ER Nurse's 'Afghanistan' Treks Prove To be Novel Experience
Tenley Woodman - Boston Herald
Nov 15, 2010
Roberta Gately has seen the world's most dangerous hot spots firsthand: Iraq, Darfur, the Balkans and refugee camps in Kenya.
A Boston Medical Center emergency room nurse, Gately makes humanitarian aid missions to countries in need. Though she's seen a lot, it's her first mission to Afghanistan that she can't forget.
"The very first time I went to Afghanistan, I did just break into tears," Gately said over a couple of Diet Cokes in her Quincy home. "To be that close to them, I was just devastated. It didn't take me long to snap out of it."
The Roslindale native is a writer as well as a nurse and used her experiences to fuel her debut novel, "Lipstick in Afghanistan" (Gallery Books, $15). Protagonist Elsa Murphy, a 20-something emergency room nurse from Dorchester, feels compelled to do more with her abilities after 9/11. Murphy is not unlike Gately, who, as an idealistic young nurse, signed up for her first mission to Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s.
Since that first trip, Gately has returned four more times, most recently in 2002. Like her fictional hero, Gately has aided victims of land mines, bus explosions and other horrific results of conflict.
"Working in the ER gave me the courage and skills to go around the world," Gately said.
Despite cultural barriers between the East and West, Gately found a common denominator between herself and the veil-shrouded women she met in war-torn villages.
"Lipstick, more than anything, is a feel-good thing for women. Lipstick is ours. It is a bond only women have," she said. "For Western aid workers, though we dress and look the part (of a native), I always wore my sunglasses and lipstick."
Unlike Gately, the village women only colored their lips in private. For them, it was a cherished and unifying symbol of womanhood.
The book's other main character, Parween, a fiesty Afhgan native who would beat up the village boys, is based on a scruffy little girl Gately observed beating up the boys in her village.
"I think when you watch the news you only get little snippets," she said. "You can get turned off. But they aren't that different from us."
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