Fuad and Libby

فؤاد وليبي פואד וליבי 

It's been over two long years since I first heard the name Wuhan China, I recall it vividly. I was doing my laundry in a basement launderette in Turin in February 2020. I was there on business consulting to RAI - Radio Italy - and had run out of clothes after two weeks. Asked the lady next to me how to operate the machine and struck up a conversation with her. She told me she was a student that had just been evacuated from Wuhan. I thought nothing of it, and only when I arrived in the UK and people started avoiding me did I hear of Covid. Shortly after, the outbreak hit Italy hard and Milan and Turin were locked down.

Today, I'm sitting in a hospital waiting for a PCR test, so I have time to look back and reflect on how I've dodged the bullet all this while when everyone else around me has had Covid. But now, having returned from London and developing a high fever, did I realize it has finally caught up with me. At least it's not as virulent now, as if I had caught it in in the beginning in Turin.

At the same time at a children's hospital 10 kms away 2-year-old Libby or ליבי is being released, fully recovered. Her situation was far worse than mine, she would have died within weeks having been born with a congenital heart disease.

3-year-old Fuad was playing near his house when a car hit him. It was over in seconds.

Fuad in Arabic means heart and yes, you already know what Libby means in Hebrew, 'my heart'. Fuad's mother, a Christian and her father, a Moslem have donated his heart to let Libby live. Like the song of Ofer Levy written by Yoni Roeh "Night Wind"- shuvy eilay zoek libi, Israel's society is multi-national and too often fractured by politics. Fuad's righteous parents in their terrible grief did the right thing. His heart lives on and beats strongly in Libby's chest. The gift of life overcoming ethnicity. Two families forever bound by one beating heart.

News in Israel continues to come to us at a hurling pace.

One couples embryo was implanted in the wrong mother causing extreme anguish for both couples. Neither one is willing to give up on the child. A true modern 'Shlomo's' judgement which is likely to play out in the courts.

Now on my way to be fully recovered from Covid and life goes on in our frenetic country…As they say may you all be inscribed in the Book of Life.

שובי אלי זועק ליבי

שובי אל ימי מאור דרכי

אין בי שקט ימי ריקים

שובי אלי הו נשמתי

Return to me, my heart cries

Return to my days of light

I have no peace, empty days

Return to me O my soul