases of prejudice, ignorance and fatalism, to stare at her.

A must-read book:

Books are marvellous inventions of perceptive human intelligence; written pieces are. A good piece of writing can save you from yourself and provide a refuge that can sustain you. Good writing can connect the dots in the development of a society and show the path toward progress.

Farida’s novel is art imitating life; autobiographical. It’s a narrative about Zaara, an eight-year old girl with cerebral palsy who was born in England. Her parents are well-educated; her mother is a lawyer and the father is a crop scientist. The family’s relocation to Ghana lays bare the ridiculously profane depths to which even things that have scientifically-proven explanations are ascribed to spiritual causes. Before long, her mother jumps onto slippery pray-for-me gravy trains to find healing for her ‘sick’ daughter.

In this novel, the reader gets a front-row seat to the struggles of a person who lives with a physical disability in the rough terrain of our society. But the novel also chronicles the possibilities and the triumphs, as well as the positive outcomes if love and care is lavished on the disabled. Yes, disabled persons can lead productive lives, to their full potential.

The book challenges Ghana to wake up to some of the many knots in the strands of our national fabric. These knots include, among many others, the implementation of sound national policies that can provide a life of dignity for the disabled; a healing of our unproductive attitudes; and a halt to our unhealthy super-religiousness, pretentious Christianity, and fatalistic beliefs – especially witchcraft.

Soon after Zaara’s diagnosis in the UK, a friend of the baby’s grandmother claimed that whilst praying in Accra, it was revealed to her that one Auntie Dede, a widow with a pleasant demeanour, was responsible for the child’s sickness. Auntie Dede had used witchcraft to steal and cook Zaara’s legs to render her disabled. What a cock-and-bull revelation! A relative on the father’s side, who is a fetish priest, also came up with his own theory of the spiritual cause of baby Zaara’s sickness.

So regardless of medical science’s diagnosis of cerebral palsy that was caused by the Meningitis Zaara had as a baby, our ignoramus folks desperately sought solace in their own backward spiritual beliefs to explain the condition. But worse of all, an innocent woman was perceived to be guilty without any proof whatsoever.

One of the ridiculous and tense moments of the novel was when Zaara’s mother, a lawyer – who should know better and set a good example, hit the pray-for-me path in hot pursuit of healing for her daughter. In the process, she tied herself to a con-artist female pastor, entrusting her with inconsequential details of her life. Such contradictions make you wonder if our culture, the basis of our belief system, is not just a trap waiting to ensnare the many gullible – literate and non-literate alike.

‘Definition of a miracle’ is not a booklet like the many hollow books that are increasingly piling up on our book stands. It is a whopping 389 page well-plotted, well-written book. In this novel, you’ll come across creativity at its best. The dialoguing is superb, rendering it very much alive and real to the point that you forget you’re reading a work of fiction. Undoubtedly, Farida is a deep thinker and a master wordsmith.

So who is a ‘sickla’?

Cerebral palsy robbed Farida’s body of some of its ‘rightful physical functions.’ Despite that robbery, Farida has excelled. Yet, in our society, people who live with disabilities are regularly referred to as ‘sick persons,’ handicapped or ‘sicklas’. These are inappropriate adjectives, loaded with negative connotations.

A disabled person is not sick. Disability is just a limitation – physical or otherwise. Disability simply means an inability to do one thing or the other. Aren’t we all plagued by one disability or the other? What do you say about people who suffer from terminal laziness, swollen-headedness, over-blown egos and the many who are not law-abiding? Don’t all these amount to some sort of handicap and disability? Who has a God-given right to define what is normal? Normalcy by whose standards?

Fact: Ghana is not disabled-friendly. If you fall down tomorrow and break a leg (Knock on wood! Tofiakwa!), you would know how deeply true this statement is. Ghana is unprepared for you and your broken leg! Where there are pavements, many are cracked and pothole-ridden to render them unusable. Many public buildings cannot be entered by the physically disabled. How do you climb a stiff stair-case with a broken leg or no legs? So we might as well just put up screaming signs at many points to announce: ‘The Physically Disabled Are Not Welcome.’

At the launch of ‘Definition of a miracle’, it was suggested that the book should become a text book in the school system. I completely agree. As our country dreams of becoming a middle-income economy, (lavishly greased with crude oil), certain things must change.

Fact: Middle income societies give regard to the disabled; they’re not left to their fate to sit in second-hand wheelchairs, or crawl on all-fours or skate boards by busy road-sides as full-time beggars. Middle income people are not fatalists, as a rule. Middle income people do not hand over their lives to pastors and fetish priests. Middle income people take charge of their destinies, and work toward enhancing their progress and quality of life.

Another plus of the novel is the humour that will get you cracking up in your rib cage as you realise that laughter is truly the best medicine. Even the author’s honesty is at once shocking and refreshing. Farida boldly describes her physical condition as: “…..when I walk, I sway about like an alcoholic at the helm of his drunken stupor.’

‘Definition of a miracle’ is a ‘non-put-downable’ sort of novel. It challenges the reader to interrogate deeply-held prejudices that are steeped in our culture of ignorance and backwardness.

However, despite the beautiful writing, an unfortunate weakness of the book is that it suffers from poor proof-reading. There are sentences with missing words. Punctuation marks are not always placed properly. In some cases, where there should be ‘full-stops’ or commas, they are absent. Such weaknesses must be fixed before a re-print. Mediocrity must not be allowed in Ghana’s burgeoning book publishing industry.