Meet Your Neighbors

There are a lot of ways to meet your neighbors -- at the market, at the mosque, or at the cops. But one of the best ways to get a true cross-section of your neighbors -- independent of origin, creed, or thought -- is at the hospital.

The sun had long since set when my friend came down with a fever of astronomical proportions as well as devilish hives, so she and I and an older lady hit a taxi and made for a nighttime clinic. Straight away, we entered what I would call the "Injection Room", because everyone in there was getting an injection. And then we froze in the middle of the room, transfixed. One of the patients was screaming her head off, calling out for everyone from her mother to Imam Husain, and we weren't quite sure what was wrong with her.

A nurse took us out of our reverie and led my friend to a bed, where she hooked her up to her serum (this was a bring-your-own medicine clinic) and left her to drip. I surveyed the nondescript room and realized that being in the hospital in Iran was way different than being in the hospital in America. In America, they do everything they can to keep the patients separate. Here -- like so many other things -- it was more of a social experience. "What's wrong with her?" "Will she get better?" And, of course, "Salaam alaikum!!! How are you??? So good to see you!!!!!" (Small world, eh) Another lady chided the screaming woman, "Quit that wailing, and quiet down now." While I had hitherto been somewhat put off by the local habit of telling whoever is doing something out of the norm to STOP doing it in the most demeaning of ways, I detected an undercurrent of concern behind the lady's words, and I began to look at my neighbors differently.

As we waited (drip... drip... drip... there were 1,000 mL to drip), I realized something else. Incapacitated or otherwise, these women were stylish. I don't know how they did it, but all of the women there (except for this sedate lady) were wearing the most classy mantos, "in" pants, and vogue chadors. They even had elaborate make-up jobs and impeccable hairdos (except for the screaming lady, but that was probably because she was grabbing at her head). I wondered if I would look so together in a medical emergency.

As another 50 mL dripped, I began to get bored (even my friend was bored), so I wandered out to the waiting room. There, everyone -- men, women, friends, relatives, employees -- was literally glued to the TV set, which was showing the hit miniseries Nargis. Since, having missed the first few episodes, I wasn't quite sure what Nargis was about, I tried to ask the lady next to me, but I was met with a chorus of "SSSSSSSHHHHHH!!!" I did however glean that it was about some boy who wanted to marry some girl but his dad wouldn't let him.

With some sympathy for the poor guy, I left the roomful of zombies and returned to the drip. The lady had stopped yelling and was asleep. My friend's fever and hives had subsided too. And then the bill came. When I saw it, I almost had to be admitted to the hospital. Weren't there supposed to be some more zeroes??? Granted, this clinic lacked some amenities that hospitals have back home (such as changing the sheets between patients), but surely sheet-changing can't be on the level of powers of ten. We paid the (to my American eyes) measly bill, and then made our way back.

The next morning, I woke up with a fever that, in my imagination, rivaled our daytime temperature. "Why don't you go to the doctor?" someone asked.

Visions of soaring medical bills, inscrutable deductibles, and overpriced pharmaceuticals danced in my head. "Nah, I'm not that sick," I said.

"You Americans," she laughed. "You never want to go to the doctor."

She had a point.