I forgot to take chalk to class one morning so I asked the students if they had any. Five of them eagerly offered me small pieces which they took out of their pockets; four white and one red. The lesson introduced commas. I wrote sample sentences on the blackboard using the red chalk for the commas, hoping it would highlight them. Then I told the boys write the sentences five times in their books.
Two boys near the back started fighting and while I dealt with that, others at the front began shouting at each other. Decorum rapidly deteriorated into chaos. I raised my hands and demanded order. Then I asked one boy to explain the problem. With some effort he told me that only three students had pens with red ink. Everyone wanted to use them so that he could put in the commas as I had done on the blackboard. I erased the red marks on the board, replaced them with white, and quiet returned for the rest of the period. I had again forgotten that the boys did exactly what the teacher told them to do. Rote learning dominated the schools. Copy what is in the book onto the blackboard. Copy what is on the boar into your notebook. Memorize it. That captured the essence of pedagogy in Ahar.
I liked the boys in my classes at Pahlavi. And they seemed to at least enjoy the small changes that I brought to the school's routine. I had no grasp of how they might have felt toward me. But they showed considerable concern the day I passed out in class.
I started having strange headaches early in February. Over two days they worsened and aspirin brought little relief. On the third day I stood up to do something in my first morning class and apparently fainted. When I woke up I saw Mr. Hashemi anxiously looking down at me.
"What's wrong?" I managed.
"We are not knowing. You have fallen and the boys have called me. Are you ill?"
"I'm dizzy and I have an awful headache."
Hashemi sent me home and urged me to go to Tabriz and see the doctor. He had Old Hotami flag down a bus that had already left its station, and together they helped me get on it. From the bus station I took a taxi to the mission hospital.
Dr. Stewart greeted me in his examination room.
"What's wrong?"
"Headaches. Really bad ones. I get dizzy and I passed out this morning in school. I've taken so much aspirin that my ears are ringing, but it doesn't seem to help."
Dr. Stewart started a methodical examination, looking increasingly serious as he went along.
"I think you have meningitis," he said after a few minutes.
With the help of an aid he took a spinal tap and then he looked at the liquid he extracted.
"Slightly cloudy," he said. "It should be clear. I'm sure it's meningitis."
Every few hours they gave me a shot, every two hours I took pills, and they pumped penicillin into my arm through a tube that led to a bottle hanging overhead. Dr. Steward said that I might be contagious, so for four days I laid in my bed in an isolated part of the hospital looking up at the stuff that ran into me, watching the mechanism dispense it one drop at a time. Then Dr. Stewart took away the bottle and, with the fear that I might spread the sickness past, he moved me to a four-bed ward.
A few days later Mr. Kashavarz came to visit. He walked into the room, took a look at me, and began crying. He sobbed loudly, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief and telling me how badly he felt about my illness. Over the next week I watched other visitors do the same when they came to see the men in the ward with me. I saw again how openly Iranians display their emotions and feelings. Kashavarz wept to show me that he cared about my well being. His action displayed both sincerity and custom deeply rooted in his society.
Most of the people who came brought bags of oranges and sweets which they passed around to everyone in the room. Then they talked for an hour or longer. Before leaving, they cried again, holding their hands up to their faces, sobbing, and showing the patient the depth of their concern. It struck me as a contradiction to cheer up a patient by crying to show concern. But in Iran, at least, it worked.
It is a cliché to say that hospital food is bad; the meals in such institutions are legendary. In Tabriz's American Mission Hospital the cook prepared the food both Iranian-style and badly. For breakfast we ate one boiled egg, flat bread with butter, and a bowl of mush over-cooked until it was dry. While the mush must have sat for hours on the stove the eggs only boiled for seconds. When I cracked mine open each morning just a thin layer of the white nearest the shell had congealed. The rest, and the yoke, ran out raw. The men in the room with me happily took a small piece of shell from one end, then drank the contents, and finally used a small spoon to scrape the cooked bit from the inside.
After a week I asked Dr. Stewart if the cook could boil my egg a while longer.
"I like a five minute egg myself," he said. "I never could eat them the way the Iranians do. I'll talk to the man in the kitchen."
Dr. Stewart ran the hospital almost single-handedly. His nursing school had helped advance the quality of medical care throughout Northwestern Iran. In addition to seeing patients, the doctor oversaw a remodeling project, supervised upkeep on the building and grounds, organized the disposal of stray cats that threatened to overrun the place, performed surgery, dispensed medicines, and taught classes to the student nurses. He must have worked thirty hour days and on top of it all, he played an active rôle in the Christian mission church.
As good as his word, Dr. Stewart must have spoken to the cook about my egg. The next morning the attendant brought in my breakfast last and with an exaggerated fuss. Everything on the tray looked the same as before. When I cracked open the egg its hard rubbery interior dropped onto my plate and defied me to eat it. The cook sent me a message which I understood and thereafter I ate my runny egg with the others and said nothing.
After two weeks Dr. Stewart had one of the hospital workers take me to the airport and I flew to Teheran. A Peace Corps driver met me and delivered me to the U. S. Air Force Hospital where they put me back in isolation, examined, tested, prodded, poked, and generally looked me over for a week. They agreed that I probably had had meningitis, but a mild case. I spent another week in a hotel resting, and then I flew back to Tabriz and then on to Ahar. I had been gone for a month.
The first person who saw me when I walked into the school was Old Hotami who stopped whatever he had been doing, ran down the hall, put his arms around me, and welcomed me home. His eyes filled with tears and he rambled on in Turkish while weeping, grinning, and showing all of his gold teeth.
"He is asking if you are well," translated Usef who came out of the faculty room. "He is happy to see you and he is thanking God again and again in his prayers because you are well again."
"Tell him I'm much better," I said, "and thank him for the prayers. I'm sure they helped."
Hotami grinned even more as Usef translated.
"Allah will keep you safe," said Usef, telling me what Old Hotami said. "He is wanting to know how many injections they are giving you in the hospital?"
"Tell him they gave me a bunch. For a week they gave me one injection every three hours."
"Bah, bah, bah," exclaimed Old Hotami when Usef translated.
Like many Iranians, Old Hotami felt that a trip to the doctor without getting a shot was a waste of time. He believed that prayer and the magic of the needles could together cure just about anything. He found pills less useful. Shots held the answer and he determined the seriousness of someone's disease by the number of shots he received.
"Tell him that I must go to Tabriz again in one week to see the doctor and get another shot," I told Usef.
Old Hotami laughed and slapped my shoulder.
"He is saying that this is a good thing," translated Usef. "He is thinking that after the next injection that you will be well for the rest of your time in Ahar."