When Malcolm and I drew up at the British consul’s residence at six-thirty the party was already in full swing. The house would have looked well as part of an African-village-style luxury hotel on the Kenyan coast. Patterson had designed it himself, plumping for open thatched rooms with cane chairs, squashy cushions, tumbling tropical plants, a parrot in a large wooden cage and a heavy emphasis on batik in the soft furnishings. The establishment was all on one level except for an exotic upstairs bedroom. Where the soft white sand and lapping blue waves of the Indian Ocean should have been, there were the sluggish brown waters and mudflats of the river.
There was a rather particular view on this section of the river. Some years ago Nambula had purchased a secondhand jet from Afghanistan Airlines. On its maiden voyage the pilot had brought it in over El Daman, spotted the lights of the runway and made a perfect landing. Only it wasn’t the runway, it was the river. No one was hurt, the landing was graceful, if unexpectedly amphibious. The passengers waded ashore. Opposite the spot which Patterson had selected for his home was a little island where the plane had eventually come to rest at a jaunty angle. It was still there, giving him a permanent cue for an anecdote.
There were lights in the trees that Friday night. There were umbrellas in the drinks, which were masquerading as fruit punches—Patterson had managed to get hold of a crate of rum—and a steel band was playing on the terrace. It was clear that Patterson was overdue for some leave and had been browsing through too many long-haul travel brochures. For a moment, when we arrived, Malcolm and I stood at the end of the drive, watching the party across the lawn. You could spot the field-workers because they had all had the runs so often that their clothes were too big for them. I saw June Patterson lurch from one little group towards another, carrying a tray of umbrella-filled glasses which seemed not to be long for this world. Her blond curly hair cascaded down like a pile of doughnuts. She was dressed in a tight pale-blue nylon pajama outfit and sparkling slingback stilettos. Everyone was pretending she wasn’t there. I saw Patterson spot her, leave his conversation, hurry to her and tenderly take away the tray. Then he bent and spoke to her, looking like a primary school headmaster with a naughty five-year-old. As I watched, he drew her to him protectively, held her for a second, and kissed her on the forehead. A dipsomaniac wife was not the best asset for a British consul in a Muslim country—particularly a country which grew more fundamentalist with every week that went by—but Patterson loved his wife. I think he loved her more than his job, more than his reputation, more than he cared about what I, Malcolm, the French ambassador, the UN representative or any other bugger thought. It was the best thing about Patterson by some way.
I watched him as he disappeared with the newly rescued tray. With his blue safari suit, sideburns and daft good looks, there was something rather seventies about him. He reminded me of a game-show host, or one half of the kind of boy-girl singing duo who would perform dressed in flared catsuits on matching bar stools. Then I felt a tap on my right shoulder and turned round to look. There was no one there.
“Haha! Got you with that one, didn’t I?” Patterson was standing on my left. He loved this kind of practical joke. “Hey, what are you guys doing without a drink? You are looking one gorgeous liddle laydeee tonight. Come and join the pardee.”
“Hi.” Caspar Wannamaker, from U.S. Arms Around the World: tall, blond, terminally boring Texan. “How goes it down on the farm?”
I told him, testing the water.
“Hell,” he said. “You don’t wanna get in a stew about it. Sure you wanna get it checked out in Abouti, alert your office, but come on, there are a hundred camps like Safila in the country. You can’t start an international emergency every time a handful of refugees turn up in one of them with a problem.”
“Four hundred isn’t a handful.”
“Oh, come on. It’s happening all the time. Anyway. That ship’s gonna be here within days. No problem.”
Then he gave me a little lecture about getting too close to the refugees. “You’ve gotta stand back, you know, take an objective view. You can’t let yourself be manipulated. You can’t be one of them, salving your little liberal conscience.”
I smiled politely and moved away. The workers from the European NGOs, the smaller nongovernment organizations like SUSTAIN, had all gravitated together. I approached a little group of French medical workers. They were the high priests and priestesses of relief chic: they wore fine cotton khaki, loose silk tops with interestingly cut necklines.
“It is ridiculous, perfectly typical,” said Francine, a pediatrician, with a toss of her head, and an irritated little puff on a menthol cigarette. She had a clipped, nasal voice and looked like Charlotte Rampling.
“The system is completely stupid,” said Jeanne, a tiny nervous creature. “It is worthless even to speak with this UNHCR. This idiot Kurt who is living down there is a complete disaster for an individual. At Wad Denazen they are hearing the same stories about this locusts. They are expecting arrivals too.”
The French worked with the Italians at Wad Denazen. It was fifty miles north of us, also close to the border with Kefti.
“What are you going to do?” I said.
“Well, we are talking to our people in Paris, but you know we are a medical agency. We are not dealing with food. What can we do?”
“Do you have any IV fluids and antibiotics up here you could let us have temporarily?” I said.
“If we have we will send you, of course,” said Francine, “but, you know, we are having the same difficulties as you.”
“Thanks. We’ll do the same for you one day.” But I knew they wouldn’t have anything to spare.
The man I really needed was Gunter Brand, the head of UNHCR in Nambula: the man with the power in the aid community. He had a backslapping manner, a head as big as a horse’s, and a very loud laugh. He had been booming around the party displaying his perfect English and overconfident social style. I found him talking to André.
“So then he said, ‘Because of the vacuum inside their heads.’ Waagh. Hahahaha. Ahahahaha. Ahahahaha,” Gunter was saying.
I hadn’t met him formally before. He had only been in El Daman for six weeks, but he had a very tough reputation based on a career in Central America.
“Hi!” said André. “Good to see you. Gunter, have you met Rosie Richardson, the administrator for Safila camp, with SUSTAIN?”
“Hey, good to meet you. One crazy party, huh? Have you ever seen such a strange house in Africa? You English have the most unusual tastes.”
“Yes, I think Patterson had one too many piña coladas at the drawing board.”
Gunter didn’t respond.
André was trying to help me out. “I mean have you seen his wife’s hairrr? What’s going on with this woman, OK? I mean, I thought I was a dipso but really, my Gaaaad.”
Absurdly, I felt my hackles rise because a Canadian and a German were slagging off the English; it was like someone outside your family slagging off your aunt.
“Has André told you about the problems in Safila? We’re very worried about it,” I said.
André was standing slightly behind him, shaking his head frantically.
An irritated look flitted across Gunter’s face. “Yes, André told me about the situation in Safila,” he said.
“And what is going to happen about it?”
“As I expect André told you, the situation is being investigated.”
“With respect, I don’t think we have much time, Gunter.”
He looked at me hard. “This is not the place to discuss this but I will tell you my view. I think you are right, there is a problem with locusts in Kefti. But it is not a serious problem. There will be swarms, there will be some crop losses. But they will be localized. Possibly you will have one or two hundred more arrivals in Safila and we will ensure that you, and all the camps along the border who are in the same position, will be provided for. Everyone is always saying it will be another nineteen eighty-four. Be
lieve me. Watch my lips. It will not be another nineteen eighty-four. It is another scare. However, I will be most interested to read what you have to say, if you would care to drop a report into my office. Now if you will excuse me, it has been delightful to meet you,” and he moved away, well away, to the other side of the party.
“Lead balloon, lead balloon. Disasterr,” said André.
“Thanks.”
“Let me tell you about Gunter, OK? Gunter is right about everything, OK? Gunter does not feel the need to explain himself professionally. Gunter will not respond to confrontations unless it is Gunter who is doing the confronting. Gunter will not talk work at social occasions. OK?”
“So I ballsed up on every count?”
“Every single one,” he said, laughing. “Never mind, have a cigarette.”
“No, thanks.”
“Now, listen, don’t worry about Gunter, OK? It’s all in hand. I’ve talked to Wad Denazen about the possibility of them giving over some of their extra rations to Safila. They’re pretty well stocked.”
“And what did they say?”
“Not overenchanted with the notion but it’ll be fine. OK?”
“But they’re talking about getting arrivals too.”
“Stop worrying so much. You’re looking at the worst scenario. Have you told your head office?”
“I telexed them today. No reply.”
“OK, fine. When are you going back?”
“Tomorrow morning. We’ve had four hundred and forty arrivals, from three separate regions of Kefti.”
“How many dead?”
“Nineteen.”
“My Gaad. Coffin city. OK, leave it with me. I’ll pass by your office and talk to Malcolm tomorrow afternoon. You’ve heard the ship’s due in ten days, OK? Are you going to be OK till then?”
“No. Well, it depends how many come and if we can contain all the disease. The problem’s drugs as much as anything. We need measles vaccine, rehydration salts and antibiotics.”
“OK, fine. Those I can get for you. I’ll bring them down with me when I come.”
“Plus the radio isn’t working. And we’ve got cholera now.”
“OK. Listen. This is not good. You are getting into a state. OK, fine. Now have a drink. Relax. I can see what’s in your mind but it’s not going to happen, OK. The ship is due. You are top of the list. You will have your supplies inside two weeks. OK?”
“Will you come and have a look yourself?”
“I will come and have a look myself.”
Then he looked uncertain. “You really think you’re going to have a big influx?”
“I really think we might.”
André looked around him, then pulled me away from the crowd.
“Look, this is not on the record, OK? I think we’re going to have to wait a long time for this ship. I think you’re right to kick up.”
“So what shall I do?”
“I think you have to have some more concrete evidence that we are looking at a big exodus, OK? There have just been a few too many people crying wolf over the last few years, and there isn’t much love lost between the donors and Nambula just now. Our report from Abouti will help, but it’s going to take three weeks, a month, to get here. The best will be if you can do something your end, try to get some concrete proof of the scale of this problem, OK? Can you get someone to go into Kefti?”
“You know what the problems are.”
“Sure, sure. I know. Think about it anyway. But don’t go yourself. OK? Send a runner. Now, come on, let’s get a drink. Let’s pardeee with Paddersurrrn.”
“I can’t face it, sorry. Try and come to Safila soon.”
I said my good-byes and thanked Patterson. June had retired some time ago. Malcolm was settled in for the duration and said I could take the Toyota, he would find a lift. I crossed the lawn and almost walked straight past Jacob Stone at the top of the driveway.
“Leaving so soon? Come on, let’s have a smoke.”
We sat on the front of his car. Jacob, a big Jewish doctor with a thick black beard, had come to Nambula when it was a moderate Muslim state, when the elected prime minister was a British-trained lawyer. He had come as an NGO doctor, rather like O’Rourke. When he had been here two years everything changed, and Sharia law was declared.
Jacob was witness to a couple of amputations with a rusty sword. He was present at one of the public occasions when they hacked off the right forearm and the lower left leg while everybody watched. He had started a home for the thus disabled. And then, having seen enough horror and gangrene, he had offered his services to the fundamentalist government as a surgeon. He offered to perform the amputations under sterile conditions and anesthetic. And they took him up on it.
I told him about the problem as he rolled the joint with his usual incongruously dainty skill and expression of worry. His face had aged alarmingly since I had met him. I asked him if he really thought he was doing the right thing. Could you temper brutality and injustice with a measure of humanity and make things better? “Humanity is the bottom line, it’s all we have.” Jacob was flying—this joint was clearly not the first of the evening. “People like us can’t move mountains. But we can go to the slopes of the mountain and do what we can. If we care in our hearts then . . . Rosie, look at the moon, right? It’s like, just because we can’t get to the moon it doesn’t mean we can’t drive to Sidra.”
Dear Jacob. He is now in and out of the Cloisters, a tasteful private psychiatric home in the Cotswolds.
That night he told me to go away and keep true to my own sense of what was right and what was wrong. He said that we could only hope to do good in tiny ways; that if I saved just one life it was worth it.
“But we’re talking about thousands of lives. And the system is just too slow and cumbersome. What am I going to do?”
And then he had his idea. “Use the celebrities.”
“What do you mean? What celebrities?”
“The celebrities you told me about, that you used to hang out with in London. You’re in a perfect position. Go back and look ’em all up. Make a little emergency appeal of your own, get it on the TV. Make a megafuss. That’s the way to get what you need really quickly. Plus once Safila is big media profile nobody can afford to let an emergency happen. Think about it. Locusts. It’s a great story for the media.” He made a sudden champing motion with his jaw, flapping his arms. “It can’t miss.”
“But all that celebrity stuff is what I came out here to get away from.”
“You can’t get away from it. It’s the way of the world now.”
He took another long drag on the joint.
“Cause celeb,” he said. He passed the joint on to me.
We smoked in silence for a while, then “How much do you care?” he said.
“How can you ask me that?” I whispered.
“Well, then, don’t be picky. Do it. Be pragmatic.”
When I got back to bed I lay awake for a long time. I thought of the camp as it would be now, the new refugees staggering down the hill in the darkness, the line of bodies waiting for burial in the morning, wrapped in sacking. I couldn’t abandon the camp and go back to London. Surely that wasn’t the only way? I hadn’t come this far, just to go back with a begging bowl.
CHAPTER
Thirteen
The morning after Patterson’s rum punch party, I went into Malcolm’s office and found him standing at the window reading a telex. He was wearing a pink T-shirt which said, “Skydivers Do It in Their Pants.” He handed the telex over to me.
SUSTAIN UK LONDON
WE NOTE WITH CONCERN YOUR COMMENTS RE: ARRIVALS AT SAFILA. AWARE OF DELAY IN EEC SHIPMENT. CONFIRM DR. BETTY COLLINGWOOD CAN STAY TILL FURTHER NOTICE. WE WILL DO EVERYTHING WE CAN HERE BUT NEED MORE CONFIRMATION AND CONCRETE FACTS. AWAITING RESPONSE OF UN, ODA. CAN YOU ENLIGHTEN US ONVIEWS YOUR END?
It was at least a response, but I wasn’t sure how much SUSTAIN could do. Even if they have emergency food they wouldn’t have
the money to fly it out here and we’d end up simply waiting for another ship to get organized. I was running through treacle again. Nothing would budge.
I sat down and wrote my report for Gunter. I asked Malcolm to take it to the UN and get them to communicate with SUSTAIN UK. I had to get back to Safila.
Betty was delighted by the news that SUSTAIN wanted her to stay on. By the time we sat down for dinner that night she had become Mrs. Senior Cheerleader of Safila, determined to jolly everyone up.
“Now. What are we going to do about Christmas dinner? I think we should do it properly this year,” she was saying brightly to the assembled incredulous stares as I entered the cabana.
“We can get a turkey from the market, like last year—as long as I don’t have to kill it! Hahaha. Then I’ve got a super recipe for stuffing made with bread crumbs, tomatoes and garlic, with a bit of egg and lemon juice. Wish we had some mushrooms, though. Now, has anyone asked for a Christmas pudding to be sent out? We’ll need two or three, I think.”
O’Rourke had his head in his hands.
“Sweet corn we can get. Sausages from the Hilton. Oh, but what about sprouts? We can’t have Christmas dinner without brussels sprouts!”
“Perhaps we could make some out of leaves and glue,” suggested O’Rourke.
The other obvious development was a man with a fungus on his leg, who had taken up residence outside the cabana. Whenever anyone walked past, he shouted and jabbed his finger accusingly at the fungus.
“We keep sending him away but he just comes back again. He’s from Safila village,” Sian explained. “We can’t do anything with his leg. It’s too advanced. We’ve offered to take him to hospital in Sidra but he won’t go, he thinks they’ll amputate the leg.”
“I’m going to amputate his leg with a kitchen knife if he carries on with this,” said O’Rourke. “Betty, I’ve got a great idea for the stuffing.”
“Robert, really,” said Linda. “I do not enjoy the way you joke about the African.”
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