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 bloody 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 space, 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 space 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 God? 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 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.