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Translated from the original Tamil short story maruttuvam (மருத்துவம்) from S.L.M. Hanifa’s 1992 collection of short stories titled makkattuc cālvai (மக்கத்துச் சால்வை). The original collection is available at noolaham.org. Co translators: eḻuttukkiṉiyavaṉ and Fasmila Raviraj.

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“Walk faster”

The Muezzin’s voice rang out above the salawat chanting.

The crowd following the coffin quickened their steps.

The coffin seemed to float in the air.

Majid was among the pallbearers.

His wife Zeinab, fondly called Zeinambu, lay lifeless inside the coffin.

Just yesterday, despite being very pregnant, she had cooked lunch for him.

‘White rice and a spicy gravy with raw mangoes and sardines,’ Majid recalled. Her cooking always tasted divine.

Earlier this morning, she had stood in the twilight as dawn broke, her full belly shining like a copper pot. That memory seemed to swell, clouding his entire field of vision.

But now.

She was a corpse on his shoulder.

But her memories stayed with him.

The house was abuzz.

“Lord Muhaideen! Only you can relieve the burden in my child’s belly.”

“Child! That is enough lamenting — go get some oil for this lamp, the house is buried in darkness.”

“There is stuff littered all over the floor. Someone’s gotta tidy them up…”

“This darned door can’t be opened and can’t be closed. It is not for nothing that people say stray dogs will wander into houses with open doors.”

Someone noisily shut the errant door.

Out in the front yard, water was boiling in a cauldron placed on top of an open fire. Steam was rising up like smoke. Coconut husks lay strewn around the fire in a circle, some burning, some not.

From time to time, a moan or a sob escaped the house.

Majid’s stomach churned.

“Dear God, Please relieve my wife’s burden…”

“Gazza is here,” someone announced the arrival of the village midwife.

“Do you know how much trouble we had, trying to locate you?”

“What to do, thampi — we can’t go to the hospital these days, can we? If our fate is to die, we will die at home.”

“They might again inject us with poison over there! No one should even talk about going to the hospital.”

“Since the troubles started, no one’s been going to the hospital. That’s why the midewife’s doing a roaring business!”

“The going rate is three hundred rupees for delivering a baby. What am I supposed to sell, to find that kind of money!”

The women gathered on the veranda to gossip.

Inside —

“Make way, let’s see,” Gazza ignored all the chatter and walked towards the pregnant woman. She felt the woman’s belly and appeared to have made a decision.

“Go fetch Mansur. The baby will arrive only if we give her an injection.”

“Thampi! Get going,” Majid’s mother-in-law pleaded.

Majid’s bicycle rolled forward like a ball on the so-called “gravel road,” which hadn’t seen any gravel for over a decade.

Mansur’s clinic was gradually morphing into a real hospital. Each neighboring village had turned into a sort of a ward for a different kind of disease.

Competition was fierce.

“Look here! Mansur, the guy who has built a hospital in your village, was just an errand boy in Abdul Rahman’s hospital in our village. He went to school only till the eighth grade. Now look at him playing doctor!”

But people from Mansur’s neighborhood who visited the village were stunned with amazement.

“Mansur is even in the tooth-extraction business now. He has brought a large dentist’s chair and a big pair of pliers from Colombo. He has also learned to perform minor operations.”

People began singing Mansur’s praises.

But they looked past the fact that Mustafa’s wife went blind in her right eye after Mansur’s eye treatment. They ignored that the co-operative store manager was left permanently disabled after Mansur stitched it up. No one whispered about how Mr. Hussain developed cancer in his mouth after Mansur tried to extract his tooth, and died in Maharagama Cancer Hospital.

Majid decided that he could trust Mansur.

As if he was a waiter at a restaurant, one of the hospital attendants came up to Majid to announce, “There are just four people ahead of you. So just wait.”. He was holding a spoon used to mix medical concoctions, stained with multiple colors.

Majid sat on one corner of the bench.

“Ah.. oooh.. My God!”

“Be quiet and hold tightly to the chair. I am going to pull your tooth out.”

That was followed by the sound of a tooth dropping into an enamelled metal kidney tray.

“Thampi! Take these pills for two days. If the bleeding doesn’t stop, come by for an injection. That would be a hundred and fifty rupees, altogether.”

The boy handed two yellowed notes, and received his change.

Majid went in next.

“Ah.. come on in. How is it going with your wife?”

“Her water broke in the morning, but the baby hasn’t come yet.”

“Who is the midwife? Is it our Gazza?”

“Yes.. yes!”

Mansur handed his medical bag to Majid.

“People inside the house, come outside. The doctor is on his way.”

A bevy of women pushed themselves out of the house.

The stink of the kerosene lamp and the human body odour probably added to the suffering of the patient within.

Gazza the midwife was urging the pregnant woman to push.

“Get me the hot water,” the doctor yelled at the people standing around the patient. Moments later, the medicine in the syringe descended on its way into the patient’s body.

“The blood pressure is at 260, and her fever has reached 104. She needs a saline drip.”

These were his usual words to reassure his patients.

He placed a pestle across the roof beam and hung the saline container from it.

Everything went like clockwork.

Within thirty minutes, a pint of saline had made its way into Zeynambu’s body.

A sense of calm descended on the midwife and those crowding around her.

But Zeynambu was still suffering in pain.

“The baby will soon arrive.”

Majid’s heart imagined a baby boy.

Dusk fell.

“What kind of baby?”

“A baby boy. But the umbilical cord hasn’t dropped down yet.”

“It seems the mother has now caught a severe cold, too!”

The house of childbirth felt like a house of funerals. The crowd would not disperse.

Majid brought the other doctor in town.

“Thampi! Don’t worry yourself. Hurry and take her to the hospital. It is good if the Medical Officer on duty can see her right away.

This doctor had a kind heart.

“Who is going to go there? That is a hospital for Tamils. It is full of Tamil Tiger militants. He doesn’t know anything. You go get Mansur, and let’s try another injection.” Gazza chased Majid out onto the street.

“Thampi! Listen to me. The baby was born four hours ago, but the umbilical cord has not broken apart yet. The mother’s body might get poisoned. You must get her to the hospital right away!”

“Half-a-day has passed since the baby was born. The baby is being fed just sugar water. The mother cannot yet breastfeed her.”

Majid felt like his head was going to explode.

He went to the three-way junction to hail a taxi, loaded the mother and baby into it, and rushed towards the hospital. He mumbled something to the guard at the entrance in his half-baked Sinhala. The car sped into the hospital.

“What the heck! Why have you brought a corpse here? Muslims have no sense..”

Majid shrank into himself in shame.

When the woman at the reception finished cursing him, she went over to the Medical Officer to tell him about the new patient. The MO rushed to the patient, concern and anxiety dripping from his face.

“Who brought this patient?”

“It is me, sir!” said Majid.

“Is it your wife? Why didn’t you bring her earlier? Her body has already been poisoned. What can I do now!”

The doctor’s face betrayed his helplessness.

“The Red Cross jeep left for Polonnaruwa just two hours ago. If you had come earlier, I could have sent her in that Jeep.”

His voice trailed off.

Majid carried his wife back to the taxi. His mother-in-law Sulaiha rātā assisted him.

“This is why I didn’t want to come here,” she mumbled.

“Shut up! I shouldn’t have listened to you ignorant folks.”

The car sped back home. As it crossed the army camp at the six-mile post, Majid’s wife Zeynambu’s arms and legs started to flail.

Her wound started to bleed again.

As the taxi approached the sentry post at Punanai, Zeynambu’s eyeballs rolled up behind her eyelids.

She fell down onto her mother’s lap like the decapitated head.

“My daughter! Did you go away, leaving all of us behind…” the old woman’s wail was shrill.

1991