The autobiography of an extraordinary hero, a doctor who put the Hippocratic Oath before his own life, his family, his religion and his country.
As the struggle for independence in his native Chechnya moved into its bloodiest phase, Dr Khassan Baiev was enjoying a life of affluence as a plastic surgeon in Moscow. But hearing reports that war was about to break out in his homeland, he knew his skills could be more usefully employed helping the wounded. Against the advice of everyone, he returned to Chechnya and found it filled with gangs of rebel fighters, orphans and victims of terrible violence.
Horrified, Dr Baiev set out to treat the appalling casualties with out-of-date equipment and dwindling numbers of assistants, often donating his own blood for operations. The demand for his medical attention was such that he was forced to work day and night; if he fell asleep whilst operating, a nurse would rub snow in his face. During one particularly gruesome period, he performed 67 operations in 48 hours.
For months Khassan Baiev was the only doctor working in Alkhan Kala, south of the capital Grozny, where he witnessed the terrible effects of war: a 7-year-old boy whose hair turned white through shock; the needless execution of a 75-year-old woman; a childhood friend dying on his operating table.
It is remarkable how anyone could perform intricate surgery under such conditions, but Khassan Baiev was driven by his allegiance to the Hippocratic Oath: a vow to serve anyone who needed help. For Baiev, the Oath placed him outside politics, binding him to operate on Chechens and Russians alike, but this led Muslim extremists to swear on the Koran to kill him and the Russian military to regard him as a traitor. He narrowly escaped execution on several occasions.
For now Khassan Baiev is a fugitive from his homeland. He knows for certain that if he returns he will he apprehended and almost certainly killed. It would only be a matter of which side got to him first.
Powerful and evocative, 'The Oath' explores the horrors of war, the consequences of racial intolerance and the enormous disparity between a human's capacity for compassion and for cruelty. Above all, it is a story about choices, heroism and honour, and how one man's courage to put his principles before his instincts almost lost him his life.
