من عنبر المستشفى: رحلة للإبصار العلمي والفلسفي

From the hospital ward - Maha Shanqab ## A journey of scientific and philosophical insight From the hospital ward | This book is neither patient stories nor doctor's memoirs in the traditional sense, but rather an intellectual journey that begins with a simple and frightening question: What makes us who we are? From here you open Dr. Maha Shanqab has three clearly defined “sections”, from which she builds a contemplative text that combines medicine with philosophy, science with ethics, and daily facts with questions of meaning. The tone of the book is calm but sharp at its core: It is not important to know only medical information, as much as it is important to understand a person when he is stripped of all adornment. Chapter One goes to the “self” and its components: awareness, perception, memory... and boldly asks: If we lose a part of it, do we lose a part of ourselves? What remains when these pillars retreat? Here the book's inclination toward neuroscience and psychiatry, and the author's early astonishment at the strangeness of the mind, appears, as if she is leading the reader from curiosity for knowledge to dread of questions that are not easily resolved. Part Two turns to values ​​and ethics: Are we truly moral beings? Are we responsible for our decisions? How do we choose “the life we ​​want” amid the pressure of reality? The author believes that medicine is not only a place for treatment, but a daily ethical laboratory: decisions, limits, responsibility, and the fact that goodness is not a slogan but a practice under pressure. Then comes Chapter Three, where the title of the book is actually born: In the hospital ward, the author sees “life summed up in moments” between the first breath and the last breath, between pain and the struggle of the soul, so the world seems less noisy and more clear. There you discover that the end may “knock on the door” without a date, and that long preoccupation with dreams may obscure life’s most important questions. After these pages, you will ask yourself frankly: Do you live consciously...or do you postpone your awareness until you are awakened by a ward that you do not want to enter?