“Dispersed where, though?” I said. “I thought they had no food reserves up there.”
“That is the reality,” he said. “There is no food.”
“So what’s happening?”
“I believe they have dispersed widely across the lowlands, but are still traveling by night. Their progress is slowed as they reach the open desert because of the need to construct camouflage for the daylight hours.”
“When will they come?”
“I am waiting for news.”
“You have people looking for them?”
“I am waiting for news.”
“Cannot reveal your sources, eh?” I said.
“Perhaps your team will have their starving babies in abundance,” he said, ignoring my question. “And we will have more sorrows. The broadcast is on Wednesday?”
“The day after tomorrow, yes. I’d better get back up to the compound, I suppose.”
“And I had better start work on my lines. You will let me speak? You will let the Keftian people speak for themselves? Or must we have these Western women with bones and turbans in their hair who understand nothing?”
“That’s not fair. They’ve done their research. But of course you can speak.” I thought of Vernon Briggs and lost my confidence. “At least, I hope so, but it’s not me who’s in charge.”
“But always,” he said, glinting in the half-light as he showed me out, “in the end, it is the woman who is in charge.”
“I wish it were true.”
“Then let it be true this time.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-eight
It was very late when I got back to the compound, but the lights of the cabana were still on, and O’Rourke and Corinna were standing in the shadows round the side. I felt a horrible jealous lunge. Surely he wasn’t going to fall for Corinna? She was still wearing her sunglasses, for God’s sake.
“Oh, puh-lease,” she was saying. “This is cultural imperialism in its most blatant form. I cannot, in all conscience, stay here.”
“I completely understand. Perhaps you’d like me to drive you to the village?” said O’Rourke, politely.
“Is there a hotel there?” she said, huskily.
“There’s a little place, yes. It’s pretty much free of any form of colonialism, neo or otherwise, and not at all racist. You have a mosquito net? And a torch? I’ll get you some water. And take your own sheets, of course. It’s open to the sky but I don’t think you need worry about rain. It’s a dormitory room. They don’t get many women there but they do have an equal opportunities policy—so keep all your clothes on.”
It hadn’t taken him long to suss her.
“Hello,” said O’Rourke, as I walked up to them. “Corinna is wanting to stay elsewhere.”
“Yes, I heard you saying. You’re going to the village, then?”
Corinna tossed her head. “I’m afraid I find it completely abhorrent to be waited on by black servants.”
“Kamal isn’t a servant. He’s a cook.”
“Oh, yes, it’s easy to hide behind semantics, isn’t it? Is this where donations go? Is this why we’re out here? Asking the public to pay up to have you lot waited on? So you don’t have to lift a finger? I have to say I’m appalled.”
O’Rourke started lighting a cigarette.
“Please do not smoke next to me.”
He walked half a dozen paces away and lit the cigarette.
“Did O’Rourke explain why we have staff?”
“Nope,” came his voice, out of the blackness.
“The people in the village need the work.”
“Oh, excuse me,” said Corinna. “I’ve found out how much these people earn. It’s a pittance. It’s slave labor.”
“The trouble is we can’t pay much above the going rate, or it mucks up the local economy.”
“Oh, puh-lease. Why don’t you wipe your own tables if you don’t want to muck up the local economy?”
“It’s stupid having nurses doing housework, when they’re overstretched in the camp and someone else needs the work.”
“Oh, come on. It doesn’t take that much effort to run up a bit of supper.”
“Good. You can cook the chicken tomorrow night,” said O’Rourke, appearing back out of the darkness. “You’ll have to kill it. That’s OK?”
“I am, as you know, a vegetarian,” hissed Corinna.
“Does it ever occur to you,” he said mildly, “that you might be missing the wood for the trees? Now, shall I run you to the village?”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “It’s obvious I can’t stay in that place.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted this sparring to continue between them. It was just a touch too sparky-warky for my liking.
“Shall we go back in, then?” I said. “Is there anything left to eat?”
“I’m going to bed,” said Corinna. “With Kate Fortune, apparently.”
“Night, then,” said O’Rourke. “I take it you won’t want to be woken with tea.”
“Depends who brings it,” she said throatily, gave him a long, unambiguous look, and sashayed off. I stared after her. I’d never seen her coming on strong to anyone before.
“Hmm,” said O’Rourke, when she’d gone. “Did you talk to Muhammad?”
“Yes.” I wanted to talk to O’Rourke now, too, but I felt unusually tongue-tied.
“You must be tired,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Well, get a good night’s rest.” He hesitated. “Night.”
Then he went off into the darkness, and I wondered where to.
Most people had gone to bed. At the far end of the cabana Betty was rabbiting on at the camera crew, still wearing her pink outfit. A bottle of gin stood in front of them. Betty’s face was almost as pink as the outfit and she was gesticulating even more than usual. Julian had found a new victim for his Janey stories in Debbie. The two of them were bent over the kitchen table.
“You see, I think I was afraid when Janey had Irony—that’s our child. I couldn’t deal with the child because I still felt I was a child myself.”
“Surely not,” said Debbie.
“Ah,” he said, beaming at me. “I was just telling Debbie here how I felt with the children today. You know, today, with those children, I felt for the first time that I was needed for myself—by the children,” he said, looking at me, thrilled, obviously forgetting all about the dollars.
“That’s great. Is there any stew left?”
After I had eaten, I looked for my bag but I couldn’t find it anywhere. It wasn’t in the Land Cruiser or in the cabana. It was one of those tiny, stupid irritations that completely floor you when you are tired. I wanted to scream, and bang on everyone’s doors with a stick. I would have to go to bed without brushing my teeth. I made my way to the hut, trying to keep control. I let myself in without a torch, and felt my way across the room, fumbling for a match to light the hurricane lamp. As the flame flared up I heard someone stir behind me. I spun round and let out a scream.
Oliver was lying on the bed, stark naked. “Hi, sweetheart,” he said, with a lazy smile.
“What are you doing here?” I shouted. I was nearly in tears. I was so tired. I picked up a towel from the chair and threw it to him. “Cover yourself up.”
He swung his legs to the floor, wrapped the towel round his waist and moved towards me. “I just thought you might need a cuddle. Don’t you?”
“What I need is sleep.”
He was moving close to me now, towering above me with the lamp behind him. I couldn’t see his face.
“I thought you might be frightened,” he said. “All this pressure building up for the broadcast, all alone in a mud hut. Wouldn’t you like me to sleep with you?”
“NO. No. I just want to be quiet, and rest.”
“But you’re all alone, with insects and rats and snakes everywhere.” His voice wobbled slightly. “I heard drums outside, and something that sounded like, like a hyena.”
&n
bsp; I suddenly understood and tried not to smile. “Are you worried about sleeping on your own?”
“No, no, of course not,” he said, too quickly. “It’s just I find it . . . well, it is rather—”
There was a bang as the corrugated iron flung open. “SHE SAID NO.”
O’Rourke was standing in the doorway. “You heard her. She said no.”
O’Rourke, too, was naked, except for a towel wrapped round his waist. I was waiting for Oliver to lose his temper, swear at O’Rourke, but he just stood weakly in the middle of the room.
“What kind of man are you?” said O’Rourke, looking at Oliver incredulously. “What kind of low behavior is this?”
The two men stared at each other for a moment, in their towels.
“Get out,” said O’Rourke. He seemed to be making rather a habit of this today.
Oliver picked up his clothes from the table, still holding the towel round his waist, and started to shuffle out, saying, as he went, “I’ve got nowhere to sleep now.”
“You can sleep,” said O’Rourke, “with me.”
*
The next morning we organized a supervised tour of the camp, dividing the party into groups. The crew stayed up in the compound, working on the equipment. Corinna had stayed up there too, saying she didn’t want to gawp at human beings as if they were animals in a zoo.
The clouds had gone today and it was hot—even for Safila. I was walking towards the hospital with Julian and Oliver. Oliver had been in a state of traumatized silence all morning. He was pale and odd, shrinking from contact with the refugees. At first I had thought it was a sulk because of what had happened in the hut last night. But then, watching him, I remembered what it was like when you first came across all this: the stenches, the faces covered in flies, the gungy eyes, the amputated limbs.
As we entered the hospital, the News photographer was sitting in exactly the same position he had been in an hour and a half ago, with his lens pointing at the head of a woman patient.
Sian came hurrying up to me, wide-eyed and anxious. “I think we must ask this man to leave,” she said.
“What is he doing?” I said.
“I think he’s waiting for her to die.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Oliver, and walked unsteadily back into the air.
*
“Come on, darling,” the photographer was saying to me, as we stood outside, in heat that threatened to take the skin off our faces. “You don’t want me taking pictures of Kate with the kids. You don’t want me taking pictures in the hospital. What am I doing here? There’s a story to tell, love. It’s got to be done somehow.”
Vernon Briggs was making his way up the path towards us, sweating, panting and wiping his forehead with a red handkerchief.
“There isn’t a bloody story to tell, that’s the bloody truth of it,” he bellowed. “This is a right bloody carry-on, this is. Sod this for a game of soldiers.”
Kate and the cameraman were following after him, with Muhammad and Henry. Betty was bringing up the rear, talking to the soundman.
“We can’t make a bloody emergency appeal out of this lot,” Vernon was going on. “Nothing bloody well wrong with ’em.”
“What are you talking about?” said Oliver. “Just look at them. This is no way to live. Look at them.”
“Don’t you start waxing poetical with me, lad. You can see this sort of thing every day, the length and breadth of bloody Africa. Crisis? This isn’t a bloody crisis. As far as they’re concerned, this is bloody luxury.”
“Well, I must admit I’m disappointed,” said Kate.
“Disappointed? It’s a bloody shambles. Crying wolf is all these aid agencies ever do,” said Vernon.
“It’s not crying wolf,” I said. “It could all still happen.”
“Not in the next two bloody days, it couldn’t. Listen, luvvie, I’m not fart-arseing and fannying about with ifs, buts and maybes. There’s some expensive time being wasted here. We’ve got that bloody satellite dish up from Nairobi. We’ve got a technical crew, a camera crew, we’ve got Kate Fortune, Julian Alman, Corinna Borghese, the head and deputy head of programming from CDT out here on a wild goose chase, with the world’s press looking on, the network cleared on Wednesday night, the franchise and my credibility hanging on it and nothing to put in it. If we weren’t stuck in the middle of bloody nowhere, I’d put a call in to London and pull the whole thing now. It’s a bloody disaster.”
“A disaster you say?” Muhammad was standing very, very still. “It is a disaster that there is no disaster?” Vernon turned round slowly. The rest of the party stopped.
“You are disappointed. Why?” Muhammad glanced witheringly around the group. “Did you come here to make your success out of our misery?”
*
After lunch, at Muhammad’s suggestion we assembled in his shelter for a meeting. Through the entrance you could see the satellite dish perched on the edge of the hill above the camp.
“The salient question is this. Is there a need for the appeal? Do we have grounds to make an appeal?” Oliver was asking.
“Yes,” said Muhammad.
“Are you mad?” said O’Rourke. “There is no question. Do people have to be on the point of death to deserve help?”
“An appeal saying what?” said Vernon. “They’re doing all right ’ere? They’ve got one lot of food from the EEC. They’ve got another lot from us. They’ve got another lot coming from the UN. They don’t do a stroke of work, just sit on their arses waiting to get fed. What’s this appeal going to say: could you send some money so this lot can buy themselves ghetto blasters?”
“That’s completely unjustified,” said Oliver.
“Oh, don’t give me that namby-pamby, middle-class, bleedin’- ’eart carry-on. It’s dicks-on-the-table time, son. You’ve cocked up.”
“It is you who is cocking up,” said Muhammad. “And it is fortunate for you that your dick is not on my table.”
“Eh, eh. Don’t you give me that, Sambo.”
“SILENCE,” roared Muhammad. “You are in my home now, and you will listen. You have come here, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, understanding nothing, and now you will listen.”
He moved into the center of the earth floor, leaning on his stick.
“Do you believe that we want to beg for food? Do you believe that we have no pride?” he said. “What has caused this situation, that we are reduced to beggar men? Tell me,” he said, looking at Vernon.
“Drought, war and a bloody lazy waiting-for-handouts attitude,” said Vernon belligerently.
“Did you starve in England when you had to fight for your freedom? Do they starve in Arizona when there is drought? Do you understand what it is to live balanced on the blade of a knife?”
Kate Fortune coughed uncomfortably.
“Lazy? Lazy? You call us lazy? Do you know what it is to walk for five miles to find water, to carry it home for five miles, fastened in an earthen pot to your back? To work all day, from the gray, smoking mist of dawn, to the last red rays of the sun . . .”
Don’t overdo it, Muhammad, I was thinking, don’t overdo it.
“. . . coaxing the dry earth with your bleeding, callused hands to bring forth food for your children? To scour the barren mountains for firewood to keep your family alive through the freezing night, knowing that every branch which is cut, every tree which dies, is causing the earth to die with it, the desert to creep towards us? And to rejoice when the first green shoots burst from the dust, knowing, still, that if the rains fail, then we will starve, and if the rains come, then the insects may come too, and we will also starve?”
“Well, you don’t have to start a bloody war, to add to your troubles, lad, do you?” said Vernon.
“What little we had was taken in taxes. The army came in tanks and took our children to fight for them, raped our women. Our land was taken. We were persecuted for our beliefs. Would you not fight? If you were in the same position as us, would we not help you too?”
Muhammad paused, and touched his forehead with his fingers. “Had we been given a little help—had we been given seeds, pesticides, hoes, medicine . . . then we could have stayed in our villages, and survived. But the West would not help the country of Abouti to develop. They were opposed to the Marxists. They did not want them to develop. We, too, were opposed to the Marxists. But to the West we were Aboutians, too.”
“But you’re here now, aren’t you? You’re all right now.”
“For how long? If the refugees come, and there is no more food, then in a few weeks we will die. We are like lamps in the wind. It takes only a breath to snuff us out.”
“You’ve got a river. In fact, you’ve got two rivers. There are bloody weeds growing down there. Why don’t you get off your backsides and grow yourselves some food, instead of asking everyone else for it?”
“We are not permitted.”
“By who?”
“The government of Nambula. They do not permit us to cultivate lest we stay.”
“Well, it’s their fault, then, isn’t it?”
“Is it? When they cannot afford to feed their own people?”
“Nambula gets enough help from the West.”
“Not anymore. But even before Saddam, what kind of help? A tractor factory—to furnish contracts for Germany. A cement production plant from Holland. The people cannot eat cement.”
“It’s all very well, lad, but we’re talking popular television here. They don’t want to sit there watching an economics lesson. It’s not the Open bloody University.”
“The West is rich. The third world is poor,” said Muhammad. “It is obvious, it is stupid. It is the obvious, stupid truth. Is that not simple enough to explain?”
“They won’t buy it, lad. They need to see the kiddies starving before they get their checkbooks out. It can’t be done. We’ll just make ourselves look bloody idiots.”
“That’s not altogether—” Oliver began.
But Muhammad was looking up ahead of him, as if he was alone. He looked despairing and sad: sadder than I had ever seen him.
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