• Complain

Mohammed Hanif - Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

Here you can read online Mohammed Hanif - Our Lady of Alice Bhatti full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2011, publisher: Jonathan Cape, genre: Prose. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Mohammed Hanif Our Lady of Alice Bhatti
  • Book:
    Our Lady of Alice Bhatti
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Jonathan Cape
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2011
  • Rating:
    4 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 80
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Our Lady of Alice Bhatti" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments are looking for a miracle, and Alice Bhatti is looking for a job. Alice is a candidate for the position of junior nurse, grade 4. It is only a few weeks since her release from Borstal. She has returned to her childhood home in the French Colony, where her father, recently retired from his position as chief janitor, continues as part-time healer, and full-time headache for the local church. It seems she has inherited some of his gift.With guidance from the working nurses manual, and some tricks she picked up in prison, Alice brings succour to the thousands of patients littering the hospitals corridors and concrete courtyard. In the process she attracts the attention of a lovesick patient, Teddy Bunt, apprentice to the nefarious Gentleman Squad of the Karachi police. They fall in love; Teddy with sudden violence, Alice with cautious optimism.Their love is unexpected, but the consequences are not. Alice soon finds that her new life is built on foundations as unstable as those of her home. A Catholic snubbed by other Catholics, who are in turn hated by everyone around them, she is also put at risk by her husband, who does two things that no member of the Gentlemen Squad has ever done fall in love with a working girl, and allow a potentially dangerous suspect to get away. Can Teddy and Alice ever live in peace? Can two people make a life together without destroying the very thing that united them? It seems unlikely, but then Alice Bhatti is no ordinary nurse Filled with wit, colour and pathos, is a glorious story of second chances, thwarted ambitions and love in unlikely places, set in the febrile streets of downtown Karachi. It is the remarkable new novel from the author of .

Mohammed Hanif: author's other books


Who wrote Our Lady of Alice Bhatti? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Our Lady of Alice Bhatti" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Mohammed Hanif

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

One

Less than three minutes in front of the interview panel and Alice Bhatti knows in her heart that she is not likely to get the job advertised as Replacement Junior Nurse, Grade 4. A sharp tingling in the back of her neck warns her that not getting the job might not even be the worst thing that could happen here. No questions have been asked yet, but she knows that all the preparation her starched white uniform, the new file, a faint smudge of mud-brown lipstick, breathing exercises she has done to control her jumpy heart, even the banana she ate on the bus to stop her stomach from rumbling all seems like wasted investment, halal money down the haram drain, as her father Joseph Bhatti had put it. These Muslas will make you clean their shit and then complain that you stink, he had said. And our own brothers at the Sacred? They will educate you and then ask you why you stink.

She has been in this room before but is dreading the prospect of sitting down on a chair and talking. She has always stood here and taken her orders: Have you cleaned the floor, Alice? Why have you not cleaned the floor? Who do you think will clean that blood on the floor, Alice? Your father?

The room is a monument to pharmaceutical merchandising: the orange wall clock from GlaxoSmithKline, the calendar with blonde models in various stages of migraine from Pfizer Pain Management Systems, the box of pink tissues promising Dry Days, Dry Nights. The ornamented gold-framed verse from the Quran exhorting the virtues of cleanliness carries the logo of Ciba-Geigy: a housefly in its death throes.

Alice Bhatti wonders if she can put in a request to be interviewed while standing. She shifts on her feet and tries to become invisible by clutching the file to her chest. The file contains nothing except a copy of her job application. She doesnt get the opportunity to ask anything as the interview panel is too busy debating the cost-benefit ratio for patients on pacemakers. They are at the end of a heated argument and everyone wants to get the last word in. She doesnt really understand what they are talking about, only wonders why she was called in if all they were going to talk about was electricity generators, ventilators, running costs and heartless relatives of the deceased arriving from Toronto or Dubai, brandishing their grief to save some dollars or dirhams, refusing to pay up, holding ambulance drivers hostage, demanding compensation.

She has an odd sensation of overhearing a conversation that she is meant to overhear. She thinks maybe this conversation is part of the recruitment exercise; shell be asked her views later and she should pay attention. The head of the orthopaedic unit only brings up words like professionalism and Canadian immigration when he is angry. Ortho Sir is very angry by now. I am a professional. He pulls out a pink tissue from the Dry Nights box and pats the bald patch on his head. The grey diamond-shaped mark on his forehead is a testament to his five-times-a-day prayer routine, but his designer goatee belongs in some kafir fantasy. My job is to cure people, to cure them at the worst of times. I dont decide when someone is going to die. He does. He raises his forefinger towards the ceiling. Alice Bhatti looks at the ceiling fan in confusion: Put Your Faith in Philips, it says.

If the relatives of the deceased are in Dubai and Toronto, she wonders, then what is the deceased doing in this death hole otherwise known as the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments. Rights of admission reserved, it says in three languages on the signboard at the entrance. Enter at your peril, someone has scrawled under it, summing up the customers sentiments. Leave your firearms and faith at the gate, says another sign under a small wooden cross, slightly askew and not painted in a long time, in the hope that people will forget that its a Catholic establishment. This is not the kind of gate where anybody leaves anything, this is not the kind of place where people forget where you come from.

Senior Sister Hina Alvi sits on the interview panel with a paan tucked in the right side of her mouth, her tongue occasionally licking the crimson juice before it can become a dribble. This well-timed anticipatory lick will remain her main contribution to the proceedings. Alice Bhatti doesnt need an advanced nursing degree to know that Sister Hina doesnt like her. The only consolation is that there isnt much that Sister Hina Alvi does like. Alice smiles at her in the futile hope of winning her over. Nothing. She looks at her terrifying poise, the imperceptible movement of her jaw, the crimson lips, and her eyes that seem to be taking part in the discussion, and realises that Senior Sister Alvis feelings towards her are slightly stronger than indifference: she hasnt yet decided whether this Alice woman even exists or not. Dr Jamus Pereira, the chief medical officer of the hospital, is Alice Bhattis only hope on this panel; he is the CMO for no reason other than the fact that he inherited the Sacred from his father, and he inherited it because of his inability to say no. But who can say no to a dying father who is pressing the family bible into your hands?

He sits with his fist under his chin and seems to be wondering how long before Ortho Sir will start healing multiple fractures with the power of his principled stance.

Alice looks at him and realises that if Dr Jamus Pereira is your best hope in this world, youd better abandon all hope.

And what do you want? Ortho Sir looks at her as if she is a child trying to interrupt a grown-up conversation.

A and E vacancy. Dr Pereira speaks before Alice Bhatti can turn and run. Please have a seat, Alice.

Normally Alice finds Dr Pereiras politeness irritating Sir, if you dont mind, I would like to inform you that the gentleman you accompanied to this hospital at the time of his admission has breathed his last. She always thinks his struggle to bring order to this world through the practice of good manners is a bit pointless. But she likes every word of it now. She likes the fact that he has called her Alice. It implies acceptance, professional fellowship, even intimacy, an innocent type of intimacy. She likes the way he has uttered the word seat.

She also realises that when you start feeling gratitude to people for asking you to sit down, you are obviously not at the top of your game.

How many candidates have we got? Ortho Sir looks at his watch impatiently. He is on a break from being a humble professional. This usually happens when underlings are around. In private he can make his superiors feel like little gods. When he is brazen and publicly rude, the network of veins on his bald head swells up and you can see them turning green with anguish, like an alien realising its not going home for a long time. That the earth has run out of the fuel that his spaceship relies on.

Only the lonely, Dr Pereira says, looking optimistically at both his colleagues. Senior Sister Alvi curls her lip in a smile that seems to suggest that she knows the con, has heard the joke before, but is too far above all of this to bother.

Then why do we have to go through this? Ortho Sir pushes the file away and looks at Alice Bhatti.

Alice Bhatti looks at a lizard on the wall, desperately willing it to move, as if its movement will affect the movement of her stars.

Procedures, says Dr Pereira. And if my colleagues here have objections, we dont have to, we can advertise externally. But there are not many qualified candidates with experience. Privates snap them up. Or they go to Dubai or Toronto. There was a time when he could assert his authority and claim that the hospital was built by my father and named after

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Our Lady of Alice Bhatti»

Look at similar books to Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Our Lady of Alice Bhatti»

Discussion, reviews of the book Our Lady of Alice Bhatti and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.