Hallowed Ground

by Paul Twivy

  ‘I heard that on the news. Was that the right thing? I worry for him.’

  ‘He acted alone. He must take the responsibility.’

  Sarah rarely heard Li be so definite, so cold towards a colleague. He was normally very protective of his team.

  ‘Be careful driving home.’

  ‘I will.’

  Li switched his desktop off. He felt a sense of relief as the screen died to black. All he wanted to do now was sleep. Thank God, Sarah and Hannah were safe. He would call Hannah tomorrow. Too late now.

  He shut and padlocked the door to his Portakabin.

  The moon was low in the sky and blood-red. It looked more like Mars.

  As he approached the perimeter fence, he saw to his relief that the crowd had thinned to a few stragglers. The journalists had all fled to Swakop to email their stories. He wound down his window to thank the security guards for keeping him safe.

  A mile or so down the gravel track that led to the main road, he saw a group of about thirty people a short distance off the road. They were gathered round a pyramid of fire made from a wigwam of thick, round logs. He switched off his engine and the car lights and watched. They seemed too engrossed to notice him.

  The women were dressed in full-length, flowing dresses with puff sleeves and skirts billowed by layers of petticoats. Their rich colours were lit to a brilliance by the fire. They wore hats with ‘cow horns’ made from bright fabric, which splayed and pointed, as if to the furthest horizons.

  Some of the men were dressed like ‘Sapeurs’ in suits of yellow and peacock blue. A few wore military uniform with three distinct bands of red: a red, flat-topped, military cap; a red waistband that erupted into the shape of flames; and finally, red spats covering the ankles.

  The whole scene was bizarre. It was as if a fully-fledged Victorian ball had been transported from a European salon into the heart of the Namib desert. In the process it had shed its formal manners but gained in intensity.

  They danced slowly, arms interlinked, and sang in harmonies that rose high into the desert air, like the flames that lit them. The dignity of their singing, and the swelling of its passion, carried its magic far into the night.

  Li knew enough about the Herero to know that this was a sacred fire and that they were praying to the Supreme Being for their ancestors, who had been so cruelly killed, and whose bones had now been disturbed.

  Somehow, he found himself standing outside his car, by the roadside, sobbing uncontrollably. All the tension of the day ran out of his eyes and his shoulders slumped forward. His eye was caught by a strange movement.

  From amongst the dancers a priest rose up, dressed in skins and pelts, his head-dress made of feathers, his wild hair streaming over his shoulders. In one hand he held a staff and in the other a carved, wooden doll. He danced ever more trance-like around the fire, picking up speed until he was whirling like a dervish. Then he stopped, put down the staff and doll, and pointed his face upwards to the heavens. The eldest woman present approached him and solemnly placed a wooden bowl in his upturned hands. He continued to face upwards to the heavens, holding, but not looking at, the bowl, muttering a mantra.

  The singing intensified. He turned his face to the crowd and then he poured the contents of the bowl on to the Earth. Li could see that it was viscous. Then he realised it was blood. It seeped slowly into the Earth. The priest swayed and lowered his huge frame to the ground. He kissed the blooded ground with his lips, as if the ground itself could be healed.

  Ralph and Anne, Ben and Barbara, had never been so grateful to see the gentle hills of Windhoek. Its clean and well-ordered streets, its office buildings and embassies, seemed the epitome of civilisation after the trauma of the sandstorm.

  A thunderstorm was raging overhead, its cracks and blasts echoing round the hills. They felt safe and cosy inside their cars, their convoy of two. Not even the thunder could wake them.

  They had phoned ahead to the Augustineum to explain why they were returning so late. The caretaker had agreed to let them in, and Ubuntu had been informed.

  On the way to the school, they passed the Alte Feste where Joe had spent time with his father in half-term. As they passed the Independence Memorial, a bolt of lightning struck between the male and female slave. It was if the bolt had split open their shackles. The figures appeared to jump at the shock. Then the rain started, softly at first, pattering on the car roof like a cat. Soon, it gathered force until it was shaking the drainpipes of the buildings.

  Shen Yue woke up not knowing what time it was. Her digital alarm said 02:36 in green, angular numerals. She turned over expecting to find Chi fast asleep snoring, as was his habit. She felt for him, but her hand only glided over an empty sheet. She sat upright yawning. No doubt he’d gone downstairs to watch something on the television and fallen asleep.

  She got up, went over to the bedroom window and looked outside. The air had cleared after the storm and Swakopmund looked back to normal. Its lights twinkled in the reflecting sea. Only the moon seemed strange: low and red.

  She switched the light on in the hall and found her way down the stairs. Sure enough, the television was on, playing some very second-rate movie but no Chi asleep on the sofa. She fished out the remote control from between the sofa cushions and turned it off.

  ‘Chi?’ she called. The kitchen was empty, but the bread board was out with a half-finished loaf on it. She looked out of the kitchen window on to the driveway. His car was still there.

  She walked into the downstairs toilet, desperately needing a pee now that gravity had worked its force on her bladder. She noticed that the laundry light was on and the door slightly ajar. As she pushed the laundry door it felt heavy. She struggled to open it and ventured in. It was only when she turned her back on the washing-machine that she saw him.

  Shen Chi’s soul had fled, but his body was hanging by a strap on the back of the laundry door.

  9

  Science Project

  Joe, Freddie and Hannah all threatened to oversleep on Tuesday. The morning bell could barely penetrate their fatigue. Hannah pulled back the curtain, encouraging the Sun to work its magic and wake her brain. She wanted to burrow back into the warmth of her dreams.

  She half-opened her eyes and gazed into the garden. Basarwa was busying himself around the baobab tree, planting. She found his presence comforting, the simple and patient movement of his hands. This set her thinking about how many people there were in the periphery of your life who were essential to you feeling safe, but who never knew it.

  Things were no less philosophical in the boys’ dorm.

  ‘Joe, what do you reckon the probability is of a sandstorm blowing up that quickly?’ Freddie asked.

  ‘I don’t have the data,’ Joe said. ‘I imagine it’s rare.’

  ‘You don’t think it might be linked to the bodies being moved from the mine?’

  ‘You mean that the spirits of the ancestors were angry…and they created some sort of force that made the weather extreme?’ Joe said incredulously. He knew that Freddie was susceptible to such ideas but couldn’t pretend to dignify them.

  ‘Something like that,’ Freddie said defensively. ‘Don’t you believe in spirits?’

  ‘Someone once suggested that a plane only flies because of the collective will-power of all its passengers egging it aloft,’ Joe offered. ‘Do I believe it? No. Am I fascinated by it as an idea? Yes.’

  ‘What is the maths of life? Of all its intersections and forces?’ Freddie asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but the math of breakfast is that it finishes in seven minutes.’

  Jericho Andjaba was a brilliant science teacher. He brought science alive.

  ‘My great sadness,’ he used to say, at least once in most lessons, ‘is that there are no distinguished Namibian scientists…yet!’

  Joe had once asked him why this made him so sad
.

  ‘Because Science, Mr Kaplan, as you know as a mathematician, is everything. Great art might inspire us. Music might lift our souls. But Science enables us. Look at this country. If Namibia is ever to grow, we need to use solar energy better. We need to desalinate water and learn how to make the deserts bloom. We need to link the country better through non-polluting transport. We need to stop cybercrime. We need to find new ways to stop corruption. We need something to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus which afflicts a quarter of our population. Science is the key to all of this.’

  Today was the start of the Science Project.

  ‘I want you to work in pairs or three’s,’ Andjaba said. ‘You need to pick a topic that needs unravelling. Think of something that needs some research but also some original thinking. This can’t just be a cut and paste from the Internet.’

  Joe, Freddie and Hannah took all of ten seconds to choose the Fairy Circles. Surely Science could unlock their secrets.

  Jericho Andjaba wasn’t convinced.

  ‘I would really prefer you to tackle something other than bare patches in grassland. Why not choose something medical? Hannah, your mother is a doctor. Surely that must interest you. Joe, what about new eco materials to build your mother’s hotels?’

  ‘Sir, supposing there is something about the circles that can revolutionise agriculture or irrigation, make the desert bloom as you suggested?’ Joe asked.

  Joe was always adept at finding and pushing the right buttons.

  Jericho looked at their pleading faces and couldn’t resist.

  ‘OK, but do you know where to start?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Within three weeks, they had unearthed a huge amount of knowledge, printed it and pinned it to an A1-sized board. The board was mounted like a landscape on the Science classroom wall. It was awash with charts, data, satellite photographs, local mythology, drawings, formulae, maps and newspaper articles. It was an impressive assembly of their individual skills and a declaration of their joint obsession.

  Such was their excitement that they had asked Mr Andjaba if he would give them an hour after school one day. This he duly granted, delighted to find pupils who wanted to give extra time to his beloved subjects.

  ‘OK, you three tell me what you’ve discovered so far.’

  Freddie kicked off, pointing to a map and some aerial photographs that showed Mother Earth with freckles.

  ‘OK, sir, so the Fairy Circles exist about a hundred miles inland and they stretch about fifteen hundred miles from here to here. They occur in an arid no-man’s land between savannah and sand dunes. They vary typically between two and fifteen metres wide, although there are reports of circles up to twenty-five metres wide. They are circular patches of barren land often encircled by a ring of grass.’

  ‘Have they been found anywhere else in the world?’ Andjaba asked.

  Freddie moved along to another map.

  ‘Yes, in 2014 they were discovered here in Pilbara, Western Australia. They exist nowhere else on Earth.’

  Hannah took over.

  ‘Professor van Rooyen undertook a long-term project in 1978, hammering metal stakes into the centre of numerous circles. He returned to the test circles twenty-two years later and found that they hadn’t moved an inch.’

  ‘Was this what you’d expect?’ Andjaba stabbed. He was energised by their keen, young minds but determined to make their neural pathways zing even more.

  ‘Probably not, because two of the theories suggest animals as the cause of the circles and animals tend to move,’ Hannah replied. ‘One idea was that the circles were formed by ostriches or zebras giving themselves dry baths in the sand. The much more common idea, though, was sand or harvest termites.’

  ‘OK, good we will come back to that,’ he said, peeling open a packet of mints and handing them round to help sharpen the mind and share the joy.

  ‘What they did discover, however, is that the circles have a life cycle,’ Freddie added.

  ‘Excellent,’ Andjaba cried ‘In other words they are dynamic in another way. What is the lifecycle?’

  ‘It differs between the smaller and larger circles, sir,’ Hannah continued, ‘but they are born, mature and die on average in forty-five to sixty years. They…’

  He put up his hand to stop Hannah continuing and looked around at all three of them.

  ‘What occurs to you about that fact, gentlemen and lady?’

  Joe piped up.

  ‘They have roughly the same lifespan as human-beings, sir.’

  ‘Exactly. Many of the Namibian tribespeople believe that each circle is the soul of an ancestor, or of someone slaughtered by foreign invaders,’ Jericho elaborated.

  Joe looked at him quizzically. ‘But you don’t believe that, sir, do you? Not as a scientist.’

  ‘What I believe is that there may be a link. Do any of you know what I am driving at?’

  Freddie raised his hand somewhat hesitantly.

  ‘You don’t need to raise your hand, Mr Wilde. We’re not in the classroom now. We’re in something far more precious.’

  ‘I think what you might be suggesting, sir,’ Freddie answered, ‘is that if the tribesmen observed that the circles grow and die with the same lifespan as humans, this might have then encouraged their view that each one is controlled by a human soul.’

  ‘Precisely. Myths don’t necessarily ignore facts. Sometimes they are built from them,’ Andjaba summarised.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ Joe muttered. No teacher had ever inspired him in this way before.

  ‘So, Mr Kaplan, as you seem hot to trot, what theories have been given to explain the circles, and how much credence can we give them?’ Andjaba asked.

  ‘Well, there are two common explanations. The first is that sand termites create the ring by consuming the vegetation and burrowing in the soil to create the ring. The barren circle allows water to percolate down through the sandy soil, keeping the soil moist and allowing grasses to grow which the termites then eat. As they progressively eat the grasses at the perimeter, the circles get wider. Radar studies have confirmed that there is this moist layer of soil just beneath the surface, in the middle of the circles.’

  ‘So, job done, right? You have cracked the secret of the fairy circles! It’s termites. Can I go home now?’ Andjaba said, pretending to leave.

  ‘No, sir,’ Joe called out.

  ‘No. Why?’ Andjaba was delighted with Joe’s certainty.

  ‘Because in Western Australia they didn’t find evidence of termites in the fairy circles,’ Joe answered. ‘Moreover, Tschinkel, a biologist from Florida, who was the man who discovered that the circles had a lifecycle, says that when he and his wife excavated a number of circles, they found no termites.’

  ‘And the other common theory, Miss Chiang, tell me about that.’

  ‘The other theory,’ Hannah responded, ‘is that the circles are a result of plants organising themselves into territories, to maximise their access to scarce resources. Plants effectively use the centre of the circles as a water and nutrient trap from which they feed themselves around the edges. They keep away from other plants doing the same with their own circles. They have organised themselves to share scant resources.’

  ‘How sensible. If only humans did the same, we might have fewer wars,’ Jericho observed. ‘So, we’ve cracked it again. It’s competition for resources that Nature has resolved.’

  ‘No, sir. Because other scientists have replaced the soil inside the circles with soil outside the circles and it didn’t cause the vegetation to grow back, suggesting that there is no lack of nutrients in the bare soil of the circles. Samples tested in Pretoria also showed no lack of nutrients.’

  ‘So, where do we stand, fellow scientists?’ Andjaba asked them all.

  Joe piped up. ‘There is no single, or even multiple theory that yet explain
s why there are 1,500 miles of circles that are broadly organised in hexagonal patterns like a honeycomb.’

  ‘And the myths? I see you have them here.’ Andjaba signalled to a section of their board.

  Freddie ran his hands over each of them in turn as he spoke.

  ‘Myth Number One…the rings have magical powers. Number Two…they are the footsteps of the gods. Three…they represent the grave of every bushman killed by a foreigner. Four…Mukuru, the Himba’s Supreme Being, made them. Five…they are from the poisoned breath of a dragon. Six…they are created by meteorite showers.’

  ‘At least the last has some link back to logic as Namibia has had frequent meteorite showers,’ Andjaba noted. ‘But of course, meteorites are a nonsense when you look at the millions of circles and their regularity of pattern. So, what do we do? We are at a familiar place for scientists. We have the available facts, the prior theories, the superstitions, but we don’t have the answers.’

  They stared into the abyss of ignorance, silent and thoughtful.

  ‘This is the real challenge. How do we move forward?’ Andjaba asked.

  Still, silence.

  ‘You have done an excellent job. You have collated, sifted, categorised and explained. I am very proud of you. You are standing on the threshold. Now you need the spark, the crazy thought that isn’t actually crazy.’

  That night, for the first time in weeks, the Four Teenagers of the Apocalypse WhatsApp group was silent. Apart that is, from one post. It was from Selima. ‘Hi guys, is anyone there? Hello?’

  An air of gloom had descended over their dorms.

  A week later, Jacob Ubuntu was explaining in African Studies, how people had created a system of writing down, in symbols as well as with letters, the clicking languages.

  ‘The Khoisan languages are the languages we all used to speak. Some have as many as forty-eight click consonants. But there are agreed to be four main types of click. There is the dental click, represented by a vertical line that sounds at the back of your teeth, like this…’

  He drew a single, vertical line on the board.