“My brother Shiva and I came into the world in the late afternoon of September 20 of the year of grace 1954. We took our first breath at an altitude of two thousand four hundred meters, in the rarefied air of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia”.
Lhe story of Marion and Shiva begins with the tones of a legend: monozygotic twins, conjoinedunited by the head, born to a Carmelite nun from Madraswho died giving birth to them, and by an unknown father, who was perhaps an English doctor, but no one knows.
In the Missing Hospital the birth of twins changes everythingWhy Sister Mary Joseph Praise it was one celestial beautyand of a goodness that radiated light, as she spread her maxim “transform your life into something beautiful”: a great void remains in all those who knew and admired her for her grace and devotion, so many memories and too many unanswered questions.
Marion and Shiva are separatedmiraculously survive the surgery and are taken in and raised by two Indian doctors, Hema and Ghosh, in a family serenity that fills the holes in the hearts of adults and forges the personalities of children. Theirs is an existence marked by duplicity and union: born identical, they grow up different in character, but with a common passion for medicine.
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ShivaMarion I am a single being marked by a necessary but painful fracture (“The only thing I remember is the separation from Shiva”), by episodes that determine estrangements and rapprochements, by betrayals and generosity, by illnesses and secrets: The door of tears Of Abraham Verghese (Neri Pozza, translated by Silvia Pareschi) tells their lives through the words of Marion, spokesperson for ShivaMarion by virtue of a caesarean section that reversed their birth, and made him the firstborn.
There are all the elements of a saga, which spans the years, intertwined with the political turmoil of Ethiopia, moves from India to Africa and then crosses the ocean and arrives in the heart of the Bronx. Abraham Verghese, famous author of The Water Pactfits into the tradition of great epic novelwith the flavor of melodrama: there are different lives and different stories, there are impossible passions and mourning, superstitions and dances, coups d’état and political prisoners, there are emancipated girls and traditions to be respected, there is the dream of a love forever that breaks on a whim for one night and seems to break a bond as strong as its legend. There is Addis Ababawith its sky streaked with ocher, crimson and black, the mission hospital with roses and the scent of eucalyptus, the patter of rain on the corrugated iron roofs: Verghese’s writing is vivid, precise in detail, strong in a bond sincere, full of flavors and smells, visceral because geography is destiny (“where you live changes you”), and that land is part of the author, as it is of his characters.
All these elements are made to find their place, which can only be grasped by looking backwards, because that is how life is: we are made to fix what is broken, heal the fractures, to reunite the pieces, to mend the tears of our mistakes and to live with our incompleteness.
“As I grew up, I discovered that my goal was to become a doctor, not so much to save the world but to heal myself.”
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Telling, Marion tries to close the gap that separated him from his brother because of a girl, to rediscover its entirety which cannot exist without Shiva. And it is with the spirit of observation that comes from his medical profession that Abraham Verghese accompanies the small immense sufferings of Marion’s heart throughout the years: his is a restlessness that calms down only in two moments, when he brings his head back to that of his brother, reuniting with half of himself, and when he practices medicine.
This is the other great protagonist of The door of tears: the medical art that embraces rationality and compassion, which fixes by listening, aware of the many fragilities of the body and soul. Marion and Shiva both proceed on the path marked by Hema and Ghosh, each in his own way. Shiva independent and eccentric, Marion restless and full of questions, inextricably linked to each other as one.
“Even when we were separated by an ocean, even when we believed we were two distinct creatures, we were ShivaMarion.
He was the libertine and I was the ex-virgin, he was the genius who learned everything effortlessly and I was the one who had to work until late at night; he is the famous fistula surgeon and I am a simple trauma surgeon. If we had switched roles, it wouldn’t have mattered in the slightest.”
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There is a meaning of the noble and pure, uncorrupted world in Verghese, which in describing health and illness, in describing diagnoses and surgical procedures, in speaking with respect about the living and the dead, seems to cast a spell by inviting us into a hidden world, where everyday problems remain on the threshold, insignificant. The answers, the explanation of good and evil, therefore, are found in medicine: where the well-being of humanity prevails, and where the parts are recomposed, there, in a space that is also spiritual, right is re-established.
The door of tears it succeeds in an unusual balance, inserting the codes of the saga into a medical context told by an expert: it makes the pieces fit together, brings the edges of the heart closer together, where the theme of belonging to the family is reflected at its maximum in the ability to entrust oneself, blindly, even to those who have betrayed, finding one’s salvation in that abandonment, the gap between love and pride, and one’s ultimate completeness. It is Ghosh who embodies the balance of the accomplished man, who lived with the passion of his profession, and died without wrongs to repair, with the serenity of someone who was able to grasp the signs of life, living fully, managing to excel in three things that gave meaning to his existence: loving, learning and leaving a memory of himself. This is the passionate recipe of the doctor Verghese, the sense of peace content ne The door of tears.
“Everything depends on our every action and every omission, whether we know it or not.”
