Body Surfing

animal—the physical—mind? Is there nothing of the infinite in this kind of behavior? Of God, or his adversaries? Listen ,” she said over Dumas’s opened mouth. “The monks you mentioned earlier spoke of demonic possessions. Many of the refugees talked the same way. As if an alien consciousness had forced them to commit such strange acts. The Zaghawa have a word. Ogbanje . It refers to an evil spirit who returns to the womb each time it dies, possessing an unborn child so it can inflict a new cycle of misery. And Arabs speak of afrit and ghul , male and female djinn who inhabit humans and force them to commit acts they would never do otherwise. And the medieval Christian belief that witches were in fact hosts of Satanic agents led them to execute hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of suspects over the course of three centuries. Can you really accept that so many similarities across such disparate cultures and religious traditions are purely chance?”
    Dumas’s lips pursed as he put his glass down and regarded the woman beside him frankly. “Ogbanje? Afrit? Ghul? Demons ? Apparently you were gathering more than statistical data in your interviews.” He laughed nervously. “I am suddenly reminded of your inexperience. You are not the first novice to run after a spiritual explanation for atrocities such as those being committed in Darfur. But I am a scientist. An empiricist. Where some people see God’s hand, I see only the slavish devotion to one tradition, one institution, rather than another. Fractured human psyches reverting to more primal expressions. And yet…” For the first time the look Dumas gave her was less lustful than sad, as though he wanted to agree with her, but couldn’t. “Though I do not believe in ‘the soul’ as such, I cannot deny that there seems to be more to this body than a finite number of cells.”
    “Consciousness,” Ileana reminded Dumas of the word he’d used earlier.
    The Frenchman nodded. “We know consciousness is an electrical phenomenon. A measurable current moving within the environment of a single brain, a single body. We can prod that body with drugs,poke the brain with needles, and, within certain parameters, predict what the effect of our stimuli will be. And yet we have never been able to duplicate a single human thought or emotion. We can break the body down into organs, break the organs into cells and cells into their component parts. We can even break apart molecules and atoms, but we cannot locate the moment at which the inorganic becomes organic, the instant that a collection of cells acquires the ability to think and feel. I must admit that when I look at a ditch filled with thousands of corpses, I sometimes find myself taking comfort in the hope that consciousness comes from somewhere outside the body, and that it returns to that place after the flesh that housed it has been so brutally destroyed. But it is just that. A hope. A comfort. It is only a matter of time before science solves even this mystery, and the miracle of the soul is reduced to a series of ones and zeros equally at home in a motherboard as in mother nature.”
    Dumas looked at Ileana self-consciously after this speech. In fact she was a bit surprised by what he’d said. There were gatherers in the Legion who said much the same thing, although their conclusions were based on rather different data from what Dumas had at his disposal.
    She reached for the bottle, but just as she was about to pour another round a young man entered the bar. He was tall with dark skin, but something about his manner and dress—louche, studiedly careless—suggested the European rather than the Arabic. Italian perhaps, maybe Spanish. He paused in the open doorway and surveyed the room, looking at each and every person in turn, but also, and quite ostentatiously, allowing himself to be looked at.
    Dumas saw where she was looking. “Do you know him?”
    “I’m not sure.” She didn’t turn away from the newcomer, whose eyes had already found hers. “Do you?”
    The connection was instant. Almost electric. The man smiled, then turned and walked back out of the bar.
    “I have encountered him here and there. He writes for the yellow press, going from famine to war to earthquake the way certain types of lawyers run along behind ambulances. His name is Antonio So—”
    But Ileana had already slid from her barstool. Dumas could only watch in confusion as she left.
    “The maids have been telling