Cutting for Stone (30 page)

CHAPTER 22
The School of Suffering

O
NE MORNING
toward the end of Michaelmas term, as Shiva, Genet, and I walked to Missing's gate, school satchels in hand, I saw a couple racing up the hill toward us, a child flopping lifeless in the man's arms. They were ready to drop, yet still trying to run up that incline when they had no breath to walk. But as long as they ran with the child in their arms, it was still alive to them, and there was hope.

Without a moment's hesitation, ShivaMarion raced to meet them. The parents’ distress triggered this, gave us no time to debate our response, as a higher brain emerged, doing the deciding for us and guiding us to move as one organism if we knew what was best. I remember thinking, in the midst of that panic, how much I missed that state and how exhilarating it was to be ShivaMarion. Even as I grabbed the infant boy from the father (whose gait by now had become a weary shuffle) and raced away, Shiva's steady hand on my low back was my afterburner, and he matched my stride perfectly, ready to take over when I tired. I was conscious of the baby's skin, the way it chilled my hand, sucking the heat out of it as I ran—I knew I'd never again take being “warm-blooded” for granted, having now felt the alternative.

We handed the child over in Casualty and we waited outside, panting. When the parents caught up, we held the doors open for them. Minutes later we heard a scream, then loud protests, and ultimately the wailing that means the same in any language. It was all too familiar a sound.

There was another Missing sound that made my adrenaline flow: it was the shrieking, grating sound of Gebrew dragging the big gate open as fast as it would go. It always signaled a dire emergency.

A childhood at Missing imparted lessons about resilience, about fortitude, and about the fragility of life. I knew better than most children how little separated the world of health from that of disease, living flesh from the icy touch of the dead, the solid ground from treacherous bog.

Id learned things about suffering that weren't taught to me by Ghosh: First, that white was the uniform of suffering, and cotton its fabric. Whether it was thin (a
shama
or
nettald)
or heavy as a blanket (in which case it was a
gabby),
it must keep the head warm and the mouth covered—no sun or wind should hit because these elements carried the
mitch,
the
birrd,
and other evil miasmas. Even the minister with the waistcoat and fob watch would, when he was ill, throw a
nettala
over his coat, cram eucalyptus leaf up his nose, take an extra dose of
kosso
for tapeworm, and then hurry over to be seen.

Day after day a white-robed mass flowed up our hill, gravity the current against which they swam. Those whose breath ran short as well as the crippled and the lame stopped at the halfway point to look up, to gaze past the tops of the flanking eucalyptus to where the African hawks soared against the blue sky.

Once they crested the hill, patients went to the registration desk to get their card. From there it was on to Adam, the man whom Ghosh called the World's Greatest One-Eyed Clinician. “Short of breath, are you?” Adam might say to a patient. “But still you managed to run up the hill and get the fourth card of the day?” In Adam's book, a number under ten on the outpatient card identified a hypochondriac more accurately than any test Ghosh might do.

From my spot observing the daily influx, I once saw a proud Eritrean woman carrying a heavy basket; inside was something large, sprouting, with a surface that was red, raw, and weeping. It was her breast. It had become so huge from cancer that this was the only way for her and her breast to come to Missing.

I drew such sights in my notebook. My sketches were nothing like Shiva's, but they served me well. A glance at them allowed me to recall the memory, even if it was not Shiva's photographic kind.

On page thirty-four I drew a child in profile, chubby-cheeked, healthy. But from the other side, his profile showed a chunk of his cheek, one nostril, and the eye missing, so that his glistening teeth and pink gum and the recess of the orbit were visible. I learned from Ghosh to call this ghastly sight
cancrum oris.
It came about from a trivial gum or tooth infection which spread because of malnutrition and neglect, often during an episode of measles or chicken pox. Once ignited, it progressed rapidly, usually causing death before the child could be brought to Missing. Sometimes, the disease simply ran out of steam, or the body's defenses were finally able to contain the march, but at the expense of half the face. Death was perhaps a better fate than to live with the disfigurement. I watched Ghosh operate on this child. It was terrifying, and then I was in awe at what this man who sat down to dinner with us each night was capable of doing: rotate a flap of skin to cover the cheek, and another the hole in the nose. Further flaps and reconstruction he planned for a later surgery. Even so there was no restoring to normal the face, much less the soul, of a child so scarred. After the surgery, what Ghosh said to me was, “Don't be too impressed. I'm an accidental surgeon, son. I do all I can do. But your father … what he could have done to that face would have been as good as the best plastic surgeon alive. You see, your father was a
real
surgeon. I don't think I've seen anyone better.” What made someone a
real
surgeon, I asked. Ghosh didn't hesitate:
“Passion
for his craft … and skill, dexterity. His hands were always ‘quiet.’ I mean he had no wasted movements, no dramatic gestures. It looked slow, routine, but when you looked at the clock you realized how fast it must have been. But even more important is the confidence once you make the first cut, the belief in yourself, which allows you to do more and get better results. I'm thankful I can do the simple things, the bread-and-butter operations. But I'm scared to death half the time.”

He was being modest. But it was true that Ghosh was a different being in the outpatient department where he saw “consultations”—the patients Bachelli and Adam kept for him to render an opinion. Ghosh's real skill emerged with those who looked “normal” to my gaze. Hidden from us unschooled observers, a disease had left its traces. A woman who wove baskets said, “On St. Stefano's Day I passed urine on a barbed-wire fence …” Or this from a sad, distraught coolie: “The morning after the Wednesday fast, I accidentally stepped over the cast-off water from a prostitute's morning wash …” Ghosh listened, his eyes taking in the blister marks on the sternum which said the native healer had been consulted; he noted the thick speech and guessed that the uvula had probably been recently amputated on a second visit to the same charlatan. But Ghosh had an ear for what lay beneath those surface words, and a pointed question uncovered a story which matched with one in his repertoire of tales. Then it was time to look for the flesh signs, the bookmarks of the disease, and to palpate and percuss and listen with his stethoscope for clues left behind. He knew how that story ended; the patient only knew the beginning.

THERE IS ONE LAST SIGHTING
at Missing—which had nothing to do with Ghosh—that I must describe because it happened during that period: it explained Shiva's life course, and why it veered away from my mine.

Late one morning as Shiva and I sat on the culvert by the side of Missing's hill, a frail, barefoot girl, no older than twelve, came stiff-legged up the hill. Prematurely stooped like an old woman, she leaned heavily on her giant of a father. His muddy, patched jodhpurs ballooned above bare feet and horned toenails. He could have taken the hill in twenty strides. Instead he took small steps to accommodate hers. They crept forward like snails, while other visitors sped up when they neared these two, as if father and daughter created an animating field. When she reached us, I understood why. An unspeakable scent of decay, putrefaction, and something else for which the words remain to be invented reached our nostrils. I saw no point in holding my breath or pinching my nose because the foulness invaded instantly, coloring our insides like a drop of India ink in a cup of water.

In the way that children understand their own, we knew her to be innocent of her terrible, overpowering odor. It was
of her,
but it wasn't hers. Worse than the odor (since she must have lived with it for more than a few days) was to see in her face the knowledge of how it repulsed and revolted others. No wonder she had fallen out of the habit of looking at human faces; the world was lost to her, and she to it.

When she paused to catch her breath, a slow puddle formed at her bare feet. Looking down the road, I could see the trail she left behind. I'll never forget her father's face. Under that peasant straw hat he burned with love for his daughter, and rage against the world that shunned her. His bloodshot eyes met every stare and even sought out those who tried not to look. He cursed their mothers, and cursed the gods they worshipped. He was deranged by a scent he could have escaped.

Did I say she met no one's gaze? No one's but Shiva's. A moment passed between them, a barely discernible easing of her features, as if Shiva had caressed her, reached out to comfort her. His lifted chin dipped for her, his eyes shaded to blue and his lips set firmly together. Her lids suddenly sparkled with liquid. The father who had blasphemed his way up the hill fell silent.

My brother, who once spoke with anklets and whose dance could be as complex as a honeybee's, didn't know he would dedicate his life to just such women, the outcasts of society; he would seek them at the Autobus Terra as they arrived from the provinces. He would pay touts to go to the furthermost villages and find them where they were hidden away, shunned by their husbands and families. He would have pamphlets distributed wherever the Coca-Cola truck went, which is to say wherever there were paved roads, asking for these women—girls, really—to come out of hiding, to come to him, so that he might cure them. He would become the world's expert …

But I am ahead of my story. Shiva's understanding of the medical condition behind that odor came later. That afternoon, one of many that I spent wondering about my future, Shiva had already sprung into action. With his eyes on her, he walked to them and led father and daughter to Hema. I look back now and I realize that in that act his career was already predetermined, and it was destined to differ vastly from mine.

CHAPTER 23
The Afterbird and Other Animals

T
HE RAINS HAD ENDED
and we had been back in class fewer than two weeks when Hema woke us with what I took to be good news. “No school. We're keeping you home today,” she said. Something about trouble in the city. Taxis wouldn't be running. I stopped listening after “no school.”

It was a perfect day to be home. Meskel celebrations were to start, and already Missing's fields were carpeted with yellow. We'd lose the soccer ball in the daisies, we'd climb into the tree house … Then I remembered: with Genet under Rosina's watchful eye, it wouldn't be the same.

I pushed out the wooden shutters of my bedroom window and climbed onto the ledge. Sunshine flooded the room. By noon the temperature would reach seventy–five degrees, but for the moment I shivered in my bare feet. From my perch, I could see beyond Missing's east wall onto a quiet meandering road which descended and then disappeared, the hills rising just beyond, as if the road had gone underground before it emerged in the distance as a mere thread. It wasn't a road we traveled or even one that I knew how to get to, and yet it was a view I felt I owned. On the left side a fortresslike wall flanked the road, receding with it, struggling to stay vertical. Giant clusters of purple bougainvillea spilled over, brushing the white
shamas
of the few pedestrians. There was a quality to this pellucid first light and the vivid colors that made it impossible to imagine trouble.

In the dining room, I noticed the strained, preoccupied expression on Ghosh's face. He had his shirt, tie, and coat on. He'd been awake for hours, it seemed. Hema in her dressing gown was huddled next to him, twisting and untwisting a lock of her hair. I was surprised to see Genet there; her head jerked up when I came in, as if she didn't know I lived in the house. Rosina, who usually orchestrated our mornings, was nowhere to be seen. In the kitchen I found Almaz frozen by the stove; only when the egg began to smoke did she scoop it off the pan and onto my plate. I noticed the tears in her eyes.

“The Emperor,” she said, when I pressed her. “How dare they do this to His Majesty? What thankless people! Don't they remember he saved us from the Italians? That he's God's chosen?”

She told me what she knew: While the Emperor was on a state visit to Liberia, a group of Imperial Bodyguard officers seized power during the night. They were led by our own Brigadier General Mebratu.

“And Zemui?”

“He is with them, of course!” she said, whispering, shaking her head in disappointment.

“Where is Rosina?”

She pointed with her chin in the direction of the servant's quarters.

Genet came into the kitchen, on her way to the back door. She looked frightened. I stopped her, and held her hand.

“Are you all right?” I noticed the gold chain and strange cross around her neck.

She nodded, then went out the back door. Almaz didn't look at her.

“It's true,” Ghosh said, back in the dining room. He glanced at Hema, as if the two of them were trying to decide how much to divulge to us. What they couldn't hide was their anxiety.

The previous evening General Mebratu went to the Crown Prince's residence to tell him that others were plotting a coup against his father. At the General's urging, the Crown Prince summoned ministers loyal to the Emperor. When they came, General Mebratu arrested them all.

It was a brilliant ploy, but it unsettled me. I couldn't imagine Ethiopia without Haile Selassie at the helm—nobody could. The country and the man seemed to go together. General Mebratu was our hero, a dashing figure who could do no wrong. The Emperor had lost some of his glow for us. But I never expected this of the General—was this a betrayal, a dark side of his that had emerged? Or was he doing the right thing?

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

One of the prisoners, an old and frail minister, had had an asthma attack, and so Ghosh had been summoned to the Crown Prince's residence in the early morning. “The General doesn't want anyone dying if he can help it. He wants it to be peaceful.”

“Does he want to be Emperor?” I asked.

Ghosh shook his head. “No, I don't think that's it at all. What he wants is for the poor to have food, to have land. That means taking it from the royals and from the Church.”

“So is this a good thing he is doing, or a bad thing?” Shiva asked, looking up from the book he had brought to the table. That was Shiva: he hated ambiguity, and he wanted things cut and dried. Often when Shiva asked such a question, it was because he didn't see what was obvious to me. But in this case, it was a good question, one that I wanted to ask, too. “Isn't the Imperial Bodyguard supposed to defend the Emperor?” Shiva added.

Ghosh winced, as if Shiva's query hurt.

“This isn't my country, so who am I to judge? Mebratu has a good life. He didn't
have
to do this. I do think he's doing this for the people. Long ago he was under great suspicion, then he was the favorite son, and recently he was under suspicion again, and he felt he might be arrested very soon anyway.”

Ghosh said that, as he left the Crown Prince's palace, Zemui had walked Ghosh to his car and given Ghosh something to give to Genet. It was the gold pendant Darwin Easton had taken off his own neck and given to Zemui—the St. Bridget's cross. He'd asked Ghosh to convey his love to her and to Rosina.

After Hema dressed, she and Ghosh left for the hospital. “Stay close to home, boys. You hear?” We were not to leave Missing property, no matter what.

I went to the gate. I met just three patients coming up the hill. No car or bus passed by Missing. I stood with Gebrew, staring out. The silence was eerie, not even the
clip-clop
of horseshoes or the jingle of harness bells to break the stillness. “When the four-legged taxis stay in their stables, you know things are serious,” Gebrew said.

There were bars, a tailor's shop, and a radio repair shop in the two cinder-block buildings across from us; but there was no sign of life. Ignoring Hema and Ghosh's warnings, and over Gebrew's protests, I crossed the road to the tiny Arab souk, a plywood structure painted canary yellow that sat between the larger buildings. The window through which the souk usually conducted business was shuttered, but a child emerged through the door, which was barely cracked open, carrying a cone-shaped package made out of newspaper and wrapped in twine. Probably ten cents’ worth of sugar for the morning tea. I slipped in. The air inside was thick with incense. If I leaned over the counter I could touch the back wall. The Arab souks all over Addis were like this, as if theyd come from the same womb. Dangling down from the ceiling, on clothespins attached to a string, were single-use packets of Tide, Bayer aspirin, Chiclets, and paracetamol. They twirled like party decorations. A meat hook hanging from the rafters held squares of newspaper, ready to use as wrapping. A roll of twine hung on another hook. Loose cigarettes sat in a jar on top of the counter, unopened cigarette packs stacked next to them. The shelves were stuffed with matchboxes, bottled sodas, Bic pens, pencil sharpeners, Vicks, Nivea Creme, notebooks, erasers, ink, candles, batteries, Coca-Cola, Fanta, Pepsi, sugar, tea, rice, bread, cooking oil, and much more. Mason jars full of
caramela
and cookies flanked the counter, leaving an opening in the middle over which I leaned. I saw Ali Osman, lace cap glued to his head, seated on the mat along with his wife, infant daughter, and two men. The floor space was hardly big enough for Ali and his family to sleep spooned against one another, knees bent, and now he had visitors. They sat around a pile of khat.

Ali was worried. “Marion, times like this are when foreigners like us can suffer,” he said. It was strange to hear him use the
word ferengi
to describe himself, or me, because we were both born in this land.

I crossed back over to Gebrew and shared with him some stick candy I had bought.

Suddenly Rosina walked right past us. “Look after Genet,” she called over her shoulder. I didn't know whether she meant me or Gebrew.

“Wait!” Gebrew said, but she didn't.

I ran after her and grabbed her hand. “Wait, Rosina. Where are you going? Please.”

She spun on me as if to tell me off, but then her face softened. She was pale, and her eyes were puffy from crying. The skin was tight over her jaw, whether in fear or determination I couldn't tell.

“The boy is right. Don't go,” Gebrew said.

“What would you have me do, priest? I haven't seen Zemui in a week. He's a simple fellow. I'm worried for him. He'll listen to me. I'll tell him he must be loyal to God, and the Emperor, before anything else.” I was suddenly scared. I clung to Rosina. She pulled herself free, but gently. Out of habit, she pinched me on the cheek and ran her hand through my hair. She kissed me on the top of my head.

“Be reasonable,” Gebrew said. “The Imperial Bodyguard headquarters is too far away. If he's with the General, then he's in the palace. You'll be walking right past the army headquarters and the Sixth Police Station. It will take you too long.”

With a wave she was gone. Gebrew, whose eyes were perpetually weepy from trachoma, looked as if he might bawl. He perceived a danger far greater than anything I could imagine.

Ten minutes later, a jeep with a mounted machine gun appeared, followed by an armored car. They were Imperial Bodyguard soldiers, wearing grim expressions and also combat helmets in place of their usual pith helmets. Camouflage fatigues and ammo belts had replaced the regular olive-green drill. A voice came over a loudspeaker mounted on the armored truck: “People. Remain calm. His Majesty Crown Prince Asfa Wossen has taken over the government. He will be making an announcement at noon today. Listen to Radio Addis Ababa at noon. Radio Addis at noon. People. Remain calm …”

I wandered away from the gate and drifted over to the hospital. W. W. Gonad was sitting in the breezeway outside the blood bank, a transistor radio in his lap, and nurses and probationers sitting close to him. He looked excited, happy.

At noon in our bungalow we gathered around the Grundig and Rosina's transistor radio, one tuned to the BBC and the second to Radio Addis Ababa. Almaz stood to one side; Genet shared a chair with me. Hema took the clock down from the mantelpiece and wound it; the unguarded expression on her face showed the depth of her anxiety. Matron seemed the least concerned, blowing on a cup of dark coffee, smiling at me. A faceless, stentorian English voice said, “This is the BBC World Service.”

At last, the announcer moved from a coal strike in Britain to what interested us. “Reports from Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, indicate that a bloodless coup has taken place while Emperor Haile Selassie was away on a state visit to Liberia. The Emperor has cut short his visit and abandoned his plans for a state visit to Brazil.”

“Coup” was a new word for me. It implied something ancient and elegant, and yet the adjective “bloodless” implied that there had to be a “bloody” variety.

I confess that at that moment I was thrilled to hear our city and even the Imperial Bodyguard, mentioned by the BBC. The British knew nothing of Missing, or the view of the road from my window. But now, we'd made them look in our direction. Years later, when Idi Amin said and did outrageous things, I understood that his motivation was to rattle the good people of Greenwich mean time, have them raise their heads from their tea and scones, and say,
Oh, yes. Africa.
For a fleeting moment theyd have the same awareness of us that we had of them.

But how was it that the BBC could look out from London and see what was happening to us? When we looked over the walls of Missing we saw nothing.

Well after noon, and long after the BBC broadcast, the martial music on Radio Addis Ababa ceased and, with a rustle of papers, a stuttering Crown Prince Asfa Wossen came on the air. What little I had seen of the portly, pale eldest son in the newspaper and in the flesh suggested a man who might scream at the sight of a mouse; he lacked the Emperor's charisma and bearing. The Crown Prince read a statement—and it was clear he was reading—in the high Amharic of officialdom, difficult for anyone but Almaz and Gebrew to understand. When he was done, Almaz left the dining room, upset. Minutes later—how did they do this?—the BBC aired a translation.

“The people of Ethiopia have waited for the day when poverty and backwardness would cease to be, but nothing has been achieved …”

The Crown Prince said his father had failed the country. It was time for new leadership. A new day was dawning. Long live Ethiopia.

“Those are General Mebratu's words,” Ghosh said.

“More like his brother's,” Hema said.

“They must have a gun to the Crown Prince's head,” Matron said. “I don't hear any conviction in his voice.”

“Well, then he should've refused to read it,” I said. Everyone turned to look at me. Even Shiva lifted his head up from the book he was reading. “He should say, ‘No, I won't read it. I would rather die than betray my father.’ “

“Marion's right,” Matron said, at last. “It doesn't say much about the Crown Prince's character.”

“It's just a ploy, using the Crown Prince,” Ghosh said. “They don't want to dump the monarchy right away. They want the public to get used to the idea of a change. Did you see how upset Almaz is at the idea of someone deposing the Emperor?”

“Why do they care about the public? They have the guns. The power,” Hema said.

“They care about a civil war,” Ghosh said. “The peasants worship the Emperor. Don't forget the Territorial Army, all those aging fighters who battled the Italians. Those irregulars are neither army nor Bodyguard, but they far outnumber them. They can come pouring into town.”

“They might anyway,” Matron said.

“Mebratu couldn't get the army, police, or air force's support ahead of time,” Ghosh said. “I suppose the more people he involved before the coup, the more likely he'd have been betrayed. The General and his brother, Eskinder, were arguing when I got there this morning. Eskinder had wanted to trap all the army generals the previous night, using the same ruse that had trapped the other loyalists. But the General vetoed that.”