Cause Celeb

by Helen Fielding

  “We are merely speeding a natural process,” said Muhammad.

  “We wait,” said O’Rourke.

  “Doctor, without your ministrations this man would already be dead. You are in the heart of Africa, you cannot apply your Western standards of medicine here.”

  “If I’d followed that tack, you’d be dead.”

  “That is a point quite irrelevant to the argument.”

  “How can you say that?” O’Rourke was angry now. “That is complete choplogic.”

  “I beg to disagree.”

  “Fuck it, Muhammad,” shouted O’Rourke. “You are molding the arguments to suit our interests. It’s not intelligent.”

  “The issue in question is the life of this man. My point concerns him. My own case is as irrelevant to the discussion as any other medical emergency.”

  “You’re completely sidestepping any logical argument.”

  “But, surely, we must focus on our logic?”

  “For heaven’s sake,” I yelled at them. “You’re going round in circles. Come on.”

  We decided to take Muhammad a little way away, and come back for the soldier. O’Rourke sedated the man before we left him, and we set off with Muhammad between us, with an arm round each of our shoulders. It didn’t work; his remaining leg was too painful to take his weight. So O’Rourke went back for a stretcher and we carried him. He was appallingly light.

  We were in an area of woodland, with low, gnarled trees. The sun was gentle, shining through them, dappled, onto the grass. It seemed unreal. It didn’t seem like war. After about half a mile we got to a big, round tree, like a mulberry tree, which gave a lot of shade. We left Muhammad there with some water and headed back.

  It went against all instinct to go back to the vehicles. It seemed more dangerous than anything before. I was very, very frightened. I didn’t say a word. When we were halfway there we heard the whine of planes again. We got down flat under some bushes. The noise grew, there were two planes, very low. They came right overhead, screaming. The whole area was bursting with the noise and vibrating. I was gripping O’Rourke’s shoulder, digging into his flesh with my nails. I looked up and I could see the gray underbelly of a plane, filling the sky. And then there was a blast and we buried our heads in the grass feeling the whole world falling apart, shuddering, shaking, rebounding.

  *

  We were all right. We were still there. There was nothing left of the vehicles except bits of twisted metal in a crater fifty yards across. Odd how you think the selfish thing. I thought that I would get into trouble for bringing a SUSTAIN Toyota into Kefti and letting it be blown up.

  “Well, that answers that little moral dilemma,” said O’Rourke.

  There was nothing left of the soldier. We looked all around for traces of the body but found nothing. O’Rourke, it turned out, had buried the other two soldiers in shallow graves in the woods very early in the morning. The graves were intact.

  I had never seen Muhammad smile so much as when he saw us come back. He looked as though his face was going to crack with smiling. He embraced us both and actually wiped away tears.

  “I think perhaps Allah was making a small point,” he said.

  “Oh yeah. What?” said O’Rourke.

  “Only that I had logic on my side.”

  We had no supplies now, just water, O’Rourke’s bag and a piece of cheese. It was nine o’clock. We knew we had to keep moving while the sun was still low. I felt uneasy about just going away. I thought we should do something to mark the deaths of the soldiers. Muhammad and O’Rourke thought I was mad. I made them say the Lord’s Prayer with me. Then I searched for dimly remembered words, and said, “Lord, let thy servants depart in peace.”

  We walked until we could see the highlands of Kefti, blue-black and heavy, rising ahead of us. We were walking through a leafy glade, the sun was warm, birds were tweeting, and all at once it seemed as if we were taking a gentle Sunday afternoon stroll. I think we all felt the same sense of release as if there was no gravity anymore and we were going to float up into the sky.

  Then O’Rourke started shaking with laughter. “Those last rites,” he said. “‘Lord, let thy servants depart in peace.’ That was wrong. They should be arriving. ‘Lord, let thy servants arrive in peace.’” It suddenly sounded like the most ridiculous thing we’d ever heard and then Muhammad and I started laughing too, hysterically, saying, “Lord, let thy servants arrive in peace.” We were falling about, completely helpless, so that O’Rourke and I had to put the stretcher down, doubled over, crying with laughter. And then there was a burst of machine-gun fire a hundred yards ahead.

  It was Keftian soldiers from Adi Wari, looking for us. There were eight of them, They took us to a good path and carried Muhammad’s stretcher. He was beginning to look very ill and tired. The land was rising more steeply now, we walked for two hours and then joined the main track again, the one we had been driving on. It turned a corner, round a hill with smooth, round rocks protruding through the trees, and for the first time we could see the landscape ahead: undulating, wooded, dark, and gashed by a deep red gorge, with the mountains as backdrop. On the edge of the gorge was the small patch of rooftops which made up Adi Wari, with glints of bright light where tin roofs were reflecting the sun.

  We were met by a KPLF truck which took us straight to the hospital. The hospital was cleaner and better ordered than the hospitals in Nambula, built in a square round a large grassy courtyard. The Keftians were organized, well educated. O’Rourke was talking to their doctors about Muhammad. Once we knew that he was settled, I told O’Rourke I wanted to go and discuss the locusts with the KPLF. He asked me if I was sure I didn’t want to rest for a bit, but I said I was fine. I was glad he let me go and didn’t fuss me.

  As I was leaving one of the nurses came after me and said that Muhammad wanted to speak with me. He was in a room on his own lying back on the mattress. There were bullet holes in one of the walls and a square hole open to the outside, with a grille half hanging over it.

  “I need to speak with you,” he said furtively.

  I sat on the bed.

  “There is a woman,” he whispered. “Her name is Huda Letay. Will you remember that? Huda Letay.” He seemed feverish now. “I thought . . . that perhaps . . .”

  “What?” I said.

  “I want you to ask for her and look for her when you are in the highlands.”

  “Of course. Who is Huda?”

  “She is a woman . . .”

  “Yes?”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll ask for her.”

  “Her name is Huda Letay. And she is a doctor of economics.”

  “Where will I find her?”

  “I thought that perhaps she might be among the refugees in the highlands. I thought that I would find her.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll look for her.”

  “She was a student with me at the University of Esareb.”

  “And why do you want me to find her?”

  He looked away as if he was ashamed. “She is the woman whom I wished to marry.”

  Wished to marry. I knew how he hated loss of face. “What happened?”

  “Her parents arranged for her to marry elsewhere. To a man who was wealthy. And she was not able to go against their wishes.”

  “How will I find her?”

  “She is very beautiful.”

  “Could you tell me a little bit more?”

  “Letay is her family name. Her married name is Imlahi. If you find her, I merely wish to know that she is safe. She is from Esareb. She has long dark hair, unusually shining, and she is always laughing. If you find her, perhaps, if she is ill or she is alone . . . you might . . .”

  “I’ll bring her back,” I said. I knew all about having fantasies.

  “Thank you.”

  He looked so unlike himself. All his spirit had gone. He had to remember his personality or he would sink.

  “Don’t you want to send a po
em?” I said.

  Something promising flickered in his eyes.

  “‘Locusts to the right of us, locusts to the left of us’?” I began—this was a favorite game of ours.

  “‘As I walked out one evening, walking down Bristol Street,’” he said smugly. “‘The crowds upon the pavement, were fields of—’”

  “Locusts,” I finished. He started to smile. “‘Shall I compare thee to a—’”

  “Locust.‘Thou still unravished—’”

  “Locust.‘I wandered lonely as a—’”

  “Locust.”

  It wasn’t the proper deep laugh, but it almost was.

  “October ‘is the cruelest month,’” he began. “‘Breeding—’”

  “Locusts ‘out of the dead land,’” I finished. It wasn’t funny anymore. I held his hand tightly for a while, then I left him there, and went off with the soldiers to the KPLF offices.

  *

  I was seated in front of the military commander for the region, who cannot have been more than twenty-six. He had come into the town especially to receive us. The room was long, thin and empty except for a desk, with the commander sitting at one side and me at the other, a bookshelf full of worn, thin pamphlets and a table at the back. Half a dozen soldiers were in the room, two of them standing behind the commander, the rest lounging around the table. I felt slightly ridiculous in a room full of large armed men in uniform, and unexpectedly physically vulnerable. The commander had a thin, intelligent face with a beard, and Muhammad’s courtly manner of speech.

  He apologized profusely for the mine and the aerial attack. He stressed how thorough the mine-clearing operation had been on the road; that they had not had a mine incident between Nambula and the highlands for six months; and that ours was a most unfortunate freak incident. The Abouti planes must have been alerted by the smoke: they never strayed into the Nambula border region as a rule. He knew all about our mission and was most keen that it should proceed.

  I explained that we could not risk going farther, but he said that he would give us two vehicles to travel ahead of us, and a truck to travel in with a full armed escort, and that we would move only at night. They had vehicles traveling that route constantly, whereas the route where we had hit the mine was underused. The area where the grasshopper bands were gathered was only four hours away. If we went a little farther to Tessalay we could see the refugees beginning to move down from the highlands. It was a question of one night’s drive. Surely, having got this far, it was worth achieving the goal of the mission? I said I would have to go back to the hospital and discuss it with O’Rourke. The commander excused himself and went out of the room.

  When he was gone I realized that I was going to continue, even if O’Rourke didn’t want to. It seemed too pointless to go back, with all this mess, and nothing achieved. The commander returned with a girl soldier, Belay Abrehet, who was to be my guide in Adi Wari. She looked slightly bored and didn’t smile.

  I made some more inquiries about the route and the risks. All the bridges over the gorge had been destroyed, so we would drive north to a crossing place, then down into the gorge, up the other side and farther north to another riverbed, this one dry, where the locusts were hatching. Then, if we wanted to go on, we could turn east and go up into the mountains. I started asking about the extent of the locusts and the crop damage and about the cholera stories, but the commander said I should talk to RESOK, the Keftian relief society. I told him that we would go on with them, and said I would go to the hospital after I’d been to RESOK and that we should meet here again between four or five. It was two o’clock now.

  Outside there was a different kind of midday heat from that of Nambula. The sun still burned the skin, but the air was cool and in the shade it was actually chilly. Adi Wari was built on a slope leaning toward the edge of the gorge. A wide stony track ran downhill as the main street, and the buildings were rough stone and concrete with tin roofs. There were people, dogs and goats in the road and soldiers hanging around in little groups. The scene looked very different from a Nambulan town because no one was wearing a djellaba. The civilians wore cheap-looking Western clothes, or cloaks in dark colors. There was no garrison in Adi Wari: it was too obvious a target. The Keftians kept all their military accommodation and hospitals underground.

  We walked down the hill and stopped at a building, which was blackened inside, with a fire burning. The man at the entrance leaned into the furnace and shoveled out four rounds of semiblack-ened bread. I hadn’t eaten for a long time, and it was just the right kind of foodstuff: warm, soothing and unworrying. I felt absolutely fine—almost better than normal, in a state of heightened energy. I suppose it was some kind of preservative shock.

  Belay lightened up a bit as we walked to RESOK. I offered her some of the burnt bread and she laughed. She was twenty-four and spoke a little English. She put her hand up to my face, touched one of my earrings and asked if she could have them and I, used to this, gave them to her. I asked her if she had taken part in the fighting and she said, “A little,” and looked straight ahead as if she didn’t want to discuss it. There were a lot of soldiers about and they greeted her as we passed as if they were schoolmates.

  It wasn’t like I expected, being in a war. At home I had vaguely imagined, without thinking it through, that a war meant fighting all the time, like in the First World War trenches, and that if you went to a war zone you would run a continual gamut of bullets. This was probably because the only bits you tended to see on the news were the shootings. Here, it felt as though life was more or less normal apart from danger spots, places you didn’t go, things you didn’t do—like playing on motorways. Of course it was the unexpected, the blast from nowhere, that made it lethal. But, in between, you just carried on as normal and bought bread.

  We followed the main street right down to the edge of the gorge, and there I saw the remains of the bombed-out bridge, a thick concrete column set into the rocks below, with a tangle of rusting steel supports sticking out. The cliff did not fall sheer: there was a footpath down to the bottom two hundred yards below, crisscrossing the red rocks like a mini–mountain pass. The river was a frothy ribbon, meandering between shingle beaches and broad stretches of grass. I thought, for a split second, that it looked a nice place to camp.

  We turned left along the edge and then back up the slope again and into a compound where I saw the RESOK sign and a couple of Land Rovers parked outside. Inside, the walls were covered with Keftian art, primitive drawings of the war. I had seen these paintings before. Sometimes there were Keftian art exhibitions in a community hall in Sidra which had been built by the Japanese in the sixties.

  The man I needed to see was the head of RESOK for the Adi Wari region, Hagose Woldu, whose name had often come up in discussions in the camp. It turned out he had just left to go to the KPLF office. So we went back there to find that he had left to come and meet us at RESOK. So we set off again. When we got back to RESOK he gave me a most warm and gratifying greeting.

  “Miss Rosie, it is my great honor to meet you. We are most grateful for your work with our people in Safila.”

  Hagose was a very tall man indeed, dressed in brown polyester trousers, which were much too short for him, and a very old mock denim shirt with floral cuffs and collar.

  He took me to a room where a relief model of Kefti was laid out on a large table, the highlands forming a doughnut shape, the desert in the center, and lowlands on the outside, crossed by the riverbeds. You could see the Adi Wari gorge where we were. The highlands beyond were crevassed with great fissures. An extraordinary oval plateau was surrounded by cliffs on all sides.

  Hagose had placed model huts in various sizes, like Monopoly houses, all over the mountains and lowlands to show the population distribution; with red flags to show the current areas of fighting, and green flags to show where the locusts were hatching. There were green flags all over the desert area in the center and the lowlands which ringed the mountains. They were in clusters al
ong the coast, in clusters at the river mouths, and following the course of the riverbed in the plain beyond the gorge. I asked him how he had gathered all this information without aerial surveillance. Hagose claimed it was by word of mouth. He said that the locusts in the desert center were swarming and moving west and crops were already disappearing in the western highlands. He said that the population was already beginning to move the length of the country.

  It was difficult to know how much to believe because he had everything to gain by sending me back in a breathless state declaring an emergency. I thought about what Gunter had said at the embassy party and wondered. But all I needed to know about was the area which fed Safila. If I saw refugees moving there on the routes to us, then I would know what I was dealing with.

  Directly east of Safila there was a break in the first ridge of mountains—the Tessalay pass. This was where some of the most dramatic scenes of the mid-eighties exodus had been filmed for TV.

  Hagose made much of their lack of wherewithal to deal with the infestations. The Keftians didn’t have any pesticide and even if they had had planes, it was too risky to fly. At the moment they were trying to deal with the swarms by beating them off with sticks, digging trenches in between the crops and filling them with fires. Apparently, the Aboutians had bombed two villages making these sorts of preparations. Hagose wanted an amnesty to be declared, and the UN to come in and spray. Too late, too late, I thought. It would take three months to set that up.

  Hagose was going to send a RESOK official into the highlands with us, and send word ahead to the villages we were going to visit. He said he would go over to the KPLF and talk to them about the route.

  Belay and I went to the hospital. Muhammad was asleep, they told me, and O’Rourke had gone off to find us. It was a typical afternoon of confusion. I left a message that I would be at the KPLF ready to go between four and five. And went shopping.

  I bought bread, tomatoes, grapefruit, and tinned cheese. It was cloudy now, and gray. I caught a gust of wind and shivered. I bought some blankets as well. Belay left me to visit a relative. As I walked up to the KPLF I could see O’Rourke with a group of soldiers, peering under the back of the vehicle, checking something.