Abraham Verghese - Cutting for Stone

A rapt Shiva spurs me on and sends silent instructions: Throw it to me. And when I cannot, he says, Open it and see what is inside. That, too, is impossible. I mold it, indent it, and watch it rebound.

Put it to your mouth, Shiva says because this is the first means by which he knows the world. I dismiss this idea as absurd.

The breast is everything Almaz is not: laughing, vibrant, an outgoing member of our household.

When I try to lift it, to examine it, that teat dwarfs my hands and spills out between my fingers. I wish to confirm how all its surfaces sweep up to the summit, the dark pap through which it breathes and sees the world. The breast comes down to my knees. Or perhaps it comes down to Almaz's knees. I can't be sure. It quivers like jelly. Steam condenses on its surface, dulling its sheen. It carries the scent of crushed ginger and cumin powder from Almaz's fingers. Years later, when I first kiss a woman's breast, I become ravenous.

A flash of light and a blast of crisp air announce Rosina's return. I am back in her arms, removed from the breast which vanishes as mysteriously as it has appeared, swallowed by Almaz's blouse.

IN THE LATE MORNING, the chill long gone and the mist burned away, we play on the lawn till our cheeks are red. Rosina feeds us. Hunger and drowsiness blend together perfectly like the rice and curry, yogurt and bananas, in our belly. It is an age of perfection, of simple appetites.

After lunch, Shiva and I fall asleep, arms around each other, breath on each other's face, heads touching. In that fugue state between wake-fulness and dreaming, the song I hear is not Rosina's. It is “Tizita,” which Almaz sang when I held her breast.

I WILL HEAR THAT SONG through all my years in Ethiopia. When I leave Addis Ababa as a young man, I will carry it with me on a cassette that has “Tizita” along with “Aqualung.” Departure or imminent death will force you to define your true tastes. During my years of exile, as the battered cassette wears out, I'll meet Ethiopians abroad. My word of greeting in our shared language is a spark, a link to a community a network: the phone number of Woizero (Mrs.) Menen who, for a modest fee, cooks injera and wot and serves you in her house if you call her the day before; the taxi driver Ato (Mr.) Girma, whose cousin works for Ethio pian Airlines and brings in kibe —Ethiopian butter—because with out butter from cows that live at altitude and graze on high pastures, your wot will taste of Kroger or FoodMart or Land O'Lakes. For Meskel celebrations, if you want a sheep slaughtered in Brooklyn, call Yohannes, and in Boston try the Queen of Sheba's. In my years away from my birth land, living in America, I will see how Ethiopians are invisible to others, yet so visible to me. Through them I will easily find other recordings of “Tizita.”

They are eager to share, to thrust that song in my hands, as if only “Tizita” explains the strange inertia that overcomes them; it explains how they were brilliant at home, the Jackson 5 , the Temptations, and “Tizita” on their lips, a perfect Afro on their heads, bell-bottoms swishing above Double-O-Seven boots, and then the first foothold in America—behind the counter of a 7-Eleven, or breathing carbon mon oxide fumes in a Kinney underground parking lot, or behind the counter of an airport newsstand or Marriott gift shop—has turned out to be a cement foot plant, a haven that they are fearful of leaving lest they suffer a fate worse than invisibility namely extinction.

Getachew Kassa's slow version of “Tizita,” a bright but haunting, sober lament on a backdrop of minor-chord arpeggios, is the best known. He has another version, with a fast Latin rhythm. Mahmoud Ahmed, Aster Aweke, Teddy Afro … every Ethiopian artist records a “Tizita.” They record it in Addis Ababa, but also in exile in Khartoum (yes, Khartoum! which proves that even hell has a recording studio) and of course in Rome, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Dallas, Boston, and New York. “Tizita” is the heart's anthem, the lament of the diaspora, reverberating up and down Eighteenth Street in the Adams Morgan section of Washington, D.C., where it pours out from Fasika's, Addis Ababa, Meskerem, Red Sea, and other Ethiopian eateries, drowning out the salsa or the ragas emanating from El Rincon and Queen of India.

There is a fast “Tizita,” a slow “Tizita,” an instrumental “Tizita” (which the Ashantis made so popular), a short and a long “Tizita” … there are as many versions as there are recording artists.

That first line … I hear it now.

Tizitash zeweter wode ene eye metah.

I can't help thinking about you.

IN OUR HOUSEHOLD, you had to dive into the din and push to the front if you wanted to be heard. The foghorn voice was Ghosh's, echoing and tailing off into laughter. Hema was the songbird, but when provoked her voice was as sharp as Saladin's scimitar, which, according to my Richard the Lion Hearted and the Crusades, could divide a silk scarf allowed to float down onto the blade's edge. Almaz, our cook, may have been silent on the outside, but her lips moved constantly, whether in prayer or song, no one knew. Rosina took silence as a personal offense, and spoke into empty rooms and chattered into cupboards. Genet, almost six years of age, was showing signs of taking after her mother, telling herself stories about herself in a singsong voice, creating her own mythology.

Had ShivaMarion been delivered vaginally (impossible, given how our heads were connected), Shiva, presenting skull first, would have been the firstborn, the older twin. But when the Cesarean section reversed the natural birth order, I became the first to breathe—senior by a few seconds. I also became spokesperson for ShivaMarion.

Trailing after Hema and Ghosh in the Piazza, or threading between gharries and lorries into Motilal's Garments in the crowded Merkato of Addis Ababa, I never heard Hema say, “That blue shirt will look so good on Shiva,” or “Those sandals are perfect for Marion.” The arrival of Dr. Ghosh and Dr. Hema meant chairs were dragged out and dusted, and a boy sent running to return with warm Fanta or Coca-Cola and biscuits, despite all protests. Tape measures sized us, our cheeks were pinched by rough hands, and a small crowd gathered to gawk, as if Shiva Marion was a lion in the cages at Sidist Kilo. The upshot of all this would be that Hema and Ghosh purchased two of whatever piece of clothing it was they felt we needed. Ditto for cricket bats, fountain pens, and bicycles. When people saw us and said, “Look! How sweet,” did they really imagine that we had picked the matching outfits ourselves? I'll admit, the one time I tried to dress differently from Shiva, I felt uneasy as we stood before the mirror. It was as if my fly were undone—it just didn't feel right.

We—”The Twins”—were famous not just for dressing alike but for sprinting around at breakneck speed, but always in step, a four-legged being that knew only one way to get from A to B. When ShivaMarion was forced to walk, it was with arms locked around each other's shoulders, not really a walk but a trot, champions of the three-legged race before we knew there was such a thing. Seated, we shared a chair, seeing no sense in occupying two. We even used the loo together, directing a double jet into the porcelain void. Looking back, you could say we had some responsibility for people dealing with us as a collective.

Ask The Twins to come inside for dinner.

Boys, isn't it time for your bath?

ShivaMarion, do you want spaghetti or injera and wot tonight?