In her thirteenth novel, the author highlights a Red Cross nurse called to work in conflict zones where humanity is losing its values a little more every day.
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“Go to the front without a weapon or bulletproof vest. Treating others at the risk of your life. To feel useful in this world.” This, summarized in three sentences, is the work of Grégory, a nurse with the International Red Cross, who, from Sarajevo (Bosnia) to Gaza (Palestine), goes to the aid of others. “Before there is sometimes a silence. A silence that no one hears. Then comes the explosion. Deafening noise, blinding flash […] The shock wave first reaches those who are nearby […] For them, no chance […] In the second circle, debris and shards pierce the flesh and bones. Secondary blast, screening. Perforated eardrums. Eyes, throats and skin burned. Bodies crushed by the unbearable pressure […] Tertiary blast. Bodies thrown several meters. Collapsed walls and ceilings. The world is falling apart. Then silence returns. A dark fog, a rain of blood, a night of ashes. A bomb has just exploded.”
We got to know Karine Giebel with more classic stories, very good thrillers that we can hardly put down. There, she enters other areas, even more morbid, since it is about war, and about people who did not choose to find themselves there. “Gregory left Sarajevo this morning. He is going to a hospital in Srebrenica where he will spend two weeks training nurses to care for people injured by antipersonnel mines. He has accepted a three-month mission in Bosnia which will begin in this region where the worst massacre of the war was perpetrated and where mines continue to kill and mutilate every day. The back cover questions what we “forces us to keep our eyes wide open to what man is capable of inflicting on his fellow human beings and questions the human being in us”.
Cruel dilemma, horrible decision
But one of the merits of this novel is to describe what is at stake in the profession that Grégory exercises. He must thus choose from the crowd of victims those who can be saved and those who cannot. Say who will live, basically. Cruel dilemma, horrible decision. “It is invariably the most fragile who pay the high price” writes Karine Giebel. As for Grégory, he will never stop fighting to continue saving others. “He will leave again because the mines continue their work of death all over the planet […] He will leave because the screams of the victims will become deafening. Because he is incapable of remaining deaf to the distress calls shouted throughout the world. He will leave again, it’s only a matter of time. Of time and courage. Of courage and values.”
In this book, there are people who mutilate women to prevent them from having children, who practice the balance of terror, who wage war to have peace, or to satisfy their most sordid fantasies. Karine Giebel has written a tough but necessary book, because it helps us understand a little of our humanity, even if we move away from it in these war zones. At the top of the book, a verse from Victor Hugo, decidedly inspired on this subject. “For six thousand years, war has pleased quarrelsome peoples, And God wastes his time making stars and flowers”. God ? It seems to be rare in war zones.
