Tunnel Vision

by Shandana Minhas

  ‘Take me to the Agha Khan,’ I yelled. The scream echoed in my ears. The medical staff continued their dispassionate probing, chatting amiably about this and that, cricket and music, TV and red tape, undisturbed by the turmoil in the air around them.

  If only someone would tell Saad. He’d get me out of here.

  I whimpered in a corner till they finished. Then the orderly rose from his upright stupor to wheel my gurney into what must be a recovery room, cluttered with all manner of whining electronica, two doctors separating from the pack to settle me in. Then my mother rushed in to stand by my side, and the cockroach, even the accident, became a distant, almost pleasant memory, a minor chord in a discordant cacophony now being conducted by the pit mistress herself, the mother of Ayesha.

  MAAN KI DUA, JANNAT KI HAWA

  BACK OF RICKSHAW

  ~

  My mother is one of that special breed of women for whom helplessness is the critical survival mechanism. Rain or shine, crisis or calm, she has made such a habit of ostensibly throwing herself upon other people’s mercy, I am surprised she can still walk upright. It would probably be easier to just squirm like the sun-resistant worm she has become. I love my mother but, as you can probably tell, the sum total of my respect for her coping skills would probably feel lost on a needlepoint.

  And as she lurched to my bedside, doing her best impression of a pious aunty overwhelmed at a dars, it became apparent that she was running true to type.

  ‘Oh, Ayesha Ayesha! What has happened to you? How has it happened?’ She lifted her dupatta to wipe the tears streaming down her face. The male doctor seemed unnerved, but the woman put her clipboard down long enough to squeeze my mother’s shoulder reassuringly.

  ‘Now Auntie, she isn’t as bad as she looks.’

  ‘Good, because she looks dead. Tell me beta, when will she wake up?’ In the blink of an eye, my mother had rejected the nurturance of the female and courted the indifferent male.

  ‘Dr Fauzia can answer that question better than I can. This is her case, I’m just observing.’

  A lesser woman would have been embarrassed by her own misogyny, but I knew that for my mother snubs were often just stepping stones to emotional confidence. And she didn’t disappoint.

  ‘I didn’t realize you were the senior doctor, beti, you just look so young. You tell me then, if she isn’t dead, when will she wake up?’

  The two doctors exchanged glances. The man turned away. I began to get worried.

  ‘She had some external head trauma which we’ve addressed, and she’s stable, but in a case like this there are other factors that come into play. With head trauma, we don’t know much about the extent of the possible internal injury for forty-eight hours. We’ll know more in a day or so.’

  ‘You might not know much right now but that’s still more than I do. So whatever it is you know, tell me!’

  I didn’t expect her to get a straight answer. Most local doctors were given to cryptic proclamations from up high, hardly ever taking the time to explain what was happening, automatically assuming the layman incapable of understanding. It might have evolved as the quickest way of coping with a largely illiterate population given to fits of emotional excess rather than a focused plan of action, but that didn’t make their arrogance any less annoying. Still, nearly all of us had fallen into the habit of accepting it. I would have pegged my mother as one of the pre-cowed supplicants mutely accepting the aforementioned cryptic proclamation from on high as her due, and the ferocity of her words caught me by surprise. I wasn’t the only one either.

  ‘Look,’ Dr Fauzia cleared her throat, ‘the impact of the car that hit her propelled your daughter’s torso through the windshield. She obviously wasn’t wearing a seat belt, because, you know nobody here does. Everything is God’s will, isn’t it? If you have any other children, perhaps you might insist they wear one. If you have any in your car, of course.’

  She must have seen a lot of accidents like these, I realized. And she was really quite young.

  Despite how annoying they became when they actually got their medical degrees, I had a healthy respect for people who wanted to be doctors. Eight years of higher education, at least, and then a lifetime of exposing yourself to all the ills of the world. Okay, I wasn’t that impressed with dermatologists or dentists, that was light work, but the poor emergency room doctor …

  ‘Anyway,’ she had collected herself, ‘she has suffered significant head trauma, perhaps internal as well as external. The extent of the damage won’t be seen until the swelling recedes. A CT scan would give us a more accurate picture of where we stand, but until we can do one we won’t have any idea how long the coma will last, or how responsive she will be when she wakes up. And even then there are no guarantees.’

  ‘So why aren’t you doing a CT scan right now?’ There was an edge to Ammi’s voice.

  The doctors looked a little embarrassed. The man suddenly decided to saunter over to the other bed in the room and study the machines its occupant was hooked up to. Was it a man, was it a woman? All I could make out was a badly burnt hunk of human-shaped flesh, the scar tissues precluding any hopes of identifying gender.

  ‘The er … the machine is … er … out of order.’

  ‘When will it be fixed?’

  ‘Soon hopefully, but the administration knows more about that than we do.’

  ‘But this is probably the city’s busiest hospital! You might have dozens of accident cases like this! What do you do when you have a patient who needs it?’

  ‘We generally do without it.’ Dr Fauzia also found something engaging to look at on her clipboard.

  ‘Isn’t there someone you can ask?’

  ‘Look, even after a CT scan we might not have definite answers to your questions. For now all I can offer you is be grateful that there doesn’t appear to be any spinal injury.’

  My mother wasn’t coping any more. She looked strangely absent-minded, asking almost wistfully, ‘Can she eat?’

  ‘Nutrition is being provided intravenously. If she doesn’t improve enough to chew, we can feed her through a tube. Only a liquid diet, of course.’

  ‘Like suji ka halwa with milk?’

  ‘As I said, we’ll know more in a day or two. Until then, just pray. I can speak to you in more detail later. Right now, I have other patients to see.’

  The two headed for the door. Dr Fauzia paused long enough to say, ‘If there is an adult male family member as well, bring him with you so I only have to brief both of you once.’

  My mother and I were finally left alone. Together. Sure there was another person in the room, but he/she didn’t count. Probably how he/she got burnt in the first place. You’re so worthless and insignificant I can set you on fire and do a pagan dance around you …

  Focus Ayesha, be positive. Think positive. Maybe it was an accident, like it was with you.

  ‘Can she hear me?’ Ammi looked inquiringly at the neighbour.

  There was an oppressive silence all around.

  ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she demanded suddenly of the ceiling. ‘Huh, why me?’

  It had taken my mother all of ten minutes to steer the conversation back to herself.

  MUJHE TUM SAY NAHIN HAI PYAR,

  TOBA TOBA ISTAGFAR

  DR AUR BILLA SONG

  ~

  Visitors shuffled past the nurses’ station just visible outside, but no one stepped in to my room. Saad’s absence was irritating yet not illogical, but where was my brother? He might be a baby to my mother but at twenty-four he was an adult, the only male in a family of three, bidden to keep his cellphone on at all times in case of emergency. Like now. Someone must have brought my mother; she didn’t drive and was afraid of all public transport after an unfortunate incident in a bus almost ten years ago.

  Buses are no place for a woman like me, she had said. Maybe you can handle it because you’re one of those modern girls, but I feel very ashamed. The shame was not hers, but she refused to under
stand that. Or maybe it just wasn’t convenient for her to understand that.Who had brought her then? If Adil had come he would have come inside by now. There were entire battalions of people moving through one booth, the one attendant rule was a joke in most government hospitals. Local hospitals tended to be gatherings of the great unwashed. But forget about the illiterate villagers, what really ticked me off was the affluent patients, the ones with wealth or connections. They were very insulted if their fourth cousin’s third wife’s gardener’s dog wasn’t allowed to bend the rules and come for a visit. Their men might wait for the guard enforcing the rule to come off duty and beat him to a pulp.

  And it wasn’t always the patients either. One of my sales representatives’ favourite clients was the orthopaedic surgeon in a small private hospital who sometimes took him into surgery with him. The rep made his pitch while the surgeon worked. His stock rose as the story spread, at least amongst his immediate colleagues. It brought him that much closer to real medicine, you see. The kind that was practied, not sold. What was the difference again? I didn’t blame the sales rep for being star-struck by the power that surgeon wielded in his little world, the excitement of being in the middle of something important probably lifted him right out of the world of scuffed black shoes with discolourations concealed by clever use of a blackboard marker, the wide trousers with seats polished from hours waiting on leather couches in crowded waiting rooms, the broken buckle on the square carrying case … pharmaceutical sales was a time consuming and gruelling business. Good thing I was a manager and not a pavement pounder. One of the few upsides to being a woman here. If I only knew who to address the thank you card to …

  Mamu appeared hesitantly by the nursing booth and the mystery was solved. My mother’s only surviving family, their elder brother had passed away over a decade ago, he was ten years younger but looked ten years older. Predictably, his wife was held responsible for this, but I knew that wasn’t the complete picture. Until recently, when Adil finally finished college and I began earning enough to support the three of us on my own, Mamu had borne the brunt of our expenses over the protests of his wife who, quite understandably in my opinion, wanted to know why an educated, urban woman like her sister-in-law couldn’t go out and get a job. Yes, buses were Satan’s mini vans and women were easy targets for exploitative employees but there was always teaching, wasn’t there?

  Yes there was. But Ammi had other fish to fry.

  Mamu edged forward. His salt and pepper hair stood on end in patches and his white kurta was creased. A yellow stain spoke of recent mango consumption. I would have liked a mangoes right then, but unless God saw fit to hijack a truck carrying mangos and send its juicy little soul to join mine in this strange dimension, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

  His hand snuck out to caress my foot and I remembered suddenly that my mamu loved me. I was touched.We were prone to much ritual touching, son to mother’s breast, hand to daughter’s head, double-handed extra respect handshake, and backhander to errant child, but this timorous foot stroke was different. Natural. If I ever woke up, I was going to hug my mamu till his eyes popped out of his head.

  ‘What did the doctors say?’ He asked Ammi, who dragged her eyes reluctantly away from her battle with the errant ceiling and turned her gaze on him instead.

  ‘That they don’t think she’ll make it.’

  ‘Is that exactly what they said?’

  ‘Well, they said they need to wait a day or so to know for sure how things might turn out.’

  ‘That isn’t the same thing then. So let’s not leap to the worst case scenario immediately.’

  ‘Where is Adil?’ Ammi spoke for us both, ignoring his comment entirely, which was an old habit we were all used to. If she didn’t like what she heard, if it didn’t follow the path she laid out, she’d just ignore it entirely.

  ‘I’ve left messages at the switchboard. His mobile is off.They say he’s on a shoot and can’t be disturbed.’

  ‘Did you tell them it was an emergency?’

  ‘They said they would tell him as soon as the shoot was over, they had orders from the big boss not to let any calls through on any pretext.’

  ‘Uff …’Ammi wasn’t impressed. ‘I have to do everything myself. I’ll go and call Adil in a minute if you stay with her.’

  ‘What if something happens? What do I do?’ Mamu sounded nervous.

  ‘Nothing, there are nurses right outside, I think some of this gadgetry sounds when something goes wrong.’

  ‘Still, I don’t want to be alone with her like this. Will you send Amna in when you go out? I’m sure she wants to see Ashoo too.’

  My mother nodded grudgingly. Amna Mumani would never be real family to her, she wasn’t blood.

  ‘Did you at least manage to get through to that other boy?’

  ‘Saad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s on his way.’

  Ask him if he sounded upset, I shrieked at my mother. Ask him if he showed any emotion. Shock. Horror. Delight? Where was her inquisitiveness when I needed it?

  ‘Good. Maybe that will wake her up.’

  *

  Saad had probably been at work when Mamu called him. Work, where we had met. My workplace. His workplace. Our workplace.

  Me, a pharmaceutical manager. Him, the marketing director. Me, the only woman on the team behind all new products. Him, the owner Seth’s son.

  Rumour had it that he’d rejected his father’s offer of starting at the top and decided to work his way up instead. No one felt comfortable enough with him to point out that marketing director wasn’t exactly Step One. Or no one was stupid enough, might have been a better way to put it. These foreign graduates were all the same, it was felt, a lot of ‘tell me what you really think’ rhetoric but under all that slick western veneer lurked the same insecurities as the rest of us.

  When I got to know Saad better I realized that he really did want to know what people thought, a quality that made me want to mass produce, bottle and market him instead of our many pills. Also, marketing director wasn’t as low as he wanted to start but as low as his father felt he could start without significant loss of face. ‘If I were a Memon, of course,’ Saad had joked, ‘I’d be lugging crates in the factory, but I’m not.’ The Memons were a business community notorious for their tight-fistedness.

  In the beginning, like everyone else, I was prepared to find a pimple-encrusted prodigal itching to try his foreign acquired management techniques on a workforce still struggling with timecards. But there were no pimples, and if he realized most of us saw him as an imposition he gave no signs of it. Not only did he not have pimples, he was actually attractive. And older without being too old. A rarity in any workplace in Karachi. Not that I cared, of course.

  I’d like to say there were fireworks at our first meeting, but I’d be lying. There was nothing. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Just a cursory greeting followed by a seemingly interminable presentation of developing the market.The slides were nice though, far better than anything our own team could do. And he asked for my input instead of my having to forcibly penetrate the conversation, another rarity in a situation where I was the only woman on a management team made up largely of bitter middle-aged men. He asked for it in front of all the bitter middle-aged men too, and I’m sure that added to their misery. It was bad enough that women like me were infringing on their domain, instead of offering my breast to my fourth or even fifth child, but here was this annoyingly chirpy new boss actually asking her questions about important things.

  I was so surprised by his overture, that I stuttered and quickly passed the buck back to R&D. Strangely, I found myself resenting his effort to involve me. After years in a male-dominated workplace, I had learned to pick my fights. As token female manager, ever ready to be paraded before foreign clients as evidence of equal opportunity policies, I didn’t want some idiot waltzing in and forcing me to disturb the status quo till I was good and ready.

  But over time, as the lau
nch of that particular product loomed close, my opinion was assiduously courted, and that is really where it all began. Not the fact that he was articulate, intelligent, funny, not even the fact that he wasn’t pimply. What it all came down to was, who doesn’t like a man who wants to know what you’re thinking, even if it is only about a broad-spectrum antibiotic?

  *

  Amna Mumani had come in while I drifted. A petite, still pretty woman in her early forties, her delicacy belied her strength. It was that delicacy, that apparent frailty, that had led my mother to shortlist her as a potential bride for her younger brother. Since Mamu had stepped in to fill the financial void left when Abba passed into the great beyond (the great beyond us, I mean), when it was judged to be the right time for him to settle down, Ammi had engineered a union with what she felt was a pliable young woman. Courteous, educated, docile, someone who knew her place, that’s what my mother was looking for when she started combing through old diaries for phone numbers of women she hadn’t spoken to in years to enlist their aid in the great matchmaking scheme. Turns out Amna knew her place a lot better than my mother did. Within a year of their marriage, Mamu and his bride had moved out. My mother’s attempts to point out the impracticability of increasing Mamu’s monthly expenditure by renting another flat was given due consideration. To offset that increase, a reduction was accordingly made in Mamu’s contribution to our household. To my brother and I, it was two newly weds beginning to plan their lives. To my mother, it was war. The moral of the story, with no comment on whom the bad guy was, is that women are generally their own worst enemies.

  I had no bones to pick with Amna Mumani. She had always treated me well.Actually, she had treated all of us well, even Ammi. Gifts, food, time, concern, love even, things my mother was often careless about, especially with me.That of course, made my mother even madder.

  ‘The most humiliating way to destroy your enemy is through kindness,’ she had yelled when I’d asked her once why she was so hostile to someone who went out of her way to be considerate of us. Family, enemy, the lines of my mother’s world were often blurred and contradictory. And the negativity was one-sided. Amna Mumani had never even acknowledged my mother’s animosity, let alone respond in kind.