Brilliant by Denise Roig Read Free Book Online

told Marian later, she nodded too. “Latifa means kind and merciful in Arabic. That man must know something, Gertie. And Doctora…well, take that as the sign of deepest respect.”
    From Gertrude Dyck to Doctora Latifa. Quite the leap.
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    I’d always imagined an oasis as a single palm tree perched by a pond. Perhaps the image came from a Bible story Mother read to me as a child. Clearly that illustrator never saw Al Ain. The whole area is an oasis: vast palm groves, sweeping fields irrigated by the most ingenious water system I’ve ever seen. (And I
am
a prairie girl.) They call them
falaj
, aqueducts that are both underground and above ground, and which bring water from the Omani Hajar Mountains to the plains. Our lifeline.
    And our lifesaver. How hot does it get? family and friends keep asking in their letters. The hottest day here — easily 120 degrees — is more intense than the coldest January night in Saskatchewan. What to wear in this heat, especially for a Western woman, is a challenge. I’ve settled on cotton dresses, with light
shalwar
trousers underneath. Modesty is like a religion here, so I’m vigilant, especially as a newcomer. After all, we’re the first uncovered women many of our patients have ever seen. And probably the first Westerners to use our
falaj
as a swimming hole. With dimensions of four feet by six feet and a depth of eighteen inches, none of us are exactly doing the back stroke. We sit, blessedly cool at last, under a palm roof, little fish nibbling at our legs.
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    Sheikh Zayed, who rules Al Ain under his brother Sheikh Shakhbut, ruler of Abu Dhabi, is our hospital’s patron saint.
Mafi fayd mal bedon al seha
, he says. Wealth without health is useless. He is so dedicated to his people, so concerned about their welfare. He’s the brains and will behind the construction of the
falaj
irrigation system. He’s the vision behind the construction of three schools here, a leap ahead of Abu Dhabi, which still has no formal education system. Many members of Sheikh Zayed’s family live in Al Ain, and Marian tells me some have already come here to have their babies. Future sheikhs, part of the royal lineage, are being born in our little hospital. Imagine.
    Until recently, only 50 percent of babies survived and only two in three mothers came through childbirth alive. While we were folding sheets a few nights ago, Marian told me about a fourteen-year-old bride who came to the hospital last summer. “She knew nothing about conception or the birthing process. All she knew was that she had a swollen belly and there was a baby in there.” The girl, terrified when her water broke, walked for kilometres over the dunes. She’d heard that on the outskirts of Al Ain a concrete building housed kind strangers who helped the sick. “She was afraid the baby would come out of her mouth,” Marian said, trying not to smile.
    â€œLord, what did you tell her?”
    Marian hesitated, as if this was perhaps too personal to share. “How could I explain to this innocent what actually happens? ‘Consider me your mother,’ I told her. Two hours later she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.”
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    How do our patients pay for medical care when so many have so little? The sheikhs have thought of this too, issuing nationals a
burwa
, something like our new national health insurance in Saskatchewan. But instead of a plastic card,
burwas
are just small slips of paper. Sometimes they’re rolled into a ball and tied into a corner of a
shayla
or stuck in a man’s
sufra
, his turban. Of course, sometimes the
shayla
gets washed in the
falaj
or the
burwa
gets eaten by a goat. We laugh ourselves silly over the tales we’re told.
    There is nothing charming, though, about the serious disease still rampant here: advanced cases of TB , children with pernicious, life-threatening diarrhea. There’s a stoicism in these people. As Pat