Devil’s Harvest

by Andrew Brown

  The man laughed good-naturedly, all the while disputing the accusations levelled against him.

  ‘But it’s just not my turn,’ he protested, grinning. This only prompted more howls of light-hearted disagreement.

  ‘Besides,’ he added, patting Gabriel on the shoulder, ‘my new friend Gabriel here is a botanist, so he knows how to work with beans. I’m just a doctor, so I don’t understand the anatomy. I’ll make a mess of it.’ Everyone laughed and someone threw a piece of potato peel at him.

  The meal was simple but filling, a kind of reconstituted mashed potato and a pile of round patties that might have been meat but were more likely made of soya. Gabriel was introduced to a dish called assida, a ground millet porridge that was gritty in the mouth and had the unappetising colour of something a baby might produce. A tomato-and-onion mixture provided some taste, but the overall effect was pretty flavourless. But blandness was something that Gabriel had come to prefer in South Sudan: it was when added spices hid the underlying dangers that one started to worry. NGO cooking might be uninspired, but colonic safety was an invaluable commodity.

  Gabriel found himself washing up after supper, a task also sidestepped by the Frenchman. Gabriel noted that here, in the camp, alcohol consumption was restricted, unlike the scenes of excess he’d witnessed in Juba. Most of the personnel soon drifted away, some to play cards, and the rest to their rooms. Bernard invited Gabriel and Alek to join him outside. They carried some chairs out and made a semicircle under the umbrella of a thorn tree.

  Margie came out with a softer chair for herself, carrying a bottle of cheap blended whisky and four glasses. She eased herself into the better-cushioned chair. Despite the smoke that hung over them, the stars were dense and bright, in places forming swirling clouds. A dog barked somewhere and the murmur of a thousand conversations drifted towards them between the scraggly trees. It was a moment of rare tranquillity and Gabriel felt a surprising bonhomie with his companions that could be attributed only partly to the warmth of the whisky.

  And then the patter of something sharp in the distance. A short burst of sound followed by a pause. Then more, a sudden cracking of metal on metal. Like someone hitting two steel pipes together. A much louder boom and a flash of light far in the distance. Back in England, he would have dismissed it as a fireworks display.

  Bernard looked serious for once, his boyish playfulness curbed as he stared into the dark. ‘We will have another rush of people tomorrow.’

  ‘People? From where?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘More refugees.’ Bernard gestured towards the horizon. ‘The border is fifteen miles away. The war zone begins only two miles beyond that.’

  ‘We say “When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers,”’ Alek remarked, swirling a little whisky in her glass but not drinking.

  ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Gabriel responded, watching the now dark horizon nervously.

  Margie chuckled as if something had amused her. ‘Ah, my dear, difficulty is what you make of it. I managed a big camp in Darfur for five years. Now that was interesting. The ground’s as hard as rock. And it rains every afternoon in the rainy season. And everyone – I mean everyone – has diarrhoea. So, before you know it, the human waste is just running like a river through the camp. And the children are playing in it. So I applied to HO for a mechanical digger to build latrines.’ Margie shook her head, laughing at the recollection.

  ‘Do you know, after weeks, I think probably months, of paperwork and forms and requests and such crap, I took one of our engineers to a nearby abandoned roads station. There was a digger standing there and we hot-wired it and brought it back. Dug my latrines in two days.’ She took a swig of her whisky before looking at him, grinning. ‘Sometimes, love, you just have to take care of the shit yourself.’ She slapped her thigh, enjoying her joke.

  Alek was looking into her glass with fierce intensity. Her liquor was still untouched. ‘Sometimes you have to take care of the shit yourself,’ she repeated.

  Once again, Gabriel realised he was failing to follow the point. But the whisky had already blurred his senses and he didn’t feel that he cared particularly. He wanted to sit under the quiet tree for ever, drinking and watching the dull fireworks display on the border, emotionally indifferent and intoxicated.

  ‘That’s not a good story,’ he said weakly.

  Margie was still grinning. ‘There are no good stories here, love. And no bad ones either. Only reality. And laughter is how you survive.’

  Another cracking burst of sound from the distant hills intervened. Margie’s smile faded as she measured the length of the gunfire.

  ‘Busy day coming,’ Bernard said softly, downing his whisky. He took his leave, embracing Margie and Alek, and giving Gabriel a solid handshake.

  The group broke up, each consumed with their own thoughts. Gabriel returned to his room, filled with unplaced anxiety. The bonhomie he’d felt earlier in the evening had dissipated. He did not belong among these people. Yet he couldn’t imagine returning to Bristol, to Jane, to resume his life unchanged. The canvas bed creaked ominously as he lay down and, within minutes, he heard the whine of mosquitoes. Although exhausted, his slumber was disrupted by unfamiliar sounds and intense dreams. He woke in the middle of the night, disoriented and thirsty, scratching around the room for the light switch and knocking his knee on the metal frame of the table. The light was unshaded and the burst from the bare globe did not assist him in centring himself. He leant against the rough wall, utterly lost for a few moments, looking across the room to the opposite end, to where the doorway to his en-suite bathroom should be, the light-green tiles that Jane detested, the elegant taps with their continuous flow of drinkable water, the under-floor warmth, the towels dry and fluffy.

  Gabriel slumped back onto the bed, noticing a bottle of water perched on the floor next to the head of the bed. He grabbed it and held it up to the light. Nothing untoward appeared to be floating in it and he screwed off the lid and drank. The water tasted slightly of algae, but it was palatable. He was grateful for it and turned the light off, hoping his head would clear by morning.

  Daylight brought as much confusion. He had slept later than everyone else, waking in a hot sweat as the sun caught the low roof. He careened out of his room into the searing sunlight, half-dressed. A group of women was passing, with bundles of clothes on their heads. One murmured something to the others and they all burst out laughing, holding their delicate hands up to their mouths.

  ‘Salaam alaikum,’ he mumbled before diving back into the furnace to retrieve his shirt in embarrassment. He plastered down his hair as best he could and put on his plastic sandals.

  The camp was thriving when he wandered out in search of familiar faces. Donkeys were carrying sheaves of grasses and poles for new structures in one direction, while passing carts were pulled the other way carrying sacks of WFP grain for milling. A queue of several hundred people had formed outside the clinic, sheets of grey plastic propped up on poles providing limited shelter from the rising sun. Many of those waiting were asleep, curled up on small mounds of clothes, children lying slack-mouthed as the flies buzzed around their faces. There was little talking among them, only exhaustion. There was no sign of Alek, and Gabriel feared, not for the first time, that she, too, had bolted, leaving him, a refugee of sorts, among the displaced.

  He made his way to the side of the clinic and peered in through the open window. Inside, he saw Bernard, wearing a blue MSF bib and examining a patient lying on a mattress in front of him.

  ‘Good morning, Professor.’ Bernard smiled briefly at him before returning to his patient.

  The academic title sounded out of place in the context, and although Gabriel knew that Bernard hadn’t meant to taunt him, he felt, for the first time in his life, mildly ashamed of his professorial ambitions. He looked down at Bernard’s charge and saw the thinnest of legs, dark skin wrapped tightly around a delicate bone. An emaciated child.

  The child’s father, o
r guardian, sported an incongruous American baseball cap with a lengthened peak. He was looking at the doctor, confusion on his face. Bernard said something to him in a language Gabriel didn’t understand, and the man nodded, the long peak bouncing up and down.

  ‘These are the new arrivals so far,’ Bernard said to Gabriel. ‘And there are more at the registration post further up the road. They’ve been on the move through the night.’

  Bernard stepped to one side to inspect the child’s legs and Gabriel found himself staring straight into the drawn face of a little girl, her eyes giant in her shrunken body. It was hard to imagine that this shrivelled being was in fact human, her features contorted by malnutrition into mutated expressions. Bernard moved back and blocked Gabriel’s view once more. He stood at the window, staring without seeing, waiting without knowing what should be done next. He had no idea if the child had actually been looking at him, but it felt as if, in that moment, she had wrenched his chest open and peered into his soul. And found him wanting.

  Gabriel stepped back from the window. He had never been a physically affectionate person, a complaint that Jane had directed against him from time to time, though she was hardly enthusiastic herself. But he suddenly felt a desire to be hugged, for a soothing, unhurried embrace, something like his mother’s. It was peculiar, this feeling, this palpable urge to find comfort in another person’s physicality. There were only strangers around him, and he even wondered whether he could approach one of the women and simply put his arms around her. A tall woman in a bright-orange shawl was standing in line close by. How would she react if he approached her with his arms outstretched? Perhaps she sensed something, or maybe he had taken a step in her direction, for she shifted away from him. What would she say if he tried to explain that he thought he was breaking apart? That it was too much for him to endure? The line shuffled forward almost imperceptibly, and the woman took the opportunity to adjust her shawl, picking up a dirty bag from the floor, her eyes averted from the white man, standing sad and lost on his own.

  A murmuring had started among the waiting newcomers. Gabriel turned to walk down the road when one woman raised her voice; then someone answered her. He stopped and turned back to see the line of people rising, like slumbering animals all rousing themselves. Figures uncurled, bewildered, a number of men shielding their eyes and looking up into the skies. And then, as if a switch had been thrown, pandemonium. One man pointed to the heavens and shouted something, and people started to scatter, running, dropping parcels, pulling young children crying by the hand. Some rushed past Gabriel, nearly knocking him to the ground. A high-pitched wail broke loose from the woman in the orange shawl. He became aware of another voice, shouting, but he had to look around before he saw Bernard standing at the clinic entrance gesticulating to the fleeing crowd. But, within minutes, the entire queue had dispersed, some cowering close by behind trees, others still jackrabbiting among the huts. Many had run back up the road towards the registration centre and, presumably, the beginning of the bush.

  Bernard gave up shouting and stood shaking his head. ‘The voice of the Antonov. That’s what they call it. Any aeroplane now fills them with terror. It’s a WPF plane coming to drop grain. Probably. SAF does send planes over as well, just to scare people. But we haven’t been bombed in a few months.’

  ‘Months! Sudan bombs this refugee camp?’ Gabriel was shouting, though the camp had in fact turned utterly silent.

  ‘Oh yes. It used to be quite often. And we get raided as well. Al Babr honours us with visits from time to time. If the women venture beyond the boundary of the camp … well, let’s just say this is not a good thing to do.’

  ‘Al Babr?’ Gabriel recalled the mention from the roadblock. ‘I’ve heard that name before. What is it?’

  ‘It’s best not to ask. There are some things that are better not to know. If you need to know, then you’re in a heap of shit already.’ Bernard laughed at his own turn of phrase.

  ‘I’m already there, Bernard.’ Gabriel gave him a pleading expression. ‘Please, nobody tells me anything in this place.’

  ‘Okay, well, Al Babr is a person, not a thing. It means “The Tiger” in Arabic and it’s the name of a man. Just a man. But a dangerous one. He has a group of militiamen, fighters, ex-soldiers, former Janjaweed – who knows what? – who follow him. The IDPs call them the Eye of Horus. They don’t speak of these things in the open, because Bashir has his spies everywhere. But it’s clear that this militia group are coming over the border into South Sudan and harassing villagers and IDPs to create havoc in the oil fields. We’ve complained through official channels. Many times. Khartoum insists that there are no cross-border insurgencies and that this is a rebel group funded by Juba. The truth is hard to come by in this part of the world.’

  ‘Horus? As in the God of War?’

  ‘This is the “domain of war”. That doesn’t define the dangers for you, but it gives you a pretty good idea.’

  ‘I see,’ Gabriel said. ‘What about the international community? What are they doing about all of this?’

  Bernard looked at him, bemused. ‘We’re here,’ he said, ‘burying the babies.’

  Gabriel left the MSF doctor to his charges scattered across the camp and headed off down an unknown road, walking to escape his thoughts. He couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t walking in a wide circle, as each cluster of makeshift structures looked similar to the last. He passed a collection of latrines that smelt of powerful chemicals and human waste and, a few minutes later, was sure that he had come full circle as another bank of latrines appeared. The camp was even bigger than he’d surmised. He passed a large compound for girls, a security guard lounging at the fenced entrance. Then a church, two mosques, several enclosures that appeared to be schools of some kind, and a large open community area where meetings were held. Everywhere he walked, women and children were sitting together, talking, mending cloth, crushing millet, some in better health than others.

  Finally, when his feet were aching and his already sunburnt neck started to prickle once more, he saw the unmistakable bulk of Margie, walking with a sombre group of people. Gabriel cut across between two huts and joined their path. The dwellings thinned out and they entered the cemetery, hundreds, perhaps thousands of mounds and piled rocks marking the graves. Only once he reached the small group did he realise that one of the men was carrying a wrapped body.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gabriel blurted out to Margie, ‘I didn’t realise.’

  ‘No, my dear. Don’t worry. As the camp manager I try and attend as many burials as I can. But with a CMR like ours, I would end up never leaving our graveyard.’

  ‘CMR?’

  ‘A Crude Mortality Rate.’

  Gabriel flinched at the terminology.

  ‘Sorry, love, that’s good old NGO-speak. We get a little hardened around here. But the euphemisms help one cope.’

  Margie nodded to Gabriel’s left, to a figure halfway down the stretch of grave sites. Alek stood still in the heat, her hands held together in front of her. Gabriel made his way to her, passing a grave on either side of him with each slow footstep.

  Alek did not look up as he joined her. ‘Did you not believe me when I said my mother was buried here?’

  What did it matter what he believed, he thought. His belief, his knowledge, his intellect, it was worthless out here. Worse than that, it inhibited him, it was an obstacle.

  ‘No, I didn’t believe you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry for that.’

  ‘My mother and my father separated when I was still young,’ Alek said sadly. ‘I lived with my father and his new wife. One brother stayed with us. My other brother and my baby sister lived with my mother. My stepmother always favoured her children over us. My father saw this, but he did nothing because he was afraid it would upset her. She had a quick temper. One day, she shouted at me and slapped me because I had used one of her daughter’s pretty butterfly clips for my hair. That night I took a match and I set fire to the kitchen. It had grass walls
and it burnt very easily. I had money from my father’s wallet and I ran to the taxis. I came to Juba, but the fighting was very bad. The soldiers were dangerous and I saw that I wouldn’t survive. From then on, I’ve lived either in camps like this, or outside of the country.’ She paused, looking around her. Jila camp made a sad childhood home, though the children Gabriel had seen accepted their dusty surrounds, knowing no better. Nothing stopped their play.

  ‘But what about your mother?’ he asked. ‘Where was she?’

  ‘I found her eventually. When the peace agreement was signed I was reunited with my stepfamily. My stepsisters had been sent to Khartoum to be educated and they spoke only Arabic. I’d been taught in camp schools, in Kampala and then in Nairobi. They ate halaal and dressed in long robes. I wore jeans and a cross around my neck. By then, my father was already too involved in politics to help. So I ran away, again, and went to look for my mother. After a long time of searching, I found her here. Just before she died.’

  ‘And your father, Alek? Why was he killed?’

  ‘My father was a dreamer. He thought he could make all of this’ – Alek swept her arm across the vista of graves – ‘come to an end. He tried to bring peace to the different tribes in Abyei. He was a loved and trusted man in this state. But he was only thinking about the people living on top of the land. He should’ve been more careful about what was underneath them.’

  ‘What do you mean? What’s underneath?’

  ‘Oil.’ Alek made a small sign of the cross on her chest and blew a gentle kiss across her palm to the barren mound of earth at her feet. ‘This is all about oil now, Mr Gabriel. One day scientists like you – or the God you mock – may make oil and water mix. But oil and peace never will.’