The kids were alone. Mum had left early in the morning and left them with Maria. When her boyfriend called to ask if she wanted to go for a ride in his brand new car, Maria didn’t think twice[…]
She was careful locking the bedroom door and keeping the key in her pocket. She didn’t want Pancho to wake up and go down the stairs looking for her […] When the curtains started to burn, the fire quickly reached the wooden stair that lead to the bedrooms. Without thinking twice, Pancho jumped out of bed […] and realized that he had to get his baby brother out of there […] When the firefighters put the fire out, everyone spoke about the same thing:
- How could this tiny child break the glass and then the screen with a hanger?
- How did he manage to load the baby in a backpack?
- How did he walk along the ledge carrying such weight, and slid down from a tree?
- How could he have saved his brother’s life and his own?
An older firefighter, a wise, well-respected man, gave them the answer:
“Little Pancho was alone… He had no one to tell him that he couldn’t.”
Adapted excerpt of ‘Stories to think about’ by Jorge Bucay.
Shifting between the Deaf community and the hearing for the past 15 years, in the capacity of interpreter of Greek Sign Language, Konstantina urges us to bridge ‘I can’ with ‘I can’t’ when confronted with the ‘Other’, the ‘Different.’ Konstantina has been practicing/applying Greek Sign Language since 2001 and has been working as an interpreter since 2005.
