CHAPTER XXVII
OF THE FIRST DAY IN HAIDAR PASHA HOSPITAL AND THE
PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION BY THE SPECIALISTS
It was long after dark when Moïse returned to the station with the news that everything had been arranged. We and our baggage were then marched up the hill to Haidar Pasha hospital, whose main entrance is about half a mile from the railway terminus. For the last ten days we had been doping ourselves regularly with phenacetin, and this on top of our starvation had weakened us so much that we were glad to sit down on the pavement half way to the hospital and rest. We each took our last four tablets of phenacetin (20 grains) just before entering the hospital.
The building was in darkness. We were taken to the “receiving room,” or “depôt,” where Moïse supplied the clerk in charge with such facts about us as were required for entry in the hospital books, and handed over our kit and our money, for which he obtained a receipt. It is fair to the Pimple to record that although he could easily have done so, he made no attempt to retain for himself any of our belongings. Indeed, throughout the whole period of our spooking together he was always scrupulously honest to us in money matters.
During these formalities Hill read his Bible as usual, and I, pretending to be under the delusion that the hospital was a hotel, repeatedly demanded that the night-porter should be summoned to show us to our rooms, and bring us a whisky and soda. The clerk was a humorous fellow. He explained that as it was war time the hotel had to be very minute in its registration, but “Boots” would be along in due course. At last, the “night-porter”—a rascally Greek—appeared and led us to an inner room, devoid of all furniture, where he made us undress. At the depôt we had been given a couple of our own loaves to tide us over the next day, for hospital rations would not be issued to us till next evening. The Greek appropriated our loaves. He also went through each garment as we took it off, and helped himself to anything he fancied in the pockets; He was on the point of taking my wrist-watch when the “hammam-jee” (the man in charge of the bath) arrived with towels for us. The watch remained on my wrist, and the Greek took away our clothes, presumably to the depôt. I never saw mine again, nor did I ever get square with the descendant of Aristides, for soon after he departed to a place where clothes are unsuited to the climate.
The Commander of the Bath was a washed-out looking Turk. He had a large, pasty, featureless face, not unlike a slightly mouldy ham in size, colour, and outline. While we were washing he took charge of the few small belongings we still retained—our cigarettes and tobacco, my watch, the first volume of the History of my Persecution by the English. He failed to loosen Hill’s grip on his Bible, and it came into the bathroom with us. He asked if we had any money, and seemed disappointed when he found we had none. When we had bathed he brought us our hospital uniform—a vest, a pair of pants, a weird garment that was neither shirt nor nightgown but half-way between, and Turkish slippers, and put into our hands everything he had taken from us. I was surprised at his honesty, but found later that, like every other subordinate in the hospital, he had his own method of adding to his income. Even when the doctors ordered it for us, Hill and I tried in vain to get another bath. Either there was “no room” or “the water was off” or “the bath had to be disinfected after itch patients”—there was always one excuse or another to turn us away until we discovered that a ten-piastre note would disinfect the bath, turn on the water, and make room for us, all in a breath.
The “hammam-jee” handed us over to an attendant of the “Asabi-Qaoush” (nervous ward). In the room to which we were taken by this gentleman there were ten beds, four on one side, five on the other, and one at the end. I was put into No. 10 bed, which was next the door. Next to me, in No. 9 bed, was a Turkish officer, and on his other side, in No. 8, they placed Hill. The room was faintly lit by a cheap kerosine lamp. The corridor outside was in darkness. Both our beds were in full view of the door.
I covered my head with the blankets, leaving a small peep-hole, through which I could watch the corridor, and lay waiting. We were determined to keep awake all night, because O’Farrell had warned us that our greatest difficulty would be to get the “insane look” into our eyes, and our best chance was to dull them with lack of sleep. We had expected to face the doctors immediately on arrival at Haidar Pasha, and had not closed our eyes the night before. Indeed, our last real sleep had been at Angora on the 5th May, and it was now the night of the 8th. The beds were comfortable (it was not yet the bug season), and we were very weary. There followed for both of us a dreadful struggle against sleep. Time and again I pulled myself together on the verge of oblivion. I felt I would give all I possessed, all I hoped for, to be allowed to close my eyes for ten minutes,—for five,—for one! I began pinching myself, making the pinches keep time with the snores of a Turk in one of the beds opposite, but in a little while the noises stopped and I nearly fell asleep while waiting for the next snore. A rush of feet down the corridor roused me, and I lay listening to the sound of blows. Then all was silent again. I did not know at the time what had happened, but I was to see the same thing happen often enough—it was merely a wandering lunatic in a neighbouring ward being pounded back to bed by the attendants. An idea prevails that the mentally deficient are handled with exceptional gentleness in Mussulman countries. It is erroneous. No doubt they are believed to be “smitten by Allah,” but followers of the Prophet are no more patient than other mortals, and if a lunatic “won’t listen to reason,” orderlies take it out of the poor devil. Before I left Haidar Pasha I was to see sights and hear sounds that will never, I fear, leave my memory. The brutalities usually took place at night, and never when there was a doctor anywhere in the neighbourhood. For the Turkish doctors at Haidar Pasha were, in the main, humane and educated gentlemen. There ought to have been a medical man on the spot, night and day, to prevent the things I saw, and there wasn’t. But that is another story.
When things quietened down again I noticed through my peep-hole a shadow flit past in the dark corridor outside, and disappear beside a large cupboard. The slight scraping of a chair on the cement floor let me know that someone had taken a seat. We were being watched.