Articles - Wild Writing Women - San Francisco Bay Area Writing Group

09/22/2008

Champion of Choice

An excerpt from the forthcoming biography of UN leader, Dr. Nafis Sadik

Cathleen Miller

Chapter 1: Birth

On a table, in the lantern light, a mother writhed in labor. She was an Indian housewife in her thirties, and she was surrounded by other women, some relatives, some strangers, who tried to assist in the birth of her baby. As she strained, the helpers crushed into the room in the oppressive August heat, sealing off the small servants' quarters which had been turned into a delivery room.

On the other side of the door another type of birth was taking place—but this delivery involved millions. The year was 1947 and the creation of a new republic, Pakistan, was tearing the British Raj in two, and the friction had raged into a civil war. As the subcontinent was divided into two nations based on religion, the rioting in the Indian capitol forced Muslims to flee to the Pakistani High Commissioner's home for safety. This estate, located in a fashionable district of New Delhi, sheltered around five thousand people as the siege outside the garden walls continued.

The baby—oblivious, of course, to the war that had brought his mother into this stranger's home, to the timing of thousands of people dying outside its protective confines—chose this moment to be born. As he struggled through the birth canal, one of the women called out, “Where is that chit of a girl, the one who's studying to be a doctor?”

They were referring to Nafis Shoaib, the self-appointed bathroom monitor, who had taken it upon herself to stand outside the toilet door and limit how long each woman spent inside. She cut off chunks of soap and parceled them out, rationed the toilet paper, and insisted that each user clean the facilities before her exit. During her introduction to medical school, Nafis had learned some things about creating a healthy environment; now she seized an opportunity to put this knowledge into practice. Her rationale was that one must impose some order in this time of chaos. Otherwise, conditions in this private home, which was never designed to accommodate thousands of people, would quickly devolve from unpleasant to unsanitary, and shortly they would have an internal health crisis on their hands to accompany the one that had been created on the streets by warring factions of politics and religion.

Nafis hailed from an upper-class Indian family; they had arrived in Delhi the week before when her father, Mohammad Shoaib, was summoned from Calcutta to assist in the formation of the fledgling Islamic state. Mr. Shoaib had planned to relocate his family to Delhi as he represented Pakistan on the Joint Properties Commission. He would help the Commission cleave the subcontinent into two separate nations.

He was respected as an intellect and an independent thinker, and yet family members felt there was one area where he required their counsel: they had advised Mohammad not to let his daughter become a doctor. He had ignored this warning, and at eighteen she had already completed one year of medical school. However, Nafis's studies to date had been textbook theories of physiology and anatomy, and her patient examinations had been confined to the dead. Dissecting frogs and memorizing cell structures had not prepared her for the messy reality of delivering a baby in the sweltering confines of this estate-turned-refugee-shelter.

The pregnant woman's sister went to fetch the medical student, and the crowd of attendants parted to let Nafis enter the room. The doctor-to-be was slender, with short wavy black hair combed back from her face, and smooth caramel-colored skin. A black mole created a punctuation mark on the right side of her strong nose. But upon meeting Nafis, all these traits receded into the background because the viewer was mesmerized by the cobra-like quality of her hooded eyes. The black pupils were the size of dimes, surrounded by a ring of icy blue—the type of heavy-lidded eyes suggesting mystery and veiled seduction, the type of eyes which had gazed from the images of goddesses in Indian art for millennia. The eyes Radha used to lure the god Krishna. Needless to say, on any given day Nafis was quite sure of herself, but on this particular night, she faced a challenge about which even she had misgivings.

When she entered the room, the patient was in the advanced stages of labor, breathing hard. One group of women set about to boil a pot of water, which became its own production; someone brought the liquid in a small container, and to heat it, another located wood to build a fire. During this lengthy process Nafis didn't have the heart to ask what the boiled water was for. She knew that in the movies a helpful soul always shouted, “Boil some water!” whenever a woman went into labor, but she had never understood why. However, her attention was drawn away from this quandary by her patient, who lay moaning on the table.

- - -

On August 15, 1947, after nearly two hundred years of colonial rule, the British had relinquished their control of the subcontinent. At midnight in New Delhi, the nation's capital, a member of the Constituent Assembly blew a conch shell in the traditional Hindu salute to the dawn, signaling a free India. Later that morning ceremonies took place at the Red Fort, an ancient red sandstone fortress where Lord Mountbatten, King George's cousin and the colony’s last viceroy, handed Prime Minister Nehru the reins of government. Outside, the half million citizens jamming the streets of a newly independent India went wild in celebration. The colors of the nation's freshly-minted flag—orange, white and green—painted the city, adorning everything from bullock's horns to tri-colored saris to horses' legs.

As part of the process to vacate India, the British had created a separate Muslim nation called Pakistan, hoping this solution would assure order after their departure. In Delhi a provisional government gathered to handle the difficult task of apportioning the land and assets of one of the world's most populous nations into two individual states. A line running north to south through the Punjab would divide the Asian subcontinent: west of the border Muslims would reside; to the east, Hindus and Sikhs. But when independence was trumpeted that August morning, the process of sorting the masses based on religion had just begun.

As millions of people looked at being displaced, tensions between the factions exploded. Relations between the three religious groups had always been tense, but these feelings were now exacerbated by the forced uprooting of millions from ancestral homes, and the loss of their livelihoods and entire way of life. Rioting swept through the capitol like the summer monsoon rains, as Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims murdered one another.

Nehru, the newly appointed Indian prime minister, sequestered the Muslims inside the High Commissioner's walled estate in an attempt to protect them from violence. Armed soldiers guarded the perimeter of the post-art deco house on Harding Avenue, a white boxy structure fronted by mullioned windows that emphasized the rigid angles of the façade. The men slept on the manicured grounds, cat-napping under the lush tropical foliage while they prepared to ward off attack. Inside the house every inch of floor space—from the foyer, rising up the grand spiral staircase to the attic—was covered by blankets where the women and children slept, and more Islamic refugees continued to arrive each day. Rumors of impending raids swirled through the frightened island of Muslims trapped in the heart of the Hindu capital.

However, for an evening, the women in the servants' quarters had other concerns to occupy their attention, as their patient's labor advanced. At thirty, the woman had already borne several children, and as she pushed, she instructed Nafis on the delivery, calling directions from the table. Soon blood and amniotic fluid flooded the floor of the cramped space. An elder assisted by holding the lantern at the foot of the table so the light shown between the mother's legs, and Nafis could see the baby's crowning head. Within the hour an infant had made his debut into the world, and Nafis held a straight razor in the lantern flame to sterilize the blade. The yellow light glinted off the steel as she sliced the umbilical cord, thereby parting mother and child.

- - -




Magazine		Articles 09/22/2008 Champion of Choice An excerpt from the forthcoming biography of UN leader, Dr. Nafis Sadik Cathleen Miller Chapter 1: Birth On a table, in the lantern light, a mother writhed in labor. She was an Indian housewife in her thirties, and she was surrounded by other women, some relatives, some strangers, who tried to assist in the birth of her baby. As she strained, the helpers crushed into the room in the oppressive August heat, sealing off the small servants' quarters which had been turned into a delivery room. On the other side of the door another type of birth was taking place—but this delivery involved millions. The year was 1947 and the creation of a new republic, Pakistan, was tearing the British Raj in two, and the friction had raged into a civil war. As the subcontinent was divided into two nations based on religion, the rioting in the Indian capitol forced Muslims to flee to the Pakistani High Commissioner's home for safety. This estate, located in a fashionable district of New Delhi, sheltered around five thousand people as the siege outside the garden walls continued. The baby—oblivious, of course, to the war that had brought his mother into this stranger's home, to the timing of thousands of people dying outside its protective confines—chose this moment to be born. As he struggled through the birth canal, one of the women called out, “Where is that chit of a girl, the one who's studying to be a doctor?” They were referring to Nafis Shoaib, the self-appointed bathroom monitor, who had taken it upon herself to stand outside the toilet door and limit how long each woman spent inside. She cut off chunks of soap and parceled them out, rationed the toilet paper, and insisted that each user clean the facilities before her exit. During her introduction to medical school, Nafis had learned some things about creating a healthy environment; now she seized an opportunity to put this knowledge into practice. Her rationale was that one must impose some order in this time of chaos. Otherwise, conditions in this private home, which was never designed to accommodate thousands of people, would quickly devolve from unpleasant to unsanitary, and shortly they would have an internal health crisis on their hands to accompany the one that had been created on the streets by warring factions of politics and religion. Nafis hailed from an upper-class Indian family; they had arrived in Delhi the week before when her father, Mohammad Shoaib, was summoned from Calcutta to assist in the formation of the fledgling Islamic state. Mr. Shoaib had planned to relocate his family to Delhi as he represented Pakistan on the Joint Properties Commission. He would help the Commission cleave the subcontinent into two separate nations. He was respected as an intellect and an independent thinker, and yet family members felt there was one area where he required their counsel: they had advised Mohammad not to let his daughter become a doctor. He had ignored this warning, and at eighteen she had already completed one year of medical school. However, Nafis's studies to date had been textbook theories of physiology and anatomy, and her patient examinations had been confined to the dead. Dissecting frogs and memorizing cell structures had not prepared her for the messy reality of delivering a baby in the sweltering confines of this estate-turned-refugee-shelter. The pregnant woman's sister went to fetch the medical student, and the crowd of attendants parted to let Nafis enter the room. The doctor-to-be was slender, with short wavy black hair combed back from her face, and smooth caramel-colored skin. A black mole created a punctuation mark on the right side of her strong nose. But upon meeting Nafis, all these traits receded into the background because the viewer was mesmerized by the cobra-like quality of her hooded eyes. The black pupils were the size of dimes, surrounded by a ring of icy blue—the type of heavy-lidded eyes suggesting mystery and veiled seduction, the type of eyes which had gazed from the images of goddesses in Indian art for millennia. The eyes Radha used to lure the god Krishna. Needless to say, on any given day Nafis was quite sure of herself, but on this particular night, she faced a challenge about which even she had misgivings. When she entered the room, the patient was in the advanced stages of labor, breathing hard. One group of women set about to boil a pot of water, which became its own production; someone brought the liquid in a small container, and to heat it, another located wood to build a fire. During this lengthy process Nafis didn't have the heart to ask what the boiled water was for. She knew that in the movies a helpful soul always shouted, “Boil some water!” whenever a woman went into labor, but she had never understood why. However, her attention was drawn away from this quandary by her patient, who lay moaning on the table. - - - On August 15, 1947, after nearly two hundred years of colonial rule, the British had relinquished their control of the subcontinent. At midnight in New Delhi, the nation's capital, a member of the Constituent Assembly blew a conch shell in the traditional Hindu salute to the dawn, signaling a free India. Later that morning ceremonies took place at the Red Fort, an ancient red sandstone fortress where Lord Mountbatten, King George's cousin and the colony’s last viceroy, handed Prime Minister Nehru the reins of government. Outside, the half million citizens jamming the streets of a newly independent India went wild in celebration. The colors of the nation's freshly-minted flag—orange, white and green—painted the city, adorning everything from bullock's horns to tri-colored saris to horses' legs. As part of the process to vacate India, the British had created a separate Muslim nation called Pakistan, hoping this solution would assure order after their departure. In Delhi a provisional government gathered to handle the difficult task of apportioning the land and assets of one of the world's most populous nations into two individual states. A line running north to south through the Punjab would divide the Asian subcontinent: west of the border Muslims would reside; to the east, Hindus and Sikhs. But when independence was trumpeted that August morning, the process of sorting the masses based on religion had just begun. As millions of people looked at being displaced, tensions between the factions exploded. Relations between the three religious groups had always been tense, but these feelings were now exacerbated by the forced uprooting of millions from ancestral homes, and the loss of their livelihoods and entire way of life. Rioting swept through the capitol like the summer monsoon rains, as Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims murdered one another. Nehru, the newly appointed Indian prime minister, sequestered the Muslims inside the High Commissioner's walled estate in an attempt to protect them from violence. Armed soldiers guarded the perimeter of the post-art deco house on Harding Avenue, a white boxy structure fronted by mullioned windows that emphasized the rigid angles of the façade. The men slept on the manicured grounds, cat-napping under the lush tropical foliage while they prepared to ward off attack. Inside the house every inch of floor space—from the foyer, rising up the grand spiral staircase to the attic—was covered by blankets where the women and children slept, and more Islamic refugees continued to arrive each day. Rumors of impending raids swirled through the frightened island of Muslims trapped in the heart of the Hindu capital. However, for an evening, the women in the servants' quarters had other concerns to occupy their attention, as their patient's labor advanced. At thirty, the woman had already borne several children, and as she pushed, she instructed Nafis on the delivery, calling directions from the table. Soon blood and amniotic fluid flooded the floor of the cramped space. An elder assisted by holding the lantern at the foot of the table so the light shown between the mother's legs, and Nafis could see the baby's crowning head. Within the hour an infant had made his debut into the world, and Nafis held a straight razor in the lantern flame to sterilize the blade. The yellow light glinted off the steel as she sliced the umbilical cord, thereby parting mother and child. - - - index of articles \| next article: Sneak Preview of Ireland: The Sacred and the Profane Reviews · Contact Us © 2010 Wild Writing Women. All rights reserved.