out, but at the time they were disconcerting. Rifle fire into the air, particularly with tracer rounds, was everywhere but came mainly from out west in the tribal areas. Our house almost bordered the tribal areas and so this was seen later to have been not so uncommon. But in those first few days it was unnerving.
One night, at perhaps 2 or 3 am, I woke up to the feeling of a gentle rocking. This seemed to accelerate and become more violent. It was an earthquake tremor but I couldn’t tell, just then, how bad it would get. I sat up and this woke Judy. She too sat there for a moment and then said in a strong and authoritative tone, “Tanks.” I said “What?” and asked her what she meant. “Tanks, there are army tanks coming along the road”, she said convincingly. I looked at her and said, “Are you joking. It’s an earthquake. Quick, let’s get outside.” So we pulled on a jacket and a bath robe and rushed outside to avoid falling items or a roof collapse. As we did, the tremors slowed and eventually ceased. I looked at Jude’s distorted and worried face and just had to laugh. She was not impressed and said to me in a convivial tone, “Well it could very well have been tanks,” then marched off up to bed. I haven’t raised that conversation very much in the past years and I remain a little concerned about writing it here now.
After about a week in Hyatterbad, I went to sleep in good spirits after playing some cards with Judy as there was no real television to watch except that from the region, meaning Pakistani and Indian films, or CNN. Incidentally, I won the card game that night so my spirits were high when I fell into a deep sleep, or so I thought. During the night I began to have small and very violent nightmares that woke me up several times. The last nightmare I remember was something being burnt onto my face, like a hot iron, in some macabre torture story. It was still dark but I remember waking and feeling hot and choked. I felt like someone was strangling me or that I had something tied around my throat. As I regained full consciousness I realised that my tongue seemed swollen and my eyes were squinty and sore. I got out of bed and went to the bathroom to rinse out my mouth and to cool my face with water. I turned on the light and in front of me, looking back from the mirror was a distorted and swollen face I had never seen before. Of course it was me, but my face was swollen dramatically. My eyes looked like I had just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson, my nose was the size of an orange and worst of all my tongue was at least twice its size. I couldn’t believe it. I stared at my reflection then felt my face and twitched it as far as I could move it in any direction. It was bizarre. I went and woke up Jude who almost screamed and asked the obvious, “What happened to you?” Well of course I didn’t know, but I assumed I had an allergic reaction to something I’d eaten or that perhaps something had bitten me during the night. The food I had eaten was nothing special and Jude had eaten the same. We searched the bed sheets and under the bed and around the windows and light for some spider or insect but again, nothing unusual. I was mystified but more than a little worried. I was looking like a smaller version of the Thing in X-Men and didn’t know how long it would last. Jude made me a cup of tea that I tried to sip but my tongue was so thick and fat I really couldn’t. My personal fear was that I could choke if the swelling of my tongue continued as it would block my airway. Already I was snorting air but in reality I had quite clear breathing. The rest of my body was normal and my skin looked the same. I checked my pulse rate and my breath rate and they too were normal. All I could do was wait until morning, and then go see a doctor. Jude rang a friend we had met earlier and woke her. She asked which hospital we could go to and we got the response, “The north west Frontier Province Teaching Hospital downtown in central Peshawar.” I really didn’t get any better in the next three hours before we left for the hospital and in fact I could literally open my mouth, and my tongue hung out from my mouth by about two centimetres.
At about 7 am the driver turned up and after he got over his shock at my face, we drove to the hospital. We were told this was the best hospital in the province and so we expected a reasonable place that would be able to assist directly. But when we arrived I almost grabbed my tongue and turned the car around to go home. It was an old, run-down looking building of stained concrete with a messy, dirty car park that joined the main building. People had been there, apparently camping all night, waiting for service or waiting for news of friends and relatives being cared for. There were people everywhere. Inside, the dark corridors had few lights working and people were asleep on the floor throughout the hospital. Some were sitting in the corridors sniffing, coughing, moaning and spitting. It was a real mess. At the reception desk two young nurses looked at us with startled faces. Judy told them what had happened and that I needed to see a doctor now. The poor senior nurse saw Jude’s obvious urgency and asked us to fill in a bunch of forms. Jude grabbed them all and said authoritatively, “Where is the doctor?” With this, the nurse got up and beckoned Jude and I to follow her. As we walked along following this neatly dressed nurse, we passed four dead bodies lying in a recess area along the corridor and I felt like I’d come to a very wrong place.
The nurse then took us into a large medical room that had a number of stainless steel benches, a large sink, huge neon lights and an operating table. It wasn’t a real operating room but had quite obviously been turned into a temporary, ad hoc one. The green sheet over the operating table was heavily stained with what appeared to be blood and other human fluids. The outer packets of needles and bandage wrappings lay across the floor and the large bench had several old needles and empty medicine bottles upon it. This really was a house of ill repute, I thought, and here I was, suffering from some unknown medical complaint when in fact I might be infected with something far worse by just being here. The nurse took my personal details including my army regimental number because I couldn’t remember the number of my new ‘official passport’ and my UN Laissez Passer had not yet been produced. I wrote most of this onto the forms she gave me and noticed she was staring at my swollen and disfigured face. It was then, in this place of ruin and disgust, I realised I must of looked like a frightening monster with my eyes bloated, my nose three times its normal size and my tongue lolling awkwardly outside the range of my lips. I was really in a terrible circumstance and not helped by what I could see, smell and hear around me.
Eventually a doctor came to see me. He spoke good English and seemed very professional, calm and sympathetic. He looked at my face, put on a clean pair of surgical gloves and inspected my tongue, ears and nose. I think he was quite taken aback by my affliction but perhaps a little relieved to get away from the death cases that had apparently been going on through the night. The doctor asked many questions about any former allergies, of which I had none, previous incidents of swellings and unusual insect bites or strange food in the last 48 hours of which I knew of none. He really didn’t get much help from me as I had no idea why I was sitting here looking like Joseph Merrick, the Elephant man. Finally he determined that the swelling and bashed up look was all of the same doing. He surprisingly said it was caused by a severe and unusual reaction to stress. I almost choked and said, “But, I don’t understand. I’ve been through far greater stress in my army life and nothing has done this to me before.” The doctor was mildly interested in my response and just said that this is what he believed was the case and with a couple of anti-inflammatory injections and some form of settling medicine, I would be free to leave and the swelling would disappear in a day or two. I admit I was a bit disappointed with his diagnoses, but what could I do? He told the nurses, as now a second nurse had joined us, some instructions in Urdu whilst he continued to take my blood pressure and stick his fingers into my mouth, nose and ears. The nurses left then returned a few minutes later with two syringe needles and a couple of small bottles. I was a bit pessimistic and it must have shown as the doctor said, “These are new needles and they are still in date as are these two bottles of ‘something and something else’ so please do not worry.” He smiled and indeed I did relax and allowed him to inject the two medicines into my arm. Thanking the doctor and the two pretty nurses, we walked outside again, down the wretched corridors and past the diseased and agonising people waiting for medical attention, or death, and left the Hospital. I felt more relaxed on the way home and perhaps it was the medicines already taking effect or the calming comments from the doctor.
We got home and I went straight to bed and slept for another eight hours. It was well into the late afternoon when I did wake up, and, although I felt lousy, my face and tongue seemed to have reduced in size. I ran to the bathroom to check the
