Cutting for Stone

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 grass 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 passed the American medical equivalency exams two months later, and immediately presented myself to the American Embassy 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

The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

William Yeats, “The Choice”

38. Welcome Wagon

CAPTAIN GETACHEW SELASSIE—no relation to the Emperor— piloted the East African Airways 707 that flew me out of Nairobi. I heard his calm voice twice during the abbreviated night. I had a new respect for his line of work, which brought him closer to God than any cleric. He was the first of three pilots who carried me through nine time zones.

Rome.

London.

New York.

THE RITUAL OF IMMIGRATION and baggage claim at Kennedy Airport went by so quickly that I wondered if I'd missed it. Where were the armed soldiers? The dogs? The long lines? The body searches? Where were the tables where your luggage was laid open and a knife taken to the lining? I passed into marbled hallways, up and then down escalators and into a cavernous receiving area which, even with two planes disgorging passengers, looked half empty. There was no one to herd us from one spot to the next.

Before I knew it, I was out of the sterile, hushed incubator of Customs. The automatic doors swished shut behind me as if to seal out the contamination of the cacophonous crowd outside, held back by a metal barrier.

A Ghanaian woman, whose flowered gown and headcloth had made her look so regal when she boarded in Nairobi, walked out from Customs beside me. We were both exhausted, dazed, unprepared for the sea of faces scrutinizing us. We stood there, manila X-ray folders (a requirement for immigration which no one checked) clutched awkwardly, baggage straps crisscrossing our chests, wide-eyed like animals coming off the Ark.

What struck me first was that the locals were of all colors and shapes, not the sea of white faces I had expected. Their lewd, inquisitive gazes traveled over us. In the cross fire of bewildering new scents, I picked up the Ghanaian woman's fear. She pressed close to me. Men in black suits held up signs on which they had printed names. Their gazes were flat, like overseers taking the measure of the Ghanaian woman's pelvis, noting the gap between her first and second toe which everyone knows is the only reliable gauge of fecundity. I had a vision of the Middle Passage, of blacks shuffling down the gangplank, shackles clinking while a hundred pairs of eyes probed their flanks, their biceps, and studied the exposed flesh for yaws, which was the Old World syphilis. As for me, I was nobody, her eunuch. She dropped her bag, she was so rattled.

It was while bending down to help her that I saw the sign in the hand of a swarthy brown-eyed man. He held it at waist level, as if he didn't want to be identified with the liveried sign holders. His bush shirt hung out over baggy white pajama pants. Brown sandals on sockless feet completed his outfit. The letters on his sign could have spelled MARVIN or MARMEN or MARTIN. The second word was STONE.

“Is that supposed to say ‘Marion’?” I asked.

He surveyed me from top to bottom, and then he looked away as if I weren't worth a reply. The Ghanaian woman gave a cry of recognition and rushed away to family.

“Excuse me,” I said, stepping into the man's line of sight. “I'm Marion Stone. For Our Lady of Perpetual Succour?”

“Marion is girl!” he said, his accent guttural and raw.

“Not this one,” I said. “I'm named after Marion Sims, famous gynecologist?”

There was (according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica) a statue of Marion Sims in Central Park, at 103rd Street and Fifth Avenue. For all I knew, it was a landmark for taxis. Though Sims started off