Healthwise
by chikitita
My friend described contestants of Fear Factor and other stunt shows as “sissies”, “Baghdadis ace them all,” she said. I couldn’t agree more; average Iraqis may not climb mountains but they do ride buses, which at some point of Iraq’s history were targeted the most. No Iraqi would swallow slimy worms, they are not a delicacy here, but they all have to fill their power-generating sets with petrol, often by plastic hoses, and they know how fuel tastes like; it’s gross. They don’t cram themselves in a roomful of snakes, but some of them venture walk into areas where merciless militiamen are lurking for would-be unidentified bodies.
Iraqi women, on the other hand, might shudder at the sight of a lizard crawling around the living room walls, but it is not the ultimate fear, there are more things to dread, like having their houses blown up, male family members arrested or abducted, or finding themselves unable to decide whether to keep their husbands in Baghdad, where they might be killed or rounded up, or send them to Syria, where they will surely have too much free time and consider second marriages.
I, too, have my own fears. Topping the list are syringes and hospitals, which date back to early first-hand experience with some nasty white coats. Sadly for me, I needed a checkup for some official papers. It is hard to find doctors in Baghdad, but I’m blessed for having a high school friend, who has grown up to be a successful lab technician and a patronizing white coat, whose second phrase after “hello” is always, “Oh my, you look so pale, let me take you to the lab and have some blood tests.” As if she was offering to buy me pizza! She works in a centre affiliated to one of those dreadful hospitals and I felt that I’d be in good hands, because she sounded well-informed from the medical jargon she often works out in our not-in-the-least medical chit-chat and above all though she’s two days my junior, she was as caring as a mother, and when I’m visiting doctors I’m often inundated with flashbacks of me running away from the monstrous white coats to the safety of my mother’s lap, and she made the perfect substitute.
The Kindi Street, once bustling with patients waiting in line for the large number of doctors to see them, has become almost abandoned, not because Iraqis have become much healthier, or most of their lives were ended by violence, it is because doctors have become as scarce as petrol; how funny is that, an oil-rich country with one of the pioneering medical colleges in the Middle East is running out of two of its major assets. Since my friend is a staff member and knows which tests should be taken and where, she took me to one of Baghdad’s infamous public hospitals instead.
Not so pleasant for the first encounter. I was face-to-face with the stars of the Unidentified Bodies soap opera, whose mystery hasn’t unraveled even though the morgue might have been short for toe tags and freezers.
This notorious hospital is mostly run by sloppy janitors and well-dressed but not well-behaved security men. It was not my lucky day because my friend forgot to bring her white coat so that I could be part of the corruption network and get in line before the others. It is funny that my slip happened to be the first, but I was one of the last to be examined by the doctor. But I was fine, I had a good time until I ran out of gossips and had nothing more to discuss with fellow patients, who had had enough of backbiting the snappy janitor and reduced the waiting room to a newsroom; five or six of them said they were forced out of their houses, the janitor said he was filling in for a co-worker whose family member was kidnapped and then women started assailing each other with accusations of sucking up to the diminutive man in the orange suit, to resolve the conflict, I chose to sing for myself and consequently embarrass my friend at her workplace.
The doctor’s prescription was scarce. I knew I could afford it from outside the hospital so I asked a male nurse to tell me where I can get one. He thought I was bribing him so he signaled my friend and me to follow him to cut a deal. The poor soul didn’t know he chose the thriftiest person in Iraq for this kind of dirty business, but he didn’t look ashamed when he realized that we were only asking about where we can get this priceless thing (which turned out to be affordable) that should be given to poor people, but usually end up in not-too-poor hands.
One of the tests, which was not conducted by my friend’s lab proved me positive for a sexually transmitted disease. Reading the lab results, my friend was shell-shocked but I laughed my head out. My friend asked the technicians’ boss to check their material, which happened to be contaminated, but the funny thing was the way the stupid technicians treated my friend, mistaking her for the serum holder, when she collected the results she was almost insulted and they shot her with a look so vile as if she were a hooker. I redid the tests in a private lab, which was negative by the way, but apparently I was not the only “unchaste woman” as proven by this public lab, another one had a similar result that day.
Wandering around the hospital lobbies I found it odd that almost all rooms had signs posted on the doors reading “We are sorry the [free] apparatus [that will cost you a fortune in private clinics] is not functioning.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but are the sanctions still on?” I asked my friend.
I was done with the checkup, but the childhood fears are now more ingrained than ever, which means I’m not planning to set foot on any hospital in Iraq, unless I’m a lifeless body without a name or choice.