We looked at the map and found that Adi Wari was only about four miles away. O’Rourke offered me a sleeping pill but I wanted to stay alert. Still, I think he may have put something in my drink because the last thing I remember before I woke up the following morning was sitting wrapped in the blanket leaning against him, with his arm round me very tight, really too tight. I felt a mixture of emotion, shock, guilt, dread, but at the same time I felt an odd form of elation, just because I was alive.
CHAPTER
Fourteen
I woke with the first gray light filtering round the tarpaulin at the back of the lorry. When something terrible has happened, the second moment after waking is the most unbearable. You start with your mind washed clean by sleep, and then you remember.
Muhammad was comatose. So was the soldier. O’Rourke wasn’t there. I climbed out of the truck and went into the bush for a pee. I was starting to have paranoid thoughts. I was thinking this was all my fault, and I was a bad person.
I walked back to the truck. O’Rourke was standing there, rubbing the back of his head. His hair was sticking up on one side like a duck’s tail, and he needed a shave, but he had a clean shirt on. He looked as though he was in control, and civilization had not stopped.
When I came up, he put his arms round me and rocked me a bit, gently. “You OK, trooper?”
I said nothing. He took me to sit in the cab of the Toyota and talked to me. He was very good with me that morning. I think misfortune is hardest of all to deal with when you feel an element of guilt or shame about it. It takes away the option of a sustaining fantasy of yourself as a hero. I don’t know how people manage to cope with accidents which are definitely their fault. But I know that people can emerge more or less intact from the most outrageous situations if they learn to think about them in the right way. I was very fortunate that O’Rourke was with me at that time. He reminded me that everyone had made their own decision to go; we had all weighed up the odds and decided that the end justified the means. He told me that we knew that dreadful things happened all the time, and that when one happened to you, or someone close to you, you mustn’t allow it to shake your confidence in the world, because the world was still the same place. You were just beginning to understand it better.
“I can’t face Muhammad,” I said to him.
“Yes, you can,” he said. “You’ll see. He will handle it better than us. He’ll turn it into an asset.”
O’Rourke was right, as it turned out. Out here, the attitude towards losing a limb was totally different from in the West. I once heard a Red Cross prosthetics worker describe how in Switzerland his patients were desperate that their artificial leg should look real so that under trousers no one would know, whereas he would give a Keftian the first crude attempt at a wooden limb fitting, and probably never see them again. As long as the limb worked, they just wanted to get on with their lives. It wasn’t something they bothered to disguise. Maybe this was because of the war and the proliferation of mines. I suspect it had more to do with what they valued in each other.
When I climbed into the back of the truck Muhammad was conscious and sitting up. It was a shock, in the light, seeing him in a dirty djellaba. It was gray with smoke, and covered with great caked patches of dry blood.
“Rosie.” He held out his hand to me. “I have become one of the war wounded. Will you love me the more for it?”
I took his hand but I couldn’t speak.
“Don’t be distressed. Please do not be that way. Rather you should be rejoicing because I am still here. You see, I am still here even though I have no leg now.”
“Shut up. Quiet.”
I thought this was rather rude of O’Rourke at such a sensitive moment until I too heard the plane. It was a distant whine to the east. Within seconds it was turning into a roar, growing until the sound was unbelievable, as if the plane was in the lorry with us. I sat completely rigid. I was thinking: of course, this is what’s going to happen, we’re going to be bombed we’re going to die now. The soldier, who had been lying comatose, started, then screamed at the pain from the metal. O’Rourke leaned over, and held him still. Muhammad was sitting with his eyes closed, arms folded over his stomach. We were tensed, waiting for the explosion. But the noise passed its peak, and the plane seemed to veer off, the sound fading until there was silence.
“I thought they weren’t supposed to come this close to the border,” O’Rourke said, with a ludicrous calmness.
“They must know we are here,” said Muhammad.
“Right, we move,” said O’Rourke.
“But how—what about the soldier?” I said. He was lying quietly now, but his eyes were mad. He was terrified.
“Leave him, leave him—he will die,” said Muhamad.
The soldier couldn’t understand English but the look in his eyes was awful.
“We can’t leave him in this state—it’s inhuman,” said O’Rourke.
“You are not understanding death in Africa. This is war. He is a soldier,” said Muhammad.
“But he’s in such pain,” I said.
“You can end that for him,” said Muhammad.
O’Rourke said nothing. Obviously, he had the drugs.
“You can’t kill him,” I said.
“We are merely speeding a natural process,” said Muhammad.
“We wait,” said O’Rourke.
“Doctor, without your ministrations this man would already be dead. You are in the heart of Africa, you cannot apply your Western standards of medicine here.”
“If I’d followed that tack, you’d be dead.”
“That is a point quite irrelevant to the argument.”
“How can you say that?” O’Rourke was angry now. “That is complete choplogic.”
“I beg to disagree.”
“Fuck it, Muhammad,” shouted O’Rourke. “You are molding the arguments to suit our interests. It’s not intelligent.”
“The issue in question is the life of this man. My point concerns him. My own case is as irrelevant to the discussion as any other medical emergency.”
“You’re completely sidestepping any logical argument.”
“But, surely, we must focus on our logic?”
“For heaven’s sake,” I yelled at them. “You’re going round in circles. Come on.”
We decided to take Muhammad a little way away, and come back for the soldier. O’Rourke sedated the man before we left him, and we set off with Muhammad between us, with an arm round each of our shoulders. It didn’t work; his remaining leg was too painful to take his weight. So O’Rourke went back for a stretcher and we carried him. He was appallingly light.
We were in an area of woodland, with low, gnarled trees. The sun was gentle, shining through them, dappled, onto the grass. It seemed unreal. It didn’t seem like war. After about half a mile we got to a big, round tree, like a mulberry tree, which gave a lot of shade. We left Muhammad there with some water and headed back.
It went against all instinct to go back to the vehicles. It seemed more dangerous than anything before. I was very, very frightened. I didn’t say a word. When we were halfway there we heard the whine of planes again. We got down flat under some bushes. The noise grew, there were two planes, very low. They came right overhead, screaming. The whole area was bursting with the noise and vibrating. I was gripping O’Rourke’s shoulder, digging into his flesh with my nails. I looked up and I could see the gray underbelly of a plane, filling the sky. And then there was a blast and we buried our heads in the grass feeling the whole world falling apart, shuddering, shaking, rebounding.
We were all right. We were still there. There was nothing left of the vehicles except bits of twisted metal in a crater fifty yards across. Odd how you think the selfish thing. I thought that I would get into trouble for bringing a SUSTAIN Toyota into Kefti and letting it be blown up.
“Well, that answers that little moral dilemma,” said O’Rourke.
There was nothing left of the soldier. We looked a
ll around for traces of the body but found nothing. O’Rourke, it turned out, had buried the other two soldiers in shallow graves in the woods very early in the morning. The graves were intact.
I had never seen Muhammad smile so much as when he saw us come back. He looked as though his face was going to crack with smiling. He embraced us both and actually wiped away tears.
“I think perhaps Allah was making a small point,” he said.
“Oh yeah. What?” said O’Rourke.
“Only that I had logic on my side.”
We had no supplies now, just water, O’Rourke’s bag and a piece of cheese. It was nine o’clock. We knew we had to keep moving while the sun was still low. I felt uneasy about just going away. I thought we should do something to mark the deaths of the soldiers. Muhammad and O’Rourke thought I was mad. I made them say the Lord’s Prayer with me. Then I searched for dimly remembered words, and said, “Lord, let thy servants depart in peace.”
We walked until we could see the highlands of Kefti, blue-black and heavy, rising ahead of us. We were walking through a leafy glade, the sun was warm, birds were tweeting, and all at once it seemed as if we were taking a gentle Sunday afternoon stroll. I think we all felt the same sense of release as if there was no gravity anymore and we were going to float up into the sky.
Then O’Rourke started shaking with laughter. “Those last rites,” he said. “‘Lord, let thy servants depart in peace.’ That was wrong. They should be arriving. ‘Lord, let thy servants arrive in peace.’” It suddenly sounded like the most ridiculous thing we’d ever heard and then Muhammad and I started laughing too, hysterically, saying, “Lord, let thy servants arrive in peace.” We were falling about, completely helpless, so that O’Rourke and I had to put the stretcher down, doubled over, crying with laughter. And then there was a burst of machine-gun fire a hundred yards ahead.
It was Keftian soldiers from Adi Wari, looking for us. There were eight of them, They took us to a good path and carried Muhammad’s stretcher. He was beginning to look very ill and tired. The land was rising more steeply now, we walked for two hours and then joined the main track again, the one we had been driving on. It turned a corner, round a hill with smooth, round rocks protruding through the trees, and for the first time we could see the landscape ahead: undulating, wooded, dark, and gashed by a deep red gorge, with the mountains as backdrop. On the edge of the gorge was the small patch of rooftops which made up Adi Wari, with glints of bright light where tin roofs were reflecting the sun.
We were met by a KPLF truck which took us straight to the hospital. The hospital was cleaner and better ordered than the hospitals in Nambula, built in a square round a large grassy courtyard. The Keftians were organized, well educated. O’Rourke was talking to their doctors about Muhammad. Once we knew that he was settled, I told O’Rourke I wanted to go and discuss the locusts with the KPLF. He asked me if I was sure I didn’t want to rest for a bit, but I said I was fine. I was glad he let me go and didn’t fuss me.
As I was leaving one of the nurses came after me and said that Muhammad wanted to speak with me. He was in a room on his own lying back on the mattress. There were bullet holes in one of the walls and a square hole open to the outside, with a grille half hanging over it.
“I need to speak with you,” he said furtively.
I sat on the bed.
“There is a woman,” he whispered. “Her name is Huda Letay. Will you remember that? Huda Letay.” He seemed feverish now. “I thought . . . that perhaps . . .”
“What?” I said.
“I want you to ask for her and look for her when you are in the highlands.”
“Of course. Who is Huda?”
“She is a woman . . .”
“Yes?”
He closed his eyes.
“Don’t worry. I’ll ask for her.”
“Her name is Huda Letay. And she is a doctor of economics.”
“Where will I find her?”
“I thought that perhaps she might be among the refugees in the highlands. I thought that I would find her.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll look for her.”
“She was a student with me at the University of Esareb.”
“And why do you want me to find her?”
He looked away as if he was ashamed. “She is the woman whom I wished to marry.”
Wished to marry. I knew how he hated loss of face. “What happened?”
“Her parents arranged for her to marry elsewhere. To a man who was wealthy. And she was not able to go against their wishes.”
“How will I find her?”
“She is very beautiful.”
“Could you tell me a little bit more?”
“Letay is her family name. Her married name is Imlahi. If you find her, I merely wish to know that she is safe. She is from Esareb. She has long dark hair, unusually shining, and she is always laughing. If you find her, perhaps, if she is ill or she is alone . . . you might . . .”
“I’ll bring her back,” I said. I knew all about having fantasies.
“Thank you.”
He looked so unlike himself. All his spirit had gone. He had to remember his personality or he would sink.
“Don’t you want to send a poem?” I said.
Something promising flickered in his eyes.
“‘Locusts to the right of us, locusts to the left of us’?” I began—this was a favorite game of ours.
“‘As I walked out one evening, walking down Bristol Street,’” he said smugly. “‘The crowds upon the pavement, were fields of—’”
“Locusts,” I finished. He started to smile. “‘Shall I compare thee to a—’”
“Locust.‘Thou still unravished—’”
“Locust.‘I wandered lonely as a—’”
“Locust.”
It wasn’t the proper deep laugh, but it almost was.
“October ‘is the cruelest month,’” he began. “‘Breeding—’”
“Locusts ‘out of the dead land,’” I finished. It wasn’t funny anymore. I held his hand tightly for a while, then I left him there, and went off with the soldiers to the KPLF offices.
I was seated in front of the military commander for the region, who cannot have been more than twenty-six. He had come into the town especially to receive us. The room was long, thin and empty except for a desk, with the commander sitting at one side and me at the other, a bookshelf full of worn, thin pamphlets and a table at the back. Half a dozen soldiers were in the room, two of them standing behind the commander, the rest lounging around the table. I felt slightly ridiculous in a room full of large armed men in uniform, and unexpectedly physically vulnerable. The commander had a thin, intelligent face with a beard, and Muhammad’s courtly manner of speech.
He apologized profusely for the mine and the aerial attack. He stressed how thorough the mine-clearing operation had been on the road; that they had not had a mine incident between Nambula and the highlands for six months; and that ours was a most unfortunate freak incident. The Abouti planes must have been alerted by the smoke: they never strayed into the Nambula border region as a rule. He knew all about our mission and was most keen that it should proceed.
I explained that we could not risk going farther, but he said that he would give us two vehicles to travel ahead of us, and a truck to travel in with a full armed escort, and that we would move only at night. They had vehicles traveling that route constantly, whereas the route where we had hit the mine was underused. The area where the grasshopper bands were gathered was only four hours away. If we went a little farther to Tessalay we could see the refugees beginning to move down from the highlands. It was a question of one night’s drive. Surely, having got this far, it was worth achieving the goal of the mission? I said I would have to go back to the hospital and discuss it with O’Rourke. The commander excused himself and went out of the room.
When he was gone I realized that I was going to continue, even if O’Rourke didn’t want to. It seemed too pointless to go
back, with all this mess, and nothing achieved. The commander returned with a girl soldier, Belay Abrehet, who was to be my guide in Adi Wari. She looked slightly bored and didn’t smile.
I made some more inquiries about the route and the risks. All the bridges over the gorge had been destroyed, so we would drive north to a crossing place, then down into the gorge, up the other side and farther north to another riverbed, this one dry, where the locusts were hatching. Then, if we wanted to go on, we could turn east and go up into the mountains. I started asking about the extent of the locusts and the crop damage and about the cholera stories, but the commander said I should talk to RESOK, the Keftian relief society. I told him that we would go on with them, and said I would go to the hospital after I’d been to RESOK and that we should meet here again between four or five. It was two o’clock now.
Outside there was a different kind of midday heat from that of Nambula. The sun still burned the skin, but the air was cool and in the shade it was actually chilly. Adi Wari was built on a slope leaning toward the edge of the gorge. A wide stony track ran downhill as the main street, and the buildings were rough stone and concrete with tin roofs. There were people, dogs and goats in the road and soldiers hanging around in little groups. The scene looked very different from a Nambulan town because no one was wearing a djellaba. The civilians wore cheap-looking Western clothes, or cloaks in dark colors. There was no garrison in Adi Wari: it was too obvious a target. The Keftians kept all their military accommodation and hospitals underground.
We walked down the hill and stopped at a building, which was blackened inside, with a fire burning. The man at the entrance leaned into the furnace and shoveled out four rounds of semiblackened bread. I hadn’t eaten for a long time, and it was just the right kind of foodstuff: warm, soothing and unworrying. I felt absolutely fine—almost better than normal, in a state of heightened energy. I suppose it was some kind of preservative shock.
Belay lightened up a bit as we walked to RESOK. I offered her some of the burnt bread and she laughed. She was twenty-four and spoke a little English. She put her hand up to my face, touched one of my earrings and asked if she could have them and I, used to this, gave them to her. I asked her if she had taken part in the fighting and she said, “A little,” and looked straight ahead as if she didn’t want to discuss it. There were a lot of soldiers about and they greeted her as we passed as if they were schoolmates.
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