Taslima Nasrin - Split: A Life

I t was not long before the cholera outbreak, after ravaging the villages, spread to the cities. We began boiling our drinking water, and water purification pills started being distributed freely by hospitals and municipal offices. There were loudspeaker announcements explaining in detail how to dissolve the pills in water, door-to-door campaigns by municipal agents to distribute thembut nothing managed to stymie the onset of an epidemic. Homes piled up with cholera patients, the dead spilling out on to the streets. There were not enough beds in the hospitals; some patients had to be laid out on the floor with needles attached to bottles of cholera saline stuck in their hands. Doctors, nursesnone had a moment to lose. At Suryakanta Hospital I was terribly busy, running from one patient to the next with bottles of saline. The infected were streaming in like flotsam after the tide; what with the wards already overflowing most ended up on the crowded floor of the corridor. Despite the saline running day and night few patients actually recovered. Cots, for the dead to be carried away on, were heaped in front of the hospital. All the cemeteries and crematoria were crowded. Vultures were circling above.

I had my hands so full that the days were a blur. I usually got back home well past evening; occasionally in the afternoon if I was too tired. Father had spread bleaching powder in the gutters of our home, Abakash, while pills were crushed into the drinking water, the bathwater and even the water kept aside for washing clothes and doing dishes. As soon as I stepped into the house Mother took my apron away to be washed.

That afternoon, however, I could not take the apron off. Father informed me that I was to go out on a call. He would have gone but he had to instead attend to another seriously ailing patient. I had never attended a call before. I asked him for the address and he told me to look out for a white house on my left, three houses past the Metharpatty rail line on the Naumahal route. Yasmins friend Rehanas house. I set off on my first call as a doctor with Yasmin in tow, a stethoscope in the pocket of my apron, besides a blood pressure monitor and a few life-saving injections.

At Rehanas house they were expecting Father. But since I had gone in his stead, and since I too was a doctor, I was allowed to attend to the patientRehanas younger brother. His eyes had sunk into hollows, his lips were dry as peeling paper, and I quickly examined him for signs of dehydration and advised the patient be admitted to a hospital at once. One of the uninfected brothers reminded me that the hospitals were so full that patients were being turned away. Seeing that no one in the family was keen on taking the boy to a hospital, I wrote a prescription for five bags of cholera saline, a saline set, butterfly needles and some medicines. Rehana immediately sent the healthy brother off with some money to make the arrangements.

The room we were in, one of the two small ones on the second floor, was in complete disarray. Rehanas father was sitting on a chair, a look of utter bafflement on his face; her mother was standing by the door, her face pale, Barristerthe youngest of Rehanas three brothersin her lap. Barrister had already been through two bouts of diarrhoea and his sister was worried that he too had the disease. After the saline arrived I set everything up and showed them how to change the bags. Having advised them yet again to take both the uninfected brother and Barrister to a hospital I made my way down the stairs, Rehana close at my heels. Yasmin had gone ahead and hailed a rickshaw. The two had been close friends since school. Some girls are married off while they are still in school; Rehana had been one such girl. She had a daughter too, about a year and a half old, and she had had to drop everything in her own home to rush to her brothers aid. In fact, for two days she had been unable to visit her own daughter. Neither was it advisable to bring the child there. Almost at the foot of the stairs, Rehana extended the consultation fee towards me. Sixty taka, my first earnings from a call, I confessed gleefully to Yasmin as I got on to the rickshaw. Yasmin, her brows drawn together, stared at my overjoyed face for a long while with a stunned expression and then exclaimed, You took money from Rehana?

Still smiling, I replied, Yes! I did. Should I not have? But she gave it to me! I attended to the patient, why shouldnt I take the money?

Rehana is my friend. Two of her brothers are suffering from cholera. How could you take money from her at such a time?

When Rehana had extended the money towards me, perhaps out of a sheer lack of habit, I had stiffened a bit. Rehana was Yasmins friend, but I didnt know her at all! If we were to go around the city we would have found a friend of mine or Yasmin, some friend of our brothers or some distant acquaintance of both my parents, in perhaps every other house. It would have been impossible to make a living as a doctor for much longer in that case! I was on a call, I had paid for my rickshaw, I had treated the patient, put in my labour, wasnt I entitled to the fee then? All doctors were! I had toughened myself up with such arguments and taken the money from her in the end despite a dogged sense of discomfort, an instinctive lowering of the eyes and a coldness spreading in the heart. Yasmin remained silent the entire way back, her brows still drawn together. I asked her if she wanted sweets from Shri Krishna, or if she wanted to go watch a film, but she refused both. I had thought that at least everyone at home would be happy at my first earnings from a call, however, I could not spy any sign of happiness on any of their faces, least of all Fathers. I dont take money, he told me. I consult them for free. Father used to consult many patients for free across the city; it did not mean I had to do the same.

The next day Father informed us that both Barrister and the healthy brother were down with cholera. All three patients had been shipped off to a hospital, leaving Rehana and her father to run around handling the entire situation. We could hardly believe the news he had for us the day after: The three brothers have recovered and have been discharged. Rehana and her father are dead. They were rushed to the hospital urgently in the dead of night but nothing could be done. He died on the way; she died half an hour after reaching. While she had been taking care of her brothers she had begun to vomit. Since there would be no one to take care of the sick or take them to a hospital if she too was laid up, she hadnt said a word to anyone. She hadnt wanted anyone to get upset over her. Thats what the father had done too; he hadnt wanted anyone to know. He had wished for his sons to get well first before taking care of himself.