1972: RECURRING ILLNESS

 Previously published in INSIDE MY HAT AND OTHER HEADS  ISBN 978-1-9163107-0-4

I wrote this in 2018,  46 years after those days of those recurring illnesses.

1.  I’d thought I’d been lucky to get out of Afghanistan alive. I had been ill for months and now, after a three day bus journey from Kabul, I found myself sitting in the street. My head was spinning and I could hardly walk. I had been vomiting again throughout the night and unable to keep even water down for long. I was dehydrated again and I still had little money. Nobody seemed to want to help for a while, then a man asked me if I needed help. After telling him I was English and wanted to get to the Embassy, he helped me to the busy and dusty street corner and pointed me down another street filled with various vehicles and people, saying that it was the American Embassy. I slowly walked to the entrance and discovered it was in fact the UK Embassy after all. Then I remembered I was in Tehran, on my way home. The Embassy was closed and the costumed guard at first would not let me in, but I insisted, entered a large room and lay out on wooden bench, saying that is was UK and I would stay until I saw an official. That is how I was taken to the Tehran hospital. I was treated well over the week of my stay, put back on my feet and afterwards the Embassy guy took me back to my hotel to get my bags and next day took me to the airport from where I flew to Heathrow. Unfortunately, just as in the previous two hospitals they did not cure me.

 

2.  TRANSLATION: the dirty hippy man that Mahatma Ji brought into my Chai shop by the bridge in Haridwar, did not look well. He was hot and I think he had been smoking charas. We did not speak the same language but I wanted to help him and I wanted to tell him to go to doctor. I could only give him Chai with extra sugar and milk. Then he soon went off and I never saw him another time.

3..It wasn’t until I had reached Delhi by train that I knew that I was far more ill than I knew. As well as having dysentery, I had contracted Hepatitis A, the infectious sort, that I thought I had picked up in Kabul. I spent a week in hospital in Delhi, well fed and resting in the cool, which was good for me as I had completely run out of money. It was good that I had left Haridwar which was where I’d first got sick. I don’t think there would have been much of a hospital there and surely no ashram would want me

I had a horribly-tasting porridge for breakfast that morning, along with poorly cooked eggs and toast and tea. That was the day I became ill with dysentery, the day everything changed. That day I was cleansed.

Kabul was a lovely city with friendly yet strange people and hardly a local woman to be seen without a full Burkha. But it was filthy. They had little care for hygiene. The water provided on the tables of restaurants was dodgy; even bottled water could not be guaranteed clean and often may have been from the tap. Whilst salads were washed in tap water, fruit was not washed at all. We saw donkeys shitting in the street next to open stalls cooking and selling food, fruit or bread. We were advised to be careful when eating with a wet fork or spoon or when drinking in a cafe, for fear of hepatitis or other sicknesses. As for the opium den, well it was the pits. We had two pipes and left hoping that we would not be ill later. It was nothing like the clean opium farm we had stayed at for three days in Iran.

When I was admitted into the hospital in Wales, they took away my Iranian medication and ignored my diet of no fried food or salads. As a vegetarian, then, I had to eat salad and chips twice a day until their test results came in, after which time they reinstated my diet and fed me better. They kept me there one week and loaded me up with pills. Apparently I had a bacteria that came from dirty water.

The bus ride from Kabul to Tehran took 5 days, changing buses several times, sleeping and eating in the cheapest places I could find, having to drink tap water. I got sick a few times but I did arrive in Kabul, dirty, hungry and ill.

 

4.  TRANSLATION: We were sitting in the shade of a holy tree and smoking chillums of the holy herb, when I saw a thin and bedraggled western man with long hair walking besides the Holy River Ganges. I watched as he slowly stepped down into the rushing waters and he disappeared beneath them briefly. After he had pulled himself out and was walking closer, I called to him to come to us and invited him to smoke with us, the Holy Herb. I asked him why he had come to the city of Haridwar and he said to meet with me. We laughed; we shared a drink of water from the river. A short while later he left with Mahatma Ji from the ashram of Prem Nagar, the place of the Guru Sant Ji Maharaj, I never saw the young Western man again.

5.. I sipped fruit juice on my way back to the railway station bench where I had slept. I think it was that what made me puke. I’d been quite stoned on chillums that day so being sick was doubly unpleasant.

6.  I saw a young man with very long hair sitting in a busy street in my home town of Tehran. He looked as he needed help so I spoke to him. He asked me to show him to the UK Embassy. I knew it was round the corner in the other big street so I took him there. It was in fact UK embassy so I left him there and he went inside. I don’t know more than that.

 

7.  After several chillums besides the Ganges and a brief dip, I met a Mahatma and was invited to stay at an ashram. I drank some tea and returned to my sleeping bench at the train station in Haridwar. I became sick and never made it to the ashram. The illness was to last for weeks and reoccur. I have often wondered if it was something I drank or just Karma.

 

8.  Peshawar was one of the filthiest places I had to stay in. Eating almost anything was a risk. We were lucky to be taken to The Secret Restaurant, run by Swiss hippies, which was clean with good food and dope. Our hotel was dirty with an open toilet on the roof. There were a lot of sick people in Peshawar and many drug addicts.

 

9.  The Mahatma took me to a chai house and ordered a cup for me. He invited me to join the Arti parade through Haridwar early evening and said that afterwards, if I wished, I could go and stay in the ashram. He left without paying for the chai, telling the waiter that it was baksheesh and not to ask me to pay. The waiter or tea-house owner did not seem to happy with that. The chai tasted strange but it was hot day so I drank it down fast. Afterwards I went back to the bench at the railway station where I had spent the previous night, I thought to relax until the evening parade. On the way I bought some fruit juice and sweet cakes. It was not long afterwards that I began to vomit and soon I had diarrhoea so I never made it to the Ashram.

 

10  TRANSLATION: I was walking alongside the river with a group of Premies on our way back to our ashram. A local Baba called to me and there I met the young man from UK. As were many young men who visited our city, he was long-haired and quite dirty. We took him to a Chai shop where I ordered a drink of chai for him, telling that he should not be charged any money. The owner was not pleased but served chai. I invited him to join our Arti parade that evening and to stay at our ashram. Then we left. I never saw that young man again.

 

11.  I’d awoken early and took a breakfast of spicy chai, porridge and eggs on toast. I wasn’t too keen on the porridge; it was slimy and too sweet. Then I made my way across the bridge to the other side of the Ganges, one of the major holy rivers of India. It is said that to drink the waters of the Ganges is to purify the soul. So I strolled along the river bank and spotted a group of younger men sitting around an orange-robbed elder – they called them Baba’s or holy men Sadhus and they smoked chillums of hashish dedicated to the god Shiva. He shouted and waved me over. On such a hot day, sitting in the shade of the tree smoking a chillum was appealing enough, alongside a possible dip in the river. So I went over and sat with them. They lit and passed me a chillum. I gave a couple of rupees and we smoked another. I said my thanks and carried on walking down besides the river but soon was invited to smoke another chillum with a different group. By now, I was very high. I took a quick dip in the Ganges but slipped my footing and quickly found myself below the rapidly moving water, getting a mouthful. By luck or grace, I managed to pull myself out and clamber up the steps. I was soon sipping weak fruit juice with another Baba, smoking more chillums. This Baba asked me why I had come to Haridwar. “To meet you,” I said and we both laughed loudly. He asked if I would like chai and said that soon the Mahatma would pass by and take me for tea. After drinking a strange tasting chai I went back to the station to rest on my bench, intending to accept the Mahatma’s invitation to his ashram. Then I got sick. I puked onto the station platform and managed to get then to the toilet where I emptied my bowels. It was the beginning and the end – the beginning of an illness and end to my outwards journey. Maybe it was a cleansing?

 

12.  TRANSLATION: the Young man from England had slept on the platform bench. In the morning he left. He came back again late that afternoon and returned to the bench. I decided to let him rest there. After a while I saw him being sick over the platform onto the tracks and then he rushed into the latrine. That was at the end of my working day, so I went home and prayed for him. The God never showed me that man again; I do not know what happened to him. The sickness here can quickly kill people from the West.

 

13.  The young hippy man was stretched out on a bench in Reception at the Embassy when I arrived. Although the Embassy was closed that day, he had, I was told, insisted that he be allowed inside as it was UK territory and he was British. He was quite correct. He told me his name and explained that he was travelling back from India after becoming ill there with dysentery and hepatitis of the infectious kind; he did look very ill. He told me that he had been in hospital in Delhi and in Kabul. He had run out of money but some had been sent to the British Embassy in Kabul, but instead of using it to fly back to the UK, he had left most of it at the Embassy and tried to go all the way by road. So he had been several days travelling and had booked in at a Tehran hotel. That morning he had set off to the American Express offices where he hoped would be some money waiting for him. I decided to take him direct to the Tehran general hospital where they admitted him immediately; then I made arrangements to transport him to the hotel to collect his baggage and then to the airport to fly back to Heathrow, one week later. I know that is what happened but apart from that, I don’t know. We get quite a few poor travellers coming from India or Afghanistan with little money and poor health, that need help to get home. In this case it was the man’s parents that paid; often it is the country itself, then we must take their passports when they arrive back in the UK until they repay the transport costs.

 

14.  I was staying at the same hotel in Kabul. He got more and more ill. I know he was being sick a lot, getting dehydrated and hardly eating. Then one day I heard that he had been taken to the hospital and they kept him there for about a week. I was still at the hotel when he got back. He still wasn’t very well, but able to walk; when they took him in, he could hardly stand up. A lot of people get sick on their journey through Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal. I must be one of the lucky ones.

15.  Inside the opium farmer’s house was surprisingly clean and comfortable. It was all ground level, cushions and carpets and low tables, sleeping mattresses on the floor. The village was very basic, just a small group of stone houses, a rough road running through it, where we had driven to the house. Quite a lot of donkeys were tied up outside. Soon after we arrived, they served us black tea with sweet cakes, followed by bread, salads and dips, all of which we ate with our washed hands. That was quite novel, no forks or spoons, but somehow it seemed so natural. The water, they said, was good to drink as it came from the well. After lunch we lazed around chatting for a few hours, then our host, the opium farmer’s son, invited us to smoke opium. Apparently the father had permission from the government to grow the poppies and, strangely, was not only a supplier of opium to locals (and maybe the occasional travellers), but he was also the local policeman. We smoked several pipes each: we were each given our own mouthpiece that slipped easily onto our end of the long wooden pipe with the bowl at the other end; as we inhaled to maximum, the farmer applied heat to a small ball of black opium with he turned, gleefully, until he knew we could inhale no more. Actually, although not one that I intended to repeat, it was a pleasant feeling, a relaxed, dreamy buzz, in the room with the men who were also laying on cushions, taking their turns, was nothing at all as I would have imagined an opium den to be. I felt safe.

 

16.  The train ride from Delhi to Haridwar took many hours. The carriages were crowded and dirty and the stink from the unflushable toilet was sickening. I had very little money left so ate what was available at the many stations where we stopped. Dahl and chapati or samosas, spicy milky sweet Chai and biscuits or sweet cakes, lots of bottled water although I wondered if they were simply refilled from a tap. It was a very uncomfortable journey and as soon as I reached Haridwar and was off the train with the crowds wandering off to do whatever they do, I spotted a bench on the platform and stretched out and slept for the first time in 48 hours. Mercifully, nobody disturbed me or robbed me. Next morning I bought a cheap breakfast and headed off to cross the River Ganges.

17.  I was wandering about New Delhi with little purpose and no money, when I spotted Al sitting on a wall. He was long-haired and bearded and looked friendly enough, smiling as I approached him. I introduced myself and he invited me to sit besides him. I explained that I had come to India over a year ago with my boyfriend but when I got pregnant, he left; I told Al that I had had an abortion and was now penniless and hungry. He told me that he had been ill with hepatitis A and dysentery and that he had been in hospital in Delhi. Well he did look quite ill, very skinny and worn. He said he was just 22 and I was just 20. Al said that he could not give me money but I was welcome to share his fat-free meal at the Chinese restaurant and that he was sitting waiting for the to open up. That evening and for many weeks to come, we shared food. That night we lay together in the local park but he would not get close as he said he did not want to risk giving me hepatitis. After a few days he received a few pounds from England; about a week’s wage there but should last many weeks here. Al wanted to get back to the UK overland and he agreed to take me with him. Actually, I just wanted to get to Kabul. We took the train to Amritsar then buses through Pakistan to Islamabad and Rawalpindi. They were two cities, new and old, right next to each other. We stayed in a cheap hotel in Rawalpindi. The hotel was as dirty as the streets. I had to take a bus to the new city of Islamabad to the British Embassy to pick up some money that my parents had sent. Then we took buses to Peshawar and then through the Kyber Pass to Kabul. The money went quick though. We’d been in Kabul a week or so and he started getting sick again. One day he couldn’t stand up so I took him to the hospital and they kept him there. I visited after a few days and he looked so much better but he did not know when they planned to release him. I got the taxi driver to translate and he said that the only doctor that spoke English was away until the weekend, so they were keeping Al ’til then. Al said that they were feeding him on soggy rice and black tea. He came back to our hotel a few days later. He was not happy when I told him I had given most of the money away to a French woman whose husband was locked in the prison, and I had lost my passport. Al wanted to leave Kabul as soon as he could and said he thought he’d die there if he stayed. So he helped me get a new passport and himself went to the embassy for help. He managed to get some money from his parents sent out. But when I got the new passport they wanted me to have to go back through the Kyber Pass to the border to get an entry stamp, or they would not let me out of Afghanistan. That was stupid, to me, to have to pay for two bus rides when I thought they should be able to do it in the post. We argued about that a lot. We had a weird trip on acid then, which seemed to bring us closer together but we still argued the next day. Al said that if I would not go to get the entry stamp, he would catch the bus alone to go west. I didn’t really care as I was not going back. So one night he said that the next morning he would either go back to the border with me or go west alone. I decided to stay – he gave me half his money and left. I never saw him again.