Murree
Scottish poet Tessa Ransford first went to live in what was West Pakistan in January 1960 as a missionary’s wife to work in women and children’s welfare. Her new book ‘don’t mention this to anyone’ (Luath Press) consists of poems and prose fragments of life in the Punjab
This poem recalls the time when I was alone for three months with my 18-month old baby in a little tin-roofed, two-roomed bothy in the foothills of the Himalayas in Murree, 20 miles and 7,000 feet up the mountains from Rawalpindi. This had meant a full day’s drive from where we lived in Sialkot and renting the mission car, packing everything we needed, including stove, bedding and crockery, etc.
There were half a dozen such houses on the hillside compound, which missionary wives and children rented for the height of the hot season. A watchman was responsible for our safety at night and would sit outside one or other of the houses. I was six-months pregnant with a second baby. An old mission servant was with me but didn’t live in the house. When the little one was ill, as she was constantly with coughs and fevers, since it was often damp and stormy and life was more or less like camping, I used to feel anxious and lonely.
There was no telephone and to go to the clinic was a long walk. On one occasion I was in tears and the old man told me that another Scottish missionary wife, for whom he had worked, had a baby much more seriously ill than mine was and hadn’t cried. In fact her baby had died, so that didn’t exactly cheer me up!
I have set the scene however in the Punjab plains where we lived most of the year and where the mali, or gardener, used to come in with flowers from the rather wild garden which surrounded the bungalow. There was no front door and he would just appear, bare-foot, from the verandah, smiling, give me the flowers and disappear again.
But
heat, dust
aching legs
throbbing head
children sick
no privacy
no light, no water
mosquitoes, flies
ants, weevils
the stove smokes
feel like weeping
no phone no friend
The servant sees me:
‘the other memsahib never cried
when things were much worse’
then I cry and cry the more
‘please don’t mention this to anyone’
he won’t
his pride and sense of honour
restores my own, a little
The mali appears barefoot
silently with sweet peas
Tessa Ransford is a poet and founder of the Scottish
Poetry Library
A further fragment from this collection will appear in Thursday’s Scottish Review
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