Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese

Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted?

“Pagan! Mr. Harris, when our pagan ancestors back in Yorkshire and Saxony were using their enemies’ skulls as a plate to serve food, these Christians here were singing the psalms. They believe they have the Ark of the Covenant locked up in a church in Axum. Not a saint’s finger or a pope’s toe, but the Ark! Ethiopian believers put on the shirts of men who had just died of the plague. They saw in the plague a sure and God-sent means of winning eternal life, of finding salvation. That,” she said, tapping the table, “is how much they thirsted for the next life.”

Men like him became stubborn with opposition, because their convictions were all they had.

So now the Bibles pile up, Mr. Harris. They breed in the toolshed like rabbits.

It’s poverty.