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Chapter Three

Look in Your Hand

When I joined the Army Reserves in 1993, I didn’t do it because I was pro-war, or because I thought that waging war was noble. I joined the Reserves because of the opportunity I had as a doctor to ease the suffering that war causes. As an Army doctor, I care not only for our soldiers but also for civilians caught in the crossfire, as well as for those we call “the enemy.”

In 2000 I was deployed to Kosovo, after NATO bombings brought the hostilities between the Albanians and the Serbs to a standstill. My unit first went to Fort Benning, Georgia, where we were trained in matters such as laws of war, clearing an area of land mines, weapon proficiency, and the historical roots of the Balkans conflicts. We were assigned battle gear, complete with flak vests and Kevlar helmets. Then we were shipped off to Kosovo.

I worked in the mobile hospital at Camp Bondsteel, a seven-square-mile sprawling complex of tents, permanent structures, fences, and every imaginable type of military vehicle. The camp accommodated ten thousand soldiers. Helicopters constantly took off and landed. Every few hundred yards there were towers from which heavily armed lookouts scanned the woods and roads surrounding the camp. Camp Bondsteel was a self-contained city. It provided its own water, sewage, and sanitation, fire and police, laundry, food and hospital services, and even jail. There was a chapel, a movie theater, a store, a library, a barbershop (all hair styles were the same—short!) and a coffee bar.

Everyone inside the camp was heavily armed. Even as you walked from sleeping quarters to the mess tent, you carried a gun. The doctors carried smaller weapons so we could keep our hands free to take care of patients. It was a strange feeling examining a patient in the emergency room with a pistol on my right hip and an ammo pouch on the left.

What seemed even stranger about all of the security was that much of what went on inside the camp was recreation— ping pong, volleyball, basketball, workout gyms, movie theaters, television lounges, as well as a Burger King and other amenities. It looked like a heavily armed summer camp.

Still, there was always a threat that lingering hostilities between the Serbs and Albanians would boil over and someone might attack. As part of the NATO forces in the area, Americans were there to maintain the fragile peace agreement between recently warring groups. NATO bombs were no longer falling while I was there. Only emotional ones.

When I first arrived with my unit, the medical staff showed me to the barracks, where I met my roommates, two dentists and a combat psychiatrist. Our housing was a large tent with a wooden floor. Soon after I set my pack on my bed, I was taken to the hospital to see where I would be spending the winter. The hospital was more modern than some of the country hospitals in Kansas where I work as an emergency room doctor!

The x-ray units, surgical areas, and MRI equipment were state-of-the-art. Most of the patients at Bondsteel did not have war-related injuries, I was told. While there were still some unexploded land mines in the area that accidentally injured civilians, most of our patients were soldiers who twisted ankles playing basketball, or people from outside the camp who had suffered a car accident, burn, or shooting. We set bones, delivered babies, performed tonsillectomies—in general, acted like a small-town hospital.

Within just a few hours of arriving in Kosovo I was shown the mess tent, and sat down for my first meal. I was tired and hungry from the long trip.

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Soon after I began eating, a professional-looking Albanian woman entered the mess hall and walked to my table.

“Are you Dr. Morsch?” she asked.

“Yes. How can I help you?”

“I’m Drita Perezic, General Sanchez’s translator. We have been looking forward to your being here,” she said in perfect English. “General Sanchez would like to ask you a favor.”

Word had gotten to the general that the head of a humanitarian group had been assigned to Camp Bondsteel, and before I arrived he had checked out Heart to Heart. And me.

Drita told me one of the most heartbreaking stories I have ever heard. Earlier that year, Merita Shabiu, an 11-year-old Albanian girl, was abducted, raped, and killed by an American soldier based at Camp Bondsteel. That soldier and his driver then buried Merita’s body in a snow bank outside the nearby town of Vitina. All of this happened on the first day General Sanchez had taken command of Bondsteel.

I remember shaking my head the whole time Drita talked to me. I had a vague recollection of reading about this back in the United States. As Drita talked, I kept wondering to myself: Why is she telling me this? Merita is dead. The soldier has already confessed and is in a military prison for the rest of his life at Fort Leavenworth. What can I do? It doesn’t sound as if they need a doctor.

“There isn’t much else the military can do for Merita’s family, but they aren’t doing very well,” Drita concluded. “They’re still full of grief for their daughter. The father showed up at one of our checkpoints recently and said they were out of food and that he was sick.”

“If he’s sick, then bring him in to the hospital and any one of us can check him out,” I said. “Bring him to a doctor.”

She hesitated.

“He doesn’t really need a doctor as much as he needs someone to reach out to him. He’s hurting in a way that the military can’t help.”

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Her next question wasn’t a great philosophical inquiry. She didn’t want to know why bad things happen to good people. She didn’t wonder where God was in this tragedy.

“Do you think you can do something for this family?” she asked.

I had no idea what I could do, but I said yes.

Within a few days our convoy of four Humvees carrying ten soldiers in full battle gear headed out of Camp Bondsteel and into the mountains that separate Kosovo from Macedonia. The Shabiu family lives in those mountains in a small village of just a few houses. Once we left the pavement of the city we drove for two hours on a steep and narrow road that seemed more suited for herds than our wide vehicles. Trees were so close to the path that they knocked the side mirrors off the vehicles. The lead driver nearly tipped his Humvee over.

The family has no phone or electricity, so there was no way of telling them that a military unit was on its way. I can’t imagine the fear they must have felt when we pulled up to their tiny house. The soldiers set up watch around the perimeter of the house as if it were a military action. One could never be too careful.

Hamdi Shabiu, Merita’s father, and Remzije, her mother, cautiously stepped out of their house, their other four children hiding behind them. After what had happened to Merita, the sight of American soldiers must have been alarming. I introduced myself through a translator. Hamdi and Remzije soon began scurrying around their property, looking for something for us all to sit on. They looked for cups so they could serve us tea. I was moved by their hospitality, especially in light of the fact that an American soldier had caused their heartbreak. Now they were surrounded by soldiers, and they wanted to make us feel at home.

Judging by the parents’ actions, they had no enemies, despite what had happened. Inside his home, I told Hamdi that I was there not as a soldier (despite my uniform) but as a friend, and that I wanted to check up on him and his family. I gave each of them a physical examination and some medicines.

“Tell me about Merita,” I said to Hamdi.

He looked up at the wall for a moment, and his eyes filled with tears. I followed his gaze, and my eyes filled as well. Still hanging on the wall was Merita’s backpack and pink coat, as if she were going to walk in soon and put them on, ready for another day of school.

“Merita was a beautiful little girl who was very happy,” he began. “When the NATO jets flew over our village on their way to bomb Serbian positions, Merita would go out to the top of the hill and wave to them. She knew they were coming to rescue us.”

The Shabius had been forced to move to Vitina during the war. Just a few days before the NATO strikes began, Hamdi and Remzije were taken by Serb police and beaten severely—simply because they were Albanian, they said. Hamdi’s injuries were so bad that blood came out of his ears. Then they were taken outside the city and dumped in the forest.

“Our children had no idea where we were, so they were very frightened,” he said. But the arrival of the NATO jets gave the Shabiu family a sense that their world would be safe soon. Merita, in particular, was happy because the jets meant that she could go back to school and someday become a doctor.

But one day Merita did not come home from school. Her mother, father, brothers, and sister searched for her without success. Finally, Hamdi reported her disappearance to the local police.

Two days later, children in a schoolyard told Hamdi that there was a child’s body in a nearby building. They pointed to a bombed-out structure surrounded by U.S. soldiers. He identified himself to the soldiers and told them that his daughter was missing.

“They took me into the building, and I saw a U.S. officer crying,” Hamdi said. The officer showed Hamdi a photo and asked if it were Merita.

“She died a horrible death,” Hamdi said. “I almost passed out when I saw her.”

The photo showed his beautiful daughter with beaten, swollen eyes, bruises around her neck, and what appeared to be a bullet hole in her forehead. Her thin, yellow hair was matted behind her head. Hamdi showed me photos of Merita when she was healthy and happy. Then he showed me the photos of her after her body was found. I cried as if she were my own daughter.

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We talked about Merita a while longer, and I asked if I could see where she was buried. They took me to a small community cemetery, where graves were marked only by a few sticks and an empty cup, an Albania custom I did not understand. Hamdi pointed out which grave was Merita’s. The dirt walls were already caving in. Animals had evidently been digging there.

“Doesn’t she have a headstone?” I asked.

“I am a woodcutter and a beekeeper, and we’re in a war. How would I pay for a headstone?” he said.

As we went back to his house, my mind was racing. I was angered and disgusted by what the soldier had done. I was also frustrated. We can’t bring this daughter back. We can’t change the economy of this village in Kosovo. We can’t make hostile parties like each other. What can we offer someone in a situation like this?

I felt completely inadequate. What small thing, in love, would be meaningful to this family in pain? I couldn’t undo the awful thing that had been done to their daughter. I looked sadly at Merita’s pink coat. I could not do nothing.

A statement by the writer Frederick Buechner came to mind: “True peace, the high and abiding peace that passeth all understanding, is to be had not in retreat from the battle, but only in the thick of the battle.”²

I went to the Humvee, got my laptop computer out of my pack, and went back into the Shabiu’s home. They watched me turn it on, then open a program that had software for creating art. With the computer’s mouse, I began to draw a headstone.

“What would you like Merita’s headstone to say?” I asked.

Hamdi and Remzije looked at each other and talked quietly as it slowly dawned on them what I was doing.

“You’re going to make a headstone on the computer?” they asked.

“I’m going to design it, with your help, and then someone else will build it.” I was just talking off the top of my head, making it up as I went along. Something had to be done for this grieving family. Something had to bring dignity to Merita.

Looking at the other soldiers, I signaled that I had no idea what we were going to do. But the soldiers and our translator were smiling. They knew we were embarking on an important journey with this family.

Soon everyone—mom, dad, and kids—was excitedly talking about what should be on the marker to honor Merita. It should have an Albanian flag, they said. Hamdi said it should also have an American flag. I stopped drawing for a moment and looked at him. “Wasn’t it an American who killed your daughter?” I asked.

“I am not an educated man,” he said. “But I know that this soldier was not following orders when he killed my daughter. I will not blame all Americans or all American soldiers.”

I pasted in the flags and put them in the upper corners of the headstone. I wrote Merita’s name prominently in the middle, with the dates of her life on earth.

“Anything else?” I asked. “Something you want to say about her?”

More discussion between mom and dad. “Write this: ‘She taught us to love one another,’” her father said.

We still had room, so I asked if they wanted a picture of her engraved into the marker. They handed me a photo that brought me to tears again. She looked like an angel. I thought about my own kids and wondered how a parent could bear the death of a child—especially such a brutal death.

I set the photo on a table and took a picture of it with my digital camera. Then I loaded the image into the computer and pasted it into the headstone. Finally, on my computer screen, we had a tribute to Merita. The family couldn’t believe it. I told them we would return with a headstone and give Merita a proper burial.

How we would produce that headstone was a complete mystery to me. But my experience told me that someone wanted to help but just didn’t know how. I decided to trust the process, get the word out, and watch people respond.

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The reason so many people don’t help each other is that they don’t know how—they are paralyzed by their lack of information. Yet at their core they want to help, and they know that they should. They know that their lives will mean more as they serve others. They just need some handles.

It didn’t take long for word about our visit to the Shabiu family to circulate among the soldiers at Bondsteel and other American outposts throughout Kosovo. Within days, officers stopped me wherever I was and handed me wads of cash donated by their units. Officers came to me in tears, saying “Thank you for giving us a chance to tell them how we feel.”

Most of the soldiers had not met any of the Shabiu family. They only knew that something terrible had happened to them, and that there was an opportunity to reach out to them through this headstone. Within days of my first meeting with the Shabius, American soldiers had donated more than $4,000 to help relieve their suffering.

We found an engraver who would make the monument for Merita and, to be certain everything the Shabius wanted would be on the headstone, we made another unannounced visit. It happened that our visit fell on a day when, traditionally, Muslim families have a great feast to celebrate the end of Ramadan— which we didn’t realize until we arrived.

Bringing out festive cakes and pastries to welcome us, the Shabius confided that they had planned to go to another village for the day. But, although Hamdi pleaded with them, the children refused to go, saying that they “had a feeling” that the American soldiers were coming to visit them. They were actually waiting outdoors for us, watching for our convoy to come around the bend of the narrow mountain road. When we arrived, Hamdi said God had brought us together on this very special Muslim holiday.

A few days later we took the money collected from the soldiers and opened a bank account in the nearby town. I wish I had videotaped that event. Several U.S. soldiers, dressed in camouflage, helmets, and boots, and all heavily armed, arrived at the bank, setting off every alarm. I stepped up to the counter and told the wide-eyed teller “I want to open an account.” She looked at me, then at all the soldiers who had filled the small bank, and could only nod. The rest of the customers evacuated the building when we arrived, just like they did in old movies of when the gunslinger and his gang entered a saloon!

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The deposit was considerably more than the cost of the headstone, so I included a stipulation that the money could only be withdrawn if it were going to be used for humanitarian purposes, and made the Army chaplain a co-signer. The Army had allowed me to continue some humanitarian efforts while I was there, permitting the shipment of clothes, medicines, and eyeglasses to the base. Volunteers then distributed them to people in need.

Lions Clubs in Indiana had collected 3,000 pairs of eyeglasses for the people of Kosovo, and the Bondsteel optometrist was organizing ways to get them to the neediest people in the province. I knew some of the money in this account would help cover those expenses. Children at Black Bob Elementary School in Olathe, Kansas, had collected and packed twenty-two large boxes of children’s winter coats, gloves, and hats for the people in the area. I knew this fund would help cover shipping costs, too.

A few weeks later we headed into the mountains again, this time with a truck carrying Merita’s headstone. I couldn’t wait for the Shabius to see it. When we arrived, they greeted us as if we were family. We had brought them hope on our first visit, and that made us brothers and sisters. They wept when they saw the headstone. The image of Merita, smiling her beautiful smile, etched into the granite, brought out emotions in her parents that I hope I never have to experience.

Hamdi and Remzije hugged me for a very long time. Merita had begun to feel like my own daughter. Anne Lamott said “It is only by experiencing that ocean of sadness in a naked and immediate way that we come to be healed.”³ This was both sad and healing.

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Merita was re-buried in a community cemetery, her headstone prominent among the others. Nearby was a sacred site, the mass grave of Albanian soldiers who had died in a military action against the Serbs. Far from being forgotten, she was now in a place of dignity, her grave marked with a stone that rose up out of the ground like a sunflower.

Several religious traditions were represented as we conducted a brief service at the new site. The differences didn’t matter. Grief, combined with hope, blurred all the lines to produce one shared experience—gratitude.

“What is experienced as most unique often proves to be most solidly embedded in the common condition of being human,” wrote Henri Nouwen.⁴ This was unique and unforgettable.

What Merita and her family experienced is beyond comprehension. And yet, through the headstone, we were able to share our humanity and serve one another. We are called to exercise hospitality to each person we encounter. “The term hospitality should not be limited to its literal sense of receiving a stranger in our house,” Nouwen wrote, “but as a fundamental attitude toward our fellow human being, which can be expressed in a great variety of ways.”⁵ In this case, it was expressed by the simple act of providing a headstone for a girl who should not have died.

How did I know that reaching for my computer was what they needed at the time? I didn’t. What I learned was the lesson Moses learned while he was tending sheep. In the Old Testament book of Exodus, God talks to Moses through a burning bush. God tells Moses to go to the Pharaoh and demand that the slaves of Israel be set free. My free translation of the dialogue goes like this:

Moses: “You can’t be serious. I have a speech impediment.”

God: “I am serious. You can do it.”

Moses: “Pharaoh won’t believe me.”

God: “Tell him I sent you.”

Moses: “Then he really won’t believe me. I can’t do it.”

God: “What do you have in your hand?”

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Moses: “A staff for herding sheep.”

God: “Throw it on the ground, then pick it up again.”

On the ground the staff becomes a serpent, but it changes back into a staff when Moses picks it up. I think God is telling Moses that whatever he has at hand will be enough to do the job.

I had a laptop computer. Soldiers throughout Kosovo had dollar bills in their hands. That was enough to bring honor to Merita and dignity to her family. In the previous chapter I mentioned the dying man who offered his few slices of tangerine to soothe the throat of another dying man. What he had in his hand was just what the other man needed. This is always the case. For whatever reason, we feel that we need more training, more education, more skills assessments, more time, or more money. We don’t. We are the answers to others’ prayers.

It is sometimes hard to see ourselves as an answer to prayer. Instead of waiting until we’re able to organize a large effort to help people, we can start where we are, with what we have. I spoke on the topic of serving others to a group in Glasgow, Scotland, and a man approached me afterward in frustration. His community needed to build a home for unmarried mothers to have their babies. There was no adequate facility in the region and he believed that he had the skills to build one.

“Congratulations,” I said. “I wish you the best in this very important venture.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “I want to build it, but there is so much government red tape involved that we haven’t even begun. I’m very frustrated by the way the government is keeping this great idea from happening.”

“How long have you been trying to get this done?” I asked.

“More than two years,” he said, with exasperation in his voice.

“And in those two years how many women have you helped?” I said.

“None!” he exclaimed. “The government won’t let me!”

“I have a suggestion,” I said. “Do you have a house?”

“Yes.”

“Does it have a spare room?”

“Yes.”

“Then open that spare room to someone who needs it right now. Don’t wait until you have a permit to build a building and start a program. Start with what you have now.”

Mother Teresa didn’t wait to pick up the dying person in the alley until she had a permit to build a facility. Heart to Heart didn’t wait until we had nonprofit status to repair the YMCA in Belize. Moses didn’t wait until he could hire a speech therapist. We just took the first step. The most important one.

The well-intentioned man didn’t realize that he could start with whatever he had in his hand at the time. One of the things that keeps us from serving others is that we want conditions to be perfect, but they never will be. Those who need us need what we have available now. For Moses, that was enough to lead his people out of slavery. Whatever we have—a laptop, a shepherd’s staff, an extra room—is enough for now.

Within a few months my tour of duty in Kosovo was over, and I returned to my family, my town, and my job. It seemed unlikely that there would be a reason for me to go back to Kosovo. But, as I began preparing this book, I could not get the Shabius out of my mind. I wanted to see how they were doing. They felt like part of my own family.

I got in touch with a missionary family who I had gotten to know during my time in Kosovo. They agreed to help me return to the Shabius. Could I bring some medicines with me for the Shabius and other families they were helping? Of course.

Would I get to see the Shabius? There was no way to let them know I was coming. When I flew into Macedonia during their civil war, and found the border crossing into Kosovo closed because of the violence, I kept asking myself “Is this worth it? What if they don’t live there anymore? Why am I going to all this trouble?” I had to walk the last few miles, hiring a couple of teenagers to help me carry the boxes of medicine.

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After many hours of breathing exhaust fumes I finally made it across the border and met my missionary friends, Randy and Lycia Harvey. They were a welcome sight after a very unnerving day!

The next day we headed into the mountains. When we pulled up to the Shabiu’s house, Hamdi and Remzije didn’t recognize me in my civilian clothes. But, when I identified myself, they treated me as a long-lost son. They rushed around their house looking for enough cups to serve tea to everyone. They offered cigarettes they had obviously rolled themselves. (Apparently my influence on them as a doctor had been limited!)

Inside the house, I looked at the wall. There was Merita’s backpack. Beneath it were an Albanian and an American flag. Taped to the wall was a letter from General Sanchez telling U.S. military outposts that, if they were presented with this letter by anyone from the Shabiu family, they were to treat the Shabius with “dignity and respect.”

“When you are here it feels as if my daughter has risen from the dead,” Hamdi told me.

Being with them again felt like a family reunion. I brought presents for each of them—hats, sunglasses, and jewelry—and we caught up on each other’s lives. They showed us the cows that had been brought to them, paid for out of the bank account we opened the year before. After a long emotional day we said our goodbyes. I wanted to see Merita’s grave, so we drove there on our way out of the village. Weeds have grown up around her headstone, much like they have in and around the bombed-out buildings that surround the area. But the headstone still stands tall, a monument to the purity of a child and the grace of a community.

“She taught us to love one another,” the monument says, chiseled with hard tools into the stone. I felt it chiseled into my own heart as well.