Ghulam Rasool is twelve years old, though if I were asked to hazard a guess, I’d say he was seven. He lies in Bed 51 in the medicine ward, which is one bed away from the window. He wears a blue shirt, which is actually part of his school uniform. It is the better of his two shirts.

He is so thin that his ribs are clearly seen, like twigs half buried in the dust.
He used to cry continuously when he came in, but he doesn’t any more. Now he only cries, a dull, tired, monotonous wail, if a clumsy medical student jogs his arm, and makes the ragged bruise at the place where a channel was put into his vein ache.
--
Medical students come in droves to his bedside because he has almost all the characteristic features of aortic regurgitation and aortic stenosis.
--
‘A seagull murmur, it is called, owing to its resemblance to the call of the bird,’ the professor says. ‘Who can tell me why this happens?’
We all look at one another mystified. We desperately try to think of anything that might conceivably produce a high pitched sound in the heart.
‘Ruptured chordae tendinae, sir?’ I ask, uncertainly.
‘That’s right. Good.’ he says, as he puts his stethoscope to Rasool’s chest.
And the lecture continues, and we are all so busy looking for his murmur, that we do not look at Rasool.
--
You see, we know Rasool’s place in this world: He is only the shell surrounding a defective heart.
--
And the professor turns to us, having concluded a conversation with an eager young doctor.
‘Do you hear it?’ he asks. ‘There is a high pitched sound right at the end of the murmur. A prime example.’
‘Yes, yes,’ we say, as we nod to one another. ‘Yes. Exactly so.’