Was God testing humanity? Or was He unwilling to intervene?
When it was my turn to speak at the service, I thought of Amena, that sweet, young widowed mother of two dead children. I pictured her scarred face and empty eye socket, and how she glowed like a neon sign in the dark with her love of God.
I said to my friends and coworkers, “You know that Amena survived what for most would have been soul-crushing tragedy—the loss of her home and entire family. But she rallied, and she was brimming with life and faith.
“I wished I had gotten to know Amena better. I would have loved to have been her friend. She told me that she had spoken with her dead boys since their deaths, and she said, ‘Don’t be sad for me, Dr. Fitzgerald. I will be with them again.’”
I teared up as I searched inside myself for an authentic, hopeful note that would represent Amena’s undiluted faith. Just then, a small bird flew across my line of sight and skimmed the glittering surface of the pond before disappearing into the tree shadows.
I snapped back into the present.
I said, “I am thinking of Amena now. Her husband sits with his arms around her, and her children are in her lap. I see her safely reunited with God.”
Was she with God? Really? Was God real? If so, did He care?
The sun was still high when the service ended.
I was still weak and depressed and thought I would simply walk home to my quirky apartment, write a journal entry about today’s service, and then drop into a dead sleep in the huge bed. I was heading toward Friedenstrasse when a gentleman coming up behind me on the same path called out, “Dr. Fitzgerald, may I give you a ride?”
I recognized Karl Lenz, one of BZFO’s benefactors. I’d seen him at the clinic but was surprised that he seemed to know me. Still, I wasn’t feeling chatty.
“Thanks anyway, Mr. Lenz. It’s a short walk.”
“Please. Call me Karl. Would you mind if I might walk with you?” he said. “I feel pretty awful, and I’m not ready to be alone.”
“Of course not,” I said.
We skipped the small talk and jumped right into the horrific week at the clinic. Karl said that he was relieved our MERS caseload had been moved to Charité. “We just weren’t equipped for it,” he said.
We had reached the edge of the park by then, and Karl asked me to lunch. I found that I wasn’t ready to be alone, either.
Chapter 51
A TAXICAB took us to Patio Restaurantschiff, a glass-enclosed restaurant on a boat moored on the Spree River.
I’d been complaining about life; then, in pretty much the next moment, a chair was pulled out for me, and a napkin dropped into my lap in one of the prettiest little restaurants in all of Berlin.
I do have restaurant German but was happy to turn the ordering of lunch over to Karl. He chose a fish soup, venison goulash with chanterelles, and a Künstler Riesling. I couldn’t help but look him over as he spoke with the waiter.
Karl looked to be in his mid to late fifties. He had good-uncle features—glasses and longish, gray-streaked dark hair. He also looked fit, and I loved that he had such expressive hands.
When the wine had been poured and the waiter was gone, Karl let me know that he was aware of my life-over-death battle with MERS. That I had almost died.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked me.
I said, “I’m not running laps around the Tiergarten, but I can tie my shoes without falling over. With my eyes closed. Pretty good, right?”
“I have to say this, Brigid. Doctors like you are why I support BZFO. Dr. Maillet told me a little about your background. I don’t want to embarrass you, but for a young woman with so many opportunities to make money and live well, to risk your life in South Sudan—well, it’s pretty impressive. Ach. I’ve embarrassed you now.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “But tell me about yourself. You’re a writer?”
“A playwright, yes,” he told me. “For me, writing plays is about the most perfect work imaginable.”
Karl told me about his play in progress, a political satire, and from there, we talked about geopolitics along the world’s worst fault lines. He was fully aware of the bloody civil war in South Sudan, and even after the dishes had been cleared away, we were still discussing the senseless conflict that was destroying the country.
“Greed and corruption are the root cause of this,” he said.
I saw it in his face: he actually felt the pain of the war. And after two and a half glasses of wine, I found myself telling Karl about my epic clash with Dage Zuberi.
It was a hard story to tell, but I felt as if I’d known Karl well and for a long time. And as I talked about that day in Magwi, I could see that Karl felt my pain, too.
We were politely thrown out of the restaurant so that it could be set up for dinner, and Karl did give me a ride the few blocks to my apartment.
Once home, I kicked off my shoes and emailed Sabeena. She was living in Mumbai with Albert, and they had adopted Jemilla and Aziza.
I wrote, Sabeena, guess what? I’ve made a new friend in Berlin.