Great as is the variety of physiognomy, of dress, and of dialect, even more diverse are the complaints for which they come. Eye diseases form more than a quarter of the whole, and few cases give so much satisfaction both to surgeon and patient as these, in many of which the surgeon is able to restore sight that has been lost for years, and to send the patient back to his home rejoicing and full of gratitude. Here is a Bannuchi malik suffering from consumption, a not uncommon complaint in their crowded villages; next him is a Wazir lad from the hills, Muhammad Payo by name, suffering from chronic malarial poisoning. He is an old acquaintance, as he returns to his home when he feels strong enough, and then, what with coarse fare and exposure (for he is a poor lad), soon relapses and comes back to us at death’s door, as white as a sheet, and has to be nursed back again to vigour. Just now he is convalescent, and is going about the ward doing little services for the other patients, and telling them what to do and what not to do, as though he had been in the hospital all his life. Poor fellow! he has lost both his parents in a village raid, and would have been dead long ago himself but for the open door of the mission hospital.
In another bed is a fair-haired, blue-eyed boy of twelve from Khost, suffering from disease of the bones of his right leg, which he has not been able to put to the ground for two years. His home is eighty miles away across the mountains, and he had no one to bring him to Bannu, though he had begged some of the traders to let him sit on one of their baggage camels; but who was going to inconvenience himself with a friendless boy like that? He had heard such wonderful stories of the cures effected in the Bannu Hospital from a man in his village who had been an inmate for six weeks for an ulcer of the leg, that he determined to get there by hook or by crook, and he had accomplished the greater part of the journey crawling on his hands and knees, with an occasional lift from some friendly horseman, and had been six weeks on the road, begging a dinner here and a night’s lodging there from the villages through which he passed. When he arrived, his state can be better imagined than described: the weary, suffering look of his face; the few dirty rags that covered him; the malodorous wound on his leg, full of maggots, bound round with the last remains of his pagari; while now there is no brighter, happier boy in the hospital, with his white hospital shirt and pyjamas, clean, gentle face and pleasant smile, as he moves about from bed to bed with his crutch, chatting with the other patients.
Passing on, we see a big swarthy Afghan, with fine martial features, in which suffering is gradually wearing out the old truculent air. He had gone armed with a friend one night to a village where there was a Militia guard. He maintains that they had merely gone to visit a friend, and had been delayed on the road till night overtook them; but to be out armed at night is of itself sufficient to raise a prima-facie case against a man on the border, and when the Militia soldiers challenged him, and instead of replying he and his friend took cover, it was so clear to the former that they must be marauders, that they opened fire. The friend escaped, but our patient received a bullet through the left thigh, which shattered the bone. He was not brought to the mission hospital for some time, and when we first saw him it was obvious that unless the limb were speedily removed, his days were numbered. He, like all Afghans, had an innate repugnance to amputation, but finally consented on condition that the amputated limb should be given to him to take back to his home, that it might ultimately be interred in his grave; only thus, he thought, would he be safe from being a limb short in the next world. Once I tried to argue an Afghan out of this illogical idea, and when other arguments failed, I suggested that the unsavoury object might be buried in a spot in the mission compound, and he might leave a note in his grave specifying where it might be found. He answered at once: “Do you suppose the angels will have nothing better to do on the Resurrection Day than going about looking for my leg? And even if they would take the trouble, they would not come into this heretic place for it.”
So the limb was removed and carefully wrapped up and stored away somewhere, so that he might on recovery take it back with him to his village. His wound is nearly healed now, and he has sent off his sister, who was in hospital to nurse him, to his home to fetch a horse on which to ride back the forty miles to his village, where he will wile away many a long winter’s night with stories of his experiences in the Bannu Mission Hospital, and how kind the feringis were to him.
Among Afghans a man’s nearest relations are often his deadliest enemies, and “he hates like a cousin” is a common expression. Thus it came to pass that one day a wounded Afghan was brought to the mission hospital on a bed borne of four, and examination showed a serious condition. He had been shot at close quarters the night before while returning to his house from the mosque after evening prayers. The bullet had passed completely through the left side of the chest, the left lung was collapsed, and the patient was blanched and faint from the severe bleeding that had occurred. A compress of charred cloth and yolk of egg had been applied, through which the red stream was slowly trickling. He believed he had been shot by his uncle, with whom he had a dispute about the possession of a field, but had not seen his face clearly. A room was got ready, the patient’s blood-saturated garments were replaced by hospital linen, and the wound was cleansed and dressed.
The Result of a Blood-Feud
An old woman in the Peshawur Hospital describing how her grandson was shot in Tirah as the result of a blood feud. He was the last male representative of a clan which had been exterminated owing to the vendetta.
For a long time he hovered between life and death, constantly attended by two brothers, who, if they had been as instructed as they were assiduous, would have made two very excellent nurses. Gradually, however, he recovered strength, and the wound healed; and one day when visiting his ward I found him sitting up with a smile on his face, and after the usual greetings, he said: “Please come to me, Sahib; I have a request to make.” I sat by his bedside, and asked what I could do for him. He drew me closely to him, and said in a subdued voice: “Sahib, I want you to get me some cartridges; see, here are four rupees I have brought for them.” “Why, what do you want them for?” said I. “Look here,” said he, pointing to the wound in his chest; “here is this score to pay off. I am stronger now, and in a few days I can go home and have my revenge.”
