Here I am in Fatima Memorial, the general labour ward. The Maulvi’s wife has had a miserable time of it as apparently she gets debilitating nausea whenever she is pregnant and, despite my uncharitable words, she is very distressed about her condition. The last baby was born in the medical centre in their village in Azad Kashmir and though she asked them to tie her tubes they didn’t. (This is for some reason the only acceptable form of birth control amongst Pakistanis of a particular class.)
I did learn rather more about their sex life than I wanted.
This hospital is a midsized charity hospital that also trains nurses. It occurs to me that I might be in the very spot I was born as I arrived on a stretcher in this very hospital, probably outside the private room, some decades ago. It’s certainly not a private hospital with hushed gleaming corridors and luxurious private rooms. The group ward, certainly, is packed with beds laid sideways, and men sitting in rows outside, playing with their mobile phones, and waves of unrest as people dash around to the latest medical crisis.
Anyway she is to be discharged soon so I will leave now having arranged for her to at least have a phone. This being Pakistan men are firmly forbidden from the labour ward so the Maulvi had no idea what was going on or if she was dying or what.