The Water Thief

by Claire Hajaj

  ‘Nagode broke the tower by accident,’ he said. ‘But Nicholas and I, we fixed it. Now it is even stronger. Look, Mama.’

  Her eyes flicked briefly to the castle and then to Nick. He saw hurt and anger – the impulse of a wounded animal.

  ‘You made your clothes dirty,’ she said. JoJo looked down at himself, his jeans covered in the mortar’s sticky grey. He tried to wipe it off, laughing.

  ‘So what?’ he said to his mother. ‘They’re just clothes.’

  ‘Just clothes.’ Her voice was harsh. ‘So I can give them to another child, if you don’t care about your things?’

  JoJo’s face tightened. ‘I do care!’ he said, outraged.

  ‘Then why should you make me clean for you, as if you are Nagode’s age? I’m not your slave.’

  JoJo was breathing hard. He unbuckled his jeans and pulled them off, legs thin as a foal’s. He bunched them up and threw them at his mother.

  ‘Here!’ he yelled. ‘It is you who doesn’t care. You want Bako to be alive and not me!’

  Margaret caught the jeans by her stomach as JoJo raced out of the garden, pushing past her. She turned her head, her mouth opening – but he was gone before she could speak.

  ‘What the hell was that about?’ Nick was furious. ‘He’s just a kid, he wasn’t doing anything wrong.’

  Her eyes came up, distraught. In that moment he saw the extraordinary resemblance between mother and son – the boy’s face under her skin like soft clay carved into adult planes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’m not the one you should apologise to.’

  She bit her lip, wandering over to Nagode’s sleeping tree, sweet with the fragrance of dead flowers.

  ‘You are going away,’ she said, her back to Nick.

  ‘Just for a few weeks.’

  She nodded. ‘Your wife will be happy to see you.’

  ‘I told you, she’s not my wife.’ Kate seemed unreal, a figure inside a snow globe, surrounded by Christmas tree lights and champagne glasses under a falling blizzard.

  Margaret picked up the clothes basket at her feet and pushed JoJo’s jeans inside it. ‘We are used to you being here.’ She walked over towards the water bucket, its contents dark with old dirt. ‘But you are tired of us, perhaps.’

  ‘I could never be tired of you.’ He spoke without caution, infected with her impulsive honesty. The truth was making his heart flood with adrenalin; it pulled dust into his lungs and bloodstream, making him part of the desert’s wild expanse.

  I don’t want to leave. It was a moment of rare clarity; the known and unknown switched inside him and England was now the alien land. It was impossible to imagine re-shaping himself to London life – to carefully ironed bedsheets and bare winter branches, to small-talk amid a growing sense of desolation.

  Margaret knelt down by the bucket, setting the clothes basket beside her. One hand rested over JoJo’s jeans, fragments of light trapped between her fingers and the denim. The beads on her wrist shifted colour as she ran her hands over the fabric. The gesture moved him, a form of spiritual communication with absent flesh. His anger at her dissolved, as if by a spell.

  JoJo’s angry passage had kicked a small posy of dried grass and seedpods away from the makeshift cross over what Nick had come to think of as the garden grave. He watched Margaret lean forward to restore it, smoothing the ground in front of the cross, laying the dry bouquet carefully back down.

  ‘Bako,’ he said, and he saw her hand go still. ‘Dr Ahmed told me what happened to him.’

  Her shoulders were rigid, as if she stood at the edge of a deep drop. ‘At home we called him Pip,’ she replied, her voice almost too low to hear. ‘It was my choice. From Great Expectations.’

  ‘Is he buried here?’

  ‘It was not permitted,’ she said. ‘But I took a lock of his hair. Only a small piece.’

  ‘Dr Ahmed said he died of a fever.’

  Her head came up. ‘The rains failed then, too. The water price went so high, we had to take it from the lake.’

  She touched the cross with her fingertips. Small flies circled her, beating shadows into the morning light.

  ‘Akim was the first to sicken. Mr Kamil’s youngest. His wife Aisha – she never accepted me. She would turn from me when we passed in the street. Aisha, with her silks and jewels, but not even a high-school certificate.’ The words were harsh with mockery. ‘I could not bear this nothing village woman to shame me. So I took the waste from our pit. I carried it through the hidden way I showed you. And I spread it in their garden under the clothes line so her dresses would stink.’

  In his mind’s eye, Nick saw her – a Fury striding through the village with her steaming pot of poison. ‘That’s quite the revenge.’

  She nodded. ‘But when Akim took a fever, I knew one of my children would follow. I thought it would be JoJo – he played with Akim. But God’s hand passed over him and touched Pip instead.’ Her voice had grown quiet.

  ‘He was just a baby. Ahmed tried everything. Every medicine. So . . .’ She looked out, her gaze ranging past the garden’s crumbling walls to the wilderness beyond. ‘I went to Binza. To the witch by the lake. I hoped that her magic would be stronger than God’s vengeance.’

  Margaret fingered the bright red beads on her wrist. ‘She gave me this bracelet to tie on Bako’s arm.’ She laughed. ‘A bracelet – what can that do? But I had to try. I gave her all of our money. For three days Bako wore it, and on the fourth he died. Akim lived, and my son died.’

  Nick realised he’d been holding his breath; his grateful lungs sucked in oxygen, drawing deep the fading smells of grass and dust. There are ghosts here. He sensed them whispering in the dead branches, bright at the edges of vision. They’d whispered at his father’s gravesite, inside the hushed song of the el maleh rachamim prayer for the dead – its Hebrew words sounding so bleak and condemning until his father’s sister had handed Nick a bound translation as a parting gift. Illuminate the souls of those we love, like the brilliance of the skies, the blameless ones who have gone to their rest.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Margaret,’ he said to her. ‘It was a virus.’

  She tilted her head in amused pity. ‘Yes. I did not kill my son. You did not kill your friend. Even God is innocent. No one is to blame.’

  She got to her feet, the clothes basket in her arms. Light fell on her shoulders as a cloud passed overhead. She raised her head at its touch.

  ‘But why do you still bring Binza food?’ Nick asked. ‘She was a fraud.’

  Margaret was silent for a moment, considering.

  ‘When we prepared Bako for burial, this bracelet was still on his arm,’ she answered finally. ‘I put it there myself. During his sickness I would turn the beads on his skin and pray for them to draw his pain away.’ She raised her arm in front of her, twisting the beads to the light.

  ‘When I saw them covering his body with the sheet, I felt they were burying me with him. So I took the bracelet for myself. Because I do not want to forget.’ She looked at Nick, unflinching. ‘I remember every good thing and also every sin. They are all tied together here, with all of us.’ She held her wrist out to him, the beads bright as blood. ‘Bako and JoJo. My husband. Aisha. Me. And Binza, too. Binza gave us the bracelet to save his life. So I feed her still. That’s all.’

  The noon prayer boomed from the mosque, rolling past them on the thermal currents. In song, Imam Abdi’s voice lost its bird-like thinness. A penetrating lament channelled a path through Nick into the earth, transforming him into part of the invisible chain linking the deep waters beneath to the sky’s high arc.

  Then he knew: he had a purpose here, and England would have to wait. The choice felt so easy, so utterly right. No more skating on thin ice, always afraid of falling through.

  ‘Margaret,’ he said, as she turned towards the kitchen. She swung back to face him, her body drawn in lines of tension. He had a sudden, heart-wrenching impression of youth.

&n
bsp; ‘I’m cancelling my visit to England,’ he told her. ‘I have a plan, something that could stop these droughts. I’d still have to go to the capital to see J.P. – but I would be back straight away.’

  Margaret stood motionless, a flush spreading from her throat’s pale hollow. ‘A plan?’ she echoed.

  ‘A plan to bring a safe water supply from under the ground.’

  That made her smile. ‘ “Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his rod, and water came forth abundantly.” ’

  ‘Something like that.’ He grinned back, excitement pulsing through him. ‘But I’ll use a drill instead of a rod. I just need J.P. to agree. That’s why I need to go south.’

  ‘To the capital?’

  ‘Yes, to the capital.’

  A strange expression shadowed her face. ‘You might have rain there, even in the dry season,’ she said. ‘Sarah and I, we used to catch frogs. There’s a pool by our house . . .’ Then she recollected herself. ‘But that was long ago.’

  ‘Couldn’t I do something for you there?’ New ideas were racing through his mind, thrilling him with their possibilities. ‘Take something for someone? For Sarah? I could deliver a letter or . . . bring back anything you need.’

  She bit her lip, doubtful. ‘I don’t know.’ She spoke softly, her words muffled by the wind. ‘Now, after so long?’ He followed her gaze to the little cross, outlined against the shifting brilliance of sun and shadow. He thought of the ending of her book: two children, silhouetted against the light, their forms merging into one.

  ‘Don’t you want to lay to rest at least some of your ghosts?’ Her eyes snapped towards him as he spoke. ‘You deserve to be happy too, Margaret.’

  The front door slammed – JoJo, walking down to the garden gate, a fresh pair of jeans on his legs. His mother turned at the sound, watching him slope slowly away.

  ‘JoJo has never seen the capital.’ Now her tone was dark with thought. ‘He knows nothing of any other life.’

  She looked back to Nick, her expression indecipherable – and he sensed something forming beneath, a fierce purpose.

  ‘How long?’ she asked. ‘How long would you stay there?’

  ‘In the capital?’ Nick considered. ‘Two days. Three at the most.’

  ‘Could you take JoJo?’ Her tone was even, questioning – but he felt the hidden urgency. ‘He’s becoming a man. He needs to know there’s more to life than this small place.’

  ‘By himself?’ The idea took him aback. ‘I could . . . it might be hard sometimes. I have meetings. We’d have to make a plan.’

  She hugged the jeans to her chest, head turned; he imagined desperate calculations.

  ‘Then I could come with him. You could take us both.’

  He hesitated – unsure; his heart began to beat with the feeling of a world sliding past, a train nearing a dangerous bend in the track. ‘But – Dr Ahmed . . . would he agree?’

  ‘Leave Ahmed to me.’ Her chest rose and fell rapidly. ‘He has asked me to heal this breach with David many times.’

  ‘And you never said yes before?

  ‘I never wanted to go before,’ she replied. ‘I have slept for thirteen years. But it’s like you say, Nicholas.’ She looked up at him, excitement mounting in her eyes. ‘It’s past time to wake.’

  She set down her basket as JoJo reached the gate, her body tense with emotion, her face entrancing, flushed – lit from within. ‘I must go and tell him. The capital – he will not believe it!’

  And Nick watched her run towards her son, calling out his name. He pulled away as she reached him – but she put her hands on either side of his cheeks, pressing their foreheads together, breathing words of apology and assurance.

  JoJo’s arms hung down for a moment, but then hugged his mother to him.

  Alone in the garden, Nick felt their embrace filling up empty rooms inside him. The air was charged with energy – a force he’d imagined but never felt: a living bond between two souls, endlessly broken and remade through love’s struggle against fear.

  Baba said yes to Mama about the capital. When she came to tell me, she put her hands on my face, and I could smell her tears. ‘We will go at New Year,’ she said to me. ‘A new year, a new start, JoJo.’ I could not sleep all that night. Akim was so jealous when I told him! They have so many things in the capital. Swimming pools and football shirts and cinemas. Nicholas will take me to the cinema, to see a film from America. One with girls. Akim, he said: ‘Those are only for real men. You’re still a baby.’ And I laughed because his eyes said he lied.

  Before we go, we will eat an English Christmas dinner together with Baba. Jalloh had a big fight with Mama when she told him. He shouted: ‘Every week you take my goat! I have saved the best pieces for you!’

  Mama, she stands there, her arms folded. She says: ‘We are making an English Christmas for our guest. In England they have goose for their lunch at Christmas.’

  Now Jalloh is yelling: ‘There is no goose here! We are not goose people.’

  ‘Mama says: ‘So I will take three chickens. Next week you can sell us goat again.’

  Jalloh is not happy. He leans closer to Mama. His hands, they are red from the meat. He says: ‘There are no Christians here, woman.’

  Mama, she draws up her head. She is not afraid of him. Mama, she fears no one these days.

  ‘Do not test me, Jalloh,’ she says. And she makes a quote from the Qur’an. It says: ‘Allah loves those who are just.’ Baba says it when I say bad things about Akim, or when Mama complains about Aisha Kamil. He says: ‘Allah’s justice comes from love. And love forbids us to speak ill of each other or seek vengeance.’

  Jalloh does not know the Qur’an. So he says he will bring the chickens from his brother in the Town. He does not want to lose our business to Tuesday.

  We work all day to make the dinner. Okra and beans and yams. Then we must stuff the chickens. Mama takes tiger nuts from the garden and I cut the stalks and roots. We pound them small. Nagode puts some of them into her mouth. ‘Bad Nagode!’ I shout. When I say that she laughs. I say it again. ‘Bad Nagode!’ She says, ‘Ba! Ba! Ba!’

  We mix the tiger nut with bread and dry plums, and Mama cuts onion. The smell makes me cry. I look and see Mama is crying too. She wipes it with her hand, and I say: ‘Bad Mama!’ We laugh at each other.

  Then we mix up everything together and fill the inside of the chickens. Mama has a needle and thread, to sew the skin closed. The chicken’s head falls down onto the table. It looks like it sleeps. If I was that chicken, I would not want to wake.

  Baba, he brings candles from Tuesday’s store for the table. I was there when he bought them. Tuesday said: ‘Dr Ahmed, I hear you are having a festival at your place.’ Baba replied: ‘Jesus is one of Allah’s prophets. I am happy to help my guest celebrate his coming.’ Afterwards, Baba said to me: ‘Now I have reminded Tuesday of one of our prophets, he is trying to remember the names of the others.’

  I say nothing. But I think. Baba knows everything about Allah and the prophets but he does not know the things that Tuesday knows. Baba is like the sleeping chicken. He does not want to see what is happening around him.

  Mama brings a red cloth for the table. It has been sewn together, in three big pieces. Baba, he says: ‘Oh, my dear. I remember this one!’ Then Nicholas, he comes in. He says: ‘Wow, look at all this.’

  Baba tells him: ‘You are receiving an honour today, Nicholas. We are eating our dinner off the blanket that Margaret and I slept under when we married.’

  Nicholas, he touches the red cloth, and looks at Mama. ‘It is very beautiful,’ he tells her.

  Now Nicholas, he and Mama have the same smile. Sometimes they have their own language, Mama and Nicholas. They use the same words as Baba and me. But they mean other things.

  Mama brings out the food, and we sit together. Baba is talking about chestnuts in England. He tells Nicholas that he did not understand the difference between the horse chestnut and the sweet chestnut.
He says: ‘I picked some horse chestnuts and cooked them for my friend. How she laughed at me! She said – stick to fixing your patients and leave the cooking to me.’

  Our tiger nuts are the same colour as tigers. So the horse nuts must be the same colour as horses. When I go to England, I will ride horses. Nicholas, he knows how to do that.

  Baba says to him: ‘I am glad that you stayed here for your Christmas feast. But your family must be missing you today.’

  I look at Mama, but she is busy pulling yellow meat from the bones, to lay on top of the yams. Mama is happy that Nicholas is staying. And me also. I do not mind about the Top Trumps. Nicholas is better than Top Trumps. And when we go to the capital together, we can find better things there.

  Nicholas says to Baba: ‘I think England can manage without me for a few months longer. And the nurses look after my mother very well. I don’t think she even knows I’m away.’

  ‘Ah,’ Baba says. ‘The mind is the hardest organ of the body to treat. Even with the best modern medicines.’

  Nicholas looks sad. He says: ‘This feels like my home. You feel like my family.’ He puts down his fork. I think he might cry. I never saw a man cry.

  Baba reaches over to him and takes his arm. He says: ‘You are always welcome in our house.’

  Nicholas, he shakes his head. But then his face changes. Now he is smiling, like Tuesday. He says: ‘But you will be rid of me for a few days over New Year. Do you want me to bring back more supplies, if you give me a list?’

  ‘Very many thanks,’ Baba says. Last week he was fighting with Miss Amina, I know. He does not have all of her medicines. We do not have enough money to pay for new ones. Baba wanted to buy many medicines – but Mama, she was mad. She said: ‘We must pay JoJo’s school. We must pay for fuel. And already we fill only half a tank of water. Bad times are coming, Ahmed. Let these people pay for their own medicine.’

  But Baba, he said: ‘You know they cannot pay.’

  Now Baba looks at Mama. He asks: ‘Are you ready for your visit? Did your brother David write back to you?’