Muhammad was already hurrying towards them. The skin on their faces was pulled back tight as though they were grinning, but they were not grinning. O’Rourke and I started walking towards them too. The expression in their eyes was terrible, because it was so human, in bodies made unhuman by starvation.
A boy who looked about seventeen had reached Muhammad now and was talking to him. The boy was talking slowly, trying to concentrate, as if he was dizzy. His teeth looked very big in his mouth and the top of his head was unnaturally large because there was no hair on his scalp, and no fat or muscle on his face, only skin. He had a piece of brown cloth like sacking wrapped around him and you could see the sockets of his shoulder above it.
“He is coming from my region,” said Muhammad. “He is saying that there are many thousand refugee inside the mountain.”
The boy started to speak again, touching slowly between his eyes with his thumb and first two fingers as if he was trying to clear his head.
“He is saying they have no food now for many day. He ask if we are having food for him.”
Muhammad was not speaking in perfect English as he usually did. O’Rourke and I looked at each other, registering the line of decisions which lay ahead.
“We go and look, and then go back for the trucks?” O’Rourke said.
“Yes. I think so, yes.”
We gave the people who had come out to meet us some high-energy biscuits which we had put in the back of the Land Cruiser.
Oliver was speaking to the crew of the satellite dish, and he told us they were going to park between the road and the mountains and try to set up the link.
As we drove along the track which led into the mountains, we passed more and more people but we kept driving now. Some of them turned round and followed the truck when they saw that we would not stop. Others stood still, looking bewildered.
Kate Fortune had started hyperventilating and making noises. She put her hand on O’Rourke’s arm as he was driving, and told him that she felt ill, and he said, “Look, shut up.”
As we drove into the narrow opening in the mountains it was very eerie because the dust was swirling around the rocks and the people were still coming towards us, jabbing at their mouths with their fingers. We drove through a very short corridor, like a fissure, with the rock rising sheer on either side, then the track turned a corner and opened onto the plain in the center of the mountains. It was about three-quarters of a mile across and not flat, but dipping down and uneven and surrounded by the high walls of the mountains. Smoke was hanging above the ground from all the fires, and below it the whole of the plain was covered in people, sitting on the ground, thousands and thousands and thousands of people. There was very little movement but the sound was immense: it was the sound of a great number of people crying. I remember looking out of the window of the jeep and seeing the face of a young girl. I remember being shocked that her tears were so full and wet because the rest of her body looked so withered, dried up and finished that you could not imagine where the moisture had come from for the tears.
Everyone started to climb out of the vehicles. Muhammad was talking to a group of men who had come forward to meet him. They looked as though they were village headmen although they might have been RESOK. I was looking over to my left where the sound of the drum was coming from, and I started walking very slowly through the people towards it.
In a clear area to the left, which rose in a slope towards the base of the mountains, they were laying out the dead. There was a line of about twenty or thirty bodies, with people mourning all around them and, behind, a group of men were using a pole to dig a grave. And people were coming from different directions, carrying bodies in their arms. When I got to where the corpses lay a man was placing the body of a child in the line. The child was in a sack and the body was so frail that the man seemed only to be laying down the weight of a rolled-up towel. Some of the bodies were on stretchers and they were all covered with something. One was wrapped in paper sacks, on which was printed, “A Gift from the People of Minnesota.” Further down was a blue blanket with a woman’s feet sticking out of the bottom and between them two tiny feet.
At the end of the row a woman was squatting next to the body of her son. She had taken the cover from him and she was clapping her hands above his head as if she were trying to wake him. She looked as though she was trying to do everything she could think of to stop her pain. She was shaking her hands as if she was trying to get water off them, then covering her eyes, then holding the sides of her head, then holding her son’s head and talking to him, then trying to bring him to life again by clapping above his head, but nothing could alter anything. When I looked at the body of the boy lying in front of her, useless and dead, I can remember thinking that it was stupid that he had died of starvation. It seemed stupid that all that grief had happened, not because of some sudden accident or unavoidable illness but because the boy had no food, when there was so much food, in the world.
Most of the people were just sitting or lying on the ground in groups. They were so weak and dazed that they were not responding to our presence or to anything. I had never seen people so malnourished and still alive. I made my way back slowly through them to where Muhammad was still talking to the headmen. I realized that I was crying and made myself stop.
As I walked past the Land Cruiser I paused because Corinna was leaning against the back of it. Both her fists were clenched very tightly and her shoulders were hunched. She was crying in a way that forced her face into dreadful shapes beneath her sunglasses and wrenched her body. I saw her crying and did not try to comfort her. I watched her groaning and racked and I was glad, because she was not made of concrete, or Lycra, or Perspex as I had thought.
She saw me looking and pressed her forehead against the back window of the Land Cruiser. Then she said, “Could I have a cigarette?”
I gave her a cigarette and lit it. Kate was sitting in the Land Cruiser with her head in her hands. Julian and Oliver were both standing alone looking dazed. I could not see Henry or Betty or Debbie. O’Rourke was crouched over a child. He was not making any sound, and looked exactly the same as he always did when he was treating the children except that there were tears streaming down his face.
I did not know what to do. I stood dazed like the others and stared at it all. It was such a monumental horror that it felt as though nothing should be the same anymore, and nothing should continue: none of us should speak or do anything, the sun should not be moving across the sky, and the wind should not blow. It did not seem possible that such a thing as this could be taking place without the world having to shudder to a halt and think again.
CHAPTER Thirty
The only way of dealing with it was not to think too hard but simply to do one task after another: to do one thing and then to do the next thing.
O’Rourke, Henry, Muhammad, Betty and I gathered by the vehicles. There were somewhere between ten and twenty thousand people on the plain. The sun was breaking through the dust now and there were thick shafts of light, like girders, lighting up great areas of the people.
“This place is just asking for epidemic,” said O’Rourke.
We decided that, while Muhammad and I started on the rehydration and feeding, Henry would check that the water supplies were clean, and set up defecation zones. Betty would organize measles immunization. O’Rourke and Debbie would start a clinic for the worst cases.
“What about the broadcast?” said Betty. It was one-thirty. We were due on air at four o’clock.
“Those forty tons of food are not going to last long here,” said O’Rourke.
Oliver and Julian were still standing staring at the crowd. I made my way over to Oliver. “Come on,” I said. “Come on. You have to go and organize the broadcast. You have got to make it work. Take the Land Cruiser back to the satellite dish and tell them what you’ve seen.”
He looked at me blankly.
“Go on, Oliver,” I said.
Corinna was walking
towards us. She was wiping her eyes and looked as though she was pulling herself together.
I looked at Oliver. He was still staring around helplessly.
Muhammad came and joined us. He placed a hand on Oliver’s shoulder and took him a little way away, talking to him.
“I’ll help,” said Corinna. “Tell me what I can do.”
I asked her to drive back to where we had left the food lorries and bring them back here.
“Ask them to wait outside the mountains till we’re ready. Will you be all right with the four-wheel drive?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
“I could ask Henry to go instead.”
“No. I’ll be fine. You need him here.”
“Wait, look, I’ll come with you,” said Julian.
“You stay here,” she said. “It doesn’t need two of us.”
“Tell me what I can do,” said Julian.
“We need to organize the food next,” I said.
After a while Oliver and Muhammad came back. Oliver looked better and said he would drive back to the satellite dish and start working out what we should do.
The village headmen were gathering around Muhammad.
“Will these men organize the distribution?” I asked Muhammad.
“Yes, of course.”
I looked around trying to work out where we could start. “Are the people in any sort of grouping?”
“Yes. They have tried to stay in their villages.”
“How many villages are represented here?” I asked.
He spoke to the men again.
“Perhaps five hundred villages.”
“We’ll start with the under-fives. And the most serious cases. And we’ll set up a feeding center here and rehydrate them at the same time. Then maybe we can start getting food out to the rest later.”
“We must feed the mothers too,” said Muhammad.
“Yes, we’ll feed the person who comes with the child.”
“I will talk to the headmen,” said Muhammad. “They will organize it.”
I was trying not to imagine anything except what was before us, and not to imagine it getting worse so as not to let dread come out or panic. I looked around for Julian, and said that we needed to build three enclosures out of stones.
“Yes, right, good,” said Julian, bending down to pick up a large stone. “Here?” He looked as though he was ready to do it himself, single-handed.
“We have to get some people together to help.”
I started to ask the people around us, the ones who were strong enough, but it was hard to explain what we wanted to do.
“What are the enclosures for?” said Julian. And I told him we needed separate areas for the immunization, for giving out the high-energy biscuits and for feeding the really bad cases with a wet ration.
“We need walls round them so everything stays under control,” I said, but I didn’t know if that were possible, since there were so many desperate people. Then Julian started miming out what was to be done, which made the people laugh in spite of what was happening but they understood and started gathering the stones. A man came up who spoke some English and that helped us, because then the Keftians could take over the organization. We were working on the area which was immediately to the right when you entered the mountains, so it would be easy to unload the trucks. Soon about three hundred people were collecting stones and starting to build the walls.
I kept looking over to where all the vehicles were parked at the end of the rocky corridor. The television crew were milling around agitatedly. A thick cable was lying along the track, and they were frantically attaching more to the end of it. Oliver kept driving up and down the corridor, going back to the satellite dish. They were like wasps going in and out of a nest.
At three forty-five the enclosures were built, and each one was crammed with children and sick people, sitting or lying on the earth, waiting in lines. The village leaders were arriving all the time with new cases, supporting them or carrying them. Every so often a group of people would suddenly run in one direction, because some of the food had been spilled and everyone would scrabble on the ground, picking up whatever they could find, and eating it. Outside the walls there were crowds of people, pressing forward, looking in. There was the sound of high agitated voices above the wailing. It was difficult to keep calm because outside the walls people were crowded a dozen deep, holding out their children to us to show us that they were dying and begging us to let them in. Fights were breaking out, because it was so unfair to be on the wrong side of the wall.
I kept looking at my watch, then down at the camera crew, but the situation still seemed the same. People kept driving off down the corridor and coming back again. I couldn’t understand what was going on. I thought Corinna and Julian should be down there, rehearsing by now, but they were in the next enclosure, helping with the distribution of the biscuits.
“I think I’d better go down and find out what’s happening,” I said to Muhammad.
As I walked across the slope towards the vehicles, Oliver was coming up to meet me. “It’s not working,” he said, as soon as he was close enough. His face was screwed up in a scowl, self-pitying.
“Why not?” I said, swallowing hard.
“There’s a problem with the dish.”
“What?”
“It’s got dented.”
“Dented?” I was blinking very quickly. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. They reckon a stone must have hit it when they were driving.”
“Is there anything they can do?”
“They’re trying to hammer it out but it’s a delicate job. It has to be absolutely smooth.”
“Will they do it, do you think?”
“To be honest, Rosie, we’re stymied.”
I rubbed my forehead frantically. We didn’t have enough food. There was another Circle Line plane waiting at Stansted. It could be loaded and here in twenty-four hours. We could have airlifts every other day till the crisis was over, but not if there was no broadcast. The lives of all these many thousands of people actually depended on a piece of television equipment which was dented. It seemed a stupid way for the world to be but there we had it. And now there was only half an hour to go.
“Do you know what you’re going to do in the program, if they can get it working?” I said.
“Yes. I’ve worked that out at least,” he said.
“Don’t you need Corinna and Julian here? Where’s Kate?”
“She’s in the Land Cruiser. There’s no point bothering with her.”
I looked over. She was sitting sobbing, pulling at her hair.
“Yes, you might as well send Corinna and Julian down. But you carry on with the feeding. I think that’s going to be more use, to be honest. We’ll call you if we have any joy.”
I tried to carry on but it was very hard to concentrate. I knew that we had just one hour between five and six to blast this horror out to the world and it was our only chance. But there was nothing I could do.
At ten minutes to four, a shout went up from the camera crew. I saw the cameraman starting to point the camera at Julian and Corinna. Corinna was looking towards me, giving a thumbs-up. I stuck my fist in the air, made my way out of the enclosure and started running towards them. As I drew close, panting and stumbling over the stones, Oliver roared out of the corridor in the Land Cruiser.
“We can’t get the fucking signal,” he was shouting as he strode across the sand. “The dish is working but we can’t get the signal. We’re in the shadow of the fucking mountain. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fucking Vernon. We should have stayed where we were.” He was banging one fist against the other, striding around, uselessly. It was five past four now. The show would be on the air in England, with no link from Nambula.
“Muhammad,” Oliver said suddenly, “is there any way of getting a vehicle higher up?”
“Yes, there is a track but it is very steep. If you go out and follow the edge of the mountain to you
r left, you will find it after two hundred yards.”
“Where does the track lead to?” said Oliver. “Is there anywhere we can drop the cable down?”
Muhammad pointed to the mountains above the enclosures, squinting into the sun. They were almost sheer: great curves of red rock. “The road is climbing up there on the outside behind the ridge, but you will find there is a place where you can look over the plain. Perhaps you can throw the cable down there, above where they have built the enclosures.”
“OK,” said Oliver, already striding towards the vehicles. “I’ll go up there with some of the lads. Get the camera over there in the feeding center and we’ll drop the cable down to you.”
At twenty past four, with forty minutes to go before the broadcast ended, Julian and Henry were waiting at the foot of the mountains, holding the end of the cable, looking up, hopefully, surrounded by crowds of Keftians. The rest of us were a hundred yards away on the other side of the wall, inside the wet rations enclosure. We were working out where the camera should be, and what we should do. I kept looking around the plain at all the people and thinking how much we had wanted this not to happen. We had brought the cameras to it too late, and still we couldn’t make the program work. A man came up and spoke to Muhammad, and he looked as though he was going to collapse.
“Huda is here,” he said. “Will you come with me?”
It was Huda Letay, the woman he had asked me to find up in Kefti. Muhammad was kneeling beside her, holding her hand, moving the blanket higher over her chest to where the bones of her shoulders stuck out through the skin. Her hair was reddening and frizzy, only clumps of it remaining because of the marasmus. At the other side, Huda’s mother was holding her twin babies. They were screaming and the skin was wrinkling on their legs because there was no muscle underneath. They were about a year old, two little boys, with big eyes. When they stopped crying they had grumpy expressions, which were very appealing. Huda was lying with her head back, her bulging eyes staring up at the sky, moving her head from side to side. I think she knew who Muhammad was because as he spoke to her she made a little noise.
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