“Myself, I prefer to prevent afflictions, rather than have to cure them, even though prevention puts no money in my purse. For example, I instruct all the mothers here in this encampment to boil the milk they give their children. Whether it be yak milk, camel milk, whatever, I urge that it first be boiled, and in a vessel of iron. As is known to all people, the nastier jinn and other sorts of demons are repelled by iron. And I have determined by experiment that the boiling of milk liberates from the vessel its iron juice, and mixes that into the milk, and thereby fends off any jinni that might lurk in readiness to inflict some childhood disease.”
“It sounds reasonable,” said my father.
“I am a strong advocate of experiment,” the old hakim went on. “Medicine’s accepted rules and recipes are all very well, but I have often found by experiment new cures which do not accord with the old rules. Sea salt, for one. Not even the greatest of all healers, the sage ibn Sina, seems ever to have noticed that there is some subtle difference between sea salt and that obtained from inland salt flats. From none of the ancient treatises can I divine any reason for there being such a difference. But something about sea salt prevents and cures goiters and other such tumorous swellings of the body. Experiment has proven it to me.”
I made a private resolve to go and apologize to the little Chola salt merchants I had laughed at.
“Well, come then, Dotòr Balanzòn!” my uncle boomed, mischievously calling him by the name of that Venetian comic personage. “Let us get this over with, so you can tell me which you prescribe for my damned tisichezza—the sea salt or the boiled milk.”
So the hakim proceeded to his examination diagnostic, probing here and there at Uncle Mafio and asking him questions. After some while he said:
“I cannot know how bad was the coughing before. But, as you say, it is not very bad now, and I hear little crepitation inside the chest. Do you have any pain there?”
“Only now and then,” said my uncle. “Understandable, I suppose, after all the hard coughing I have done.”
“But allow me a guess,” said Hakim Mimdad. “You feel it only in one place. Under your left breastbone.”
“Why, yes. Yes, that is so.”
“Also, your skin is quite warm. Is this fever constant?”
“It comes and goes. It comes, I sweat, it goes away.”
“Open your mouth, please.” He peered inside it, then lifted the lips away to look at the gums. “Now hold out your hands.” He looked at them front and back. “Now, if I may pluck just one hair of your head?” He did, and Uncle Mafio did not wince, and the physician scrutinized the hair, bending it in his fingers. Then he asked, “Do you feel a frequent need to make kut?”
My uncle laughed and rolled his eyes bawdily. “I feel many needs, and frequently. How does one make kut?”
The hakim, looking tolerant, as if he were dealing with a child, significantly patted a hand on his own backside.
“Ah, kut is merda!” roared my uncle, still laughing. “Yes, I have to make it frequently. Ever since that earlier hakim gave me his damned purgative, I have been afflicted with the cagasangue. It keeps me trotting. But what does all this have to do with a lung ailment?”
“I think you do not have the hasht nafri.”
“Not the tisichezza?” my father spoke up, surprised. “But he was coughing blood at one time.”
“Not from the lungs,” said Hakim Mimdad. “It is his gums exuding blood.”
“Well,” said Uncle Mafio, “a man can hardly be displeased to hear that his lungs are not failing. But I gather that you suspect some other ailment.”
“I will ask you to make water into this little jar. I can tell you more after I have inspected the urine for signs diagnostic.”
“Experiments,” my uncle muttered.
“Exactly. In the meantime, if the innkeeper Iqbal will bring me some egg yolks, I would have you allow the application of more of the little Quran papers.”
“Do they do any good?”
“They do no harm. Much of medicine consists of precisely that: not doing harm.”
When the hakim departed, carrying the small jar of urine with his hand capping it to prevent any contamination, I also left the karwansarai. I went first to the tents of the Tamil Cholas and said words of apology and wished those men all prosperity—which seemed to make them even more nervous than they always were anyway—and then wended my way to the establishment of the Jew Shimon.
I asked again to have my tool greased, and asked to have Chiv do it again, and I got her, and as she had promised, she did present me with a fine new knife, and to show my gratitude I tried to outdo my former prowess in the performance of surata. Afterward, on my way out, I paused to chide old Shimon yet again:
“You and your nasty mind. You said all those belittling things about the Romm people, but look what a splendid gift the girl just gave me in exchange for my old blade.”
He humphed indifferently and said, “Be glad she has not yet given you one between your ribs.”
I showed him the knife. “I never saw one like this before. It resembles any ordinary dagger, yes? A single wide blade. But watch. When I have stabbed it into some prey, I squeeze the handle: so. And that wide blade separates into two, and they spring apart, and this third, hidden, inner blade darts out from between them, to pierce the prey even more deeply. Is it not a marvelous contrivance?”
“Yes. I recognize it now. I gave it a good sharpening not long ago. And I suggest, if you keep it, that you keep it handy. It formerly belonged to a very large Hunzuk mountain man who drops in here occasionally. I do not know his name, for everyone calls him simply the Squeeze Knife Man, because of his proficiency with it and his ready employment of it when his temper is … . Must you dash off?”
“My uncle is ailing,” I said, as I went out the door. “I really should not stay away too long at a time.”
I did not know if the Jew was just making a crude jest, but I was not confronted by any large and ill-tempered Hunzik man between Shimon’s place and the karwansarai. To avoid any such confrontation, I stayed prudently close to the inn’s main building for the next few days, listening, in company with my father or uncle, to the various bits of advice dispensed by the landlord Iqbal.
When we loudly praised the good milk given by the cow yaks, and loudly marveled at the bravery of the Bho who dared to milk those monsters, Iqbal told us, “There is a simple trick to milking a cow yak without hazard. Only give her a calf to lick and nuzzle, and she will stand still and serene while it is being done.”
But not all the information we got at that time was welcome. The Hakim Mimdad came again to confer with Uncle Mafio, and began by suggesting gravely that it be done in private. My father and Nostril and I were present, and we got up to leave the chamber, but my uncle stopped us with a peremptory flap of his hand.
“I do not keep secret any matters that may eventually concern my karwan partners. Whatever you have to tell, you may tell us all.”
The hakim shrugged. “Then, if you will drop your pai-jamah …”
My uncle did, and the hakim eyed his bare crotch and big zab. “The hairlessness, is that natural or do you shave yourself there?”
“I take it off with a salve called mumum. Why?”
“Without the hair, the discoloration is easy to see,” said the hakim, pointing. “Look down at your abdomen. You see that metallic gray tinge to the skin there?”
My uncle looked, and so did all of us. He asked, “Caused by the mumum?”
“No,” said Hakim Mimdad. “I noticed the lividity also on the skin of your hands. When next you remove your chamus boots, you will see it on your feet as well. These manifestations tend to confirm what I suspected from my earlier examination and from observation of your urine. Here, I have poured it into a white jar so you may observe for yourself. The smoky color of it.”