Page 64 - Education World July 2020

Books

(Bangladesh, Canada, Co- a refugee at the end of a
lombia, the Congo, Egypt, three-year journey, where WHY BAD THINGS CAN’T HAPPEN
Guatemala, Iraq, Italy, she endures insults and TO GOOD PEOPLE! BECAUSE
APPLES CAN’T GROW ON MANGO
Jordan, Mexico, Myan- mistreatment by other TREES
mar, Syria, Uganda, the children at school before Atman in Ravi
United States, Yemen, and she witnesses a vigilante AIR INSTITUTE OF REALIZATION
Zambia). Here is a gist of attack on her home, which
those stories, which have kills her mother and deep- Rs.122 Pages 175
to be read in full to grasp ly wounds her father. The
their import. family is then fortunate to
Zaynab and Sabreen, be accepted, after a wait Uganda. She ends her
sisters of mixed African of several years, to live on story poignantly: “I still While it’s easy to
parentage, had a diametri- refugee status in Lan- struggle to find out what accept pain and
cally opposite experience caster, PA, USA, where, I will do for the country suffering of the sinful
going from their home in in a happy ending, Marie where I was born. While I and corrupt as just
Egypt to the United States, completes her final year of often feel as if my coun- punishment, it’s more
seemingly on account of schooling and graduates try gave up on me, I have difficult to explain
capricious authority which from high school just six never given up on it.” why noble and upright
readily grants one of them months after arriving, hav- For a true apprecia- people are visited by
a visa, while refusing it ing convinced the school tion of what these brave pain and anguish
to the other. Muzoon, a authorities to admit her women have endured and
13-year-old Syrian girl in a against heavy odds. achieved, you have to read
refugee camp in Jordan, is Ajida, a young Ro- the book. Their lives will obviously don’t deserve
able to convince other girls hingya woman from surely comfort the dis- it? While it is easy to ac-
in the camp that school- Myanmar, is forced to run placed multitudes in our cept pain and suffering of
ing is a better option than to an open-air camp in uncertain and dangerous the sinful and corrupt as
waiting to be married to neighbouring Bangladesh world. just punishment, it’s far
older men, which is the with her husband and DR. MOHAN RAJ (The more difficult to explore
only other option their three children to escape a Book R ev i ew, February- the complexity of noble,
lives offer them. Najla, military attack. Her fam- March) upright and god-fearing
a Yazidi girl from Iraq, ily remains stateless and people visited by pain
survives the horrors of an homeless and has had to and anguish. On a larger
shift camp from the river
ISIS attack and fights her plains for fear of floods, to Explaining canvas, the enormous pain
father — and orthodox and suffering that millions
community values — to treacherous mountains, of people are subjected to
resume schooling. with little external sup- suffering & pain as a result of war, poverty,
Maria, the daughter of port. and displacement could
a farmer, lost her father The story of Farah from T IS THE HUMAN prompt utter despair
at the age of four to a Uganda now settled in condition for every and make us lose hope in
militants’ attack and is Canada, is told in retro- Iperson to want hap- goodness and justice in
forced to flee her home in spect. She is now a project piness and conversely, this world.
the Colombian countryside administrator helping to avoid pain. Yet, why is For people who believe
with her family, to live girls’ education in Uganda, happiness so elusive and in God, the Creator and
in a makeshift camp in but her family had been pain so ubiquitous? Why Controller of the universe,
Cali city for the next three victim of Idi Amin’s forced is there so much suffering what we may view as un-
years. She then joins a exodus of Ugandans of in the world? Most of us just suffering poses major
theatre group for children Asian origin, back in 1972, must have reflected on this theological questions
set up by a community when Farah was two years question at some point. concerning the power,
organisation and ends up of age. They had tried so A related issue is un- goodness and justice of
as a 16-year-old, making a hard to assimilate into warranted pain world- God. If God is, as many re-
documentary about what it Canadian life that until wide. Why do people who ligions aver, all-powerful,
means to be displaced. she became an adult, are genuinely good and all-just and all-good, why
Marie Claire escapes Farah had no idea of her selfless often experience does He permit suffering
the violence of her native origins or of the tyranny excruciatingly painful and distress on such a
Congo to enter Zambia as that forced their exile from situations in life when they massive scale? If God is,

64 EDUCATIONWORLD JULY 2020