on which women moaned and twisted tended to by fully covered nurses. Two of the women
were in the act of delivering. There were no curtains between the beds. Laila was given a
bed at the far end, beneath a window that someone had painted black. There was a sink
nearby, cracked and dry, and a string over the sink from which hung stained surgical gloves.
In the middle of the room Mariam saw an aluminum table. The top shelf had a soot colored
blanket on it; the bottom shelf was empty.
One of the women saw Mariam looking.
"They put the live ones on the top," she said tiredly.
The doctor, in a dark blue burqa, was a small, harried woman with birdlike movements.
Everything she said came out sounding impatient, urgent.
"First baby." She said it like that, not as a question but as a statement.
"Second," Mariam said.
Laila let out a cry and rolled on her side. Her fingers closed against Mariam's.
"Any problems with the first delivery?"
'No.
"You're the mother?"
"Yes," Mariam said.
The doctor lifted the lower half of her burqa and produced a metallic, cone shaped
instrument She raised Laila's burqa and placed the wide end of the instrument on her
belly, the narrow end to her own ear. She listened for
almost a minute, switched spots, listened again, switched spots again.
"I have to feel the baby now, hamshira "
She put on one of the gloves hung by a clothespin over the sink. She pushed on Laila's
belly with one hand and slid the other inside. Laila whimpered. When the doctor was done,
she gave the glove to a nurse, who rinsed it and
pinned it back on the string.
"Your daughter needs a caesarian. Do you know what that is? We have to open her womb
and take the baby out, because it is in the breech position."
"I don't understand," Mariam said.
The doctor said the baby was positioned so it wouldn't come out on its own. "And too
much time has passed as is. We need to go to the operating room now."
Laila gave a grimacing nod, and her head drooped to one side.
"There is something I have to tell you," the doctor said. She moved closer to Mariam,
leaned in, and spoke in a lower, more confidential tone. There was a hint of embarrassment
in her voice now.
"What is she saying?" Laila groaned. "Is something wrong with the baby?"
"But how will she stand it?" Mariam said.
The doctor must have heard accusation in this question, judging by the defensive shift in
her tone.
"You think I want it this way?" she said. "What do you want me to do? They won't give
me what I need. I have no X ray either, no suction, no oxygen, not even simple antibiotics.
When NGOs offer money, the Taliban turn them away. Or they funnel the money to the
places that cater to men."
"But, Doctor sahib, isn't there something you can give her?" Mariam asked.