Mohammed Hanif - Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

Alice turns towards him and props herself on her elbow. “Don’t be a child.” Her right breast rolls and falls over her left. In all the time that Noor has thought about them, he has never imagined her breasts cuddling themselves, like two abandoned puppies confusing each other for their mother.

“It’s different for different people,” she says, her expression that of an experienced surgeon trying to choose the right scalpel. “It’s a real fucker for TB patients. It’s like a fine silk shawl being dragged through a thorn bush. It leaves their soul in shreds.” The layer of Tibet talcum powder in her armpit is streaked with sweat. She stops twisting a lock of hair with her forefinger and puts the finger on Noor’s chest. She draws a careful circle. “Heart. People with heart problems are lucky. It just stops then tries to start again and then they are dead.” She falls backwards on the stretcher, her neck lolls back, her breasts shift into their original position.

To Noor she looks the opposite of death. For about nine seconds he doesn’t think of a woman or any of her body parts.

Now he sits beside her, and the wheelie stretcher under them sways and screeches as she turns over towards him again. Noor’s behind is pressed against the abandoned puppies.

“And when you find out that it’s about to happen, what do you do? What do you tell them?”

She shrugs her shoulders with her eyes closed. “I turn off the IV or oxygen or blood or whatever it is that they are on. Why waste it on someone who is already dead?”

“You never talk to them? Don’t you ask them about their last wish, note down their last words for their families?”

She opens her eyes and looks at Noor as if he has suggested a sexual act that she has never heard of.

“Do you know how much I get paid in this hospital?”

Noor feels ashamed of himself. He feels as if he has just accused her of not doing her duty properly.

“It’s not as if they are going to write me into their will.” She sighs. “Sometimes I read the kalima, if they look the type or if they ask for it. Sometimes if they are in a stupor I read it anyway, because I know that if they could talk and believe that they were about to die, they would ask for it.”

“You know the kalima?” Noor asks her. The fact that this Catholic girl who hates all Muslims and most of their Catholic cousins could be reciting the kalima to the almost dead depresses him.

“Silly boy, there are lots of things that I know and you don’t. You’ll learn.”

Alice turns onto her other side. Now Noor is back to back with her and he can feel her quivering spine. She lies still and waits. Noor knows she wants to be asked something. Sometimes she wants to tell him something. But she wants to be asked first.

“You are hiding something from me,” Noor says. This has happened with Zainab too, lots of times. He has to guess and ask her the right question. Women talk differently. Boys tell anybody anything; in fact mostly they do things so that they can tell somebody. Even if people don’t want to hear. But women want to be asked. Properly. He has learnt that in the Borstal.

Alice turns her face and looks at Noor, slightly startled, as if he has addressed her by another name.

“I can look at someone’s face and tell.”

“I can too.” Noor tries to cheer her up. “Ortho Sir would rather be an imam in Toronto and convert all Canadians. Dr Pereira wants to write a book about his life but is too shy and hopes someone else will write it. He actually thinks he is training me for the purpose. Sister Hina Alvi thinks she can run this country better than the Bhuttos. And who knows, she probably can. At least she knows when to keep her mouth shut.”

Alice Bhatti is not interested in Noor’s talents. She needs to tell him something.

“I can look at somebody’s face and tell how they are going to die.”

“Easy if you have their medical records in front of you.” Noor has a strange feeling that he must not find out whatever it is that she is trying to tell him. Sometimes it’s good not to know things. “If a diabetic’s sugar level is point six plus and BP lower than one twenty, I can tell his relatives that he’ll collapse in the bathroom because of heart failure.”

Alice Bhatti puts both her hands on the edge of the stretcher and bends down. Noor can see a layer of talcum powder between her breasts as well. He’s not thinking of women or their body parts. It doesn’t do anything for him. Suddenly he feels no desire. He feels like a child who is about to be told a secret about grown-ups that he doesn’t really want to know.

“No. Not patients. People. Ordinary people on the streets. I just know. I look at their face and then I see their dead face and I know how they will die.”

“Like your father? Didn’t Mr Bhatti cure people by reciting something? You showed me in the Borstal with a candle and a glass of water.”

“Yes, he had only one trick. For stomach ulcers… but sadly not many people had stomach ulcers in French Colony. It’s a rich man’s disease.”

“You could do better. You could start a business. Send us your photo and we’ll tell you how you are going to die. You could make lots of money. You can have your own Friday column in a newspaper. You can have your own segment on Telefun.”

“I can’t tell from photos,” Alice Bhatti says. “I have seen hundreds of pictures of Yassoo all my life, but I still can’t tell how he died.”

Noor makes a last effort to save himself from her knowledge of death. He removes himself from the stretcher, walks around it, stands in front of her and mimes a hammer hitting a nail into a cross. Streaks of sweat are now running across the talcum-powder patch. She seems tired of having seen so many dead faces.

“I told you I can’t tell from photos. I can’t tell about babies and young boys, because they always die suddenly.”

“Have you looked in the mirror?” Noor knows, has known all along, that this is the question he is supposed to ask. He knows that he could have asked about himself, but he has already been dismissed as a young boy, and young boys die suddenly, reason not important, and reasons can change at the last moment anyway.

She stands up and crosses her arms over her chest and squeezes them as if trying to steel herself against this cruel world.

“Yes, I look in the mirror. I don’t see anything.”

Noor is relieved. He can’t imagine Alice Bhatti dead. With her flushed cheeks, and the scar on her chin glowing, she looks like everything that is not death. “Doctors can’t always heal themselves,” he says. “Your Yassoo couldn’t have resurrected himself. Moses couldn’t have baked all that manna by himself.” He could have gone on in his attempt to change the subject and narrate the world history of unintended consequences, but he looks at her pale face and stops.

Her voice comes out different. Scared.

“It’s not a miracle. It’s a bad dream. Actually I can see something in the mirror. But I don’t recognise it. It’s not me, it’s not even a human face. It’s a ghoul. I get frightened.”

“Don’t be frightened of your own reflection. We all have bad moments in front of the mirror,” says Noor. “You should probably get married. I have heard that a good husband is the only cure for bad dreams. You know why? Because then you are sleeping with your bad dream.”

The day Joseph Bhatti is required to go to court for his daughter’s bail hearing, he goes looking for a lawyer. He hasn’t got any money on him, but he has done his homework and brought his satchel that contains the tools of his craft. He stands outside the lawyer’s office and reads a hand-painted sign on a piece of cardboard. It seems the lawyer can’t afford to employ an assistant or even a signboard painter. The piece of cardboard on the door reads: S.M. Qadri, MA, LLB, civil, criminal, property, divorce, cut-price oath commissioner .