The Miracle in Cairo

The Miracle in Cairo

It was the year 1942. I was then living in Cairo, Egypt, with my parents. Around June or July that year, when I was thirteen years old, I contracted a persistent fever with a very high temperature. The doctors diagnosed it as typhoid. 

My illness came as a terrible shock to my family. Typhoid at that time was a dreaded disease. The survival rate of patients with this disease was less than fifty percent. Generally, had the fever continued for forty days or more, the chances of survival would be extremely poor. It was summer in Egypt at that time, and the risk of dehydration was high. This added factor made the prospects of my recovery rather bleak. 

I had to remain in bed all the time and lie on my back with an ice bag on my head. I was so weak that I could hardly get up and go to the bathroom. I was completely bedridden. The only food I was allowed to take was a watery chicken soup and lemonade; and my only medicine was aspirin. Chloromycetin, the wonder drug which has saved the life of countless typhoid patients, was not available at that time. 

We belong to the Roman Catholic Church. My parents were devout Catholics. In this calamity they felt totally helpless; and all they could do was to pray to God for my recovery. They  also put at the head of my bed an icon of the virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus in her arms. 

The small icon, painted on wood, was of Turkish origin and was very old, so old that it had lost most of its details. Yet the faces of Virgin Mary and baby Jesus remained clearly visible. This ancient relic, for its protection, was put inside a box fitted with a glass door. 

The icon had been with our family for many generations and some miraculous stories were associated with it. It still belongs to our family and is now with my brother who lives in Sao Paulo, Brazil. 

We believed that, among other things, the icon also had the power to heal sickness. During my illness I would look at the icon off and on. and beg the Virgin Mary to forgive me for whatever wrong things I might have done knowingly or unknowingly in my life. I would do that with all yearning of a thirteen-years-old boy stricken with a life-threatening illness. 

During my illness my aunt used to visit me and would often give me some coins which I would offer to the virgin Mary. I cannot explain how one of those coins got stuck to the glass door of the box in which the icon was enclosed. And it remained stuck during the entire period of my illness. 

One day, as I was lying in my bed praying, I distinctly heard three tapping sounds coming from the boxed up icon as though it was responding to my prayer. Also, every Friday around noon, a strange fragrance of incense would fill my entire room and overpower the odour of the disinfectant that was regularly used to clean the floor. I was not able to explain how all those things happen. 

On the fortieth day of my illness, my condition had deteriorated so much that my parents and other members of our family were present by my bedside expecting the worst to happen. I was lying on my back in the bed as usual when I suddenly saw a lady of humble appearance standing beside my bed. She resembled one of those Bedouin women of interior Egypt. She was wearing a long white dress, part of which covered her hair like a veil. 

Her complexion was tanned and she stood next to my bed quietly without saying anything. Somehow, a thought came to my mind that she might perhaps give me some medicine, so I suddenly sat up just for a few seconds. I was surprised that I was able to do that because of my prolonged illness had sapped all my strength, leaving me extremely weak. Suddenly I had a bout of sneezing and my nose started bleeding profusely. Strangely enough, from that moment onward I started to improve and feel better. 

I had never seen that Lady before, and she surely did not look like any picture of the Virgin Mary I had ever seen. Within a few days I completely recovered from my illness, but the memory of the vision of that humble brown-

complexioned lady with the long white dress lingered on in my mind. I could never forget her. It was years later that I came to know who she was. 

Christians were a minority in Egypt, and years later, owing to the changed political situation, we started having difficulties living and earning our livelihood there. By that time I had married and was working as a salesman in oriental rugs in Cairo. 

Therefore I decided to move with my wife to Brazil and start a new life in the city of Sao Paulo. There I started working as salesman for a foundry company. 

In 1973 a friend invited me to go with him and visit one of his friends in the Ramakrishna Ashrama of Sao Paulo. This was the first time I visited an Ashrama associated with Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. 

As I entered the foyer of the building I suddenly noticed a small photograph sitting on a bookshelf with other pictures. All my attention was drawn to that photograph and I stood looking at it in the greatest wonder. It was the picture of the lady who had appeared to me thirty one years earlier in Cairo and saved my life as I lay dying of typhoid! 

With great emotion and eagerness, I asked the friend, who had taken me there, "Who is this lady in the photograph?" And he told me that she was Sri Sarada Devi, the divine consort of Sri Ramakrishna. 

He asked me why I look so surprised and startled. Then I related to him the story of how she appeared before me in Cairo and saved my life when I was thirteen years old. 

For the second time in my life, I was in front of the same humble lady of tanned face who was wearing the same dress and standing in exactly the same way as I had seen years before in Cairo! It was my second meeting with the Holy Mother Sarada Devi! From that moment onward I started walking a new path of understanding, devotion and love toward her. 

In the year 1974, I was initiated by Swami Paratparananda of the Ramakrishna Order. Since then, the Holy Mother has always protected me from all dangers. Once when I was on a business trip in the interior of Sao Paulo state, it started raining very hard. The road was slick and dangerous. Suddenly I lost control of my car. It flipped over twice and then stopped with its belly up. Eventually the police came and pulled me out of the car, they first thought that I must have either died or been critically hurt. But, miraculously, I didn't even have a scratch on me. 

I had put a magnetic picture of the Holy Mother on my car. Dislodged by the accident, it was resting on my head when the police rescued me. Glory to the Holy Mother. 

-Nirvana