The Girl Coming Out Of Padsan River

     She was a wisp of a girl, no more than 12 years of age. She was coming out of the river, a water jug on her head. Seconds later, she was making the ascent on the river bank, balancing  with her small brown hands the vessel containing sweet drinking water. When she walked the flat ground, the street where I lived, I caught her smile but her eyes essayed a long narrative of sadness. They were poor like us, with no source of water except the river.

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     "The patient has to start by treating his illness not as a disaster, an occasion for depression or panic, but as a narrative, a story. Stories are antibodies against illness and pain."  ---Anatole Broyard