Travels with my Daughter. Niema Ash

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      I did not accept the charge of irresponsible mother, although I knew a good case could be made to support it. As a matter of fact it would be possible to argue that my being a mother was one long series of irresponsible behaviour, and that this Moroccan trip was only one more irresponsibility in a long list which began with Ronit’s conception.

      Ronit was conceived while Shimon and I were hitch-hiking from East Africa to South Africa. Shimon was South African. We had met in Israel and married so that he could obtain leave from the army, which had exhausted him. With borrowed money we flew from Tel Aviv to Nairobi to visit Shimon’s sister and then hitchhiked the vast distance to Johannesburg to visit the rest of his family. At that time hitchhiking was the only means of travelling by land. There was no public transportation. Actually there were no roads, only dirt tracks riddled with ridges and potholes. The journey was difficult, bumping through areas where the tsetse fly had wiped out human life with sleeping sickness and the only visible homo sapiens were fierce-looking nomads, seven feet tall, draped in blankets and beads, wandering with spears and cows. For days on end there was nowhere to buy food or find a bed. Not surprisingly, when we reached the civilisation of Dadoma, Tanganyika, (now Tanzania), we splurged on the luxuries of Hotel Dadoma. These included a bedroom with a four-poster bed, silk sheets and a mosquito net.

      The contrast with nights spent cramped in vehicles or on the floors of wooden shacks was so intoxicating that I became pregnant. However, this fact did not reveal itself to me until we reached Johannesburg, two and a half months later. Meanwhile, secretly, tenaciously, the child in my womb clung to life. Ronit’s survival was nothing short of a miracle.

      Outside Dadoma travelling became treacherous. The jungle paths disappeared into rocks, stumps and gullies. I was so severely shaken by the jolting and thudding that I hung on to my limbs and breasts to prevent them detaching. I held my body together piece by piece. Each time we lurched into a crevice or bounced off a stump, the jolt was so fierce that I found myself clutching my guts to stop them hitting the floor. The poor newly-made Ronit was in there somewhere, hanging on. But at least, unaware of Ronit’s presence, I could not be held responsible for those early months in my acrobatic womb. It was different later on.

      In Johannesburg I discovered I was pregnant. The news was devastating. For me, having a baby was an alien concept, going to Mars was more of a consideration. I wanted only to travel. As a child I was more fascinated by Aladdin and Sinbad than by the Bobbsy Twins and Bessie Bunter. As an adolescent my pin-ups were not movie stars, but maps. Travel was my great passion, my first love, and I wanted nothing to come between it and me.

      Africa was only the beginning, the plan was to travel through Europe to Russia and then onwards from there. But I was forced to stay pregnant, abortion was impossible, only witch doctors performed them. Having no alternative, I decided to ignore the whole thing in the hope that it would go away. In my three months working in Johannesburg, and in the following months hitchhiking through South Africa, Spain and France, I never consulted a doctor. When I confessed this to the Montreal obstetrician, in my final month of pregnancy, he drew his eyebrows tight, sucked in his lips, and stared at me in silence. I like to think it was more in wonder than in censure. After an exhausting examination, he mumbled, “well both you and the baby seem to be healthy,” and shrugged his shoulders, in a gesture indicating there was no accounting for providence, so if he thought I had acted irresponsibly, he never let on.

      I did make one concession to pregnancy: I bought a book on natural childbirth by Dick-Read, a South African doctor. The main fact I gleaned from Dr. Dick-Read was that having a baby didn’t hurt. Secure in that knowledge, and with implicit trust, I put the entire matter out of my head and carried on with my vitaminless, doctorless itinerary. Months later, in hospital, torn apart by the cruellest pain I had ever known, sweating and panting and gasping in the agony of childbirth, I felt outraged by the deception. The only time I cried out was in protest to Shimon. “Damn that Doctor Read,” I wailed, in indignation. “He betrayed us.”

      As if the trauma of those first desperate months clinging to life in the hostile jungles of East Africa wasn’t enough for the poor, unborn foetus Ronit, she had to undergo a further battle for survival in the aggressive waters of the Atlantic. In my sixth month of pregnancy we sailed from Cape Town to Malaga on a Cunard liner. My plan to ignore the pregnancy was working to perfection. No one suspected my condition. The modest swell of belly was easily concealed under loose clothing, and I had virtually forgotten all about it. I participated in the ship’s activities, attending the dances, which I loved, and joining in the games and competitions. When the kicks came, I pressed my hands over the offending area, rubbing it gently, soothing it as though it was a muscle twitch, and waited until it was better.

      Our first stop was the Canary Islands, and eager to see volcanoes and hear Flamenco music, I convinced a reluctant Shimon to leave the ship, having been told it would be easy to get another one. For two weeks we tried unsuccessfully to book a passage to Malaga and finally settled for third class passage on a small elderly ship we had been warned against. Third class consisted of two dorms in the hold, women and children in one, men in the other. The dorm was narrow and windowless with two tiers of bunk beds so close together we had to shuffle sideways between them. The mattresses were lumpy and crawling with bed bugs. There was no deck and no food. The other passengers came equipped with baskets filled with sausages and bread. The smell of garlic, combined with the smell of diesel fumes, was nauseating. To make matters even worse, we ran into a storm the first night at sea. Everyone was sick, babies crying and spurting vomit, splattering the floor and walls with undigested garlic sausage. Suddenly I knew I was pregnant.

      Although terminally nauseous and unable to eat, I couldn’t stop throwing up, my distended belly clenched in spasms of pain from the violent retching. Everything hurt. My aching teeth projected thin needles of pain into my eye sockets and my cheekbones were like rods burning holes into my brain. Shimon searched for a doctor or nurse, fearing the worst. He couldn’t even find a first aid kit, or anyone who spoke English. In desperation he carried me onto the tiny, forbidden, first class deck where at least I could breathe fresh air instead of the stench below. For almost five days I lay on that deck writhing in pain, my stomach contracted in a tight fist punching me from within, battering my womb, as the ship pitched and heaved. I thought I was dying and didn’t much care. But through it all, Ronit held on, determined to be born.

      In a strategically placed mirror, hanging somewhere above the operating table I was lying on, legs forced wide apart by metal stirrups, I watched her being born. Shimon wasn’t allowed in the delivery room and I felt abandoned and alone. Ironically, although I was the centre of attention, I was virtually ignored by the efficient medical staff brusque with preparations and crisp utterances like “dilation,” “uterus,” “diaphragm,” “placenta,” as though none of these related to me. It was disorientating having to look up toward the mirror to see something happening down inside myself while glaring lights distorted my vision and brutal, spasmodic thrusts contorted my womb. Engrossed in mastering a body in chaos and satisfying the demands of a doctor I couldn’t even see, I was suddenly aware of a gentle cajoling voice nuzzling my ear and a hand soothing my forehead. I looked up into the pained eyes of a young intern bending over me, coaxing me into taking whiffs of gas to ease the pain. I pressed my hand into his with the intensity of a new lover, but refused the gas — losing consciousness was even more frightening than giving birth. Heaving and panting I strained to eject the foreign presence trapped in my womb, while the doctor’s voice urged me to keep pushing and the intern’s fingers gripped mine, offering the only comfort.

      “Can you see the head?” the doctor asked, encouraging me to push.

      “No.” My voice scratched through an arid mouth.

      “It’s right here.” A finger flashed into view and disappeared.

      “I can’t see it,” I moaned, my muddled brain straining to comprehend the remote fragmented images in the mirror, through the haze of pain and excitement.

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