The principle of honoring the heroes and martyrs of war, prosecute criminals, thieves or save the family or a person from disaster, drowning, fire or car accident, or freeing a slave, are some of our inherited characteristics, as well as some countries in the world when building the monument of the Unknown Soldier. We have witnessing recently many cases of recognition of persons and groups of soldiers and civilians each of them has played a heroic or humane role. A role that is considered part of our inherited values. However, this was not the case with Mishary bin Abdul Mohsen Al Surayhi, the mechanical engineering student, who rescued his friend and his friend's son from drowning in one of America's lakes, and later he died as a result of hypothermia. His scarifies has being ignored except for the formalities of the “protocols”. Such act will normally be awarded with the highest scarifies recognition. This rather unfortunate event makes one wonder that being a Saudi national is not as worthy as other nationalities and the appreciation of the position is up to the American conscience. The unfortunate feeling is that this young man, who is an example of sacrifice and heroism, did not care that his friend is Christian or otherwise, he was only morally motivated. His sacrifice should be properly honored as a distinguished individual in our society rather than leave one family to receive his body. He would have been put among the distinguished people if this event took place in a different country. We do not know whether to blame the failure on the foreign affairs, our embassy in the USA, the ministry of higher education or any governmental and non-governmental social organizations, while we are known for caring about our people who they share the qualities of bravery and consideration. Honoring Abdul Mohsen is a debt on the State and the society to recognize him among the decent. The least we can do is to perpetuate his memory by naming a street or his school after his name or in any form that to show the next generations the value of the man who sacrificed him self, gave a model of the human spirit and saved a friend regardless of the consequences. The grieving family is satisfied with its son's sacrifice as he did what he had to do. They are not angry or sad. But not to get honored by his own country is unfortunate and unjustified. We did not pay attention to this honoring due to the event as we could not confirm what has happened. It is not too late to tell the family that their son has made everyone of us proud. His own country should recognize and appreciate his sacrifice and also as a message to the American who did not.
