Instant City by Steve Inskeep

Author:Steve Inskeep
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101547939
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-09-06T10:00:00+00:00

10

EMERGENCY NUMBERS

This is where we last encountered Dr. Seemin Jamali, the “Incharge” of the emergency department at Jinnah hospital. On February 5, 2010, an argument was boiling at the emergency department over whether the injured patients should be moved to another hospital.

Dr. Jamali, the woman at the center of that argument, had a big job. She directed about 240 hospital staff in the emergency department, from doctors on down, men and women alike. She also took part in the broader management of the hospital. If women did not enjoy equality with men in Karachi, neither were they denied all opportunity: a woman like Dr. Jamali, coming from an educated family, could choose to cover her hair or not, could choose to pursue a career, and in rare cases could even rise to a position of authority—so long as she could navigate the complexities. “Is it difficult,” I asked her once, “as a woman, to be supervising so many people?”

“It is difficult but it makes life easy,” she replied. “They don’t assault you. It is not easy to be beaten up, not as easily as a man.” Conservative men in Pakistan displayed great respect for women in public, and this mattered at the hospital, where patients typically arrived accompanied by crowds of relatives. Some might become extremely emotional. “If there was a man here, they would have assaulted a man very easily; this is a big hospital, things keep happening here. But you know when you look at a face, it’s the weaker gender, they don’t tend to assault you as much.”

The tendency for relatives to accompany patients explained the crowds that filled the emergency department on February 5.

All the hours at the Jinnah hospital that afternoon are captured on video, which Dr. Jamali played for me. Recordings from four security cameras show the scene from slightly overhead—two in the emergency room where initial examinations are made, one in the reception area, and one outdoors, overlooking the front entrance. The first striking thing about the video is the sheer number of people, masses of moving humanity: Shias with white cloths tied around their foreheads, doctors in white coats, policemen, and Scout leaders in gray uniforms with kerchiefs around their necks. Orderlies wheel patients on gurneys into the emergency department and back out into the wards. Everyone seems to be moving somewhere, coming down a hallway, out the doors, back in again. Now and again a sweeper comes through with a mop, working it between the shoes of swiftly moving people. The security camera near the reception desk shows a man holding his own video camera high above the crowd to capture the scene; part of the scene he’s recording is a man holding up yet another video camera in front of the first.

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