by Roger Curtis
‘Come back to me, Sarah. This is still your home.’
‘Yes it is.’ She kissed him goodbye. Seeing that his eyes were moist she felt sorry for him for the first time in their relationship.
The taxi driver had never heard of the Mary Rose. Nor had he ever been asked to wait for anyone while they sat for five minutes doing nothing except stare at a solitary boat bobbing in the water.
HATOMI CAMP
September – December 1987
18
Irmkutz was the end of the line, where civilisation of sorts ended and the wasteland began. There were already patches of rock-strewn plain, devoid of life, visible between the mutilated dwellings.
Jefferies, from the region’s consulate, had travelled with her from Ankara. He was pacing up and down on the platform beside the waiting carriages of the returning train. He glanced at his watch and frowned at the end of each excursion.
‘Look, Mr Jefferies,’ Sarah said, ‘they’ve obviously got held up. You need to get back on the train and I’m quite happy to wait here. I can always get the next one back if nothing happens.’
‘The day after tomorrow?’
‘If need be. There’ll be a hotel in town.’
‘Well then, if you’re sure. I do have a dinner with the minister that I can’t really miss.’ He relaxed a little and held out his hand. ‘I do wish you good fortune, Dr Potter. I think you will need it but I also have the feeling that you’ll manage. You have my number – use it if you have to.’
The train resolved into a tiny dot that suddenly was no longer there. On the empty platform she felt the kind of loneliness that can bite the most hardened travellers, when all ahead is unknown and previous human contacts have been severed – worse now that evening was approaching. She shivered, in spite of the still searing heat. She was not, she now realised, adventurous.
The few remaining taxis were leaving the patch of earth that was the station’s forecourt. There was nothing left for them, the unlucky ones. The last reversed back to her in a swirl of dust that hurt her eyes. She waved it away; there was no place she could think of to be taken to.
How about a real rebirth, she thought. If I were to toss my bag into that bin over there and tear up my passport, just start walking, and pretend amnesia, what then? The idea appealed. But it was the old Sarah thinking. Her face would put paid to any real thought of survival, except as a beggar.
Across the road a defunct neon light with cable ends dangling suggested a moribund café. She walked towards it, hopeful of a flicker of life. No English anywhere, not even a cola ad, but a smell of frying onions seeped through the boarded windows. She pushed at the door, releasing a dose of animated male menace, like a fart.
It was a mistake to enter. Just like the figure-hugging jeans and the blouse were mistakes. This was a place where women had either one use or one purpose. That was conjecture, but she read it in their eyes, all score pairs of them, and none directed at her face. It was confirmed in the brazen photos pinned haphazardly on the walls. The barman, with a glass and a cloth, froze to a statue, then slowly put them down
‘Deutsch?’
‘English.’
‘English? Better, better! Ha! Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha! The cackle was taken up all around the room. All the grinning, chanting mouths seemed to be missing teeth.
‘You want food?’
‘A drink would be nice. You have juice?’
‘Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!’
Already Sarah could see one of the men feeling her bag. Then he tested its weight and lifted it onto a table. ‘You pay for drink?’
Her body was expendable, maybe, but the few instruments and books she had brought were not. They meant lives, and were not negotiable. She had to keep her head and her nerve.
‘Put it back on the floor.’
The man played drunk, his face contorting into an idiot’s grin.
‘On the floor,’ she repeated, glaring at him and pointing. The returned stare was that of a Rottweiler, unblinking, savage against the background titters.
His fingertips pushed sharply into her shoulder. One of the others had got on his hands and knees behind her and she cursed herself for not realising the cause of the premonitory laughter. She collapsed backwards onto the floor, her head narrowly missing the edge of the bar. No one moved. They were waiting to see what she would do next.
Sammy’s attentions were all too recent to allow a trace of inaction. She sprang to her feet and rushed to the bag, intending to grab it and make a run for the door. Its new custodian snatched it away and danced with it to the far end of the room.
One of the men gripped her arms from behind, bringing the elbows together, forcing her to watch while the contents of her bag were displayed, one by one, on the table. It was a rape of her mind, and a pointer to what might follow.
The ophthalmoscope brought an outburst of mirth.
‘Vibrator, brmm brmm.’ He licked it and put the black head in his mouth.
Then, suddenly, they realised what she was.
‘Doctor? You doctor?’
‘Doctor’.
‘You go to camp? Help at camp?’
‘I go to camp.’
‘You no look like doctor!’
‘You no look like man,’ she replied, imitating him. ‘More like animal.’
He took no notice, then jabbed his hand towards the others ‘We… have brothers there. From across border. Need help very bad.’
‘Then why do you stop them getting it?’
They stopped playing with her bag and backed away from the table. She went to it and with slow deliberation repacked the contents. The man who had pushed her over appeared at her shoulder.
‘We…’ This time he restrained the jabbing fingers. ‘We… are sorry.’
‘And I am sorry. I hope your brothers have better manners.’
They let her go. A shrill voice behind her called, ‘Your juice!’ She ignored it. At the door someone was coming in. She almost collided with him. Without thinking she accepted the hand that was thrust towards her.
‘Dr Potter? Andrew Plumpton, Red Cross liaison. Well, congratulations! Not many women come here and emerge unscathed. That kind of resilience… could be useful to us. Here, let me take your bag.’
She let him have it without a murmur, unquestioningly. Not because she trusted him but because her powers of resistance had simply ebbed away.
The jeep was parked outside and she got in. She didn’t look at him and didn’t speak, just stared in front towards the expanse of plain dotted with rock clusters ochre-pink in the dying sun. It seemed to promise a future that was as barren as the past. She blinked back tears.
‘You appreciate this is highly irregular, Dr Potter. Red Cross jeeps don’t usually pick up doctors from rival organisations.’ He must have seen she didn’t care. ‘Only joking,’ he added coyly. ‘Fact is, I passed your chap on the road – broken axle – and promised to fetch you. If it’s mended I’ll hand you over. If not I’ll take you all the way.’
‘That’s kind of you.’
She watched him choose his words.
‘They give you trouble in there?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Harmless, but bloody annoying. Sums up most of them. Touch you, did they?’
‘No… not in that way.’
‘Don’t let it get to you.’ He hadn’t misread the situation after all. His concern made her look at him again: young, early thirties probably, but sounded older; fair hair, clean shaven and rimless lenses that don’t detract from good looks.
‘You’re a doctor too?’
‘Good lord, no. Field director. We just boss them around.’
A few hundred metres further on the metalled road stopped. Suddenly she was being flung from side to side as the tyres clutched and
grasped their way forward over the rock-strewn track. In daylight the journey might have held some interest; in darkness it became an interminable assault, not only on her senses, but on what little remained of her physical stamina.
Probe as she might, her memory of what she had left behind offered no refuge; far from yielding niches of comfort, it repelled her. She felt hot, as she had during the day, but inexplicably now given the cool of the evening. The sweat on her body was cold, clammy and unnatural. At one point the vehicle stopped and Andrew jumped down to remove some obstacle on the road. But the swaying continued in her head, to be joined by waves of nausea. Then she was out of the vehicle, retching over the rocks. She had never felt more vulnerable, or so willing to be kicked aside and left to die.
She remembered her mouth and face being wiped and something – probably a blanket – being put around her shoulders; then, as it all became indistinct, of being lifted and carried back towards the vehicle.
Which side of her face was towards him? she wondered. No, no, no, that was past.
She had been lying on her side, so they told her, which is why, when she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was a silhouette of heads at the window, featureless against the sunlight. A faint tremor, a response to her own, produced a row of flashing teeth – children’s teeth – and the whites of widening eyes. Then hands appeared above the sill to wave to her.
An adult voice said, ‘Welcome to Hatomi Hospital, Dr Potter.’
Her thoughts, which had channelled themselves rapidly to receive the welcome at the window, now became confused again, as if, with these words, a damp mist had fallen across her bed. It was a shadow not of the speaker’s making, but of her own distant guilt. She struggled to turn her body to see but the sheets held her. In that brief moment her spirits descended from elation to misery. What’s bugging you, Sarah? she asked herself.
‘Dr Potter, Sarah, it’s Jazreel. You’re safe now.’
Jazreel’s smiling face glided into view as she rounded the end of the bed to sit beside her.
Sarah looked at her with eyes filled with tears of apology. ‘I’m sorry, Jazreel, forgive me.’
‘For taking ill? You couldn’t help that.’
What Sarah had meant could not be explained, not yet. ‘Was I ill?’
‘Unconscious for two days. And a little delirious. Your Red Cross friends – whom you don’t even know yet – think it’s a virus. Maybe they’re right, I’m not so sure.’
‘I’ve been so much trouble to you. I only wanted to help.’
‘You shall – all too soon, I’m afraid, my dear. Things are not so good here, as you will see. But first some food, then proper sleep. After that we can talk.’
A black bubble of ungraspable information was growing in Sarah’s mind. There was a name there, but it wouldn’t come. She started to speak, hoping that the act of doing so would bring it forth. ‘I want to…’
‘If you’re thinking of Ali,’ Jazreel said kindly, ‘it’s okay. I know what happened. Marcus wrote to me. You don’t have to be anxious on my account.’
When Sarah woke again there was a candle burning, and soap and a towel on the chair beside her, with clothes neatly folded across its back. She found water – so little of it! – in a bowl on the table. She dressed and opened the door.
Voices, serious and concerned, echoed down the corridor. She traced them to a door like her own and knocked. There was a response in a language she did not recognise. She entered.
Apart from Jazreel, all were men, a mix of colours and nationalities. They rose to welcome her.
‘Perfect timing, Sarah,’ Andrew said, shaking her hand, which he retained long enough to whisper, ‘Thank me later for getting you here in one piece.’
From the head of the table Jazreel said, ‘Let me introduce Dr Farouqi, Dr Al Esben, Mr Sirivan, the hospital manager, and Mr Kempis, Camp Director. Dr Nuru, who takes over from me next week, has been held up by bad weather and is still in Ankara.
‘Replaces you?’ Sarah said. ‘Are you leaving?’
‘For a short while only,’ Jazreel replied, ‘but I may return to another hospital, Sarah, not necessarily this one.’
‘Jazreel is returning home to get married,’ Farouqi said. ‘Her – how do you say it in English? – honeymoon? We all hope it will be a well-deserved vacation.’ He looked at Jazreel, hoping he had not spoken out of turn. Sarah thought that perhaps he had.
‘Gentlemen, back to business,’ Jazreel continued. ‘Mr Kempis was starting to tell us that from tomorrow we can expect the next influx from across the border. Apparently there are many sick this time, including some with gunshot wounds and, as you might guess, rather more with less conventional injuries. Exposure too, if the weather doesn’t break. Saddam’s merry men seem to have excelled themselves this time.’
‘On past performance that means a hundred beds,’ Sirivan said. ‘We can make available fifteen at most.’
‘We can help with a few tents and blankets,’ Andrew said, ‘but that’s all this time.’
‘For that we need more ground,’ Jazreel said.
‘We can let you have that,’ Kempis said, ‘but not where you would like it. You’d have to fetch your own water.’
‘And antibiotics, dressings, halothane?’
‘Afraid not this time,’ Andrew said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Then we’ll have to raid the clothes store and tear up a few more shirts,’ Jazreel said.
‘We’ll need all we’ve got to clothe them,’ Kempis replied. Impatience and frustration were surfacing in his voice. ‘So you’d better think of something else.’
Sarah watched in disbelief as the bartering became more heated. It reminded her of travellers at the council tip near home, fighting for choice pickings amongst the refuse.
Jazreel’s engagement and intended departure had unnerved her, perhaps because she was the last link with the world Sarah knew. Or was there another reason for it? Had Ali known of Jazreel’s plans? If not, why hadn’t she told him? It seemed that Sarah had about a week to get some answers.
Breakfast was taken in an airless box of a room with windows above eye level and a scratched, formica-topped table surrounded by an assortment of chairs, none matching. It was only seven-thirty, but from the soiled clothes and anxious expressions, the work of the day had already begun. Sarah sat down next to a pretty nurse with spots of blood on the back of each elbow which, being invisible to her, she’d failed to wash off. She was of Marguerite’s age and not unlike her; except that Marguerite seemed one of nature’s innocents compared with this girl.
‘Dr Potter, hello. I’m Allison. If you’re wondering, coffee is in the flask next to the cereal – that’s cereal in the cardboard box. There might be bread there and something to put on it, but I don’t know what they’ve given us this morning.’
Sarah was about to ask for guidance, but the girl anticipated it.
‘For meals the principle is to help yourself to what the textbooks say is a healthy diet. Enough to keep you active, but that’s all. There’s a chart on the wall. All you have to do is know your weight – and make sure it stays the same.’
Sarah got up to study it. A spoonful of this, a slice of that, all given values, and a grand total to be exceeded at one’s peril. It seemed pitifully meagre.
‘It’s fair. It’s of no help to anyone if we go sick,’ Allison said, getting up. ‘I have to go, I can hear the next lot coming in.’ She turned at the door. ‘Good luck, Dr Potter.’
‘Sarah!’
‘Sarah.’
Jazreel appeared in a white coat with a stethoscope at her neck. ‘I’m sorry, Sarah. I’ll have to throw you in at the deep end and leave the sightseeing till later.’ She rested her hand on Sarah’s shoulder. ‘Believe me, it’s the easiest way. Like diving into a cold sea.’
Sa
rah found herself seated beside a small table in a makeshift cabin. She looked out through a wide, open door into an homogenous, grey mist. The ground was visible for about twenty paces and would have been a morass of brown mud if someone had not thrown down a load of rubble to create a path. She got up for a better look and was surprised to find another figure standing just outside under the awning.
‘Karim, Dr Potter. I help you this morning.’
They came. In ones, twos or small groups, young and old, sometimes with others helping but usually unaided, hobbling, clutching at one another, many weeping. Sarah realised that Karim had been posted there to segregate them so that the more needy cases were seen by Farouqi or Jazreel in an adjacent hut. For her it was a luxury that was to last only that day.
Allison came in with a box of improvised dressings which she placed on the table. Then she stood beside Sarah.
At first Sarah was more of an observer, lost without the accoutrements of modern medicine. She remembered, ruefully, what it was like to be a mere houseman under the patronage of a ward sister. She was awed by the movements of Allison’s deft hands as they probed, dressed and bandaged. But when she had established the limits of the nurse’s competence the pair began to function as a team. Most important of all, Sarah learnt from her where to place the shifting line between admission and contested discharge into the heaving squalor of the camp.
Allison seemed relaxed. Around mid-morning there were a few minutes respite when she fetched coffee in cracked mugs. ‘You’re okay,’ she told Sarah, with a hint of a smile. Praise never came sweeter than that.
There was another break around midday, before the theatres swung properly into action. By then the mist had begun to disperse; soon the remaining wisps of vapour were carried up and away on the strengthening breeze. All around were mountain peaks, crisp and bright in the sunlight. Sarah’s attention was caught by the snow-flecked ridge to the south. ‘They crossed that,’ Allison said. Then she looked down. ‘Well, most did.’
The scene now revealed reminded Sarah of the beginning of an operetta, when the curtain rises on a stage packed with peasants cheerfully busy with themselves: a human ferment from which leading players would soon emerge. Here, just the same, people fetched and carried, idled away the time and passed things from hand to hand that Sarah could not identify. The difference was that nothing remotely interesting seemed likely to happen; except that, from the mass, life itself would gradually seep away.