The Water Thief

by Claire Hajaj

‘We’ll get back on in a couple of weeks.’

  The governor craned his head around, back towards the village. The mosque had come to life, the last prayer before Ramadan running ahead of the sunset. The wind rose in competition – rattling the scrubland’s skeletal bushes and setting the dogs howling.

  Nick saw the governor laugh and nod his head, as if understanding some hidden message.

  ‘Do you understand what our imam here is singing, Nicholas?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s about submission to God. The first pillar of Islam. My father was a very religious man. And as a boy, I thought he could never be wrong. But at Brown, they killed my delusions from the very first semester. A painful lesson, but important. Do you know what it was?’

  Nick said nothing. The well’s freshly sealed cap was reflected in the car’s wing mirror; he saw the elephant tank squatting beside it, the bare wiring of the generator. So close. We are so close to success.

  ‘They taught that the universe is built on order,’ the governor was saying. ‘Gods have whims, they are capricious. Their followers inspire chaos – the evidence is all around us. But order is written into nature. We all depend on it. Me. The Town, this village. Even you. We spoke about this before. But I’m not sure you listened. Which is a pity.’

  The sand hissed through the lake’s dead stalks. Nick’s mouth was dry.

  ‘This land could be green again if the well works,’ he said. ‘That’s got to be worth a few thousand dollars and a couple of weeks’ delay?’

  The governor gestured to his driver. Nick heard the Cruiser shift into gear. The engine began to keen, high and urgent. The window wound upwards, nearly trapping Nick’s fingers. He snatched them back in shock.

  The window halted as the governor turned his head. From below Nick could see the powerful planes of his face, cheekbones broad as a bull’s under a marble-smooth forehead.

  ‘People tell me what you are doing here, Nicholas.’ His gaze tipped towards Jalloh, standing a few metres behind them. The big man blushed.

  ‘And I know you mean well,’ the governor went on. ‘But I wish you had listened to me. When I cannot communicate with a man in words, I have to find other ways.’

  He tapped the driver. The vehicle reversed, forcing Nick to step back. One by one, the other Land Cruisers followed, speeding off into the distance. The last to leave was the small contingent of armed men, dust swallowing them as they headed north.

  Eric walked Nick back to Dr Ahmed’s house, the heavy tread of his boots eating into the ground. The world was so dry that the ground seemed barely to cling to it, once-dark millet fields rising in layers of gold and light. It hid their feet as they walked, wading slowly into a strange sea.

  Eric swung his broad arms, waving at Miss Amina on her porch as they passed. She stopped the tired drifting of her fan. Nick saw languid flies settling on her headscarf, crawling down loose strands of grey.

  At the garden gate to Dr Ahmed’s house, Eric stopped – putting his hand on Nick’s shoulder. His broad face was red, sweat pooling in his beard. The blue eyes narrowed as they looked down at him.

  ‘This business with the governor . . .’ he said.

  ‘It will be OK.’ Nick didn’t want to hear anything more. ‘I’m sorting it out.’

  ‘I never said a word to J.P.. You can count on that.’ Eric shifted uneasily on his feet, fingers digging into Nick’s collarbone. ‘But you’re a fucking idiot if you think that dickless foreman hasn’t. Their headquarters are in the capital, remember?’

  ‘I’ve not done anything wrong.’ Nick wiped the sweat from his own forehead, trying to recall the arsenal of explanations he’d gathered when this all began. He’d been ready for any challenge, almost disappointed that none had come.

  ‘I’d get on the blower to J.P. today, if I were you,’ Eric was saying. ‘Because the truth is we are really fucking behind. And I’m not going to be the last person he hears it from. I have more than your fucking problems to worry about, understand me?’

  ‘I promise I’ll call him. Just give me another couple of days.’ If the money arrived in the capital this week, J.P. would never need to hear from him.

  Eric dropped his arm and looked back towards the well, hidden in the shimmer of afternoon heat.

  ‘You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that. They would have been waiting for their own water supply here till the Day of fucking Judgement.’

  Nick closed his eyes, remembering what Margaret had said by her mother’s grave. Every day is a Day of Judgement. ‘Imam Abdi said the fires were Allah’s judgement,’ he reminded Eric. ‘For bowing to a godless man.’

  Eric snorted. ‘Their Allah has a lot to fucking answer for. The governor’s right about that, at least.’

  Dr Ahmed was not in his office. Nick opened the door to his own room, the air stale with old breath and gasoline but a relief nonetheless from the crucible outside.

  He sat down at his desk, head in his hands. Kate will answer soon. She will. The pressure of her silence was building like a bubble, distorting today’s victory with fear. But, he reasoned, that was only the old poison of his self-doubt – of the boy standingly helplessly by the climbing frame, too terrified to disobey. His hands dropped to the table, palms facing upwards. He almost laughed at the sight of them; how puny they seemed, to be attempting so much.

  Sliding his arms down the table, he rested his forehead on the warm, chipped wood. The whir of the fan seeped into his brain, soothing him, blowing his thoughts over and over, like autumn leaves chasing each other down a winding country lane. As he drifted, he felt them rising on warm currents into a lightening sky. We won. The well is built. Relief is on its way.

  He woke to a hand on his shoulder. Dr Ahmed’s face loomed above him, his reading glasses dark. His throat was sore and his thoughts scattered.

  ‘Nicholas, I am so sorry to wake you.’

  ‘No.’ Nick tried to sit up, stretching his aching back. ‘I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I haven’t been sleeping well.’

  Dr Ahmed, too, looked exhausted. His hair had grown, a wiry bush above his head. He smelled strongly of sweat. His head seemed to tick constantly with tiny, staccato jerks, some faulty inner mechanism finally seizing up. The Tin Man, Nick thought. Binza’s the Wicked Witch and the governor’s Oz the Great and Powerful.

  ‘I have a letter for you from England,’ the doctor said. ‘They sent it from your office this morning. Perhaps you want to read it?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Nick’s heart leaped to life. Kate’s reply, at last.

  ‘I may have to travel to the capital tomorrow, to collect an instalment of cash,’ he told the old man. ‘By the time I get back, the well will be up and running. We can all celebrate with a glass of cold, clean water.’

  Dr Ahmed nodded. ‘Congratulations.’ His voice was gracious. ‘They had to postpone today’s celebration, I hear. An unexpected visitor upset all plans.’

  ‘The governor tried to intimidate us,’ Nick said. ‘But it’s too late for that.’

  Dr Ahmed smiled as he straightened. ‘I am glad to hear it.’ He placed a letter on the desk. ‘Happy reading. I will see you at dinner.’

  Nick waited for him to leave. Then he tore open the letter, thrilled to see Kate’s neat cursive under the N&K embossed initials.

  Dear Nick, it began, I’m sorry this is late, but honestly I had a lot of thinking to do since we last spoke.

  It went on, and he could almost see her – bent over the paper, brow furrowed, hair a smooth cascade down her back, cool sunlight gracing her with its pale halo.

  At first she didn’t refer to his request. She was worried about his mother: a change of medication had made her unusually agitated; she was constantly asking for Nick, for his father, hating the clinic, begging for her garden at home.

  It’s too much to expect of me, she wrote. You can’t be a saint doing wonderful things for other people while you’re being unkind to those closest to you. Maybe it’s hard to hear. But that�
�s what marriage is supposed to be, isn’t it? No rose-tinted glasses, seeing things as they really are? Telling each other the truth, no matter what?

  He felt a cold premonition as he read on. Kate was worried about him. She’d agreed to support this dream of his and she hoped he was proving whatever he had to prove. But she could not in all conscience just send him all his savings on a whim.

  I’m your fiancée. It’s awful what’s happening there, and I’m very sorry for them all. But we have our own future to think of, and our own family. We have to make these decisions together, not thousands of miles apart. Come home. Come home and let’s talk. What could be more important than that?

  He didn’t bother to read to the end, letting the paper fall to the desk.

  Come home. That was Kate all over, Kate the parent looking after a wayward child, protecting him from all but the most middle-class of errors. Come home. He knew she believed she loved him. And at one time he’d marvelled that a woman like her could choose him, when she could have had anyone. But now he understood: it had been a gamble, a blind roll of the dice as uncertain as his own when he’d handed over J.P.’s money. And in the end, both of them had lost.

  So . . . there would be no money from London to pay back what he’d taken. Maybe two thousand dollars was left in the safe. It would not be enough to finish the hospital.

  What now? He could fly back to London, to Kate’s door, and beg her. But he knew he would fail. The gulf between them was much wider than thousands of miles. He wished he could spare her the coming pain – prayed for it to be short, like the burn of a hot knife cauterising a wound. One day he would be nothing more than a faint scar, the first on that smooth white skin, for another man to soothe one day as she lay in his arms.

  Once J.P. learned of Nick’s theft, he would face criminal charges. The only way to protect himself was to run – back to England, out of arm’s reach, until he could return the money. For an instant this hard truth lanced through him, so violent that he wondered if this was what his father had felt when his heart finally exploded, dying alone, without his wife or son or one of the hundreds of patients he’d cared for instead of paying attention to his family. See, you old bastard. Nick screwed up Kate’s letter and threw it on the floor. I abandoned my family. I stole from the rich and gave to the poor. And now I’m alone. I became you at last.

  The light was off in Dr Ahmed’s office. Nick ran into JoJo as he searched through the corridors of the house. The boy was hurrying away, head down, the governor’s cap on his head.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ Nick asked him.

  ‘Nowhere,’ was JoJo’s short reply. The cap with its ridiculous bear logo was pulled slightly to one side. Nick half wanted to reach out and straighten it.

  ‘That’s what I used to say to my father,’ he said. ‘Nowhere means: somewhere I don’t want to talk about.’

  JoJo looked down, his hands in his jean pockets. He shrugged, but stayed where he was.

  Nick searched his memory, desperate for some way past the sly nonchalance back to the boy he remembered.

  ‘I miss you,’ he said at last. ‘I miss making our schematics.’

  The boy stayed silent. His foot scuffed over the tiles.

  ‘Now that I’ve finished the well, I’ll have more time,’ Nick went on. He touched JoJo’s arm, fingers cautious. ‘I’ll make more time, JoJo. It can be like before.’

  The boy’s eyes turned upwards – an unguarded moment. Nick stepped back in shock at the anger they held. A memory returned of the night JoJo had nearly fallen into the reservoir pit – of the boy’s fingers clenching his arm, nails black from the muddy wall. He’d answered none of Nick’s frantic questions – what were you doing? Didn’t you hear me say it was dangerous? What happened to you? He’d only looked up with these very same eyes, like dark holes filled with fury.

  Now JoJo pulled his arm away from Nick with a sharp jerk.

  ‘I’m going out,’ he said. He pushed past towards the door, and Nick heard it slam.

  The hall was silent, apart from the slow tick of the grandfather clock. Nick walked slowly into the dark and pushed open the door to Margaret’s room, where Nagode still slept.

  Margaret lay on the bed, the baby curled up beside her. Her arm with Bako’s bracelet was flung up, pale on the underside, reflecting the window’s faint glow.

  Nick had only seen Margaret asleep once, in the hotel in the capital. Then he’d lain watching her, awestruck by the beauty of life’s unconscious rhythms. Now her lips were relaxed as her chest moved with the pulse of breath and blood, the embodiment of peace.

  He sat down on the bed and her eyes opened, full of sleep. ‘Nicholas,’ she said, reaching up to him, touching his cheek. ‘You should not be here.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve done many things I shouldn’t.’

  She studied him, face thoughtful. ‘Today was your triumph. But you’re sad. Why?’

  Even good deeds are not immune from consequences. Nick tried to smile. ‘I wanted to make you proud.’ He touched her fingers, tracing the skin between her breasts, the hardness of the breastbone and the dark swell of nipples still tender from Nagode’s mouth. ‘To make up for all your regrets. But maybe I’ve just given you more of them.’

  She sat up, bringing her lips to his. He felt the warm curve of her forehead pressing into his. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I have paid with a thousand sorrows for this one joy.’

  Nagode stirred between them, breath escaping from her lips in a faint cry. His heart thudded against his ribs, feeling the air catch between Margaret’s open lips as he kissed her. Her eyes were open, and he remembered how they’d closed when he was inside her, surrounded by the smell of her, pressing her arms into the ground as Bako’s bracelet branded both their skins.

  ‘Margaret,’ he said, pulling back. ‘We’re going to have to make some decisions.’ He rubbed his hands along her back, feeling the curve of her spine. ‘Things are happening – and I have to know: do you want to make a life with me?’

  She turned her head away, biting her lip. ‘Please, Nicholas. Please, not now.’

  ‘Now.’ He took her face in his hands. The room felt hot and cold at once, heat shivers spreading through his body to confuse his senses. Even the mechanical tick of the clock in the lounge had fallen out of sync with Nagode’s even breath. Margaret’s features seemed to shift and change before his eyes, sliding from fierce youth to the soft surrender of old age.

  ‘I don’t want to go back to England without you,’ he said, words halting in the incoherence of his thoughts. ‘I don’t want to be anywhere without you. But I may not be able to stay here.’ She opened her mouth to ask a question; he put his fingers to her lips.

  ‘I can’t explain everything now. But you and me and Nagode and JoJo – we’re going to have to make a choice very soon.’

  Tears came to Margaret’s eyes. ‘Ahmed is a good man,’ she said, her voice hushed. ‘He does not deserve more grief.’

  He brushed her tears away with his thumbs. Remorse lodged in his throat, a leaden lump. I’m so sorry. He wondered if the old man would ever be able to forgive them. If anyone could, he would.

  ‘He told me that love meant wishing happiness on the beloved,’ he whispered, finding his voice. ‘He said he knew you were unhappy. He tried to rescue you once, but it didn’t work. Now he has a second chance. We all do.’

  His pulse pounded in his ears, strong as the grandfather clock’s tick, a tide of seconds flooding past. He took Margaret’s hand. His face felt hot and dry and her palm moist as rain. He knelt beside the bed and looked up at her.

  ‘I swear, Margaret, I will love you all my life. And Nagode and JoJo – we’ll open the whole world to them. You can go back to university and get that doctorate. You can grow old with me, teaching English literature students something real about life. We can visit your daffodils every year.’ Her hand was on her chest; he took it, holding it tight. ‘It can all happen.’

  ‘It’s a dream,’ she
said. ‘This is what we did in another life.’

  He shook his head. ‘This is our life.’

  She was crying, one hand on Nagode’s arm, the other hot inside his.

  ‘This place was my exile.’ Her breath was hoarse. ‘My punishment. Like the Hebrews in the desert – they reached the Promised Land but were afraid to step across.’

  ‘Maybe they were right to say no.’ Jews invented doubt, his father would say. Nick almost laughed at the memory. ‘Maybe they’d had enough of God’s promises.’

  She smiled through her tears. ‘But their children found it at last.’

  He took her chin in his hand. ‘So can we. I’m asking – will you be ready? When it’s time, will you come with me?’

  She looked down at him, doubt tracing her face. For a moment his heart faltered.

  But then she looked up. Dropping his hand, she wiped her cheeks and then laid her palms flat on her lap. Her eyes met his; he saw fear there – but also purpose.

  ‘I am ready,’ she said. ‘I’ve been ready for too long.’

  I ask Mister: ‘How can you know Jalloh is a traitor?’

  Mister, he says: ‘Watch his eyes. His mouth lies, but his eyes cannot.’

  ‘And his table,’ Juma says. ‘His table tells us, too.’

  Mister, he smiles. He says: ‘You are right, captain. Jalloh’s table tells us everything.’

  Now I understand. There is no more meat in the village. Jalloh’s animals, they all died. Hanan has only three goats now – the oldest ones. The young ones died first.

  But Jalloh still has meat at his table. Tuesday said that one of his ladies ate meat at Jalloh’s house. Mister says it is our meat Jalloh eats. The flesh from our bones and the blood from our skin. The governor, he pays Jalloh to eat us.

  ‘Tonight,’ Mister tells us, ‘it’s time for Jalloh to pay back what he owes us.’

  I ask: ‘Pay back the meat?’

  The others, they laugh. But when I took the test, they did not laugh. My finger still feels cold, from the trigger. I point it at Akim, and he stops laughing. He sees. He remembers what I want to forget.