07 FROM MORNING TO NIGHT

Chapter 7 FROM MORNING TO NIGHT AN Eastern day begins early. As the first streak of dawn lightens the Eastern sky the slumberers are awakened by the long-drawn-out chant of the Muezzin calling to prayer from all the mosques in the city. " God is great, God is great. I give witness there is no God but God. I give witness that Muhammad is the prophet of God. Come to prayer ; prayer is better than sleep." And forthwith every pious Muslim hastily rises, performs the necessary ablutions, and commences the day with ascription of praise to the Creator. The Hindus follow suit : little bells tinkle in their temples as their priests rouse the slumbering Gods, or as the Puritanical Arya Samajist offers his early sacrifice of " Hawan," or incense. Meanwhile, the church bell calls the little Christian community together for early morning worship, and they unite in prayer and praise before separating, each to his or her own sphere of work for the day. If the missionary desires a morning " quiet time " he must get up early enough to get it in before this, as after morning service the busy round of duties leaves him little leisure till the evening shades close in.

Darya Khan, the " Lord of the Rivers," the hospital cook, is waiting for the day’s supplies, and reports fifty patients on full diet, twenty on middle, and fifteen on milk diet. So many cases have left the hospital, so many admitted ; such a one died last night. And so the supplies for the day are measured out and weighed, and orders given for the purchase of fresh goods as needed.

Then come the ward clerks, with their tale of soiled linen and case sheets to be checked, and clean towels, bandages, bed-linen, and clothes for the in-patients have to be dealt out according to the needs of each one. This over, the head gardener, ’Alam Khan, or the " Lord of the World," is standing by with the day’s supply of vegetables and flowers, and these have to be apportioned to the patients in the hospital and to the various members of the staff whose families reside on the premises. He follows with a string of questions, each of which requires due consideration, such as, "Are the mulberries to be shaken yet?" " Where are the young Pipul tree saplings to be planted ?" " Some oranges were stolen in the night ; would I come and see the footmarks ?" "A hostel boy ( ’Light of Religion ’ ) was caught among the plum-trees with some fruit in his pocket. Would I punish him? And so on, as long as one has leisure to listen and adjudicate. The clock strikes eight, leaving just half an hour to visit the wards before out-patients begin. There is the abdominal section operation of yesterday to examine; the house-surgeon has come to report that the case of tubercular glands has had a hemorrhage during the night. We are just hurrying over to see them, when up comes ’Alam Gul, the " Flower of the Earth," to say his brother was coming down from the roof that morning, when his foot slipped on the ladder ; he fell on his head, and was lying unconscious. Would I go and see him? The serious cases seen, and ’Alam Gul’s brother visited, the out-patient department is demanding our attention. The verandahs are full of patients, the men in one and the women and children in another, and while the catechist is preaching to the former, a Bible-woman is similarly engaged with the latter. Outside are some patients lying on the native beds, or charpais, and a variety of other equipages which have all brought patients palanquins, camels, oxen, asses, and so on.

Let us see some of these. Here is a Wazir shepherd from the mountains. He has been shot through the thigh while tending his flocks, and eight rough-looking tribesmen of his have bound him securely on a bed and carried him down, journeying all night through, and they have left their rifles, without which they could not have ventured out, at the police post on the frontier. Another of those on the beds is a man of about fifty years, suffering from dropsy. He has been carried sixty miles on this bed from Khost, a district in Afghanistan. A third, who has been brought from another trans-frontier village on an ox, is suffering from a tumour of his leg, which will require amputation. And so on with some half-dozen others. After this brief examination, saying a word of welcome to the travel-stained Afghans who have borne their precious burdens in with so much labour, and even danger, and with a word of comfort and reassurance to the sick ones themselves, the doctor enters his consulting-room, and the patients are brought in one by one to be examined. Those requiring in-patient treatment are sent off to the wards, and the remainder get the required medicines, or have their wounds dressed and leave for their homes. A great number of the out-patients are cases of eye disease, and sometimes four or five blind men will come in a line, holding on to each other, and led by one who is not yet quite blind. Very likely they have trudged painfully upwards of a hundred miles, stumbling over the stones in the mountain roads, and arriving with wounded feet and bruised bodies. They sit together, listening, perhaps for the first time in their lives, to the Gospel address, and eagerly awaiting the interview with the doctor, when they will hear if they are to receive their sight there and then, or to undergo an operation, or what. For the stories they have heard of the power of Western skill lead them to believe that if the doctor does not cure them on the spot it must be that he is too busy or they are too poor. When, therefore, as sometimes happens, the doctor sees at the first glance that the case is a hopeless one, and that the sight is gone never to be brought back, it is a painful duty to have to explain the fact to the patient, and often the doctor needlessly prolongs the examination of the eye lest the man should think that it was want of interest in his case that makes the doctor say he can do nothing. And then the beseeching, " Oh, sahib, just a little sight!" "See, I can tell light from darkness ; I can see the light from that window there." "I have come all the way from Kabul because they said the feringi doctor could cure everything. Why do you not cure me ?"

One man refused to budge till I had taken him to see my mother ; she might be able to do something she must have more skill than I, for from whom had I learnt? Another went to her to beg her to intercede with me for him, because he was sure it was want of will, not want of power, that prevented him gaining his end. At last, when they are convinced that nothing can be done, it is touching to see them as they resignedly say, often with tears rolling down their cheeks : " It is God’s will. I will be patient." Then they may begin their weary trudge home again, or stop in the Bannu bazaar for a few days to beg some money to get them a lift on a camel for part of the long journey. A commotion at the door, and a Bannuchi boy of about seven is carried in on the shoulders of his father, with his hand tied up in the folds of a turban. " We were crushing sugar-cane in our press, when my beloved Mir Jahan got his hand in the cogs of the wheel, and it was all crushed before we could stop the buffalo. Oh ! do see him quick he is my only son, a piece of my liver !" And the father bursts into tears. Mir Jahan is chloroformed at once, the bandages unbound, and a terrible sight we see ; the hand has been crushed into a pulp, but the thumb is only a little cut. That will enable him to pull the trigger of a rifle when he grows up, and that is what his father and he consider of great importance. So the thumb is saved, and the mangled remains of the other fingers removed, and a shapely stump fashioned. It is fortunate that the Bannuchis have not much machinery. This sugar-press is almost the only piece they have, and we get several crushed hands every year as a result, usually because they let their children play in dangerous proximity to the wheels, and then leave them to "Qismet" (Fate).

Meanwhile, perhaps, some big chief has come in with several attendants. He wants to have a special consultation with the doctor, and has to be treated with as many of the formalities of Oriental courtesy as the doctor can find time for. He gives some fee for the hospital, or perhaps may send one or two ox-burdens of wheat or Indian corn as his contribution to the hospital stores. The patients are still coming, when a schoolboy comes to say that it is time for the doctor to take his classes in school. It is not every mission station that can provide a distinct European missionary for the school, and Bannu is one of those where the supervision of the school is one of the duties of the medical missionary, who takes the senior classes in Scripture, English, and Science. So the consulting-room is changed for the class-room, and the missionary finds himself surrounded by a class of twenty to twenty-five intelligent young fellows preparing for the matriculation at the Panjab University, and waiting to be initiated into the mysteries of optics, or chemistry, or mechanics, or to practise English composition, or he may have them attentively listening while he goes with them through the ever-fresh stories from the life of our Lord, hearing and asking them questions as its inimitable teachings are brought home to them by precept and by illustration. Classwork over, a visit of inspection is paid to the other classrooms, where the remainder of the school staff are at their work, which the school principal must criticize and supervise, giving some advice here, some correction there, and seeing generally that everything is kept up to the mark.

Now we must go to see what progress has been made with the new ward which is being built in the hospital. The beams must be selected and tested. Here a carpenter has been putting some bad work into a lintel, thinking it will not be noticed ; there the bricklayers have been idle, and have not finished the stipulated number of layers. The foreman has a complaint to make of some of the coolies, who went away from work without his permission. " We only went to say our prayers. Surely you would not have us miss them ?" they plausibly urge. Put them on piecework, and their prayers are got over very quickly; but pay them by the day, and even the ablutions seem interminable ! But such is human nature, and they have such an air of injured innocence it is difficult to be angry with them. They are Mahsud Wazirs from over the border, and work hard when well managed, so are let off with a warning this time. This done, a visit must be paid to the mission press. Here not only is printing in vernacular and in English carried on for the mission’s own requirements, but work is executed for the various offices and merchants in the city. Accounts have to be checked, bills have to be made out, proofs have to be corrected, and directions given for the day’s work.

Now it is time to visit the hospital wards, and perform the day’s operations.

Usually, patients are operated on the same day that they are admitted. If this were not done, not only would the wards become hopelessly congested, but in many cases the courage of the patients would ooze out of their fingers’ ends,, and, instead of finding them ready for the ordeal, one would be greeted by " I have just heard that my father has been taken seriously ill. If I do not go home at once, I shall never see him again." Another : " I quite forgot to arrange for my donkey to get hay during my absence. I will go home and make arrangements for it, and return in two days." Of course, one knows that these stories are pure fabrications, but it would be useless to tell them so, or to argue ; one can only return them their own clothes, take back the hospital linen, and let them go. Sometimes they come back later on, and tell more fibs about their father or their donkey in justification of themselves ; more often they are not seen again.

While the operation cases are being prepared by the housesurgeon, the doctor goes the round of the wards, examining, prescribing, and saying words of cheer from bed to bed. This done, he is just about to commence operations, when a man comes running up to say that his brother was out shooting when his gun exploded, blowing off his hand ; would the doctor see him at once lest he bled to death - and close behind him is the wounded man brought up on a bed. The doctor examines him, sets a dresser to apply a temporary dressing, and perhaps a tourniquet, so that the case may safely wait till the conclusion of the other operations. The operation cases to-day are representative of an average day in the busy time of the year: they begin with five old men and three women suffering from cataract, then two cases of incurved lids, then an amputation, the removal of a tumour, and two cases of bone disease. These over, the man with the injured hand is chloroformed and the wound stitched up, except for two fingers, which were so damaged that they had to be removed altogether. The schoolboys are out now in the field playing football, and the doctor, after refreshing himself with a cup of tea, thinks that nothing would be more invigorating than a good hour’s exercise with them ; but he has scarcely got his togs on before the servant comes to announce that a certain big malik, or chief, has come to make a call. One would like to put him off with an excuse for a more convenient time ; but then it was he who gave us lodging and hospitality when itinerating in his neighbourhood six months ago, and this would be a poor return for his courtesy ; so he is ushered in, with four or five of his retainers, and some minutes are spent in formal courtesies and talking about nothing in particular. Then, just as one is going to suggest that as one has something to do the interview might terminate, he comes to the point and object of his interview. He has got a lawsuit on in one of the local courts against a neighbouring malik. His case is an absolutely just one ; but as the other party have some relationship with the head-clerk of the Judge’s office, he fears he will not get justice, unless unless... Would I just write a few lines to the Judge, asking him to give his case full consideration ? It would be no trouble to me, and would confer a benefit on him which he will remember to his dying day. One launches into an explanation, which is wearying because one has so often given it in similar cases before, that the Judge would be very angry if I adopted such a method of influencing his case, that if his case is a just one there is no need of such measures, that he must rely on the integrity of his witnesses, and so on ; no, he cannot or will not understand why you profess friendship with him, and yet refuse so very humble a request as the writing of a note. By the time the visitor has departed only half an hour is left for the game of football, and there is a man waiting to take you to a case of pneumonia at the other side of the bazaar, and two other calls have to be made on medical cases in the city.

It is evening now, and once more the church-bell collects the little Christian community together for the evening hymn of praise and worship, and the pastor gives some words of instruction and encouragement, specially intended for the catechumens and inquirers who are present. At last, however, these duties accomplished, dinner is negotiated, and then the doctor can sit down to his newspaper and his correspondence. He is not, however, long left free from interruption. The first to come is the superintendent of the boarding-house ; he reports that some of the Hindu boarders have been cooking meat in the school saucepan, and now the vegetarian party refuse to eat food cooked in that vessel, which has ipso facto become unclean. The arguments of both sides are heard, and the case decided, that the meat party are to provide their own saucepan. Then the house-surgeon comes in with his nightly report of the wards, stating the condition of the operation cases or of any other serious cases, and taking the orders for the night. Following on him comes a catechumen who has a quarter of an hour’s instruction every night ; then three of the senior boarders, to ask some questions about the English composition for the morrow, and get some hints for their essays. Lastly, the night-watchman comes to report that, as there is a gang of Wazir marauders about, special precautions must be taken for the security of the compound ; but he thinks that if I get him a new pistol and some cartridges all will be safe. A day such as I have described is not at all above the average during the busy months of the year, and the doctor may consider himself lucky if the soundness of his slumbers is not disturbed by any calls during the night.