Tripe in the air, the skull smashed, a part of the face amputated a leg corrupt and bluish, and a foul smell. We are at the morgue, Ain Chok Casablanca. The lady who receives me does not seem to be particularly disturbed by the spectacle of death. I had not had time to regret having put the feet by mistake in the room of the autopsy that a lovely lady appeals to me in a gentle voice, “What can I do for you? ""I'm looking for dr. Farida Bouchta" , murmurais-I. “It is I myself. Take place, by the time I finished the review from this woman who died in an accident yesterday, " she says. A little lost, I stay at a respectable distance from the corpse to watch the practitioner to the work.
The character is confusing, a lady who lives in the shadow of the zombies. In ant, a tireless, she prefers not to dwell on it, do not dwell on the real. A woman is smooth and reasonable, "distanced" and nonchalant, which lets herself go on her looks, that leaks when it cries, who pretended to obey is better to take refuge on its cloud, which often turns on its wake, and drowns in the blood.
Guts
As she cuts into the flesh, putrid, Farida Bouchta explained to me that they are two women medical examiners at the centre medico-legal community Ain Chok Casablanca. She manages the service with his colleague Soumaya Bouhlal . She is responsible, since September 1989, perform forensic.
The task of this gentle mother, a native of Oujda in 1958, consists in the systematic examination of cadavers to study the lesions, collect samples and lead to the diagnosis: the cause of death.
The dead and the dead are everywhere in the life of Farida Bouchta. This is his livelihood. The universe disaster mortuary Ain Chok, Dr. Bouchta is finally used to it. She was strangely hooked. His nose does not seem very unwell smells pestilential body; his frail hands not to tremble, not in the viscera of a child completely shredded by a harvester. His heart was not tightened when she picks up the brains of a crane fully broken.
Lividity
Each day that God made, Dr. Bouchta is bathed in pools of blood. All that anime, and the fact that you live, it is to take care of the corpses as soon as they arrive at the morgue. It performs a variety of tasks to prepare the body for the formalities of identification, external review, to move to the autopsy.
For her, the ritual of the autopsy usually begins with a careful examination of the corpse stripped, which would lead to note : the state of the clothes, sex, apparent and real, the size, the weight, the pigmentation of the skin, as well as the characteristics of "anthropological" of the individual. The findings that it does need to be noted as. This review, Dr. Bouchta the full by the practice of incisions deep with the help of a scalpel, and designed to identify or confirm bruises and hematomas of the skin, sub-cutaneous or deep muscle. It is from this external review that the autopsy itself begins.
Sensitive people, refrain!
Knife in the right hand, Dr. Bouchta explains to me that the dissection occurs in three phases: cephalic, cervical-thoracic, and abdominal. Demo!
For the first phase, the scalp is incised according to a line from a region behind the ear to the other, passing near the nape of the neck, and then it is discarded and another in front and back. The skull vault is cut according to a circular line passing through the forehead, the temples and the occiput. Two parts of encéphales are cleared, the Dr Bouchta examines them carefully.
This examination of the skull, our medical examiner, the complete detachment of the feeling which allows a direct view of the os, for the research of fractures, disjunctions, or that is even more difficult to detect traces of crack or crack.
The second phase concerns the decomposition of the part cervico-thoracic. To begin, Dr. Bouchta practice a long midline incision from the tip of the chin to the pubis. Two nurses the help keep the skin and muscles of each side of the thorax and of the abdomen, désinsère the collarbones and you have to cut the ribs.
After observing the organs in place, Dr. Bouchta releases the language and the elements of the cervical she takes cautiously towards the bottom. She cuts the esophagus, the trachea, and the vessel elements in the ras of the esophagus. After which, she carefully weighing all the organs : lungs, liver, kidneys, spleen, heart. A display of blood and flesh that raises the heart.
Evisceration
Then comes the turn of the autopsy of the abdomen. While I was sweating, terrified, Dr. Bouchta started already in the examination of all the viscera in place. Then, she opened the stomach to examine the contents.
She then removes the liver, the spleen, the pancreas, the intestines and the kidneys, and then opens the bladder to collect urine.
She inspects carefully the internal genital organs of the deceased. After evisceration, she practices a careful examination of the entire skeleton in search of all the lesions.
Dr. Bouchta explains to me that in the case of suspicious death, or in case of need, the autopsy is completed by the levies referred toxicological concern.
After 3 hours of this course of practical anatomy of the human flesh, the longest of my life, Dr. Bouchta seems to have completed its autopsy.
With a small smile tracing his thin lips, she invites me to follow her into her office. Phew !
Over a cup of coffee, I had just started to regain my senses, she immediately started to try to speak passionately about his job and his world. The dead and the dead ! She explained to me with simple words, how after death, the temperature of the corpse is in equilibrium with the external environment, with, theoretically, a drop of 1 degree per hour ; how the evaporation of water from the corpse leads to a loss of weight of about 1 Kg per day for an adult ; the dermis in the nude becomes dry, brown and hard. She described to me the lividités usually characterized by a pink color blue in the lower parts of the body because of the blood that does not flow. She was telling me putrefaction, symbol belated, but absolute death.
To conclude his theoretical course, it specifies that any withdrawal from an autopsy in forensic medicine must first be referenced and can be preserved for months in the fridge or freezer, except for the hair that must be kept at room temperature and in sec. Destruction
I have fixed the innocent look of this mother courage who has dissected more than 12 thousand dead bodies, and I thought about his colleague Soumaya Bouhlal and all forensic pathologists in Morocco, which, in conditions that are untenable, are in constant contact with the misfortune.
Practitioners who know that the vast majority of us are under no illusions about the future of the body after death and that the brutally destroyed by an accident, or the progressive destruction by bacteria or worms, we would also go back to the molecular state. This rational design is not incompatible with the understanding of the emotion inspired by an attack on the integrity of the body of a being that we loved.
I left Farida Bouchta and the morgue Ain Chok shaken, but more than ever convinced that the passage of the exploits of the medicine in the silence of a morgue is part of the work of mourning.
I realized, finally, that if the destruction of the body does not coincide with the destruction of the soul, it loses nothing of its horror. It really is the last enemy of Man.
Interview with Farida Bouchta
“No place for feelings”
Interview
by Taïeb Chadi
• Maroc Hebdo International : Is it that you find pleasure in breaking down a corpse ?
– Farida Bouchta: I don't find pleasure in the act of autopsy itself, but in the result of this work. When I arrived to detect scientifically the causes of a dead suspect, there is something to be proud of, since it is the purpose a professional account, and that I am judged. It is at this moment, I feel a great pleasure. I'm not a blood-sucking. It is true, I'm a medical examiner, but I'm a woman so sensitive that others.
• MHI: Is it will never finish to be shocked to the point of stopping an autopsy ?
– Farida Bouchta: No. Ever. I do my work calmly in the world. Without emotion, and with a high level of professional integrity. For me, a dead man or a dead body they are working on which I applied all my knowledge professional medical examiner. There is no place for feelings, otherwise this could go very badly. I must confess that force to examine corpses, forensic doctors used to it.
• MHI: Palpate head had been smashed or tripe in the air, it does you absolutely no effect?
– Farida Bouchta: Why do you want that I faced ? I'm doing my job as a computer engineer, a carpenter or a blacksmith. It is safe, the relationship with the dead where I work is humane and ethical, but it is also a scientific and professional. There are borders between my feelings of a wife, mom, and my duty to medical examiner.
• MHI: These boundaries are, they'll still be waterproof?
– Farida Bouchta: Not as tight as that, but let's say that once in the morgue, I think, and I am acting as a forensic pathologist. In the evening the family, I assume my conjugal duties towards my husband, and I am the mother caring and tender with my daughter, Sofia.o
