Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

zaher omareen

said no more about it. When Om Ahmed saw the doctor her heart nearly stopped beating – she got even more worked up than she had been. In her whole adult life, the only man who’d ever seen her face uncovered was her husband. Her face froze, a blueish tinge came over her, and her contractions just stopped altogether! Well, after a while the doctor knew that her labour had halted for real, the baby was in danger, and he had to try something different to get things moving again. Dr Mukhtar looked around him: there was no surgical equipment, and no medicines, just a basin of hot water and a piece of cloth. And Om Ahmed was so afraid of the doctor, and in such extreme agony, that she couldn’t even get any sound out anymore.

He said to her: ‘You’re taking your sweet time, aren’t you?’ Then he turned to the girl and said ‘Empty out that basin of water a second, can you, and give it to me.’ And then, as your granny tells it, ‘Suddenly, before our eyes, the doctor tied that piece of red cloth over his white jellabiya around his hips – like a belly-dancer’s sash! – and picked up the basin and started drumming on it as he danced around the bed like a madman, singing a nursery rhyme in this weird falsetto: “Oh my Indian neighbour, come and see what I’ve got! I’ve got a big black dog, who wants to eat me up!” Well, Om Ahmed was already in quite an altered state from her labour pains, of course, and so can you imagine the fright Dr Mukhtar gave her, dancing like a woman and gyrating his hips like a belly-dancer?

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