I have now finished “Emergency Sex (and other desperate measures). What a fantastic book it is. The three main writers provide an honest, personal account of some of the wars that have taken place in recent history. They are all young and idealistic and want to change the world. Whilst their efforts, during their work for the UN was inevitably clouded by an element of cynicism, they still managed to remain hopeful and to believe that they could and did make a difference.
Heidi, the feisty, modern female provided a very powerful voice, focusing on individual characters rather than seeing groups of people merely as a population. She got under the skin of each and every person she met, it appears and at the end of the book, after her beloved boyfriend and her mother died, she wrote a paragraph about death which I thought was beautiful:
“With Marc’s death I both lost and gained my life in one tragic stroke. The pure beauty of death is as impossible to describe as the birth of a child, the betrayal of a lover, the moment of orgasm. You can’t know it until it’s touched you, moved inside you, awakened every nerve in your body and made you feel with complete clarity things you never thought bearable. You make it through the long weeping nights when the ravens come to scratch at your eyes and you open a drawer and a scrap of paper with your beloved’s handwriting floats silently to the floor and you’re struck with the realisation that you weren’t wrong. He did exist but he’s gone now.
And then one morning, after a very long time, you hear a rose bloom and the sun no longer makes you sad and you feel clear and privileged to have shared a life. You take each moment and hold it on your tongue and taste the bitter and the sweet and the sour and know that life is beautiful and you’re grateful for the gift.
I think of all the women I’ve met over the last decade in other people’s wars and the things they knew in their hearts. I remember how they continued to love and laugh and to bring new life into the world with all the hope and courage to imagine a future. I remember a warm brown hand on my breast and a soft voice naming me sister. It was my great fortune to have known these women. Before leaving Somalia, I was honoured to be asked by a Somali friend to name is newborn daughter. I pray now for that young girl in Mogadishu, whom I blessed with the hope-filled name of Aayaan. Aayaan. Daybreak. The moment of the day pregnant with promise. The long night over, life starts anew.
She dedicates the book to her mother amongst others “on who’s shoulders I stand”, which again, I thought was a lovely way to look at how we benefit and grow from the people that come before us.
You must all read it. I suspect it won’t be long before it becomes a film.
