The Somber Side of a Scientific Mind. Christian Tyoder
burning sun was over her head. She fell into a deep sleep with her back leaning against a large standing, erect, flat boulder a few yards from the walking path. Suddenly an unusual commotion with increasing intensity was heard coming from the south side. Omira stooped low down behind the rock for fear of being seen by fighting rebels or bandits. She saw two bearded men coming in her direction. Both carried cartridge-loaded bandoliers and grenades. Trembling, she held her breath and lay flat on the ground when the two men walked past the rock. They didn’t see her. She got up a few minutes later when the men’s footsteps were no longer heard. With her fearful eyes, she looked for the dispersed goats. Frantically, she ran in all directions looking for them, but they were nowhere to be found. The sun was about to disappear behind the clouds covering the mountain peaks.
Omira was supposed to be back by this time. Mrs. Rasulov started to worry about Omira’s whereabouts. She sent Abd to the scene to find out what was going on and to look for them. He saw the animals scattered in the gulley on the other side of the walking path, at some distance. He knew right away that none of them was watched for quite a while. He ran fast, dashing through bushes toward the frightened animals that kept wailing instead of grazing. Finally, brother and sister managed to keep the three goats again on leash. But neither could stand up. They were exhausted from running. Omira lay down first on a patch of dry grass. Abd sat down a few feet away, facing Omira, who looked pale. While still trembling, she directed her weeping eyes to Abd: “Thanks for saving me from being harmed by these uncontrollable dangerous bandits who roam around looking for women. The idea that you might be shot at by these criminals, every moment they see some sort of movement in tall grass, frightened me. Thanks God, the danger is finally over.”
All of a sudden, with his eyebrows raised, his eyes and mouth wide-open, Abd worrisomely directed his regard toward the right side of Omira’s dust-stained cloak where a two-inch broken thorn lay horizontally at the center of a wet-looking area. “Are you having pain somewhere?”
“On my side,” replied Omira, who lifted up the right half of her apparel to show her brother where she was experiencing pain. The white blouse she wore under the cloak showed a large wet bloody area. Immediately she turned her lying body away from Abd and pulled up and freed the right flap of her garment tightly tucked to her skirt.
“A deep cut with oozing blood. It is burning and very painful.”
“Where exactly?”
“Above the nipple.”
Without hesitation, Abd took his dirt-spotted plaid shirt off, shook it vigorously, and then handed it to Omira. “Lay the inside of it over the wound, and then place your left palm firmly over it.”
Omira did exactly what her brother had instructed her while keeping her back facing him. As Omira turned to her left side and flipped back the headpiece attached to her cloak, Abd spotted another horizontal cut, approximately one and a half inches, on the right side and at the root of her neck. Fresh blood was oozing out of this second wound. Omira worrisomely looked at her brother. “It stings there.”
“Where?”
“Between my right ear and my shoulder.”
Abd knew right away that she was referring to the same place he was looking at. He moved close to her, grabbed another section of the shirt, placed it over the nuchal wound, and then firmly applied pressure over the area with his left palm. This was the first time this eleven-year-old boy saw wounds and fresh blood. He got scared but could remember what he had recently learned in school on how to handle bleeding in case of emergency. He also remembered that his teacher taught the students the danger of having a deep cut on the sides of the neck. While sister and brother continued to apply pressure over Omira’s wounds, Abd kept the three animals on leash in order to prevent them from wandering away again. Calmed down from the initial fright, they recounted to each other the whole event, and both realized that Omira’s wounds were inflicted by nasty thorny bushes when she ran aimlessly looking for the scattered goats. Abd freed the gourd off Omira’s neck and gave her some water to quench her thirst. They stayed on the ground, exposed to the scorching early-afternoon heat. Afraid of being scolded by their parents for leaving the goats unattended, Omira asked Abd not to say anything to them about her falling-asleep incident while she was supposed to tend to the animals. She didn’t want to lose her parents’ confidence in her, being the oldest child who assumed a large part of many in-house responsibilities. But most importantly, she didn’t want her status of an elder sister caring for younger siblings to be questioned. Abd agreed to her request. In order to hide the whole story, she sent Abd home, instructing him to look for a clean garment and return to the site with it without letting Mother Elaha or anybody else see what he did. He did exactly what his sister had figured out and brought back a clean cloak, which was soaked in a pile of dry dirt before she put it over the blood-tainted dress.
Abd had the animals on leash and walked behind Omira, who slowly strolled back to the goats’ open stall. That evening, Dr. Faisal made a trip on camel’s back to take care of Omira’s wounds. Before saying goodbye to the Rasulovs, he left ten tablets of penicillin for the girl to take every day for the next five days. Fortunately, the wounds healed uneventfully.
During the next two years, life was going on as usual with the Rasulov family. Zekirullah turned thirteen. He needed to find an evening job and hoped to go to high school during the day.
Uncle Faisal’s medical practice was getting too busy, even though he already had five full-time employees. He was thinking of hiring someone to assume the office’s cleaning job at the end of the working day. He thought about the oldest Rasulov boy, who had the hip disease three years ago and was now fully recovered. The week after, he came to talk with Abd’s father and offered the job to Zekirullah, who was delighted with the prospect of being able to continue his schooling in Kabul area while earning a small wage. Abd’s parents saw this arrangement as the very first opening for their children to be potentially educated and exposed to employment opportunities beyond the suburb of Bamyan. They counted on the traditional Afghan custom that the oldest sibling would help the younger ones to be successful in their education and career.
Within a couple of weeks, Zekirullah left home. He went to stay with the Faisal family. Five days a week, he had to get up before 5:00 a.m. and bike to the high school in Tuti Koshteh, a town located approximately twenty kilometers east to Bamyan. After five in the afternoon, he returned to work at Dr. Faisal’s office in Tupchi, another small village ten kilometers west to Tuti Koshteh. He was allowed to have two weeks off per year when Dr. Faisal’s medical practice was closed for vacation. At the end of the first year, Zekirullah’s report card was “excellent” in all subjects. His parents were very pleased. But the uneventful life in the Rasulov family was short-lived.
In the fall of that year, the Rasulov family was struck by a calamity. When the weather turned cold, Abd’s mother started to cough and seemed to have a persistent low-grade fever. She had no appetite and felt tired all day long. At first, she and her husband didn’t make much out of it. They thought they were dealing with a common cold that she couldn’t shake off. A couple of weeks passed. Her symptoms got worse. Dr. Faisal finally was asked to check her out. After carefully examining her, he concluded that she had some sort of lung disease that needed to be investigated further. He wrote a note on his prescription pad to the radiology department of Kabul City Hospital requesting a chest x-ray as soon as possible. Not able to walk, Abd’s mother had to be transported on the back of a donkey borrowed from their neighbor. Husband and wife left for Kabul on the next day. They went directly to the hospital, handed Dr. Faisal’s note to the receptionist, got registered, and then waited in a small room packed with coughing and sneezing patients for her turn to be called. Abd’s parents returned the same night to Bamyan. They anxiously waited for the x-ray report. Five days later Dr. Faisal came to their house with bad news. The radiologist’s note to him read: “There appear to be some parenchymal shadows with possible cavitation on the lower half of the left lung, suggesting mycobacterial infection. Gastric aspiration for culture is strongly recommended to rule out active tuberculosis.” In the meantime, Abd’s mother’s symptoms got worse and the skin test on her left forearm, done three days earlier by Dr. Faisal, showed a circular redness with central induration. This finding together with the radiological abnormal