Sir, please step on to the table, said an elderly rugged woman, perhaps the janitor of the building, who opened the doctor's chamber for us. She said this pointing at the table where pregnant women mount to give birth, seeing me hesitant for a moment when asked to prepare myself for an examination by a no-nonsense looking male gynecologist Dr Orhan Gelsin on a Sunday in August of 1986 in Turkey.
On the previous night I scurried out of bed in panic in the middle of the night as I felt suffocated in a stuffy room and tried desperately to live for another day. I found relief after I opened one of the window panes and cursed myself for my stupidity not to have thought about it before I went to sleep. A cool breeze, as if coming from a tunnel linked to the heavens, put me back to sleep and a deep sleep indeed.
I woke up in the morning with a slight ache in my lower abdomen which gradually increased in intensity. By 11:00am it became unbearable, so much so, that I had to seek help from the caretaker of the government accommodation I was put up after my arrival in Turkey only days ago.
However, Mr Hussein Khamber, the driver with the Ministry of Education cum the Caretaker of the lodging, knew no English while Turkish was Greek to me back then.
Accordingly, the Ministry was informed of my sudden indisposition and a young education officer was put in charge of taking me to a doctor.
Since Saturdays and Sundays are weekly holidays and the Turks, being nomadic in nature, usually spend weekends with their families away from home and that made it all the more difficult for anyone to find any medical practitioner worth the name in town on that day.
The young man from the Ministry, looking visually nervous and out of his wits on a holiday, took me in his car and drove me round the city in search of a doctor and more importantly one who could speak English. He often parked his car by the pavement near phone booths before resuming his search. At about 1:00pm he emerged from one of his many runs to the phone booths smiling and informed me that a doctor has been found who is conversant in English.
We arrived at a community centre where a wedding reception was being held. The young officer walked into the hall leaving me in his car to nurse my excruciating stomach ache---caused by exposure to extreme cold-related inflammation of my internal organs, I was later told.
He came out of the wedding hall literally dragging a handsome man in his forties perhaps directly from the dining table and gleaming like one who has confirmed his continuity in his job.
I was thus taken to the only available doctor in town who could speak in English. And he happened to be Dr Orhan Gelsin, the renowned gynecologist with a degree from England, whom I befriended for the rest of my tenure as a teacher with the Turkish Ministry of National Education in that exceedingly hospitable country.
The writer is Joint News Editor, The Daily Observer
