I arrived into Al-Nouman hospital a little ruffled, and so I asked for a glass of cold water. I was checked for a gun, and realized that if they would have found one, it would not have created a problem. Instead, the guy behind me checked in his gun and took the police officer's badge as collateral.
I started to look for the doctor who was to help me out, but he was nowhere to be found. Finally, I heard word that he was called in late last night, and so was probably sleeping. "Oh yeah, you can wake that guy up about as easily as you can wake the dead."
How would you try to wake the dead? For me, my knuckles grew raw knocking at the door, so I grabbed a stick and batted on it until the neighbours were checking their doors. But still no response. This continued off and on for about an hour before I finally surrendered. I left a message with one of his coworkers, and left it at that. Strike hospital #2.
I hooked up with Dahr Jamail, a great reporter for The New Standard, and his "fixer" at a hospital in Yarmouk (1 hour by vans), one of the worser off hospitals in the region. The director was an absolute joke, insisting that the hospital did not lack supplies, equipment, money, or respect. They didn't need any help, and actually everybody in the whole place spoke English flawlessly, so I could serve no role as a translator or buffer between them and the Americans during the frequent raids which actually never happened. What he didn't realize was that this was a follow-up visit for Dahr, and so he knew better. After some weeding around, we finally found a woman who would be honest with us.
With every word, Dahr, his fixer and I were falling in love (with the woman, that is). She spoke with such passion and intensity. When the fixer asked her who her husband was, she promptly put him in his place: "These are my words. My husband has nothing to do with this." She told us as much as she could. Wow. Did she have a daughter? Yes, just finished her first year of medical school. : ) I got her phone number (the mother, not the daughter), and asked if she would help me work in the hospital. She would try.
tarek