THE SOUND OF A HAGGIS??
...DOES A HAGGIS HAVE A SOUND?? READ FOR YOURSELF.
This
is what I imagine.
My
father was dying from a diseased lung, liver or kidney.
Whichever
the ailing organ was, it’s decaying state had been described to him as having
the texture of a Haggis.
That
is how the Indian doctor, from Calcutta, had described the infected appendage.
“Spotted like a Haggis, “he had muttered as he
stared at the ghostly image that was scorched on the grey and white sheet of X-ray
in the room where only one fluorescent tube worked and the fly-strip, heavy
with its catch, hung limp from the ceiling.
Through
the rusty mosquito netted window, the earth was red, and the sky a brilliant
blue, as it always is in Africa.
The
Indian doctor, from Calcutta, had recently received a letter from his brother
in Birmingham, England. In the letter, his brother had told him that he’d
travelled to Scotland. In the letter, he had written down the ingredients for
haggis.
These
are the ingredients that were listed for the Indian doctor, from Calcutta by
his brother from Birmingham, England:
1 sheep’s stomach bag
1 sheep’s pluck – liver, lungs and heart
3 onions
250g beef suet
150g oatmeal
Salt and black pepper
A pinch of cayenne
150mls of stock/gravy
My
father would only have “humph-ed” in reply to the description because it was an
accurate one and not one for debate. The Indian doctor, from Calcutta – who
also owned the general Dealer Store and drove, occasionally, the only imported
car – had no need to pull punches or dance the verbal tango with his words. He
had seen worse. He would have, as the entire African continent, in his eyes,
was ill and looking like a Haggis: dark and spotted and congealed. It was diseased.
That is what he often told his wife when he helped serve the pot-bellied runny
nose children from behind the counter in their store. Occasionally he would add
the word damn to this description, but that was when he was angry because the
Leghorn chickens from the street had fouled in the shop or had stepped onto the
bonnet of his imported car.
“Damn
dark, spotted and congealed damn continent,” is what he said out loud, now more
frequently than usual.
The
hospital in which my father was dying was of Government design. That implied it
had a corrugated iron roof and was built in the shape of a square with a
courtyard and a broad porch. It had a tree in the centre of the courtyard and a
concrete bench. The outside walls of the hospital were painted yellow with a
green skirt. The hem of the skirt was now stained with the red of the earth,
and the yellow had lost its yellow. The roof, that popped and whispered in the
heat, was silver in colour and in the evening the branches of the tree would attract
the hens to roost.
There
was one tap of running water (attached to the borehole pump alongside the dirt
road) in the courtyard. A not-so-ill patient would have been nominated to guard
over this precious commodity. The tap leaked, and the pool of water attracted
many worker bees during the day. On the porch, waiting patients would sit with
their backs against the wall, and wait. Their babies would offer a chorus of
sounds and the waiting men would spit lumps of phlegm from TB infested lungs
into dirty rags.
And they would wait, and wait for the doctor
from India who was an extremely busy man.
My
father would have been able to see these waiting, patient people from his bed
in his private room. He would have been able to see them through the only door
as he lay on his back on the rough, grey blankets and the over-starched linen.
Perhaps he admired their patience, the occasional gesturing of mothers as they
waved off insistent flies or pushed away the noses of ever-hungry, stray dogs.
Perhaps he didn't. He was, after all, an African himself – white skinned, but
African, so these sights and sounds, were not foreign to him. Or then perhaps,
he was looking and listening elsewhere by now; had reached that mental space
where he was looking and hearing far beyond his present whereabouts. A little
soul searching, I wonder, but also doubt.
My
father’s room was painted the standard, government-issue of puke green: the
colour of a growing lemon on a sick tree. The floor would be red and polished,
and there would be a framed photograph of the country’s present dictator on the
wall. The mosquito mesh over the window would be rusted. The ceiling would be
sagging a little, shaped like a pregnant woman’s belly and there was a water
stain in the shape of the island of Madagascar in the corner. He would have a small,
white metal table beside him with a jug of water and a glass. That is all.
In
my mind, this is the place where he was to die.
In
his reverie, my father would listen to the popping and the sighing of the
corrugated iron roof above him. He would listen to the chorus of babies and the
occasional tap-tap of a nurse’s heel as she walked along the porch. At sunset,
he would hear the waiting patients leave the hospital quietly and without dissent.
They would return the following day as the sun rose. The smell of distant
cooking fires would intrude into the room, flavoured with the taste of maize
meal and curry. If and when it rained, my father would listen to the raindrops
hammering onto the sheet- iron roof and perhaps as I did as a child, think of
machine guns and advancing armies. He would smell and sense the air chill when
it rained.
When
the night came a nurse would have given him a paraffin lamp with a spluttering
wick. In its light, he would have watched the dancing shadows on the walls and
listened to the barking of stray dogs. My father did sleep, or at least, he
tested sleep, but sleep, when you are dying, offers up darkness, and I think,
if I were my father, I would have avoided that. Dozed, but not slept for fear
of never awakening.
The
Indian doctor, from Calcutta, would do his rounds three times a day. He wore a
white jacket and had a stethoscope around his neck. He wore dark shoes that had
hard heels so he could be heard approaching from a distance. Clipped onto his
breast pocket were three biro pens (blue, black and red) and a little torch for
looking into a person’s eyes. On his wrist, he had a fake Rolex watch that was
sent to him by a cousin from Bombay along with three cans of sugared litchi and
a photograph of a Bollywood starlet.
The
Indian doctor, from Calcutta, also wore a woman’s perfume. It was Chanel number
five from Paris, France. A salesman had left the sample bottle at the shop
months ago. The Indian doctor, from Calcutta, had told his wife that there was
never a chance in Hell that they would ever sell such stuff in this “ Damn
dark, spotted and congealed damn continent “ and that the salesman responsible
would be in need of a new job shortly.
Always
following the Indian doctor, from Calcutta, was a nurse from Abuja, Nigeria who
was as thin as a bird and as dark as ebony. She was new and she did not like
being in my father’s ward. He could sense that in her because she always looked
away from him and found interest in her bare feet or in the map of Madagascar
on the ceiling. What my father did not know was that this nurse, from Abuja,
Nigeria, was feeling ashamed to see such a large, broad shouldered white man
lying on a thin metal bed waiting to die. She was ashamed because she knew
there was nothing to be done for this man. She was ashamed for him and others
like him. That is why she looked at her bare feet on the red polished floor.
She was ashamed to look death in the face. The little silver watch she wore
over her heart (awarded to her at nursing school in Abuja, Nigeria) was to be
used to count a man’s pulse, not to record its fluttering and ultimate demise.
The
Indian doctor, from Calcutta, would use his stethoscope and listen to my
father’s chest. “Breathe in, breathe out,” he would say. “And again,
please." Amplified in his ears, the Doctor, from Calcutta, would hear the
gurgling and dying of the Haggis. He would close his eyes to this sound as he
listened and he would imagine himself driving on the long road to the city with
the Bollywood starlet sitting beside him in his American car.
“Not
good,” he would finally say. He would use the red biro pen to write on my
father’s chart. “I will prescribe more pain killer. Understand, nurse?”
“Yes,
Doctor,” the nurse from Nigeria would chirp in response as she studied the
southern tip of Madagascar and wondered who lived and died on that part of the island.
“Are
you sleeping better?” My father would be asked.
His
response was in the negative.
“Eating?”
He
responds with a shrug.
“This
I can appreciate. The skoff (food) here is minimal, and the cook, if I may
loosely describe him as that, is ignorant, but we do our best as I am most certain
you can understand. Perhaps I must put you on a vitamin drip. That will offer
you some nutrition. Yes, that is what I will do. I will order it, and it will come
by the truck.”
And
then the doctor, from Calcutta, would leave followed by the nurse from Nigeria
and my father would remain in his bed, listening to a child crying somewhere in
the hospital and his nose inhaling the ghostly scent of Chanel number 5 from
Paris, France.
...enjoy your journey.
