The Water Thief

by Claire Hajaj

The cars have too much dust on them. Juma drags his finger across one. ‘Bad rains are good for business,’ he says. ‘All the engines in the village will stop working soon.’

  Two years before, we had good rains. The ground was heavy and the lake was green. There was mud as far as the village. Akim and me, we painted ourselves red. How Baba howled! One day it rained so much the lake came to the square and made Baba’s car into a boat. We pretended that I was the captain and on the top was a big sail. Even Mama laughed at us.

  Today, Akim is complaining: ‘Man, it’s too hot. I want some Fanta. Let’s stop at Tuesday’s place.’ But Tuesday is not in his shop. Instead there is one of Tuesday’s ladies. The refrigerator is not fixed, she says. There is no Fanta. I smell the hot glass when I put my hands on it. Juma asks her: ‘Where are the magazines, darling? You know the ones?’ He leans close to her and she hits him on the side of his head. I take some stickers from the shelf and put them under my shirt, into my trousers. They are shaped like flowers. Later I will give them to Adeya for her schoolbag. Her bag is very ugly.

  ‘Get out,’ Tuesday’s lady says. ‘You are only trouble, you boys.’

  When we leave the shop, Juma’s face is red where she hit him. But he is still laughing. He says: ‘How many times has Tuesday fucked that one? Maybe she’s tired of him now. Maybe she wants a change, eh?’

  Akim is giggling like a donkey: eeheeheehee. Juma punches him, and he gets tears in his eyes. I do not want Juma to hit him again. So I say, ‘How do you know about Tuesday’s ladies?’ Juma, he laughs. ‘I know all of Tuesday’s ladies,’ he says. ‘I fucked some of them, too.’

  Akim has his stupid smile again. Juma pinches my arm. He says: ‘That is how you get a big dick, JoJo. You give it lots of exercise.’ Then he pulls down his pants so we can see it. His dick is not so big.

  We walk through the garden of the mosque. Akim wants to go another way. He whines, ‘Maybe Father will see us,’ he holds onto Juma’s arm, but Juma, he pushes his brother away. ‘Leave me be,’ he says. ‘Father went home with the imam. Men will come to the Town to speak with them about the election.’

  Akim’s eyes go wide. He says: ‘The governor’s men?’

  ‘Fuck the governor,’ Juma says.

  I say nothing. But I think. My baba does not like Mr Kamil or Imam Abdi. When Jalloh brings the meat to our house after Friday prayers, he tells Baba: ‘Good sermon, eh, Dr Ahmed?’ And Baba just smiles and says: ‘Thank you, sir, for the best cuts as usual.’ But sometimes he says to Jalloh: ‘We must all be very careful.’

  Baba is an old man. He is not strong like Juma, like Mr Kamil, like Mister. He does nothing. Instead he stands, like a tree. The winds here are too strong, they take down the trees. This is what Juma says. He says: ‘Mister teaches boys how to be strong.’

  We reach the shop where Juma works. I can smell burning inside. Suddenly I do not want to go in. But Juma pushes me. He says: ‘Hurry, yallah. Mister is at the back. He waits for you.’

  A radio is playing Michael Jackson. ‘Beat It’. Now Akim’s eyes are down. He is afraid.

  But I will not be afraid. I want to look at Mister. I never saw him close. So I turn my eyes up – and there he is, looking straight at me. And he smiles.

  At first I think – but he is smaller than Juma. Just a boy, like us. He sits so still, on a box under the shelf where the radio is. He has bare feet. His toes are long, like white fingers. One tooth is gone. There is a scar from his shoulder down to his hand. His eyes are not brown. I never saw such eyes. They are white. His hair is white, too. Like Baba’s. Baba’s is old-man-white. Mister, he is spirit-white.

  Juma says: ‘So here is my brother Akim. And Lady JoJo, too.’

  ‘I’m no lady,’ I say back fast. But my heart is beating.

  Juma says: ‘Your mama and baba treat you like a girl. Drive you to school, JoJo. Don’t be in trouble, JoJo. Dress nice, JoJo.’

  Akim is laughing too. If we were at school, I would hit him. But here I swallow the words. They feel hot in my stomach.

  ‘So, boss.’ Mister is talking. Juma and Akim, they go quiet. ‘How old are you?’

  I say: ‘Thirteen. Soon.’

  Mister smiles: ‘Almost grown, eh? I know your father. And your mama, she’s a pretty one.’

  Mister stands up and comes close. I can smell him. He smells of burning. He asks me: ‘Do you know who we are?’

  I answer: ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘We are the knights of the village,’ he says. ‘You know what a knight is?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. His eyes make me cold inside. So I try again. I tell him: ‘The knights fight to protect the weak ones.’

  He puts out his hand to squeeze my arm. It hurts. I hear the music behind and the dogs barking in the field. He is so close. In his belt is a knife. Its shape is long and slim. He opens his shirt for me. I could touch it.

  Then he lets me go. I rub my arm where he has marked it. He turns to take an oil can from the shelf beside the radio with Michael Jackson singing. Akim moves back, away from me.

  ‘You want to be a knight, boss?’ Mister asks me. ‘You want to join us?’ His eyes are white, white as his knife. I feel like they cut me.

  ‘Yes,’ I whisper.

  He smiles. Then he tips the oil can. I see it pour out onto my school shoes. They go yellow where it touches them.

  He says: ‘Your brother died. Your mama can’t have strong sons. You are one of the weak. How do I know you will even live to be a man?’

  He is close to me, so close. I know what he is telling me. I know what he wants. He wants me to take the knife from him, right now. I must show no fear.

  Inside I shout: ‘Now, JoJo, now!’ Behind me the dogs have caught a bird. I can hear it screaming. When they cut Mister’s arm, did he scream? Is his blood red, like mine? Or white as his skin?

  Mister, he waits. With every breath I think: Now! Now! But I do nothing.

  Then Mister, he smiles.

  ‘Go home, boss,’ he tells me. ‘Be good. There’s no place for you with us.’

  I run.

  Margaret had laid the table, fire-roasted meat filling the room with its warm thyme smell. Beside it lay a bowl of maize porridge, dumplings made of groundnut, rice and lime soaked with strong yogurt. There was a salad of tomatoes and a green, viscous soup. The meat was paler than lamb and darker than chicken. A plump man with scarred hands and a vast belly nodded gratefully when Nick complimented its flavor.

  ‘I bring the best cuts for Dr Ahmed,’ he said. ‘They are always tender because the animal is never afraid when I slaughter it. I hypnotise it with my voice.’

  ‘He really does.’ Another man spoke from the table’s end. ‘I’ve seen him at it. One minute they struggle and then Jalloh here whispers in their ears. I don’t think they even see the knife.’ His beard looked thin and small against the splendour of his peacock robe. He had been introduced to Nick as Mr Kamil. His wife, Aisha, wore a full emerald abaya with dark embroidery and a towering hairpiece. Her nails glinted like beetles as she waved her husband’s remark away. ‘Oh, Kamil, please. At dinner it’s disgusting.’

  Across the table sat the hunched old woman Nick had seen on the porch of the house opposite – Miss Amina. No English, according to Dr Ahmed. But she nodded vigorously, saying, ‘Eh, eh.’

  ‘It’s my personality,’ Jalloh continued unperturbed. ‘The animal knows its master. Once it knows, it forgets its fear. Fear sours the meat. The best butchers have strong personalities.’

  Dr Ahmed leaned over to Nick and whispered, ‘Jalloh is a great hypnotist. He thinks he has hypnotised me into imagining his goats get thinner every month. I don’t mind making my little contribution to his Friday supper, though.’

  Margaret served the food, her hair covered in a pale scarf. It slipped as she bent to spoon rice onto Nick’s plate, her wrists fragrant with thyme. The carelessness of her dress seemed almost disdainful; he saw Miss Amina’s frown and Aisha’s pursed lips as their hostess placed the bony meat o
n the table. She met Nick’s eyes, her own coolly deliberate.

  ‘This is the wrong lesson, Jalloh,’ another man said – the village imam, wrapped almost to vanishing in a heavy white shawl. His narrow mouth worked even when empty, as if in permanent argument. A thin hand burrowed into the folds over his lap, the other plucked at the meat like a hungry stork. He had more to say, but in a language Nick did not understand, waving his finger at the butcher. A slick of grease shone on his knuckle.

  Dr Ahmed listened with intent politeness. Margaret came through from the kitchen and took a seat behind Nick, a plate of food on her lap. He looked back at her. ‘They’re upset about something.’

  ‘It’s an old argument,’ she replied. ‘The imam says no death is ordained except by Allah, and any man who challenges Allah’s authority is the pawn of Shaitan. Now they are talking about politics, not goats.’

  ‘Forgive us, Nicholas,’ Mr Kamil broke in. ‘Our village is like a house of many rooms, a different family in each one. Allah is the rightful master of the whole house. But some men place themselves above Allah. And wherever men challenge Allah’s authority, the poor and weak suffer first.’

  Jalloh’s broad face was creased into a dark frown. He moved to answer, but Dr Ahmed spoke over him. ‘Another time, Kamil. Let’s enjoy our dinner.’ Mr Kamil leaned closer to Nick.

  ‘Let me ask you something. In England, if a man takes the food and fuel from a house and makes the family inside beg to take back what is rightfully theirs – what would you call such a man? Master or thief?’

  ‘Politician,’ answered Nick, and Mr Kamil laughed, slapping the table with puffy fingers. Yellow grains of rice flew from his beard like flies.

  ‘That’s right! Politicians are the biggest thieves. We will have elections here soon. There must be a return to the rule of law. Allah’s law is a fair law. Man’s law is easily corrupted.’

  ‘You are a Christian?’ the imam interrupted in halting English.

  Nick sensed Margaret stirring behind him. She picked up her plate and walked into the kitchen.

  ‘My mother was a Catholic,’ he said carefully. ‘She had her faith. My father wasn’t a religious man.’

  It had been one of Kate’s wilder efforts to talk him out of coming here, an uncharacteristic resort to terror tactics. They hate Jews, you know, she’d said. They could find out and kidnap you. I’m not Jewish, he’d reminded her, gently. Only my father is – and he hates Jews more than anyone. She’d snorted at that. Like they’ll know the difference.

  But he’d thought about it later, about the strange compulsions that drove his father to marry a fervent believer despite his contempt for faith. He remembered the tense day of his grandmother’s burial – feeling cowed by the sight of his father in a long black coat, singing in an unknown tongue that transformed him into a stranger. The women were eerily alike: the same hard black shoes, the same shiny hair emerging from caps, curling around their chins. Wigs, his mother had whispered. The men wore fringed tallits, stringy curls jerking as they bobbed over their prayer books. There had been dark knots of silence under the falling rain and shouting behind closed doors while his mother cringed, then a silent drive home. Later Nick made a hesitant pilgrimage to his father’s study to find him hunched over a thick book, strange letters slanting across its pages like fine strokes of a paintbrush. Is that Grandma’s book? he’d asked in a whisper. His father looked up at him, gaunt, deep lines scored down his cheeks by the grey light. For a split second Nick had a wild urge to run to him, to bury his face in his chest and feel the constant, steady thud of his heart. But his father turned away, closing the book with a snap. God is for people who can’t find the right road without a map, he’d replied.

  ‘Many good men do not practise a faith,’ Dr Ahmed said. Nick had seen passages of Arabic script framed on his wall, presumably from the Qur’an.

  ‘He would say the same thing.’ Margaret’s eyes were lowered, but he sensed the light touch of her attention. ‘He believed the only important values were human ones. Honesty. Honour. Valour.’

  ‘And here you are following his teachings,’ Mr Ahmed said. ‘Like a good son.’

  Before Nick could reply, the group turned at the sound of the door opening. A reedy boy slipped into the room, heading for the kitchen.

  Dr Ahmed stood up. ‘Yahya? Yahya, come here. Where have you been? Your mother is angry with you.’

  His father’s voice pulled the boy back – shoulders set in tense unwillingness. He said something quietly to his father.

  ‘Speak in English,’ said Dr Ahmed. ‘We speak in English to the children, you know. It’s better for their education.’

  The boy cleared his throat and turned his eyes to the kitchen doorway. Margaret stood there, her face the troubled mirror of her son’s.

  ‘I was out with Akim,’ he said, spacing each word carefully, speaking to the floor. ‘I forgot the time.’

  ‘It is impolite to be late, Yahya.’ Dr Ahmed sounded pained. Mr Kamil was nodding sagely. ‘You know we have a guest here.’ The old man seemed to notice his son’s disarray for the first time – the white shirt dirty and torn, his shoes leaving oily prints on the tiled floor. ‘And what happened to your clothes? What kind of state is this?’

  The boy looked over at Nick, disturbance plainly written on his face. Their eyes met. And Nick remembered a kindred moment, standing in front of his own father after one of many nameless failures, his chest filling up with the old man’s disappointment. It was the first feeling of real comradeship since his arrival.

  ‘I don’t feel well, Baba,’ the boy was saying. ‘I need to sleep.’ His father walked over and felt his forehead – love plainly wrestling with irritation in him. ‘Nonsense, Yahya. Please wash and come sit with us.’

  The boy looked into his father’s eyes, and Nick felt the strain between them. Then the boy turned and ran back through the door into the night.

  Margaret reached out an arm, calling, ‘JoJo!’ But the door slammed behind him. The boy had left a dark trail on the floor that stank of oil.

  I am not afraid of the dark. I am fast. If I run, nothing can catch me. Not even the dogs. Dogs will try, if they are hungry. Hyenas will take even big children. A boy was taken two years before.

  But I will not go home. Baba, he shames me. Mr Kamil will tell Akim and Juma. Tomorrow they will laugh at me.

  Akim is stupid. Mister, too. What does he know? My brother was the weak one, not me. He could not fight the fever. And Baba was weak – he could not save him.

  Baba lies, too. He says we must study to lead a good life. But look at him. His books, they are useless. He could not even save his own boy. Only the poor people go to him, like Miss Amina. Or Tuesday, for the sickness in his dick. Everybody knows. If you are sick and you have money, you go to the Town. If Baba had taken Bako to the Town, he would be well now. I would be his big brother still.

  The houses look different in the dark. The road is awake, and the houses sleep. There are lights on the road. Oil and water, Baba says, cost more than blood here. But I like to hear the generators. They sing after dark. They beat, like hearts.

  The lights make everything white. The houses are white. The road is white. Only the desert is black and the lake. We don’t go there at night. There are witches there. But I will not be afraid of them. I am not afraid of Mister. I am a man, too.

  I am still running, away from the mosque and the generators. There are no lights here. Here the sky is bright. The wall of the school is low. I can cross it, easy. We used to play catch here, Adeya and me. She is fast. For a girl. But that game is for children.

  My shoes hurt. So I take them off. Baba bought them for me. Good leather and a buckle. Shoes show respect, Baba says. Respect for learning. But the oil is inside the soles. Now they stink.

  I want shoes like that white man’s. I saw pictures of men wearing shoes like that in Tuesday’s magazines.

  There is my classroom. I see the window near my desk. The teacher says I am sma
rt. She says: Smart boys don’t stare out of the window, JoJo. They look at their books. But what is in those books? Stories and numbers. They are not real. Mama used to read me stories, sometimes. Dragons and castles and knights from long ago.

  But not any more. Now I know what is real. The fevers are real. The dogs are real. Mister, his knife is real. His scar is real.

  I drop one shoe. The other one is heavy in my hand. Like a stone. It pulls me down into the ground.

  I can see the window of my classroom. I think: knights do not take classes from the school. Knights fight the wicked. They fear nothing.

  So I reach back my arm and I throw. I throw the shoe with all my strength, far away from me. Then the glass breaks, and I feel my heart still running. But beneath my feet the ground is sharp as knives.

  October

  Light floated down through high, yellow curtains, stirring behind Nick’s eyelids. He lay still in the early heat, each new breath tugging him gently up towards consciousness. Senses returned one by one – the sweat filming his skin, the cool whir of a fan, the mattress wire-thin against his back, the taste of last night’s meal still warm and bitter in his mouth. For once, he couldn’t remember his dreams.

  He sat up, feet tentative on the floor’s bare tiles. They were cool to the touch, soothing his heated skin as he looked around him. My new home. His suitcase was wedged against the door separating the small bedroom from his office beyond. A plastic curtain divided the bed from a sink, a squat toilet and a shower hose attached to the wall. Outside, he thought he could hear birdsong.

  After a cool rinse and a rudimentary shave, Nick stepped into his office. The filing-cabinet drawers were rusted. A bulky Codan HF radio was connected to a portable generator. His desk was chipped, sporting a telephone and a walkie-talkie, with a worn plastic chair to sit on. Nick thought of his London office – all plush carpets and artwork, wide windows sweeping down onto a world of bustle and steel.

  Soft human sounds were audible from Dr Ahmed’s clinic on the other side of the wall. Already at his morning rounds. Nick’s watch read 9:30. J.P.’s fixer, Eric, would pick him up in half an hour to take him into the Town – to view the hospital project site and meet the region’s governor. Our partner in crime.