I saw his shoulders slacken. ‘I wish I could go back to my old job, but the truth is, I left under a bit of a cloud.’

‘The tweet about the clitoris having eight thousand nerve endings and still not being as sensitive as a white man on the internet that, um, rubbed your boss up the wrong way?’ I laughed.

‘No. Truth is, I found out I was operating on a man who’d raped about ten women, and, well, I “accidentally” genitally mutilated him.’

My mouth opened and closed like a puppet whose ventriloquist had laryngitis, while I tried to think of something to say. ‘Um, I think that’s a little more than “leaving under a cloud”. It’s more like leaving under a cyclonic typhoon and possible asteroid onslaught. What were you thinking?’

‘What I was thinking is that the food crisis that’s gripping parts of southern Ethiopia is all because of ethnic violence – violence that has driven nearly a million people from their homes. Doctors Without Borders treated more than two hundred children in two weeks for severe malnutrition. The grim freight of human suffering I’ve seen – well, it’s scarred my retinas, and maybe my psyche a little bit,’ he confessed.

His eyes caught and held mine. My irises are the palest blue possible, but the doctor’s molten chocolate orbs got even darker as his story deepened.

‘And, of course, rape is a weapon of war . . . and this cocksure dipshit was bragging about his many “conquests”. I was draining his acute perineal abscess, STD-related, and performing a circumcision due to multiple infections. It was only supposed to be a little dice and splice, but – well, I was so war-weary and shell-shocked, I couldn’t even really remember which end of the syringe went into the patient. And oops, what a shame! My scalpel slipped . . . which meant I took off more than the tip, leaving a bit of a stump.’

I was appalled and intrigued in equal measure. ‘Well, one thing’s become clear. Now I know why you doctors wear those little green masks – so that nobody will recognise you when you’re out of the operating room. So, what happened?’

‘The official line was that it was an accident. But then I got ratted out to my supervisor by my girlfriend, who didn’t quite appreciate the irony of genitally mutilating a rapist, apparently. And so, here I am.’ He let out a sharp, contemptuous bark of a laugh. ‘At least it taught me to never trust a woman again.’