“Once God wills our end there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Only my sins make me afraid of dying.”

“You’re worried about your sins—you with your angelic ways.”

A nurse came out of the corridor and approached me.

“You must be Feri McIntosh,” she said.

I nodded.

“I’m sorry I took so long but I was with another patient. She doesn’t want to be in the hospital and was causing a lot of trouble.”

I got up and followed her through the corridor to a room. She was young with small black eyes and heavy eyebrows. She had replaced the buttons on her white uniform with heart-shaped lacquered ones. She gave me a white robe and pointed to a dressing space for me to change. I stepped behind the curtain, thinking it was comforting that the white robe looked like any other hospital robe.

The nurse was very lively and talked all the time as she gave me the routine tests—weighing me, taking my blood pressure, taking blood from my arm. She said her name was Manijeh.

“I hear you’re visiting from the United States,” she said. “I’d like to visit there one day. My fiance is an engineer. When we are married we may go, but first we’ll have to save some money. You know Doctor Majid studied there?”

“Yes.”

“He says going there will only make us restless and dissatisfied.”

“Maybe he has a point.”

“They accept nothing, the Americans; they think they can change the world so they can be happy. Life goes on—you can’t change a thing. Dr. Majid is temperamental. Maybe he’s caught some of that restlessness himself.”

Manijeh led me to another room, where she gave me X-rays and then we came back to the first room to wait for Dr. Majid.

“You’re in good hands,” she said, leaning against the wall. “Since he came here he has done so much for the hospital. We have new equipment, journals to read.”

She sat down as if she had nothing else to do but talk to me. “What do you think of houses in the U.S.—they have no walls around them. Don’t you lose your privacy?”

“Actually Americans are always worried about their privacy.”

There was a shrill cry in the corridor, followed by “No, no, please.” We turned towards the door and listened.

“It must be the old woman who was being admitted before you,” Manijeh said. “She has cancer and has to be operated on but she’s very religious and doesn’t want to be seen by male doctors—all our surgeons are men.”

The sound of crying became louder and then I could see an old woman, wearing the hospital robe and a kerchief, dragged along by a nurse and a young woman.

“Let me die in peace, please let me die,” the old woman pleaded.

Dr. Majid came in, wearing a white uniform. He asked me to sit on the cot in the corner and began to give me more tests—looking into my eyes, ears, pulling my shoulders backward, examining my breasts. Manijeh stood there watching him, with an expression of humility and absolute respect. Then he left and came back quickly. “Nothing shows in the X-rays. And we can’t give you further tests until we have the results of the blood test.”