Cutting for Stone

“Since when did thinking become a crime? … Don't look at me that way,” I said.

She took her plate and sat far away from me. Even if I didn't have great faith in myself, I wanted her to have more faith in me. It hurt that she no longer saw me as the hero who shot the intruder.

BY THE LATE AFTERNOON the tent came down, and now visitors from outside Missing arrived as word spread that Ghosh was free. For Evangeline and Mrs. Reddy the moment was bittersweet because, though Ghosh was back, General Mebratu was gone forever. Evangeline kept saying, “So young. So young to be no more,” dabbing at her eyes, while Mrs. Reddy comforted her, pulling Evangeline's head into her considerable bosom. The two brought a giant pot of chicken biriyani and the fiery mango pickle that was Ghosh's favorite. “It's your second honey moon, sweetie,” Evangeline said to Ghosh. She winked at Hema. Adid, their old friend, came carrying three live chickens roped together by their feet, handing them over to Almaz. He brushed feathers off his spotless white polyester shirt, which he wore over a flowing, plaid ma'awis that extended to his sandals. Behind him came Babu, who was General Mebratu's usual bridge partner, bearing a bottle of Pinch, the General's favorite. By nightfall, there was talk of pulling out the cards for old time's sake. At any moment I expected Zemui to drive up with General Mebratu.

The house got stuffy. I opened windows back and front. At one point Ghosh retreated to the bedroom to shed his sweater and Hema went with him. I followed and stood in the doorway. He went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. It was as if he couldn't get over the novelty of running water. Hema stood outside the bathroom looking at his reflection in the vanity.

“I've been thinking …,” I heard Ghosh say. “We've had a good innings. Maybe we should leave … before the next coup.”

“What? Back to India?” Hema said.

“No … then the boys would have to learn Hindi or Tamil as a compulsory second language. It's too late for that. Don't forget why we left in the first place.”

They didn't know I was listening.

“Lots of Indian teachers have gone from here to Zambia,” Hema said.

“Or America? To the county of Cook?” he said and laughed.

“Persia? They say there are huge needs, just like this place. But they have tons of money to spend.”

Zambia? Persia? Were they joking? This was my country they were talking about, the land of my birth. True, its potential for violence and mayhem had been proved. But it was still home. How much worse would it be to be tortured in a land that wasn't your own?

We've had a good innings.

Ghosh's words felt like a kick to my solar plexus: this was my country, but I realized it wasn't Hema's or Ghosh's. They weren't born here. Was this for them a job only good for as long as it lasted? I slipped away.

I stepped out to the lawn. I remember the air that night, and how it was so brisk that it could revive the dead. The fragrance of eucalyptus stoking a home fire, the smell of wet grass, of dung fuel, of tobacco, of swamp air, and the perfume of hundreds of roses—this was the scent of Missing. No, it was the scent of a continent.

Call me unwanted, call my birth a disaster, call me the bastard child of a disgraced nun and a disappeared father, call me a cold-blooded killer who lies to the brother of the man I killed, but that loamy soil that nurtured Matron's roses was in my flesh. I said Ethyo-pya, like a native. Let those born in other lands speak of Eee-theee-op-eee-ya, as if it were a compound name like Sharm el Sheikh, or Dar es Salaam or Rio de Janeiro. The Entoto Mountains disappearing in darkness framed my horizon; if I left, those mountains would sink back to the ground, descend into nothingness; the mountains needed me to gaze at their tree-filled slopes, just as I needed them to be certain I was alive. The canopy of stars at night; that, too, was my birthright. A celestial gardener sowed meskel seeds so that when the rainy season ended, the daisies bloomed in welcome. Even the Drowning Soil, the foul-smelling quicksand behind Missing, which had swallowed a horse, a dog, a man, and God knows what else—I claimed that as well.

Light and dark.

The General and the Emperor.

Good and evil.

All possibilities resided within me, and they required me to be here. If I left, what would be left of me?

BY ELEVEN O'CLOCK, Ghosh excused himself from the company in the living room and came back with us to our room. Hema followed.

Shiva said, “We haven't slept in this bed since you left.”

Ghosh was touched. He lay in the center, and we huddled on either side. Hema sat at the foot of our bed.

“In prison, lights were out by eight o'clock. We'd each tell a story. That was our entertainment. I told stories from the books we read to you in this room. One of my cell mates, a merchant, Tawfiq—he would tell the Abu Kassem story.”

It was a tale well known to children all over Africa: Abu Kassem, a miserly Baghdad merchant, had held on to his battered, much repaired pair of slippers even though they were objects of derision. At last, even he couldn't stomach the sight of them. But his every attempt to get rid of his slippers ended in disaster: when he tossed them out of his window they landed on the head of a pregnant woman who miscarried, and Abu Kassem was thrown in jail; when he dropped them in the canal, the slippers choked off the main drain and caused flooding, and off Abu Kassem went to jail …

“One night when Tawfiq finished, another prisoner, a quiet, dignified old man, said, Abu Kassem might as well build a special room for his slippers. Why try to lose them? He'll never escape.’ The old man laughed, and he seemed happy when he said that. That night the old man died in his sleep.

“The next night, out of respect for the old man, we lay in silence. No story. I could hear men crying in the dark. This was always the low point for me. Ah, boys … Id pretend you both were against me, just like this, and I would imagine Hema's face before me.

“The following night, we couldn't wait to talk about Abu Kassem. We all saw it the same way. The old man was right. The slippers in the story mean that everything you see and do and touch, every seed you sow, or don't sow, becomes part of your destiny … I met Hema in the septic ward at Government General Hospital in India, in Madras, and that brought me to this continent. Because of that, I got the biggest gift of my life—to be a father to you two. Because of that, I operated on General Mebratu, who became my friend. Because he was my friend, I went to prison. Because I was a doctor, I helped to save him, and they let me out. Because I saved him, they could hang him … You see what I am saying?”

I didn't, but he spoke with such passion I wasn't about to stop him.

“I never knew my father, and so I thought he was irrelevant to me. My sister felt his absence so strongly that it made her sour, and so no matter what she has, or will ever have, it won't be enough.” He sighed. “I made up for his absence by hoarding knowledge, skills, seeking praise. What I finally understood in Kerchele is that neither my sister nor I realized that my father's absence is our slippers. In order to start to get rid of your slippers, you have to admit they are yours, and if you do, then they will get rid of themselves.”

All these years and I hadn't known this about Ghosh, about his father dying when he was young. He was like us, fatherless, but at least we had him. Perhaps he'd been worse off than we were.

Ghosh sighed. “I hope one day you see this as clearly as I did in Kerchele. The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny“

AFTER GHOSH LEFT, I wondered if the army man was my pair of slippers. If so, they'd come back once already in the form of his brother. What form would they take next?

Just when my thoughts were coming in illogical sequences, a prelude to sleep, I felt someone lifting up the mosquito net. In the instant that I saw her, she was already sitting on my chest, pinning my arms down.

I could have thrown her off. But I didn't. I liked her body on mine and I liked the faint scent of charcoal and the frankincense that permeated her clothes. Maybe shed come to make up to me for being so rude before. She