In the Body of the World Read Free

drawn into your neurotic obsessing. We have been trained to believe this bifurcation of heart and head is necessary, something that will protect us, that embedded in this detachment is some magical shield that will keep us from the void. I know now that the opposite is true. The first time I talked to Dr. Deb, I didn’t believe she was a doctor at the Mayo Clinic. She had called because she had been reading an article I had written about the atrocities and rapes happening to the women and girls in the Congo and she was crying on the phone. She could hardly speakthrough her tears. She was saying, “I will do anything to help. What can I do? What can we do to help?”
    I think here is where I need to tell you about the Congo. It is hard to know where to begin. It is hard to know where anything begins—like the cancer itself. Was it the day I met Dr. Mukwege in New York City at NYU Law School? The day I walked into a room—I believe it was a small classroom—and found a tall very dark African man sitting in a chair? A man whose beauty was inseparable from his kindness, his devotion and caring, his big capable surgeon hands, his energy, his smile, his stillness and detachment. His eyes looking off into a distance, bloodshot, filled with nightmares and sorrow. Handsome was not the word. Charismatic would be the easy choice. But I see now the correct word would be good . As I sat onstage that night trying to interview him in front of five hundred people, I came face-to-face with a man who lived among the worst atrocities on the planet, who, as a gynecologist, had been forced day after day to heal and repair the bloodied, torn, eviscerated vaginas of a country that had been invaded, occupied, and pillaged for thirteen years. Or was it my first trip to Bukavu and meeting Christine, Mama C, the tall, stunning, outrageous warrior woman dressed in her brightly colored African finery and even taller in high heels who was my translator and guide through the journey with the survivors,Mama C’s bitter-heart-hurt-mama strength? Or was it the women survivors who gathered for days outside the room at Panzi Hospital to tell their stories? It was the women, of course it was the women. Shaking women, weeping women, women with missing limbs and reproductive organs, women with machete lashes across their faces and arms and legs, women limping on crutches, women carrying babies the color of their rapists, women who smelled like urine and feces because they had fistulas—holes between their vaginas and bladder and rectum—and now they were leaking, leaking. Women who were funny, passionate, clever, and fierce, who turned ten dollars into a thriving business. They danced when they couldn’t walk. They sang when their futures had been stolen. Dr. Mukwege and Mama C, the women and the Congo, let’s not forget the Congo. The silky, powder-blue Lake Kivu; the sweet, warm African air that embraces; the high, green, fertile trees and shocking orange and pink blossoms and birds; the crazy, chattering morning birds. I was a goner for the Congo.
    Dr. Deb offered to bring her team from the Mayo Clinic to support Dr. Mukwege at the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu. I was the activist who would help her make this happen. She had not been my doctor. I hadnot been her patient. I had not been anyone’s patient. I was an activist. I did not get sick.
    I find myself dialing her number. She answers. I cannot breathe. I whisper. “They have found a tumor. It is very large. It has broken through, invaded the sides of my colon. They are not sure where it’s coming from. It could be my uterus. Maybe you can help me.”
    She says, “Get on a plane. Come here. Come now.”

SCAN

SOMNOLENCE
    There was something not only passive but downright suicidal about my response to the early signs of my cancer. A kind of resignation possessed me, as if I were an estranged voyeur noting my body from a great distance. Somnolent is the word that keeps coming to me. Half awake, half