Exodus
WHEN I LEFT ETHIOPIA two years after Ghosh died, it had nothing to do with Ghosh"s deathbed wishes. It wasn"t about finding Thomas Stone and healing his pain. It wasn"t because the Emperor had been deposed by a creeping military rebellion, or that the armed forces "committee" that took power had been reduced by infighting and murder to one mad dictator, an army sergeant, a man named Mengistu, who"d eventually make Stalin look like an angel.
Rather, I left on Wednesday, January 10, 1979, the day news spread through the city like influenza that four Eritrean guerrillas posing as pa.s.sengers had commandeered an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 707 and forced it to fly to Khartoum, Sudan. One of the four was Genet. That morning she"d been a medical student, albeit one who had fallen three years behind. By evening, she was a liberation fighter.
I was a doctor at long last, an intern finishing up my last rotation. I"d done three months each in internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology and now all that remained was a month of pediatrics.
Hema tracked me down by telephone in the early evening. She"d heard the news about Genet.
"Marion, come home at once."
The tone of her voice made the air around me go still.
"Ma, are you okay? We can"t help her. They may come to talk to us. You are her guardian."
Since Ghosh"s death, without the buffer of his presence, I"d become closer to Hema. She sought my advice, and I looked for time to spend with her. I felt Ghosh"s hand in that.
"Marion, my love, it"s not about Genet ... Adid just called. The secret police are searching for a co-conspirator named Marion Praise Stone. They may be on their way there."
Thank G.o.d for Adid"s source, a Muslim in Security with a soft spot for Missing. Genet"s roommate, a tiny waif of a girl who I am sure had no knowledge of the plot, spit out my name within an hour of the hijack. People will say anything when their fingernails are being ripped out.
Visions of Ghosh, his head shaved, in the Kerchele Prison yard, flashed through my mind. But the old Kerchele was a country club compared with what it was now: an overcrowded torture college, a butcher shop where enemies of the state came to their ends. Bodies and body parts were carried out in trucks every night and posed throughout the city a macabre public arts program that served to educate and edify. Portrait of the Artist as a Dead Man. Headless Woman Pointing Out Orion. Traitor Holding Head in His Hands. Dead Man with p.e.n.i.s in His Mouth. The unifying message was clear: You"re Dead If You Think of Crossing Us.
The Sergeant-President, an uncouth, barbaric man, had only one thing in common with the Emperor: hed never let Eritrea secede. He launched a full-scale military offensive, bombing Eritrean villages where rebels mingled with civilians, putting the Eritrean homeland under siege. But of course, this only served to give new energy to the Eritrean People"s Liberation Front.
Meanwhile, the Oromo tribes were pressing for freedom. The Tigres (who spoke a language similar to that of the Eritreans) had formed their own liberation front. The royalists around Addis Ababa, who believed in the Emperor and the monarchy, had set off bombs in government offices in the capital. The university students, once great fans of the military "committee," were now split into those pushing for democracy and those who felt nothing short of an Albanian-style Marxism would do. Neighboring Somalia decided this was the time to press its claims on disputed territory in the Ogaden Desert that even the vultures did not want. Who said being a dictator is easy? The Sergeant-President had his hands full.
WITHOUT A WORD TO ANYONE, I slipped out of the back of the Ethio-Swedish Pediatric Hospital, leaving my car parked in its spot. I took a taxi home. I couldn"t believe this was happening. What had Genet accomplished? Hijacking an Ethiopian Airlines plane was all about publicity. Yes, BBC would pay attention. It would further embarra.s.s the Sergeant-President, but he was doing a fine job of that without any outside help. Even if Genet"s act hadn"t put me in danger, I"d have resented the hijack. Ethiopian Airlines was a symbol of our national pride. Foreigners raved about EA"s wonderful service, its skilled pilots. Jet flights from Rome, London, Frankfurt, Nairobi, Cairo, and Bombay to Addis made it easy for tourists to visit. Then EA"s regional service of DC-3s flew a daily looping, hopscotch route so that you could leave the Hilton Addis Ababa in the morning, see the castles in Gondar, the ancient obelisks in Axum, the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, and be back in the Hilton lounge in Addis just when the good-time girls were drifting in trailing perfume, and the Velvet Ashantis were playing their theme song, a version of "Walk-Don"t Run" by the Ventures.
Ethiopian Airlines had for years been a target for the Eritrean People"s Liberation Front. But even in the Emperor"s time, crack security men on board disguised as pa.s.sengers ensured a near-perfect safety record until Genet"s flight. On one occasion, seven Eritrean hijackers stood up and announced their intentions. The two security men picked off five of the hijackers as easily as if they were shooting tin cans off a fence at ten paces. They overpowered the sixth. The seventh locked herself up in the bathroom and exploded a grenade. The pilot landed the crippled, rudderless plane despite a gaping hole in the tail section. On another occasion, the security force overpowered a hijacker and strapped him into a first-cla.s.s seat. Instead of shooting him, they bibbed him with towels and slit his throat.
That January afternoon, Genet and her pals seized the plane without a fight. Word was they had help on the inside. The security men may have turned.
As my taxi drove through the Merkato, I took in the familiar sights. Could this be the last time I pa.s.sed this way, the last time I smelled the hops from the St. George"s brewery on this road? A woman with her hair in cornrows, Eritrean style, flagged my taxi down. "Lideta, please," she said, naming her destination.
"Lideta, is it?" the driver said. "Why don"t you take a plane, sweetheart?" Her face fell, then turned hard. She didn"t bother to argue. She just turned away.
"Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds better lay low tonight," the driver said to me, since I clearly wasn"t one of them. "Look," he said, waving his hand at the pedestrians on both sides. "They"re everywhere." There were thousands of Eritreans in Addis Ababa-people like the Staff Probationer, like Genet. They were administrators, teachers, university faculty, students, government workers, and officers in the armed forces, executives in telecommunications, waterworks, and public health, and legions of others who were just common folk. "They drink our milk and eat our bread. But in their homes tonight, you know they"re butchering a sheep."
Since the military took power, many Eritreans I knew, including some physicians and medical students, had gone underground to join the Eritrean People"s Liberation Front.
The news in the capital was that the situation in the north of Ethio pia around Asmara had turned against the Sergeant-President. The Eritrean guerrillas ambushed military convoys at night and disappeared in daylight. I"d seen grainy photos of these fighters. Dressed in their trademark sandals, khaki shorts and shirts, they had the daring, the conviction, and the pa.s.sion of patriots fighting their occupiers. The conscripted Ethiopian soldiers in their jeeps and tanks, weighted down with helmets, combat boots, jackets, and weaponry, were confined to the main roads. How could they find an enemy they couldn"t see, in a countryside where they didn"t speak the language and couldn"t tell civilians and sympathizers from guerrillas?
As my taxi approached Missing"s gates, I saw Tsige stepping out of her Fiat 850 in front of her bar. She"d prospered these last few years, buying out the business next door, adding a kitchen, a full restaurant, and hiring more bar girls to serve customers. Upgrades to the furniture, two foosball machines, and a new television set made her bar the equal of the best in the Piazza. Tsige owned one taxi, and when we last spoke she"d told me she was looking for a second. She never failed to encourage me, to tell me how proud she was of me and that she prayed for me every day. Now, as I saw her lovely stockinged leg emerge from the car, I had a great urge to stop and say good-bye, but I couldn"t. This was her land, too, and I hoped that unlike me she"d never have a need to flee.
MISSING"S MAIN GATE was wide open. This was Hema"s prearranged signal that the coast was clear for me to come home.
When you have just minutes to leave the house in which you"ve spent all your twenty-five years, what do you take with you?
Hema had my diplomas, certificates, pa.s.sport, a few clothes, money, bread, cheese, and water packed in a roomy Air India shoulder bag. I wore sneakers and layers of clothes against the cold. I threw in a ca.s.sette which I knew had both the slow and fast "Tizita" on it, but left the ca.s.sette player behind. I contemplated taking Harrisons Principles of Internal Medicine, or Schwartz"s Principles of Surgery, but with each book weighing about five pounds, I didn"t.
We left on foot, a small convoy heading to the side wall of Missing, but first I insisted we go by the grove where Ghosh and Sister Mary Joseph Praise were buried. I walked with my arm around Hema. Shiva a.s.sisted Matron. Almaz and Gebrew had gone ahead. I felt Hema"s body trembling.
At Ghosh"s grave, I took leave of him. I imagined how he would have tried to cheer me up, make me look at the bright side-You always wanted to travel! Here"s your chance. Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels. I kissed the marble headstone and turned away. I didn"t dwell at my birth mother"s grave. If I wanted to say good-bye to her, this wasn"t the place. I hadn"t visited the autoclave room for more than two years. I felt a pang of guilt, but it was too late to go there now.
At the wall, Hema held me. She laid her head on my chest, and the tears were flowing freely, in a way that I"d only seen at Ghosh"s death. She couldn"t speak.
Matron, a rock of faith in moments of crisis, kissed me on the forehead and said simply, "Go with G.o.d." Almaz and Gebrew prayed over me. Almaz handed me a kerchief tied around a couple of boiled eggs. Gebrew gave me a tiny scroll that I was to swallow for protection- I popped it into my mouth.
If my eyes were dry, it was because I couldn"t believe this was happening. As I looked at my send-off party I felt such hatred for Genet. Perhaps Eritreans in Addis were slaughtering sheep and toasting her tonight, but I wished she could see this snapshot of our family as it was torn apart, all because of her.
It was time to say good-bye to Shiva. I"d forgotten what it felt like to hold him, what a perfect fit his body was to mine, two halves of a single being. Ever since Genet"s mutilation, we"d slept separately except for a brief period around Ghosh"s death. Once Ghosh died, I returned to his old quarters, leaving Shiva in our childhood room. Only now did I recognize the severity of the penance I"d enforced by sleeping apart. Our arms were like magnets, refusing to disengage.
I pulled my head back and studied his face. I saw disbelief and a bottomless sadness. I was strangely pleased, flattered to get such a reaction from him. I"d seen this only twice before: on the day of Ghosh"s arrest and on the day of Ghosh"s death. Our parting at Missing"s wall was a kind of death, his expression said. And if it was so for him, it was for me, too. Or should have been.
There was a time, ages ago, it seemed, when we could read each other"s thoughts. I wondered if he could read mine. I"d postponed this moment, this reckoning with him. It was the deal I"d made with Genet, but I felt no need to honor that now. Now, my mind expressed itself.
Shiva, do you see how deflowering Genet, a biological act as far as you were concerned, led to all this? It led Rosina to kill herself, led Genet to stray from us? It led to this moment where I hate the woman I hoped to marry? Even now Hema thinks that I set all this in motion, that I did something to Genet.
Do you see how you betrayed me?
This good-bye is like cutting off my body.
I love you as I love myself-that is inevitable.
But I can"t forgive you. Perhaps in time, and only because that"s what Ghosh wanted. In time, Shiva, but not now.
We stood at the foot of the ladder which Gebrew had placed against Missing"s east wall.
Shiva handed me a cloth bag. In the darkness it was impossible to see, but I thought I recognized the shape and the color of his dog-eared copy of Gray"s Anatomy and below that a pristine copy of some other heavy book. I was about to remonstrate. I bit my tongue. In giving me his Gray"s, Shiva sacrificed a piece of himself, the most valuable thing he owned that was removable and portable.
"Thank you, Shiva," I said, hoping it didn"t sound sarcastic. I now had two bags instead of one.
Gebrew slung burlap sacks on top of the bottle shards that crested the wall. I climbed over. On the other side was the road that I"d always seen from my bedroom window but never explored. It was a view that I thought of as pastoral, idyllic, a road disappearing into the mist and mountains to a land of no worries. Tonight it looked sinister.
"Good-bye," I called one last time, touching my hand to that moist wall, the living, breathing exoskeleton of Missing. Inside, a chorus of voices so dear to me, they who were the beating heart of Missing, called out, wished me G.o.dspeed.
A hundred yards away, a truck sat idling. It carried stacks of re treaded tires. The driver helped me climb onto the bed, where a tarp had been strung over and under tires to make a small cave. Adid had water, biscuits, and a pile of blankets placed there. He had arranged my escape but under the aegis of the Eritrean People"s Liberation Front. The EPLF had become the common path to leave Ethiopia, particularly if you planned to do it from the north and if you were willing to pay.
The less said about my cold, b.u.mpy, seven-hour ride to Dessie, the better. After a night in a Dessie warehouse, where I slept on a regular bed, and a second night where we rested in Mekele, on the third day of out northern journey we reached Asmara, the heart of Eritrea. The city Genet had loved so much was under occupation. The Ethiopian army was visible in force, tanks and armored cars parked at key junctions, checkpoints everywhere. We were never searched, since the driver"s papers showed the tires we carried were to supply the Ethiopian army.
I was taken to a safe house, a cozy cottage surrounded by bougainvil-lea, where I was to wait until we could make the trek out of Asmara and into the countryside. The furniture was just a mattress on the living room floor. I couldn"t venture out to the garden. I thought I"d be in the safe house for a night or two, but the wait stretched out to two weeks. My Eritrean guide, Luke, brought me food once a day. He was younger than me, a fellow of few words, a college student in Addis before he went underground. He suggested I walk as much as I could in the house to strengthen my legs. "These are the wheels of the EPLF," he said, smiling, tapping his thighs.
There were two surprises in my meager luggage. What I thought was a cardboard base at the bottom of the Air India bag that Hema packed was instead a framed picture. It was the print of St. Teresa that Sister Mary Joseph Praise had put up in the autoclave room. Hema"s note taped to the gla.s.s explained: Ghosh had this framed in the last month of his life. In his will he said that if you ever left the country, he wanted this picture to go with you. Marion, since I can t go with you, may my Ghosh, Sister Mary, and St. Teresa all watch over you.
I caressed the frame, which Ghosh"s hands must have touched. I wondered why he"d taken so much trouble, but I was pleased. It was my talisman for protection. I had not said good-bye to her in the autoclave room, and it turned out I didn"t need to, because she was coming with me.
The second surprise was the book under Shiva"s precious Gray"s Anatomy. It was Thomas Stone"s textbook, The Expedient Operator: A Short Practice of Tropical Surgery. I"d never known such a book existed. (Later I learned that it went out of print a few years after our birth.) I turned the pages, curious, wondering why I"d never seen this before and how it came to be in Shiva"s possession. And then, suddenly, there he was in a photograph that occupied three-fourths of the page, staring out at me, a faint smile on his lips: Thomas Stone, MBBS, FRCS. I had to close the book. I rose and got some water, took my time. I wanted to compose myself and look at him on my own terms. When I opened the page again, I noticed the fingers, nine of them, instead of ten. I had to admit the similarity to Shiva and therefore to me. It was in the deep-set eyes, in the gaze. Our jaws were not as square as his and our foreheads were broader. I wondered why Shiva had put it in my hands.
The book looked brand-new, as if it had hardly been opened. A bookmark placed on the copyright page said, "Compliments of the Publisher." The bookmark had been pressed between the pages for so long that when I peeled it off a pale rectangular outline remained.
On the back of the bookmark was written: My mother had penned this note a day before our birth and her death. Her clear writing, the even letters, retained a schoolgirl"s innocence. How long had Shiva posessed the book and bookmark? Why give it to me? Was it so that I"d have something from my mother?
To get in shape, I"d pace around the house, hauling the bag with books on my shoulder. I read Stone"s textbook during those two weeks. At first I resisted it, telling myself it was dated. But he had a way of conveying his surgical experience in the context of scientific principles that made it quite readable. I studied the bookmark often, rereading my mother"s words. What was in the letter she had left for Stone? What would she have been saying to him just one day before we, her identical twin boys, would arrive? I copied her writing, imitating the loops.
One day when Luke brought my food, he said we"d leave that night. I packed one last time. The two books had to go with me; I couldn"t abandon either one, though my Air India bag was still very heavy.
We set out after curfew. "That"s why we waited," Luke said, pointing skyward. "When there"s no moon it is safer."
He led me down narrow paths between houses, and then along irrigation ditches, and soon we were away from the residential areas. We crossed fields in the pitch-dark. I sensed hills in the distance. Within an hour, my shoulder hurt from the bag, even though I positioned it in different ways. Luke insisted on transferring some items from my bag to his knapsack. He looked shocked at the sight of the books, but said nothing. He took the Gray"s.
We walked for hours, stopping only once. At last, we were in the foothills, climbing. At four-thirty in the morning, we heard a soft whistle. We met up with a troop of eleven fighters. They greeted us in their trademark fashion: shaking hands while b.u.mping shoulders back and forth, saying, "Kamela-hai" or "Salaam." There were four women, sporting Afros just like the men. I was shocked to recognize one of the fighters: it was the firebrand, the student with the bovine eyes whom I had encountered in Genet"s hostel room. On that occasion hed stormed out contemptuously. Now, recognizing me, he sported a lopsided grin. He shook my hand with both his. His name was Tsahai.
The fighters were exhausted, but uncomplaining, their legs white with dust. They carried a heavy gun which they had dismantled into several large pieces.
Tsahai brought something over to me. "High-protein field bread," he said. It was a ration which was of the fighters" own invention, but it tasted like cardboard. He rubbed his right knee as he spoke, and it looked to me as if it was swollen with fluid. If it was sore, he said nothing about it.
We avoided the topic of Genet. Instead he described how earlier that night they"d ambushed an Ethiopian army convoy as it tried a rare night patrol. "Their soldiers are scared of the dark. They don"t want to fight and they don"t want to be here. Morale is terrible. When we shot the lead vehicle, the soldiers jumped out, forgetting to shoot, just running for cover. We had the high ground on both sides. Right away they screamed that they were surrendering, even though their officer was ordering them to keep fighting. We took their uniforms and sent them on foot back to the garrison."
Tsahai and his comrades had siphoned gas from the trucks, then hid the one working vehicle in the bush, stuffed with uniforms, ammunition, and weapons to be retrieved at another time. The real prize was the heavy gun and sh.e.l.ls which they brought with them, everything carried on foot.
WE SET OFF after fifteen minutes. Before daybreak we reached a well-hidden, tiny bunker carved out of the side of a hill. I didn"t think I was capable of walking as far as I had. It helped that my fellow walkers carried five times my load without complaint.
Luke and I stayed in the bunker. The others hurried on to a forward position, risking daylight and being spotted by the roaming MiG fighters because there was some urgency to rea.s.semble the gun.
I slept until Luke woke me. My legs felt as if a wall had collapsed on them. "Take this," he said, giving me two pills and a tin mug of tea. "It"s our own painkiller, paracetamol, manufactured in our pharmacy."
I was too tired to do anything but swallow. He made me eat some more of the bread, and I slept again. I awoke with less pain, but so stiff I could hardly get off the floor. I took two more of the paracetamol pills.
Five fighters arrived to escort us onward when it turned dark. One of them had a partially withered leg: polio, I knew. Seeing his swinging, awkward gait, his gun serving as a counterbalance, made it impossible for me to think of my own discomfort.
The second march was half as long as the first, and gradually my legs loosened. We arrived long before dawn at some scruffy hills. A narrow trail led to a cave, its entrance completely hidden by brush and by natural rock. Wooden logs framed the opening. A steep wooden ramp went down to more rooms, deep within. The trail on the outside led to other caves up and down the hill, all the openings cleverly concealed.
I was taken inside to a stall. I removed my shoes, and fell asleep on a straw pallet. It felt luxurious. I slept till late afternoon. Luke walked me around. I was stiff again, but he seemed fine. The base was empty of fighters because of a major operation going on elsewhere.
I suppose I should have admired these fighters, who could flit through the dust like sandflies. I should"ve admired their resourcefulness, their ability to manufacture their own intravenous fluid, their own sulfa, penicillin, and paracetamol tablets stamped out by a handpress. Hidden in these caves and invisible from the air or ground was an operating theater, a prosthetic limb center, hospital wards, and a school. The degree of sophistication in those surroundings was even more impressive for being so spartan. The quiet discipline, the recognition that the tasks of cooking, caring for children, sweeping the floors were as important as any other, convinced me that they would one day prevail and have their freedom.
I watched a fighter relaxing outside the bunker. The sun filtering through the acacia tree formed a changing mosaic of light on her face and on the rifle across her lap. She hummed to herself as she scanned the skies with binoculars, looking for MiGs, which were flown by the Rus sian or Cuban "advisers" to Ethiopia. America had long supported the Emperor, but it withdrew its support of Sergeant-President Mengistu"s regime, halting weapons and parts sales. The Eastern Bloc stepped in to fill the void.
The fighter, who was about our age, reminded me of Genet in the way she arranged her limbs, in the ease with which she occupied her body. Despite the lethal weapon in her hand, her movements were delicate. She wore no makeup, and her feet were dusty and callous. Seeing her I was grateful for one thing: my Genet dream was gone forever and good riddance. Id been so stupid to sustain a one-sided fantasy for so long. The honeymoon in Udaipur, our own little bungalow at Missing, raising our babies, setting off to the hospital in the morning, doctors working side by side ... It would never happen. I never wanted to see her again. And I probably never would. She was surely in Khartoum, still basking in the glory of her daring operation. There was no going back to Addis for her either. Soon she would join these fighters, live in these bunkers, and fight alongside them. I hoped I would be long gone by then. I resented having to be in their camp at all, even more having to turn to her comrades for help.
That night I woke to the sounds of MiGs overhead and bombs dropping far away, but close enough for us to hear the rumble. Also the fainter thuds of artillery. No lights were allowed anywhere near the mouth of the cave.
Luke said that a ma.s.sive raid had just been completed on a weapons and fuel depot. It had included Tsahai and the group of fighters we met on the first night. They had penetrated using a stolen army truck. Once inside, they set charges, but their comrades outside had been surprised by a reinforcement convoy that attacked them from the rear. It had not gone exactly as planned. Nine guerrillas including Tsahai were dead and many more wounded. The Ethiopians" losses were much larger and the fuel depot partially destroyed. Our casualties would arrive at the cave by early morning.
I woke to voices, the activity and urgency unmistakable. I heard moans and sharp cries of pain. Luke took me to the surgical ward.
"h.e.l.lo, Marion," a voice said. I turned to see Solomon, whod been my senior in medical school. Hed gone underground as soon as he finished his internship. I remembered him as a chubby, well-fed intern. The man before me had hollow cheeks and was as lean as a stick.
I followed Solomon, stooping down in a low-ceilinged tunnel where stretchers were arranged in pairs on the floor, triaged so that those most in need of surgery were closest to the operating theater at the end of the tunnel. The entrance to the theater was a cloth curtain.
The wounds were ghastly. One barely conscious man whispered last instructions into the ear of a friend, who hovered over him, writing furiously. Intravenous fluid and blood bottles dangled from hooks embedded in the cave walls. The attendants worked squatting next to the stretchers.
Solomon said hed gone close to the battlefront for this mission. "Usually I stay here. We resuscitate at the battlefield. Intravenous fluid, control bleeding, antibiotics, even some field surgery. We can prevent shock just like the Americans in Vietnam. Only we don"t have their heli copters." He slapped his thighs. "These are our helicopters. We carry our wounded by stretcher." He scanned the room. "That man over there needs a chest tube," he said, indicating with his head. "Please do it. Tumsghi will help you. I"ll go ahead to the theater. That comrade cannot wait." He pointed to a pale soldier lying near the curtain with a b.l.o.o.d.y pad over his abdomen. He was conscious, but barely, breathing rapidly.
The fighter who needed the chest tube whispered "Salaam" when I squatted by him. The bullet had entered his triceps, then his chest, and miraculously missed the great vessels, the heart, and the spine. When I tapped with my bunched fingers above his right nipple it was dull, quite unlike the boxy, resonant note on the left. Blood had collected around the lung in the pleural s.p.a.ce, compressing the right lung against the left lung and the heart in the confined cavity of the chest. Working just behind his right armpit, I injected lidocaine and anesthetized the skin, then the edge of the rib and deeper into the pleura, before making an inch-long cut with a scalpel. I pushed a closed hemostat into my incision till I felt it pop through the resistance of the pleura. I put my gloved finger into the hole, sweeping around to ensure s.p.a.ce for the chest tube-a rubber hose with openings at side and tip-which I fed into the hole. Tumsghi connected the other end to a drainage bottle with water in it, so that the tube emerged under the water level. This crude underwater seal prevented air going back into the chest. Already dark blood was emerging, and the soldier"s breathing improved. He said something in Tigrinya and pulled off his oxygen. Tumsghi said, "He wants you to give his oxygen to someone else."
I joined Solomon in the operating theater in time to see his patient come off the table. The man"s chest didn"t move. There was about a five-second silence. One of the women, fighting back tears, knelt and covered his face.
"Some things are beyond us," Solomon said quietly. "He had a laceration to the liver. I tried mattress sutures. But he also had a tear to the inferior vena cava where it goes behind the liver. It kept oozing. I couldn"t stop it unless I clamped the inferior vena cava, which would kill him. You remember Professor Asrat used to say that injuries to the vena cava behind the liver are when the surgeon sees G.o.d? He used to say things like that that I didn"t understand. I understand now."
The next patient had a belly wound. Solomon systematically sorted out what to me looked like an impossible and dirty mess. He pulled out the small bowel, identified several perforations which he oversewed. The spleen was ruptured and so this was removed. The sigmoid colon had a ragged tear. He cut out the segment, and then brought the two open ends to the skin in a double-barrel colostomy We irrigated the abdomen vigorously, left drains in place, and did a sponge count. The field looked so neat compared with its condition when we started. Solomon must have read my mind. He held up his hands to show me his stubby fingers and his hammer thumbs: "I wanted to be a psychiatrist." Over the eight hours, that was the only time I saw him smile behind the mask.
We amputated five limbs. The last two procedures we performed were burr holes in the skulls of two comatose patients. We used a modified carpenter"s drill. In the first we were rewarded by blood welling out from just under the dura where it had collected, pressing on the brain. The other patient was agonal, his pupils fixed and dilated. The burr hole produced nothing. The bleeding was deep inside the brain.
Two days later, I took leave of Solomon. There were dark rings under his eyes and he looked ready to fall over. There was no questioning his purpose or dedication. Solomon said, "Go and good luck to you. This isn"t your fight. I"d go if I were in your shoes. Tell the world about us."
This isn"t your fight. I thought about that as I trekked to the border with two escorts. What did Solomon mean? Did he see me as being on the Ethiopian side, on the side of the occupiers? No, I think he saw me as an expatriate, someone without a stake in this war. Despite being born in the same compound as Genet, despite speaking Amharic like a native, and going to medical school with him, to Solomon I was a ferengi- a foreigner. Perhaps he was right, even though I was loath to admit it. If I were a patriotic Ethiopian, would I not have gone underground and joined the royalists, or others who were trying to topple Sergeant Men-g istu? If I cared about my country, shouldn"t I have been willing to die for it?
We crossed the Sudan border by early evening. I took a bus to Port Sudan, and then Sudan Airways to Khartoum. In Khartoum I was able to call a number Adid had provided to let Hema know I was safe. Two days in sweltering Khartoum felt like two years, but at last I flew to Kenya.
IN NAIROBI, Mr. Eli Harris, whose Houston church had been the pillar of Missing"s support for years, had arranged room for me at a mission clinic. Matron and Harris had made these arrangements by cable. I found the work in the small outpatient clinic difficult, as I was certain that many things were getting lost in translation. In my free time, I studied for the exams that I had to take to begin postgraduate training in America.
Nairobi was lush and green like Addis Ababa, the gra.s.s pushing up between pavement tiles as if the jungle seethed underneath the city ready to take over. Nairobi"s infrastructure and sophistication dwarfed that of Addis. One could thank the years of British rule for that, and, though Kenya was independent, many Brits lived on there. And Indians: in some parts of Nairobi you could imagine you were in Baroda or Ahmedabad with sari emporiums ten to a street, chat shops everywhere, the pungent scent of masala in the air, and Gujarati the only language spoken.
At first I spent my evenings in the bars, drowning my sorrows and listening to benga music and soukous. The jazzy Congolese and Brazilian rhythms were uplifting, full of optimism, but when I retired to my room, afloat in beer, my melancholia was always worse. Other than the music, Kenyan culture made no impact on me. The fault was mine. I resisted the place. Thomas Stone had come to Nairobi when he fled Ethiopia with his demons chasing him. It was another reason I was disinclined to stay.
I called Hema on a schedule, dialing different friends" houses every Tuesday night. Things were no better, she said. Were I to come back, I"d still be in danger.
So I stayed in my room and studied every waking minute. I pa.s.sed the American medical equivalency exams two months later, and immediately presented myself to the American Emba.s.sy for my visa. Again, Harris had eased my way.
I was righteous: if my country was willing to torture me on suspicion, if it didn"t want my services as a physician, then I disowned my country. But the truth is that by this time I knew that I wouldn"t return to Ethiopia, even if things were suddenly rosy again.
I wanted out of Africa.
I began to think that Genet had done me a favor after all.
PART FOUR.