by Claire Hajaj
Madi had been dubious, his face troubled. ‘My father says we’re lucky,’ he’d said. ‘He says we’re safe here. But – well – he still gets mad sometimes. When people round here think we’re stupid, I tell him: they can’t help it. They don’t know you were a teacher. They think all taxi drivers are stupid.’
Nick could still see Madi’s eyes, lowered and fixed on the table while he scratched a piece of blue paint off the edge, another of life’s inconsequential details. ‘I know we have to get used to it,’ he’d said. ‘But I see what it does to him – he’s angry all the time. Like he wants to smack something.’
Now Nick remembered the satisfying force of that word – smack – picturing his own fist in Phil’s face, wiping off the bully’s sneer. He’d been eating a Jammy Dodger while his father spoke to Madi; he could still taste the factory pink of the jam, fiercely sweet, see his father’s hand as he laid it briefly on Madi’s head. ‘Unfairness is universal,’ he’d told them both. ‘But, fortunately, so is justice.’
The iron barrier before the governor’s residence swung up as their convoy approached. To Nick’s right, the hospital complex loomed against a hazy sky. The unfinished clinic jutted from its side, ragged plastic sheeting fluttering in empty holes.
Nick pushed his hands into his pockets, digging for confidence. This has to work.
The guard jerked his gun for Nick and Eric to follow him. They walked past the heavy doors and along the hallway with its silent marbled walls. Another set of doors swung open at the end onto a long room where sound echoed from the vaulted ceilings.
The governor sat facing them, dressed in military greens. Nick had time to count every bronzed button as his footfalls reverberated against the walls.
He stopped in front of the chair. The governor was engaged in quiet conversation with a staff member, his head turned away. It struck Nick as a petty kind of arrogance. I can wait you out, you son of a bitch.
But as the minutes ticked by, his temper began to fray. Dr Ahmed’s clock was running its countdown inside his head; back in the village, the seconds of Nagode’s life were draining away. Whatever arguments we have to make, whatever punishments are coming, let them come now.
‘You’ve made your point,’ Nick said aloud. The governor’s eyes flickered upwards, settling on his face. Water churned inside his stomach – an echo of the morning’s chills. He clenched his legs, and found they were trembling.
‘Please.’ He tried again, his tone lower, more conciliatory. ‘You’ve made your point.’
The governor tilted his head, heavy brows furrowed.
‘What point was I making, Nicholas?’
He looked up to the airy ceiling. Give me the right words.
‘Dr Ahmed’s daughter, his baby daughter,’ he said. ‘She has cholera. She’s dying. The lake is infected.’ He swallowed down the caustic burning in his stomach. ‘If you’re so angry – and I understand why you would be – then take it out on me. Not them.’
The governor leaned forward, a dark mass in the centre of the room.
‘You think this is revenge, Nicholas? You think: here is another petty ruler who subjugates with collective punishment.’
‘This is absolutely collective punishment.’
The governor pointed his finger at him in a stabbing gesture. ‘You insult me. You think you are some hero in one of your fairy tales. But this is my land, my people. My blood. I care for every drop. You – you care only for your own skin.’
Nick clenched his fists. The room smelled of disinfectant and the oily waft of some unknown fragrance. Vomit curled into his throat.
‘You’re the one killing them.’ He longed for the courage to punch this man, wishing that he’d come like Madi with a knife instead of on his knees. ‘You’re the murderer, not me.’
‘Wrong again.’ The governor leaned back. ‘Tell me, where is the money for the children’s clinic? The one you promised to build us?’
The chills were back full force, splintering Nick’s bones from the inside. ‘I can get that money back. I just need time.’
The governor nodded. ‘So, take your time. And when you next come, bring back what you stole from us because you think you know better.’
He waved his arm in dismissal. Nick felt a hand on his shoulder – one of the young guards, bristling with authority.
‘Wait!’ The hand was tugging him but he held his ground. The governor turned away; panic seized Nick – there was too much left unsaid. ‘Don’t you understand?’ He was screaming now, the words choking him. ‘They’re dying already!’
He threw the guard’s hand off his shoulder. But another wrapped around his neck, squeezing his windpipe. Hard metal pressed into his back.
Now the governor stood up. Nick had forgotten how tall he was, larger than Danjuma or Dr Ahmed. His outline blurred before Nick’s eyes as he approached, deeper than the well, immovable as a rock.
‘Our new hospital will treat children with cancer,’ he said, as Nick fought for breath. ‘Sometimes the treatment will be very drastic and there will be pain. But the cancer must die for the child to live.’
He made a gesture, and Nick was freed. He gasped for air as he clutched his throat; his skin felt slippery, loose.
The governor turned away, walking back to his seat. Then he stopped, the strong muscles of his neck twisting as he looked back. ‘Dr Ahmed would tell you I am right,’ he said. ‘So please give him a message from me. Tell him his old friend sends greetings. Tell him – I wish his daughter well.’
Eric dropped Nick off at the checkpoint in silence. A cloudy evening was setting in, covering the land in colours of ash and smoke.
Nick glanced up as he stepped from the Jeep. ‘It looks like rain.’ The air was growing heavy, static building between sky and ground. He could almost feel the water falling onto his face, warm and rich.
But Eric shook his head. ‘Electric storm,’ he said. ‘A good night to stay inside.’
Dark forms were hurrying through the streets, a handful of people caught out after dusk. A good night to stay inside. The words played inside his head over and over. Hurry, he thought as he passed them. Hurry.
Above Dr Ahmed’s house the sky was purple as a bruise. Inside the candlelight was gentle. Dr Ahmed sat hunched on the sofa, his can of polish in one hand and a buffing cloth in the other. The old man looked hollow, a stretched shape over brittle bones. Polishing his clock while his child’s life ebbs away.
Dreading the answer, Nick asked: ‘How is Nagode?’
‘Still living.’ Dr Ahmed looked up, his glasses smudged with grease. ‘No better and no worse. Praise Allah for that.’ Nick could not bring himself to reply.
‘The young are stronger than we imagine.’ Dr Ahmed’s eyes fell to the cloth lying on his palm, as if he were weighing it. ‘They can endure what we cannot.’
‘Is Margaret with her?’
Dr Ahmed’s body grew even stiller. ‘She will not leave her side.’
His voice was so heavy that Nick felt a strange compulsion to take his hand and kiss it. If only there were a way across this strange gulf of silence and complicity. I love my wife, you know. Somewhere the right words existed to explain that they were not rivals, but partners in the same quest – that each needed the other to succeed.
‘How was your meeting with the governor?’ Dr Ahmed’s tone switched to strained breeziness.
Nick shook his head. The cold was still within him, gripping his muscles and contorting his thoughts. ‘A waste of time.’
‘A pity.’ The two words cut Nick; his father might have said the same. Not in all the years of his son’s missteps had he ever descended to the banality of ‘I told you so’.
Nick looked down the little hallway, towards the closed door of Margaret’s room. He wanted more than anything to go to her, to lie down with her and share her sorrow. Dr Ahmed’s presence barred the way. But another shape sat huddled by her door. ‘JoJo?’
The boy looked up, silent, his arms around his kne
es.
Behind them, Dr Ahmed said, ‘I cannot let him inside. But Yahya wishes to wait there.’
The chill was in Nick’s heart, freezing pain into numbness. ‘He loves his sister.’
‘He loves us all.’ Dr Ahmed stood up and walked to the clock, resting the cloth against its body.
The bottle of Johnnie Walker stood on Nick’s desk in the office where he’d left it. The liquid was cool and gold in the light, but it scorched his throat as it went down.
At a quarter empty, his head was already pounding along with the thunder outside. Resolution was heating up inside him: he flicked on the HF radio, fired up the generator and called J.P.. The handset felt hard against his mouth as he waited for a response. Come in. Over. Come in. Over.
Suddenly, the static broke. ‘Nicholas? Is that you?’
Nick leaned his head against the receiver. ‘J.P.. It’s me. I should have called, I know. I’m nearly out of fuel for the generator. There’s . . . there’s real trouble here.’
J.P.’s voice came through, harsh over the breaking frequency. ‘Nicholas, please tell me you didn’t take that money?’
Everything hurt. Nick pressed the receiver to his chest, trying to breathe. Then he raised it to his mouth again, the Johnnie Walker slurring the words on his tongue. ‘I have the money in England. I was going to pay it back. I still can. J.P. – I don’t know what to say. I couldn’t just stand by.’
The static hissed at Nick. ‘No way, mate.’ Madi was standing in the corner, smiling. ‘Never thought you could.’
The line crackled into life. ‘I cannot speak to you now, Nicholas. There are laws here, too, and penalties. I could put you in prison.’
Nick felt the threat bounce off the armour of his desperation. ‘So be it. Can you help us here? The governor has cut off all supplies. People will die. They’re already dying.’
‘I have to consult. Then I will come north. With the police, Nicholas. Do you understand me?’
That will be too late. ‘I understand you,’ he said. His heart was taking wing, lifting him above fear.
‘You’re a fool, Nicholas. Out.’ The line went dead.
He let the receiver fall on the desk. The safe was under his feet. He opened it and pulled out the small bundle of notes. He laid them on the desk beside the telephone. Just a little money, and they can become Danjuma’s men. Between one day and the next.
No. He picked up the mouthpiece and dialled Kate’s number. The wires strained to make their connection, searching over thousands of miles for one pinpoint echo of response.
At last, incredibly, he heard a ringing tone. It would still be afternoon in London. She was out, probably at a friend’s house. Or maybe visiting his mother, holding her unresponsive hand, chatting aimlessly about new clients or fabricating wedding plans.
But she answered after a few rings. ‘Hello?’ Music played in the background; he heard the hum of voices. ‘Hello?’
‘Kate.’
‘Who is this?’ Her words were fracturing over the line into staccato bursts. ‘Nick? Is that you?’
‘Yes.’ His voice sounded broken, even to himself. ‘It’s me.’
‘God, Nick. Oh, god – I was just . . . it’s so frustrating! I can’t hear you – it’s Sam’s birthday, he came to do a barbecue.’
He laughed, suddenly drunk. The sun would be shining, the air chilled with a residual nip of winter. Kate would be light and pretty in her flimsy dress, bare arms challenging the spring goose bumps and a glass of wine in her hand.
‘Nick, about the money. Don’t hate me, please. I just – please come home. Please. We can’t do this over the phone.’
‘I know that.’
‘Sorry, I . . . what? I can’t hear!’
‘I know.’ He was crying now – weak, useless fever tears running into the handset. She was in another universe; they had separated into two bubbles of existence, floating off in different directions. He tried to transport himself to their garden: the neat floral borders, the pale chime of glass against glass, the smooth touch of her hand. Teflon-coated, it slipped out of his and left him standing there, invisible.
‘I want . . . talk.’ A song was playing behind her, achingly familiar. Someone else laughed, close to the receiver. ‘Sam . . . tell me . . . you . . . OK?’
‘I’m sorry, Kate.’ His voice was barely a whisper. ‘Nick!’ he heard her say as he put the receiver down. It knocked the whisky bottle, making a hollow ring.
Picking up J.P.’s money, he stepped out onto the porch. The night was full of heat, a directionless, rumbling darkness. Flashes of lightning sent insect wings into panicked spirals around his head. Nick stood in the doorway, feeling the alcohol stalk the fever through his limbs.
Bodies were moving at the edge of his vision – Hanan, with Adeya beside her, walking slowly away from the house. They would have offered to nurse Nagode, he realised. Of course they would have come – and of course Dr Ahmed would have turned them back. Adeya walked more slowly than her mother, her shoulders bowed, the scarred ridges of her hands hidden under long sleeves. He saw her look back for a moment, face wet in the lightning’s afterglow.
The hair on his arms stood on end. The darkness had a red tinge. The sky was breaking into rolling shapes, like writing underlined in white flashes. The governor was the thunder. Mister was the lightning. And the rest of them, they were just insects spiralling oblivious, drawn blindly into the storm’s mouth.
Fury filled him: at the storm, at his own helplessness. Lightning mocked him as it struck due north, the only signpost in the formless night. You only care for your own skin.
You’re wrong! he screamed, a voiceless cry that hurt. I love them! He flung his arms out, setting his body in front of the porch, in front of Margaret and her children, in front of Adeya and Miss Amina, in front of Madi and the climbing frame.
The thunder laughed back at him. You’re drunk, Madi said. Smashed. I know, Nick replied. I’m sorry.
The rest of J.P.’s money lay crumpled in his hand. Less than two thousand dollars. He felt the hands on his windpipe again, choking the air from him. You’re a murderer, he told the governor. Wrong. The governor’s voice ricocheted through the air. The cancer must die for the child to live.
Nick’s feet carried him along the porch to the back of the house. They passed the swaying branches of low, dead trees and JoJo’s ruined castle, bringing him to the boy’s bedroom window.
You’re mad. Stop. Stop now. Someone was crying out to him – a boy’s voice, a child frozen by the climbing frame. But Madi whispered in his other ear. Go on, mate. I dare you. I double dare you.
He tapped on the window. There was a second of silence. And then he saw JoJo’s surprised face.
‘I need Mister,’ Nick said. He tried to focus through the blur of the whisky – and saw JoJo’s face crease in puzzlement. ‘I need him right now. Where is he?’
‘Wait there,’ JoJo mouthed at last.
The boy met him in the back garden. He wore the governor’s college cap, a large Coca-Cola T-shirt and low-slung jeans.
‘What do you want with him?’
Nick put his face in his hands. What do I want? he asked his father. What do you think? But for the first time in his life, the old man was silent.
There was no point in waiting; time was running out. Nick forced himself to speak. ‘Mister knows what I want,’ he said.
JoJo hesitated. Then he said: ‘Come.’
The child drinking Coke on JoJo’s T-shirt had yellow hair and a white smile. It waved at Nick, toasting his success as he followed JoJo out of Dr Ahmed’s garden, into the street and through the village.
Time slowed. Nick had to force one step to follow another; with each he felt the world turn a fraction under his feet, a relentless onward movement. He focused on the blond child on JoJo’s T-shirt, following him through Tuesday’s unlocked front door, past the dark and pillaged shelves and into the rear courtyard.
Mister stood up as Nick came in. The air he
re had a sharp, chemical reek. It woke the alcohol in Nick’s veins, sending his head reeling.
The Boys gathered around. Nick saw Akim and Juma and others from the village. But Mister stood out among them, a lonely pillar in the sand.
‘Hey, boss.’ Mister spoke to him, unsmiling. ‘What is it you want here?’
The others were not real; Nick could only see Mister, could only feel the strange force pulling them together, stronger than anything he’d ever known.
There was a moment of hesitation, the last echoes of doubt. But he’d gone too far; there was no turning back. He felt JoJo’s eyes on him.
What do I want here? Nick reached into the back of his jeans; he brought out the dollars, slick with his sweat. Holding them out to Mister, he fought the protest of gravity as it tugged against his arm.
‘I want justice,’ he said.
Mister gives Nicholas’ money to Juma. He says: ‘This is for the governor’s men. You know which ones. Half for the captain watching the governor’s house. Half for the captain holding Danjuma. Make sure you see Danjuma’s face before you give the captain the money.’
Juma says: ‘First let me smoke.’ He wants a bang cigarette. But Mister takes him by his shoulder. He says: ‘Juma, eh! Use your head. Remember what Danjuma said. We are his soldiers. He cannot move tonight, but we can. When I come to the Town later, all must be ready.’
Juma has his head down. He is angry. But Mister puts his hand behind Juma’s neck. Black skin on white. He says: ‘My captain.’ And Juma, he starts to smile. They laugh, the two of them. Mister, he stands up now. He says, ‘Go now, captain.’
Akim complains: ‘Why does Juma always go? What if they see him on the road?’
‘They will never see him,’ Mister says.
He takes one of our last cigarettes and gives it to Akim. Juma’s friend Buffalo says: ‘Eh, Akim, share with me.’ Akim says: ‘Wait your turn, long-nose, or smoke your dick.’
‘Fuck you,’ Buffalo says. He likes the American films that Mister gets from the Town. He pretends to talk like those films. Buffalo’s real name is Abubakar. But in The Boys he is Buffalo Soldier. He played me a song with the same name, on Mister’s stereo. ‘He sings for us,’ Buffalo told me. ‘For all the slaves. He was a lion, like us.’ I used to think he was clever to think these things. Now I do not care.