Bettany's Book

by Thomas Keneally

  ‘Wait a tick. Let me talk to the boys.’

  Within five minutes he was back on the phone. Prim was already searching through the office cupboard and had found a used can of white paint left from Crouch’s time, and a selection of hardened brushes. She was in a state of vengeful grief: Operation Safety was such a sane plan, it had seemed at first to create a new reality. But obviously, it would be permitted to operate only within the bounds of the military convenience of the parties to the war.

  There was a profounder weariness in Stoner’s voice now. From his storeroom he had blue housepaint, three litres, and brushes. He and the boys would go out to the airport …

  ‘Collect me on the way,’ she insisted and, waiting, set to thinning Crouch’s ancient white paint.

  From the front seat of Stoner’s truck, Julio and Anwar greeted Prim wanly. The last time they had seen her they had been remaking the earth. Now they were merely engaged in a gesture, and might not be permitted to accomplish even that.

  Everyone still had the appropriate passes: of their sundry organisations and of Operation Safety. With these, and a lot of persuasion in Arabic from Anwar and Stoner, they were admitted through successive screens of reluctant NCOs onto the apron of the airfield. ‘Amreeka?’ Stoner was always asked. ‘British,’ he would say, pretending to less Arabic than he had. ‘Shnatuk. El tayarah. Ilyushin.’ His bags were still on the Ilyushins, he claimed. Incredibly, they were permitted to drive around the edge of the airport to where about thirty assorted military aircraft waited on the far side.

  The Sudanese Army, it had seemed to Prim until recently, always dressed in what she thought of as a quaintly British manner, their berets, shirts, trousers and gaiters had a Second World War cut to them, as if still supplied by warehouses the British had left behind thirty years past. But the troops guarding the airport perimeter, and at ease in the doorways of hangars, were dressed in snappy, fresh-looking camouflage gear which bespoke a new level of military purpose. A company of young Sudanese soldiers in camouflage were loading their packs through the rear door of one of the transports on whose flank the UN insignia still shone. The charter company pilots, African and European, stood by in the wing’s shade, watching. Anwar got out and went to the officer directing the troops and was suddenly loud and eloquent, pointing to the plane, raging, holding up his fingers. ‘Sittah! Six. With a threatening politeness the officer ordered him to clear off; ‘Imshi’. Stoner, watching from his truck, was inflamed. ‘Imshi yourself, you bastard!’ he cried through the window.

  Prim and Julio were already at the rear of the truck. While Julio levered cans of blue paint open with a screwdriver, Prim stirred the opened cans with a stick. They were all enraged and willing to be shot for their right to erase the debased symbols.

  The officer called to Anwar, who was coming back to the truck to take up his brush. ‘The plane’s ready to depart,’ he yelled. ‘Essabaah’. This morning. Anwar turned back to the man, holding forth the UN pass hung around his neck, and pointed at the task they were engaged in, the work which had to be done. One of the charter pilots, a Frenchman, came out of the shade. ‘I told them to remove the UN signs,’ he said. ‘I told them. It makes this trip easy for them, but the future hard for us. The rebels will start shooting at everything. I told him. But be neat, guys, be neat!’

  So Prim and the others were not impeded, and as the officer and his company boarded a plane, took up the streaky white and fresh blue paint cans.

  The team of four spent an hour effacing the pretence of compassion and human courtesy from the sides of the remaining three cargo planes as young Sudanese men in camouflage kit with the sweetest of mute faces approached the cargo doors, loading cases of artillery shells aboard, gifts for Anwar’s former regions, Aweil and Malek.

  Slavery remained an issue for Prim through all her Austfam duties; it would return to her in dreams and in small-hour wakings. She had questioned a number of Dinka refugees in the town of Aweil who claimed one or more of their children had been taken away by government troops or militias, and for whose freedom the family had needed to pay over the last of their cattle. And Sherif introduced her to the middle-aged Sudanese woman, Khalda el Rahzi, he had described as being concerned with the matter of hostage-taking in the South and with – the word Sherif hesitated to use – slavery.

  Sherif had taken Prim to the el Rahzis’ for dinner one Sunday night. They drove there, as Sherif said, ‘Louisiana-style’, together in the front seat of his old Mercedes and were admitted to the el Rahzis’ high-walled stone villa, on the southern edge of the university, by a tall young man dressed in shirt, pants and sandals. He wore glasses and had the look of a student.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, in English. ‘I’m Safi. My parents have me on the door this evening. I hope I look adequately august.’ He laughed, a big half-made man, all bones. He led them into a broad hallway from which the house seemed to spread out without constraint, and he dashed ahead to a sideboard on which stood a tray of iced fruit drinks which he offered to them.

  Glass in hand, they were led into a living room where Western style chairs stood against the wall but a long, low lacquered table occupied the centre of the room. Khalda el Rahzi, shorter than her son, bare-headed here at home and dressed in a long blue gown, greeted them. She wore the nostril ring of marriage, Prim saw, along with her repute for feminism. Her firm neck was decorated with a circlet of ancient coins. She suggested in English they put down their drinks a second, as a Southern-looking woman, a servant, approached them with a copper ewer of water and a bowl, a white towel folded over her wrist. Prim was delighted by such rites of hospitality. She relished in particular the way Sherif turned his hands and his wrists under the thread of water the servant poured. It was a sinuous and balletic exercise, more an inheritance than a mere practice of hygiene. Then, with rinsed hands, they were led by Mrs el Rahzi towards her husband and amongst the guests.

  The professor, a tall, slightly heavy man with grizzled hair, pleasant features and an urbane air wore a light suit rather like Sherif’s. ‘Now, if you would like some gin or whisky, Miss Bettany,’ he murmured, ‘it would not be looked upon amiss.’ Prim said the juice was fine, and so introductions began.

  Sherif appeared to know everyone there. A man as tall and perhaps younger than Sherif, dressed in a long thobe-like garment and a loose vest, turned out to be a lawyer named el Dhouma. He had a great deal of whimsy in his eyes, and murmured to Sherif, but for Prim’s sake, ‘We went to school together in Almarada, isn’t that so, Dr Sherif?’

  ‘That is precisely correct,’ said Sherif, making great ceremony of the handshake, his shoulder leaning in towards el Dhouma’s. ‘Dr el Dhouma was the absolute star of the law school at the University of Khartoum. As to the name of the star of the school of medicine, I leave you to guess.’

  The company laughed, and a suited young man standing near Safi said, ‘It depends which era you’re dealing with.’

  ‘You are as usual right, Dr Siddiq,’ said Sherif. ‘Your era was a much more illustrious one than mine.’

  At Professor el Rahzi’s invitation the guests began disposing themselves on cushions around the low table. Mrs el Rahzi disappeared to look at the final preparations for dinner, and Prim observed the Sudanese courtesies as she had learned of them through reading manuals prepared for her kind by various NGOs. In her long floral dress, she knelt with knees together, reaching behind her to stretch the dress hem over the soles of her low-heeled shoes. All around her the men, emitting sighs, settled cross-legged, a posture considered unacceptable for women.

  Just then the doorbell rang again, and the guest whom Safi admitted this time was was Helene Codderby.

  Professor el Rahzi said, ‘You must think us barbarians, Miss Codderby, that we sat to table before you arrived.’

  ‘I certainly don’t,’ said Helene, having her hands rinsed. ‘I rang your wife earlier to apologise in advance that I’d be a latecomer. I’ve been at a press conference at the Finance Ministry and
I’m ravenous.’

  Prim saw Doctor Siddiq and el Dhouma smile at each other, a shared joke. Helene Codderby smiled at Prim and took a cushion next to her, while Sherif reclined on Prim’s right. Helene only had time to whisper, ‘My God, that dear old Sherif of yours. He is an absolute hunk, isn’t he?’ Khalda led into the room two young women in white who each carried trays of bowls of the opening course, lentil soup. Setting to, Helene and the men did not leave their bowls on the table, but held them in their left hand as they spooned away at a hectic pace.

  Prim had felt her heart expand under Helene’s simple, womanly compliment.

  The soup consumed, and Mrs el Rahzi moving to the kitchen to attend to the next course, a silence grew which was filled with a sudden, half-nervous comment from the el Rahzis’s son, Safi. He turned to el Dhouma. ‘After all my father says of you, I was surprised to hear you were the lawyer who represents the National Islamic Front.’

  Prim sensed a slight uneasiness amongst the older members of the company at what would be considered a confrontational remark. People like the el Rahzis looked askance at the National Islamic Front, though for subtler reasons than the Western press, with its caricatures of turbaned fundamentalist zealots. They understood, if they did not agree thoroughly with, the Front’s desire to fight the West’s baleful politics and culture by bringing about a more stringently regulated Islamic state than presently existed even under Sharia.

  Before el Dhouma could reply, Safi went on, ‘My father tells me you were a declared socialist as a student.’

  ‘Please,’ rumbled the professor, ‘make a fool of yourself on your own bat, dear Safi, but don’t drag me in.’

  ‘No,’ said el Dhouma, nodding with weary good humour, as if this were for him a much-heard question, ‘I think you wouldn’t be surprised, my young friend, to find that I am still a socialist, but so are many of the NIF. Their agenda is not simply religious. You would consider many of them very civilised chaps, and excellent patriots.’

  There was the polite hint of a snort from the boy.

  El Dhouma continued patiently. ‘Many of the leadership are progressives. But they are not shallow humanists as say, the Democrats in the United States pretend to be. They are progressives within a tradition – an Islamic tradition. With due regard for our esteemed women guests, the NIF see the rootless, anti-Arab opportunism which lies behind the facade of Western democracy.’

  ‘And these are the sorts of propositions used to justify the Sharia and the war?’ Safi asked.

  Professor el Rahzi began laughing. ‘Enough of the Socratic method, young man!’

  ‘You mustn’t think I mind the subject at all,’ el Dhouma insisted. ‘I find my clients an interesting bunch not least for the way they combine theology and political theory. Some are from the mystical tradition, and others from the hard-headed political side of things. And as for science – which in America or Britain is seen to be at loggerheads with religion – well, I had a fascinating chat the other day with a man from the science sub-committee of the Front. An older man, a graduate in science from the University of Khartoum. I shan’t name him …’

  ‘Do,’ cried young Dr Siddiq. ‘If he’s fascinating and has a crazy theory, it’s probably an uncle of mine!’

  El Dhouma let the laughter die. ‘No, I shan’t name him. But consider, he asked me, the Resurrection of the Dead as predicted in the Koran … “Man thinks that We shall not assemble his bones. Yes truly! Yes, We are able to restore his very fingers!” Well, my friend on the science sub-committee begins from the justifiable theological premise that the Resurrection of the Dead is inevitable and certain to occur. He also argues that it offends piety to believe that there is a single scientific error in the Koran. So how shall we rise from the dead? For the answer he goes to the Big Bang theory. That too must lie latent in Revelation. The idea of the universe being in expansion is raised by one of the Suras, he says.’

  It seemed to Prim that the Sudanese in the room were capable of mental recitation of the Sura in question. El Dhouma went on.

  ‘It’s a matter of pride to this man that the Koran countenanced the concept of an enlarging cosmos. Compare that with the Vatican, which fought a rearguard action against the idea of a sun-centred galaxy, though it was forced to accept reality in the end. In any case, my friend the scientist–theologian argues a correlation between the Big Bang and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity on the one hand, and on the other the Sura which reads, “We shall roll up the heavens as a recorder rolls up a written scroll.” The idea is that the universe expands, but at its limit of explosion it will inevitably begin contracting. And when that happens, time – which is the measurement of the continuum of expansion – will be reversed and rolled up like a scroll. Or like a rewound tape in a tape-recorder. In that reversal of time, we shall rise from the dead, this old man argues – all under the pull of the running down of time. We shall be old before we are young. We shall be aged before we are born. The future will be our past. All our evil deeds will occur and then feed themselves back painfully to their initial intent. We will feel the anguish of our evil long before we have done it, while all our good deeds will joyously emerge and be connected by a golden thread to their founding impulses. In the reversal of time, says this old man, there will be heaven in our decency and hell in our malice. And we shall carry all our sins and all our virtue back with us into the womb. This will continue until the last man and woman have replayed their lives backwards and disappeared into the water from which God first brought them. And so the entire universe will rush backwards to its final, founding explosion in the hand of God.’

  There was silence in the room, a reverence for the august nature of this idea, even if it did come from the National Islamic Front. El Dhouma turned to Safi. ‘You see, my clients are not unimaginative people.’

  ‘But,’ said Safi, with a smile, falling back on his inherited charm, ‘they wouldn’t be willing to eat dinner with two such charming infidels as Miss Primrose and Miss Helene?’

  Everyone chuckled again, and Prim savoured the old-fashioned nature of the English spoken by these men. Soon Mrs el Rahzi was back again with her two women. They carried platters of kisra flatbread, bowls of white rice, tomatoes stuffed with minced beef, bowls of fool beans and shata sauce, and lamb stew. As all was laid before him, el Dhouma toasted the feast with a glass of grapefruit juice, invoking ‘the plenty of our country, the continued exile of that weak man Nimeiri …’

  ‘May he enjoy Paris,’ sang Siddiq, since that was the city of Nimeiri’s exile. But el Dhouma was not quite finished. He still had his glass in the air.

  ‘… and the well-meaning compassion and fellow feeling of our foreign friends.’

  ‘Well-meaning,’ said Sherif, winking at Prim. She did not think it such a bad word.

  Eating heartily, the Sudanese men, Mrs el Rahzi and Helene Codderby sopped up the lamb stew with their kisra bread. But after a time, noticing that Prim still used her cutlery, Sherif lifted up some stew on a fork and ate it companionably with her. Prim listened as the men talked. Dr Siddiq had just been appointed to a post in the Ministry of Health. ‘I’ll be living somewhere out there on the banks of the Atbara.’

  It was when the crème caramels were brought in, and Mrs el Rahzi picked up her spoon and the dessert and admired the sheen of its surface, that Prim took the chance to lean across the narrow space occupied by Helene and say, in a lowered voice, ‘I believe you’re involved in the question of slavery. However that might be defined.’

  Mrs el Rahzi went on working delicately with her spoon at the crème caramel, and did not lift her eyes from the task. ‘It’s true the term is a sliding one. It is sometimes not as clear-cut as in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Yet it is almost traditional, and it’s endemic.’ She smiled, finished her dessert. ‘Helene, why don’t you bring your friend, Miss Bettany, out to the kitchen to watch how Sudanese coffee is made?’

  Sherif raised an eyebrow and struggled upright. Apart from that, the men barely
noticed when the women rose, excused themselves as a phalanx, and left. So, in good company, Prim entered the large kitchen in which there was an enduring redolence of spices. In a patch of light beyond the back door, the two young women who had borne the trays in and out had squatted, white linen shawls over their heads, and were frying coffee beans over a small charcoal heater. They would sometimes reach into the pan with bare fingers and flip this or that imperfect bean out, dropping it on the ground.

  Mrs el Rahzi went to her cupboard, extracted a bottle of J & B whisky, poured a glass and handed it neat to Helene. ‘Prim knows I’ve got hollow legs when it comes to this stuff,’ said Helene. Khalda el Rahzi gestured with the bottle to Prim, who decided to wait for the coffee. They sat on three stools in a close circle.

  ‘What sparked your interest?’ asked Mrs el Rahzi.

  Prim recounted her contact with the Dinka midwife. She mentioned too the servant boys in the governor’s headquarters in el Fasher.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs el Rahzi. ‘The victims know they’ve been traded into bondage. You see, down in the South the Arab tribes such as the Beggarah have been capturing hostages, and trading in them, for centuries. One is reminded of kidnapping amongst some Southern Italians – a way of life. Certainly it is possible for Westerners, uninformed about Sudanese history, to come here and be over-excited by what they see and hear.’ Mrs el Rahzi spread her hands. ‘But if slavery is the buying and selling of people, if you look at it in that strictest sense, then you’d have to say, yes, there is slavery in the Sudan.’

  ‘I once used that term on the BBC,’ said Helene Codderby, happy with her whisky, ‘but the government went crazy.’

  ‘If you can prove a case,’ murmured Mrs el Rahzi, ‘the police will often act on it. However, that happens only occasionally.’

  Helene had two-thirds finished her tumbler, and had the look of a woman who might ask for a refill. ‘Most NGOs don’t want to buy into the question – it’s too explosive, and it’s hard enough pursuing famine relief. And anyhow, the war is what drives it, and makes it easy. So Stoner virtually makes a stab at ending the war by making the parties agree to relief in the South! That’s his way. A failed one, but an honest try.’