Nearly killed for Jesus – but closer to him than ever.
My daughter.
That was all that Sara* could think about just before she fainted in the street on the dreadful day she was attacked. Her daughter was home alone, and what would she do if her mother would never return? But while her attacker kept insulting her, “Dirty Christian, die!” her eyes became blurry and everything went black.
It’s a miracle that Sara is sitting in front of us today. Her daughter, whom she was so worried about, sits next to her; together they giggle and make jokes. It’s hard to believe that not so long ago Sara was in the emergency room of the hospital and the doctors were close to giving up on her. She brought printed pictures of her wounds. It’s difficult to look at: large, deep cuts, drowned in blood. But for Sara, these pictures have become part of her testimony: God saved her from death.
Sara shares that in the days before the attack she had felt a strange worry inside of her. Something was about to happen she told her daughter, but she wasn’t quite sure what. Still, she didn’t feel scared going into the street to buy groceries. The street she had to be in was busy and brightly lit. Not wearing a veil, she was clearly recognizable as a Christian woman, but that had never been a problem before.
Like she often did when she was out, Sara was repeatedly praying the Lord’s prayer in her head walking towards the shop. Then suddenly she felt a sharp object hitting her body. ‘Dirty Christian, die!’ she heard a man shouting while her legs started trembling. “I didn’t feel pain at first,” Sara tells us. “I must have been in shock. I felt a lot of blood was coming out of my body and I just started dabbing it with my scarf, but it was too much.”
Sara later heard what happened next from the people that witnessed the attack. While Sara fainted, the attacker, dressed in the typical white clothes of Islamic extremist Salafists, continued threatening her. While a crowd had gathered by now, he didn’t feel the need to flee. Maybe he knew that what he did wouldn’t have big consequences. “The attacker hasn’t been held accountable for his actions,” says Sara. “This worries me because this time it was me, but what if next time it is my daughter?”
Sara’s story isn’t unique.
Each year men and women in Egypt are attacked for their faith by extremists. Sometimes the attacks are so serious that the victims nearly die. And at least once a year a victim actually passes away. While the Egyptian authorities strongly disapprove of this persecution, many extremists still get away with their deeds: they are declared mentally ill and released or are protected by allies working in the police force that simply don’t investigate the case.
As for Sara and her daughter, they still avoid the street the attack happened on. They might be more afraid, but they are certainly not bitter. Sara isn’t angry at the attacker. She forgave him and prays for him regularly: “I hope that God will touch his heart,” she says with a smile.
The main change in her life since the attack? Her relationship with the Lord. Sara’s face lights up when she talks about Jesus. It’s difficult to explain for her what it is exactly that changed, but she has felt like Jesus has been with her the whole process. “It’s a feeling of inner peace, an inner love,” she says. She is now rejoicing in what she has in Christ each day. “If someone is willing to kill me for my faith, my God must be powerful,” she says.
*Pseudonym used for security reasons.
