Hansel Und Gretel
For days they were together, left alone, not in a forest but in a waste land beneath a tree of a hospital. They were so thin, so small. How they managed to eat, drink and sleep, I don’t know. Every day when on duty in the hospital I took some food and milk for them, How eagerly they ate and drank.
I wish I could take them home but we already had a foundling. But when I decided to take them home, they were gone. I, we all who went together felt bad in the car. Before driving for home we suggested to just try again almost with no hope. How we rejoiced as we found them still there.
I tried to find some one who would take care of them. But when I told them that Hansel is crippled and about Gretel’s itch and asthma they refused to take them, perhaps they’re business people. “What if they couldn’t be sold?” they thought. As I now think I’m so glad that they were rejected, otherwise … What if they took Gretel only or Hansel only. It would be cruel to separate them as they so love each other and always huddle, play, sleep together in my bed. And I thought of the orphans of wars, brothers and sisters separated from each other or from a mother when taken in families abroad and of slaves in former times when they were captured and sold. Hansel isn’t crippled anymore and walks, runs, jumps on all four, though sees with squinting eyes. Perhaps he’s got a violent beating on his head before and Gretel –she was near death, yet, thanks God, survived, three, four times revived by artificial respiration during a surgery - is a cute, funny, lively creature. I’ll never give them away, even when I have to go abroad.
That’s Upik her story.
For days they were together, left alone, not in a forest but in a waste land beneath a tree of a hospital. They were so thin, so small. How they managed to eat, drink and sleep, I don’t know. Every day when on duty in the hospital I took some food and milk for them, How eagerly they ate and drank.
I wish I could take them home but we already had a foundling. But when I decided to take them home, they were gone. I, we all who went together felt bad in the car. Before driving for home we suggested to just try again almost with no hope. How we rejoiced as we found them still there.
I tried to find some one who would take care of them. But when I told them that Hansel is crippled and about Gretel’s itch and asthma they refused to take them, perhaps they’re business people. “What if they couldn’t be sold?” they thought. As I now think I’m so glad that they were rejected, otherwise … What if they took Gretel only or Hansel only. It would be cruel to separate them as they so love each other and always huddle, play, sleep together in my bed. And I thought of the orphans of wars, brothers and sisters separated from each other or from a mother when taken in families abroad and of slaves in former times when they were captured and sold. Hansel isn’t crippled anymore and walks, runs, jumps on all four, though sees with squinting eyes. Perhaps he’s got a violent beating on his head before and Gretel –she was near death, yet, thanks God, survived, three, four times revived by artificial respiration during a surgery - is a cute, funny, lively creature. I’ll never give them away, even when I have to go abroad.
That’s Upik her story.
February 2009
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