Tongues of Fire

by Peter Abrahams

  He had forgotten Gillian Wells. Birdwell hadn’t mentioned her either. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Right.”

  Krebs drove to the airport and caught the first flight to Cairo.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  In the afternoon a helicopter swooped down from the yellow sky and circled low over the camp. The Mahdi came out of his tent to watch it with the others. Many of them had seen a helicopter before—a few years earlier one had flown over them in the same way and then dropped dozens of sacks filled with powdered milk. Most of the sacks had split, sending clouds of white powder drifting across the plain; they were left with scraps of cloth that said “United Nations” in six languages. But no one had worried about it. As long as they could keep the herds alive they would have milk. What they needed was rain to make the grasses grow, and no helicopter could give them that.

  So they watched it circle above, waiting for sacks of powdered milk. It flew very slowly. Once around. Twice. Finally the helicopter hovered over the center of the camp, a few hundred feet in the air. There it hung, shuddering slightly and giving off invisible waves of heat that distorted the sky around it. Then it dropped one sack. The sack had arms and legs. It jerked and kicked them all the way down, but none of that could make it fly. It hit hard ground near the Mahdi’s tent with a sound that was soft, like a fist striking a pillow.

  He ran to it as fast as he could, although he knew what it was and knew there was no point in running. Bokur, broken on the ground. His silver teeth were scattered around him.

  Without seeming to hurry, the helicopter rose in the sky and flew away to the east. To those in the helicopter, the Mahdi realized, he was an insect far below, to be squashed at will as Bokur had been. What could he do against helicopters? His father had been dreaming a fool’s dream. Instead of coming true, it had killed a trusting old nomad in Kordofan and the white woman. And it had made him what he was.

  He felt people press around him. Neimy. Una. Bokur’s other wives, his children and grandchildren. They fell on the body and began to wail, loud ululating cries that spread quickly through the camp.

  “You did this,” someone shouted. A hand dug into his shoulder and spun him around. Hurgas. His face was twisted, his teeth bared. Hurgas punched at him, but he caught his wrist in midair and squeezed it until the fist slowly opened. The cries died down. He sensed the eyes of everyone on him. The moment had come, just when he knew that all was hopeless.

  “No, Hurgas,” the Mahdi said quietly. He released Hurgas’s arm. “They did it.” He pointed to a speck disappearing in the eastern sky. He raised his voice. “But now I will do something. Neimy, bring me the black mare.”

  Kneeling over her father’s body, she looked at him, her cheeks wet with tears. “Where are you going?”

  “Khartoum.”

  Neimy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and stood up. “I’m coming with you,” she said.

  Somewhere in the crowd a man said, “Jihad.” He did not speak very loudly, but because he was listening for it the Mahdi heard.

  “Yes,” he said: “Jihad.” Holy war.

  They caught the word like a disease. “Jihad. Jihad.” Their voices rose. “Jihad. Jihad.” They fired rifles in the air. The women took up their ululating cry, no longer so much in grief as in anger. The sound made the Mahdi’s skin prickle. He felt power surging around him. It was real power, dangerous power, but he did not know what it could do against helicopters.

  The next morning they broke camp: the Baggara and all the others who had come from the west to be near the Mahdi. Slowly they began moving east, women and children on the backs of oxen, the herds following behind. Rich men rode horses, poor men rode donkeys. The poorest walked. In front where they could see him rode the Mahdi on the black mare.

  Only Hurgas had stayed behind. Just before it was time to go, Una had taken the Mahdi to plead with him. Hurgas sat on the ground near the newly dug grave. “Come,” Una said.

  “No.”

  “Then come for revenge. Don’t you want revenge?”

  Hurgas looked at her. Then he looked at the Mahdi. He said nothing.

  Una turned to the Mahdi. “Say something to him. He can’t stay here alone.”

  The Mahdi laid his hand on Hurgas’s shoulder. Hurgas jerked away. The Mahdi stepped back. “It’s his decision,” he said coldly. “He has his own cattle. He’ll survive.”

  Hurgas stayed behind.

  They moved east across the plain. From time to time they came across other people. The other people joined them—nomads, hunters, villagers. Whole towns emptied and followed. The dust they raised filled the sky from horizon to horizon. The Mahdi sensed their force at his back. Even if he wanted to he knew he could do nothing now to stop them, to turn them around. Some were hungry, some were thirsty, some were armed. They had been waiting for him for a long time. Yet he was aware that he was not really leading them: He felt their push. The most he could hope for would be to steer a little. What would happen would happen. He smiled at that thought. He was becoming like them.

  “Why are you smiling?” Neimy asked when they halted for the night.

  “I’m happy.”

  “I’ve never seen you so happy.”

  He heard the worry in her voice and looked at her. She seemed smaller. The world he had been living in was shrinking. Soon he would be entering the world he had been prepared for. If everything worked.

  Campfires burned across the plain like the lights of a great city. They ate and talked and sang and finally slept. The Mahdi lay awake most of the night. Neimy laid her head on his chest. He moved away.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “I can smell the river. The Nile.”

  “You aren’t sad about my father, are you?”

  “Yes. I am.” He was sad about his own father too. But sadness could not compete with the smell of the river. Neimy rolled over and was quiet, leaving him to enjoy his happiness alone. All night it welled up in his chest.

  At dawn the camp was awakened by a shriek that came out of the east. People rushed from their tents as a jet with sweptback wings roared overhead. Orange flames shot out from under the wings. Rockets exploded among the tents. People screamed. It rained steel. The screams grew louder. The screamers ran back and forth, trying to find safety. There was no safety. They died.

  The Mahdi stood in front of his tent and watched. The jet banked in a broad circle and turned for them again. They were helpless. They would all be slaughtered on the plain. His father had been a fool, and he was a fool too. Born and bred a fool.

  Two more jets dove out of the sky. People fell on the ground and prayed. The two jets fired orange flames. They struck the first jet. It vanished in a ball of fire. The two jets wheeled in the sky and flew away.

  It was very quiet.

  The Mahdi understood. His father had not worried about helicopters or jets. All that mattered were the minds of the pilots. The jets were his.

  “Jihad.” He screamed.

  “Jihad. Jihad.”

  By the time they reached Khartoum the government had fled. The inhabitants cheered them through the streets. The Sudan was his. He wanted more than that. His father had wanted more than that. Khartoum was a step. It led to Port Sudan, the Red Sea, Mecca.

  “On to Mecca,” he told them.

  “Jihad. Jihad.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  He gazed out the little barred window, past the dirt yard where chickens pecked and a man slept, and over the high wall at the blue sea beyond. It stretched away to the horizon where it met the cloudless sky in a white haze. What was on the other side of the sea? A high wall, a dirt yard, a little barred window?

  “What’s on the other side of the sea?” he called down the long wide hall to Baby-Finger. Baby-Finger tapped the stick on his knee and said nothing. What the point of asking Baby-Finger? Just because he had the stick didn’t mean he knew anything. “What do you know anyway, Baby-Finger?” Tap, tap went the stick. He
stopped shouting at Baby-Finger. He knew Baby-Finger didn’t like it. And when Baby-Finger didn’t like something, he got up from his chair, came down the hall, and used the stick. He hated the stick, so he kept his mouth shut and stared out the window at the sea.

  The sea had a smooth shiny skin. Sometimes it shivered, despite the heat. Once a breeze gave it goose bumps. When it passed, the skin was instantly smooth again. He wanted to lower himself onto that skin, very gently so he would not disturb it, and sink into it a little way. He wanted badly to be there. That always happened when he looked out the window long enough. But it was no use. He had asked Baby-Finger a thousand times if he could go lie on the smooth skin, and Baby-Finger was sick of hearing it.

  Once more wouldn’t hurt. “Baby-Finger.” Tap, tap. “Nothing.”

  Nothing. He gazed at the sea.

  “Snakes are biting me,” the snake man whispered in his ear. The snake man liked to come and watch the sea with him. Without looking at the snake man, he turned and left the window. He walked from one end of the hall to the other, searching for the golf ball socks.

  Boom boom. Someone was banging on the steel door. Baby-Finger took the key from his pocket and unlocked it. The door swung open. A man in a white jubba was pushed inside. He stumbled and fell and lay face down on the floor. Baby-Finger locked the door.

  The man in the white jubba was bleeding from the nose and mouth. Drip drip. Slowly a small red pool formed on the floor, quivering with surface tension.

  He forgot about the golf ball socks and went closer to examine the red pool. Somehow he knew it would feel sticky if he touched it with his toe. Once a red pool like that had flowed around his bare feet. He stepped in it. Wet and sticky. He lifted his foot, took it in his hands, and twisted it to look at the sole. It was stained red. What had he done? He would need something to hide it.

  “Have you seen my golf ball socks?” he asked the man on the floor.

  The man raised his head. His face was dark and gaunt. He smiled. “What do you want socks for? It’s too hot.”

  He showed the gaunt man the sole of his foot. “To hide this,” he whispered.

  The gaunt man laughed. “Do you think that’s bad? Look at my face.” He did. It was bad.

  “It is bad.”

  “I know. But don’t worry about it. I’m not.” He lowered his voice. “They didn’t find it.”

  “What?”

  The gaunt man laughed again.

  “What?”

  He kept laughing.

  Tap, tap. “That’s enough,” Baby-Finger said. “Get up.”

  The gaunt man turned and saw Baby-Finger sitting on the chair behind him. He got up. Baby-Finger got up too. “This way,” he said. He led the gaunt man to a cubicle, one of the cubicles that had a dirty curtain across the front. “Go in,” Baby-Finger said. The gaunt man went in and disappeared behind the curtain. “Don’t bother me,” Baby-Finger said to the curtain. “If you do you’ll be sorry.” Baby-Finger walked back to his chair and sat down.

  He waited until Baby-Finger’s eyelids began to droop before tiptoeing across the hall and peeking around the dirty curtain. The gaunt man lay on the mattress, curled up with his knees to his chin. He went inside and looked down at him. “What didn’t they find?”

  The gaunt man stared past him and did not answer.

  “What didn’t they find? My golf ball socks? Have you got them? Have you?” He grabbed the gaunt man’s shoulders and shook him. “Answer me.”

  “Don’t,” the gaunt man whined. He began to cough, a deep cough that sent vibrations through the bones in his shoulders.

  “Then tell me.”

  “Don’t.” The cough was taking over the job of shaking his body.

  “Tell me.”

  “I will. I will. Stop.”

  He stopped. After a minute or two the cough stopped too. The gaunt man lay on the bed panting. Then he stood up and stripped off his jubba. The gaunt man was naked. There was nothing unusual about that. So was he.

  “They didn’t find it,” the gaunt man whispered.

  “What?”

  “You have to whisper.”

  “What?” he whispered.

  The gaunt man raised his left arm. In his armpit was a very small leather pouch, held there by a safety pin stuck through his skin. “This,” he whispered.

  “What is it?”

  “Whisper.”

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  “I’ll show you.” The gaunt man’s right hand reached across his concave chest and up to his armpit; his fingers felt the leather pouch, the pin. They fumbled with it for a while, but they could not make it open. The gaunt man stepped toward him. “Help me.”

  He didn’t like the gaunt man’s smell, but he leaned forward so he could see what he was doing and put his hands in the damp armpit. With one he supported the pouch; with the other he unfastened the head of the safety pin and pulled it slowly out. Two drops of blood about an inch apart appeared beneath the coarse wiry hairs on the gaunt man’s skin. He lowered his arm and took the pouch.

  “It’s a secret,” he whispered.

  “I won’t tell.”

  The gaunt man untied the string that was wound around the mouth of the pouch and turned it upside down. Something very small, no bigger than a pill, fell into his palm. He took it in the tips of his fingers and carefully began to unfold it. It was a tiny wad of paper. Newsprint. The gaunt man smoothed it flat on his palm and held it up so he could see.

  He saw a photograph of a dark young man. In Arabic under the photograph was written: “The Mahdi.” It was his boy.

  It was his boy. He fell on the floor and wept. He wept as hard as he could weep, but it was not enough, so he banged his head against the wooden boards.

  “Quiet,” the gaunt man whispered urgently. “Stop it.” He wept and cracked his head against the floor.

  Hurriedly the gaunt man refolded the scrap of newsprint and thrust it into the pouch. “Be quiet,” he hissed. It was too late. A gust of wind blew into the cubicle as the curtain was swept aside. Up went the stick. And down.

  When he awoke he was bound tightly in cold wet sheets. “Guard,” he shouted. “Guard.” He kept shouting the word until the man he had called Baby-Finger came into the cubicle and stood at the foot of his bed. “Please unwrap me,” he said. “I’m not going to bother you.”

  The guard shook his head. “You say that every time. And every time you bother me.” The guard went away.

  Lying there in the cold wet sheets, his eyes filled with tears. They ran down his cheeks, fell softly on the iron bed frame. He thought about the face in the photograph. It was a powerful face. A hard face. Very little of his boy remained. He had sacrificed the boy. He had hurt a woman named Paulette, long ago. He had thrown away his own chance to make a new life. For what? Tears fell on the iron frame.

  He could have enjoyed the boy. He could have let the boy enjoy him, and be a normal American boy with friends and games and school. Now it was too late.

  But it was not too late to find him, and tell him. Tell him what? That he was sorry? How would the hard face react to that? That he loved him? It would be no better. But none of that mattered. He wanted to be near him. His tears dried up. “Guard. Guard.” The guard would not come. He stopped calling.

  Another man came. “Snakes are biting me,” he said.

  “Go away.”

  “But snakes are biting me.”

  “Go.” He went.

  Much later the guard appeared and began unwrapping the sheets. As they were stripped away he looked down at his body. Was it really him? He had been a strong, muscular man. Now the muscles had shriveled, and most of the flesh as well. What remained hung loosely from his bones.

  He noticed the plastic band on his wrist. Quentin Katz. When the guard had gone he ripped it off. He knew who he was. Isaac Rehv.

  He knew who he was. But not where. Or when. Suddenly he remembered the dirty little mirror on the wall near the toilet. He rose and slow
ly, afraid, walked toward it down the hall. He looked in the mirror.

  An old man looked back at him. He had white hair, a white beard, and a face as gaunt as the face of the man with the pouch. The old man’s deep brown eyes filled with tears and he began to cry, because he knew from the photograph of his son that he could not yet be so old.

  After a long time he turned away from the old man’s eyes. He saw a rectangle of blue shining through the little window. The sea. The Red Sea. He knew what was on the other side.

  Isaac Rehv hurried down the hall. He had to find his son. He would need clothes. And money. But first he had to get out.

  As he approached the steel door he saw the guard look up and finger the long wooden billy that lay across his lap. “Guard,” he said. “I’m better now. I don’t need to be here anymore. Please let me out.”

  The guard laughed.

  “If you can’t do it on your own, let me see someone who can. There must be a doctor here. Call him.”

  “Go back to your bed.”

  “Please.” He laid his hand on the guard’s thick shoulder. The guard jumped up and kicked back his chair. Up went the stick. Rehv ducked to the side and it glanced off his arm. The guard raised the billy again and stepped forward in a wary crouch, his yellow eyes like slits in a lantern. Rehv backed away. The guard kept coming. Rehv felt a wall behind him. The guard smiled. Rehv threw his fist at him, a weak looping punch that struck nothing and put him off-balance. The guard grabbed his arm and spun him around. Down went the stick.

  Blackness.

  “Is this the one?” a man said in Arabic.

  “Yes,” answered another man whose voice he knew. The guard.

  Rehv opened his eyes. He lay on the bed frame, wrapped in cold wet sheets. Looking down at him was a tall man, not much darker than he. Beside him stood the guard; the billy dangled loosely from his maimed hand. The tall man’s curly hair shone with oil; so did his neat mustache. A heavy gold chain hung around his neck, and he was carrying more gold on his fingers and wrists. He wore a white laboratory coat over a Western suit.