Chutzpah

Chutzpah (pronounced Hootspa) is a Jewish word meaning audacity or nerve.

 

I checked the Dictionary.com for the meaning of audacity. It gives the following:

 

Boldness or daring, especially with confident or arrogant disregard for personal safety, conventional thought, or other restriction.

 

Here is a true story. This is not any movie scene.

 

Amrullah Saleh was a Spy Chief for the Afghanistan Government. He is now running for the Vice President of his country as a running mate for the current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. As a Spy Chief, he made lot of enemies including the Taliban. He killed lot of enemies. To a US television network he said: “And if they kill me, I have told my family and my friends not to complain about anything because I have killed many of them – with pride”.

 

In July of this year, his office was attacked and many of his bodyguards were either killed or wounded. He just escaped. He later visited the wounded bodyguards in a hospital. In the hospital, a relative of a dead bodyguard slapped Amrullah Saleh. His own security came to protect him. He asked his bodyguards to step back. Amrullah told the dead bodyguard’s relative to hit him more. And, he hit him again.

 

Amrullah Saleh asked the grieving relative whether his own death would have eased his pain. The man said “yes”. Amrullah Saleh then pulled his handgun, loaded it, and gave it to the man to shoot him. The relative took the gun, aimed at Amrullah Saleh, and after a few seconds returned the gun to Amrullah Saleh saying he could not shoot him.

 

During these few seconds, Amrullah Saleh looked at the man straight in his eyes and no fear in his face.

 

I would call this Chutzpah. Real life incident. Not a movie scene.