In a Kingdom by the Sea

by Sara MacDonald

  As we walk back along the corridor Dr Baruni tells me that the one positive thing to come out of the floods is that she is able to see women from rural areas, who previously had no access to medical help. She can now treat the minor gynaecological ailments that blight the lives of women who have never been able to visit a hospital before.

  ‘Once a week a male colleague, a gynaecologist, drives up from Karachi to operate. Poor women from remote regions are often treated like cattle. They are beasts of burden to work and breed. When women become ill, frail, or old, their men often abandon them. We have many women whose fathers and husbands have deserted them when they became a liability in the floods. The men make their way back to their villages without encumbrance as the water subsides. It is very sad …’

  Dr Baruni smiles drily at my shocked face.

  ‘Many of these women coming to us now have had multiple pregnancies. Year after year they have produced child after child. They are worn out. As they feel safe and comfortable here in the hospital we have been able to persuade them to have their tubes tied. Eight children are enough for any woman …’

  We start to talk about aid. Sergei has asked me to check what medical supplies are most needed and how the hospital prioritizes. Everything Dr Baruni lists seems so basic it is hard to believe the government is unable to provide these fundamental essentials. She also tells me that they only have one small operating theatre and often, in the middle of an operation, the electricity will conk out.

  ‘Local and foreign news channels come to record our plight. Then they leave. The world moves on, but here we cannot move on. Schools, refugee camps, roads, mosques, shops, all gone, nothing is functioning. Our entire infrastructure has disappeared in the blink of an eye. It will take us at least twenty years to rebuild, to recover …’

  She stops in the corridor and turns to face me. Her eyes are smudged with weariness. The sheer scale of what is needed here is daunting.

  ‘We need western aid. We need foreign aid agencies like yours to convince your governments, your people, that the suffering poor of Pakistan are in desperate need …’

  Into the silence a woman screams. It reverberates through the empty corridors and bounces off the damp walls. It is a long, quivering, hopeless sound and something in me changes in that second. I have a sudden, clear sense of purpose, as I stand in a bleak hospital corridor with an exhausted doctor in a shabby shalwar kameez. A lone doctor who is trying to do the impossible.

  I tell her that I am here to help Sergei plan a huge advertising campaign for IDARA, to highlight the urgent need for aid. I tell her that Malik Ali is going to take visual images of the suffering for National Geographic and national newspapers. I explain that I have been asked to help collate the individual stories of hardship, especially of children, that will resonate with people, for mass distribution for newspapers and magazines. IDARA will do everything in its power to highlight the conditions that doctors like her have to work in.

  Dr Baruni smiles. ‘Sergei Orlov is a force to be reckoned with … I hope he never leaves Pakistan.’

  We go back to Sergei, Malik and Dr Qasim. There is bread and tea on a low table. Dr Baruni turns to me. ‘Gabriella, would you like to sit in on one of my clinics?’

  I glance at Sergei.

  ‘If you feel up to it, Gabriella, I can leave you with Abida for an hour,’ he says. ‘I need to meet up with a colleague in the next village. I would like to take Malik with me to photograph the conditions …’

  I say to Malik, knowing how difficult this will be, ‘Could you try to get close-up shots of children, then I can blog when I get back and get them straight onto the IDARA website?’

  ‘Sure,’ Malik says, smiling. ‘I have a long-lens camera.’

  Sergei puts his hand on my arm. ‘Gabriella, you must keep hydrated. I will give you more water. You have had no time to acclimatize to this heat.’

  The heat is oppressive and I’m not feeling my best but neither is anyone else. ‘I’m fine, Sergei.’

  Sergei hands me a bottle of water and says quietly, ‘Abida will probably tell you things she would not necessarily say to a man. This will be useful in terms of her needs here.’ He smiles at me. ‘Try out your Urdu.’

  Dr Baruni hears this. ‘Do you speak Urdu, Gabriella?’

  ‘Very poorly.’

  She smiles. ‘Come, I start my clinic. Your skills will be tested. Most people speak Pashto or Punjabi here.’

  Dr Baruni’s small room has an electric fan running.

  ‘While we have electricity we use it,’ she says.

  Thin, frightened-looking women are queuing outside the door of her clinic, many with emaciated babies clinging to their arms. Their clothes, though much washed, still have threads of vivid colour; blue, red and pink material are gold-edged, radiant against the dark of their skin. They wait with resigned patience and grace.

  Dr Baruni takes the mothers and babies behind a screen to examine them. Every now and then she translates their problems for me. Like many Pakistanis she switches languages unconsciously. These young women carry their harsh lives on their faces. They appear to go quickly from being child women to middle-age.

  Their eyes slide towards me curiously as I sit in the corner. After a while I’m excited to realize I’m picking up the rhythm and sense of what the women are saying. I am beginning to distinguish words and phrases and common female ailments.

  A young mother comes in wearing a scarlet shalwar kameez. She is small and pretty. Her little girl is about two and dressed in a yellow dress with gold stars. While the woman is being examined the baby toddles over and eyes me solemnly.

  I wiggle my nose at her. Something passes across her face, a shadow of a smile. I hide behind my dupatta and then peer out of it at her. I do this twice and hear a little hiccup of a laugh. The third time she laughs openly, her small arms opening like a flower.

  Dr Baruni and the mother come out from behind the thin screen. The young woman says something to Dr Baruni. The doctor smiles at me. ‘This woman, she is saying her daughter, Usama, rarely laughs.’

  I look down at the little girl. Usama is looking at her mother with the smile still on her face. Then, she turns, holds her small arms up at me and jumps. I catch her, still laughing, and rock her in my arms. The child stares into my face, fascinated, and reaches up to touch my hair with a small finger as if to see if it is real. I look across at Usama’s mother and see astonishment in her eyes. This girl, who doesn’t look much more than a child herself, stands riveted, watching me hold her child. She turns to Dr Baruni, clutches her heart, and begins to wave her arms and speak very fast. It sounds almost as if she is begging for something but the doctor shakes her head vehemently and says, ‘No! No!’

  The child lays her head sleepily on my shoulder as I rock her. ‘What is it?’ I ask. ‘Is she upset because I am holding her child?’

  Dr Baruni looks annoyed and makes a dismissive gesture to the woman. When the girl refuses to stop begging, Dr Baruni holds both her hands up for silence and turns to me. ‘This girl, Samia, is only sixteen. She has been separated from her husband in the floods. She fears he has deserted her because she has been unwell with a painful infection for weeks. She is worried that she cannot keep Usama safe here or find enough food for her. She wants you to keep her child, take her away with you so that Usama can have a good life with the foreigner. She tells me she has never seen Usama go to anyone before. She is believing you are a sign from God; that you were sent here to rescue her child. I am explaining that what she is asking is neither possible nor legal.’

  I am shocked and upset that this young girl would so easily give up her child to a stranger. Usama is asleep or soporific on my shoulder. I am touched by the weight of this trusting little stranger. I yearn to keep her safe. I long to do what Samia wants and run down the corridor with her in my arms; take her back to Karachi and safety.

  I meet the girl’s eyes and she reads me clearly. I look away. ‘Will you tell Samia that Usama is a bea
utiful child and she’s doing a great job looking after her. Will you say that I can’t take her child but I’d like to help her in other ways? Can I give her money?’

  Dr Baruni nods. ‘You can. But if you don’t mind I would like to keep the money safe for her. She is likely to be robbed. She is in the refugee camp a few miles away from here with other family members.’

  She translates to Samia as I walk over to give her back her child. She takes Usama from me reluctantly. I go to my rucksack and take out all the money I have on me and hand it to Dr Baruni. She shows it to Samia, whose expression does not change, but her eyes are fixed on the money.

  Dr Baruni peels off two ten-rupee notes and hands them to Samia. Samia takes them, bows to me with her hand on her heart and is gone from the room.

  The doctor watches me. I sit on the chair. The room is hot and claustrophobic. I feel drained and faint and upset. She hands me my bottle of water and sits beside me with a sigh. ‘Gabriella, there are thousands of Samias and Usamas out there. You must harden your heart or you will not survive in Pakistan. You cannot help them all. What you can do is help many people to have a better life because of the things you do …’

  She’s right. I want to cry suddenly. My earlier confidence in my ability to help anyone is evaporating. It’s too hot. I feel frail and useless. I don’t have the training or skills needed. I am not sure I can survive this heat.

  ‘Drink,’ Dr Baruni says gently. ‘Do not be hard on yourself. I too cry in small moments on my own. I too give money when my heart aches. This is to be human.’

  She goes and wipes down the examination table and places a pillow at one end, then beckons to me.

  ‘Lie down for a few moments to refresh. You are not used to this heat or this life. My clinic is done. I will sit and do paperwork and watch over you.’

  I lie down gladly. Sergei and I were up at five thirty. I have no idea when he came to bed. I cling to the sides of the bed for a while feeling strange and unbalanced, then I float dizzily and gratefully away into sleep.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  Suhkar, North Pakistan, August 2010

  Lines and lines of tents stretch to the horizon. Sergei, Malik and I walk with Dr Qasim through the refugee camp. This place is a heaving mass of hungry, displaced people as far as the eye can see. We stop to talk to families crouched with their few saved possessions. Dr Qasim translates.

  Before we left the hospital I found Samia and Usama crouched outside with an older woman who was possibly her mother. I asked Samia if Malik could take their photographs and Usama said something to the other woman and then nodded.

  Against the stone walls, against the mud, their bright clothes stood out like flowers in a desert. Around this photograph I would weave a story. The women had hidden their faces behind their thin dupattas.

  Above us a Pakistan air force helicopter flies over the area and all eyes turn upwards. It circles and begins to drop bundles of food in the distance. There is a sudden eruption of movement as people rise to their feet like a wave and start to run towards it, a great flow and ripple of humanity moving fast in one direction towards expectations that cannot be met, except for those nearest to the plane.

  Sergei suddenly glances at his watch. ‘Dr Qasim, we need to head back to Karachi.’

  Dr Qasim also looks nervously at his watch. ‘I did not realize the time. You must be on your way. You must be back in Karachi before dark.’

  He leads us to the waiting Land Rover. Three security guards with guns are standing beside it. The doctor tells the driver to drive as fast as he can. We roll slowly through the potholes out of the village onto the wet road, leaving the stuck trucks still embedded in the swollen waters. We rumble past villagers still wading ankle-deep in water going in the opposite direction towards their abandoned homes.

  We drive in silence. We can see where bridges have been swept away and makeshift ones ingeniously set up on the banks of the river. Green trees poke incongruously out of the water like large flowers. Small boys sit on stones near the water and wave at us as a diversion.

  One security guard sits in the front with the driver and the other two sit behind us in the back. We are swaying fast on a rutted bare road that stretches ahead and the light is fading fast. The security man sitting with the driver talks almost constantly into a crackling mobile phone.

  I can feel the pressure building in the car. Malik is fidgety and sweating and Sergei’s body language is tense. We are silent, trying to pick up words of the staccato Pashto going on in the front. The danger of travelling on an isolated road in the dark is obvious. It is risky being out here at all, even with security. I think of the nurse, Abigail, back in London. ‘Never ever think it couldn’t happen to me. Believe me, it can.’

  Sergei says to Malik, ‘Can you speak Pashto? I can only pick up the gist of what they’re saying. I think the security men are stating our position to some rangers further up?’

  Malik nods. ‘Yes, that’s right. They are speaking so fast it is hard to understand much, but the driver has been told to step on it, to get “the foreigners” off the road as quickly as possible …’

  He pauses and glances at me. ‘The driver and the guards seem nervous, jumpy, as if they know something.’

  ‘Or, would just prefer not to be ambushed and are as anxious as we are to get off the road,’ Sergei says reassuringly.

  Malik shrugs. ‘Maybe, Sergei. You’ve done this before, I haven’t.’

  The Land Rover brakes suddenly and we peer ahead into the dusk. We can see a barrier across the road and rangers with guns. The mobile phones crackle like angry bees. The driver is waving his arms and shouting. The security guards leap out of the back and go and shout questions at the rangers.

  They shout back and gesticulate. Everyone is getting heated. We stay silent and still in the back of the car. Sergei puts his hand on my arm. It is as if we have all stopped breathing.

  One of the security guard walks back to the Land Rover and talks to the driver. The driver shakes his head vehemently. ‘No, no!’

  The security guard gets back into the front of the car. He glances at me and then says to Sergei, ‘Sir, rangers, they are not allowing us to go further up this road. They are expecting trouble. They will not allow us to pass. They are telling us to go back. It is not safe to continue.’

  Sergei reacts like the driver. ‘This makes no sense. We are not far from Karachi. To go back on this road in the dark is far more dangerous.’

  The security guard shrugs. ‘We cannot remain here. We cannot go forward in case we are bombed. If we go back we are in danger of bandits on the road. It is not a good situation.’

  Sergei gets out his mobile phone but at that moment a ranger walks towards us from the barrier. I pull my dupatta over my head. Malik and Sergei greet him politely.

  ‘Assalam-o-alaikum … Aap kesay hein?’ He points at the pendant on the bonnet. ‘IDARA, good …’ he says and leans in and shakes Sergei and Malik’s hands. Sergei greets him politely and tells him that if we cannot continue on to Karachi, we need to stay here, near the barrier, rather than try to return north in the dark.

  The ranger deliberates for a moment, his eyes resting on me. Then he lifts his phone, talks rapidly into it and disappears.

  ‘I got that,’ Malik says. ‘He’s speaking Urdu. He has an idea. He is going to telephone someone. We are to wait.’ Even I picked that up. I have a hunch that Sergei understands Urdu pretty well. It might be in his interest that not everyone knows this.

  We sit for what seems like hours as the dark gathers around us then the ranger comes back, grinning and pleased with himself. ‘There is Pakistan air force helicopter in area. They land for you in ten minutes. You wait in car. I call you …’

  Sergei breathes a sigh of relief. ‘Thank you, thank you for your help.’ He leans out of the window and grips the ranger’s hand. The man grins. ‘You help us. We help you. Pakistani pilot say he know Dr Sergei Orlov …’

  I smile. Who doesn’t?
/>
  Sergei turns to the driver. ‘Asif, I’m sorry; you will have to go back on this road in the dark. There is nothing I can do.’

  Asif shrugs. ‘It much safer without you and the mem, boss. Inshallah, all will be well. I drive back to Karachi office in morning.’

  Soon we hear the noise of a helicopter above us, and the ranger runs to the car. ‘Quick, quick, you out now.’

  The helicopter hovers and lands on the side of the road. The door opens and hands inside beckon for us to hurry. Sergei takes my arm and with Malik close behind we run towards it and throw ourselves in.

  As soon as we are inside, the helicopter starts to rise, the doors are clamped shut and we are airborne and heading up into the darkening sky. The pilot holds his hand up in a wave to Sergei and turns back to the controls. I crouch by the window and Sergei and Malik squat among empty sacks talking to two tired-looking crewmen.

  Suddenly, in the distance the whole sky blazes in an eruption of orange sparks mushrooming from the ground and filling the sky. I cannot hear the explosion, only see it from the window. I cry out and the helicopter seems to wobble as if caught by the blast, but the pilot is turning towards the sky that is on fire, great flames leaping and black smoke billowing upwards.

  The crew are shouting to each other over the roar of the engines and staring out of the window. Sergei crawls towards me and looks out. As we fly lower we see that trucks and lorries are on fire and people are running everywhere. Sergei puts his mouth to my ear.

  ‘They have blown up the NATO trucks bound for the military in Afghanistan.’

  It is like an inferno down there and the pilot is talking urgently into his mouthpiece. He turns and beckons Sergei.

  When Sergei comes back he says, ‘The pilot needs to go back to the scene of the explosion. He will have to drop us off at his base. He says Karachi is gridlocked, there has been some sort of violent demonstration, so we won’t get back home tonight …’

  In a few minutes we are running under the helicopter blades with one of the crew and the helicopter has risen, turned and gone, before we even reach the clutch of buildings on the Pakistani air force base. I am so tired that I stumble and nearly fall and Sergei catches hold of me. We are taken into a small waiting room whilst Sergei goes off with a crew member to find someone in authority.