‘Am I pressing too hard?’ Gerard asks.
‘Harder.’
My shoes lie where I left them, at the door of the hut; their soles are caked with dry mud, the laces red with sand. My long skirt, my scarf, my bulletproof vest and my helmet are bundled up on the bed. I took them off as soon as I came inside and stood in the middle of the room in my most modest bra and knickers, my skin pale, even though the sun shines here constantly at this time of year, under my arms the pressure marks left by the bulletproof vest. I always use the same underwear on field trips. The reason is al-Shabaab. They may appear as I am working, point their guns at the villagers and kidnap me. If they take a woman prisoner, she is likely to be raped. Kidnappings do not take place very often at the moment, but being kidnapped is possible on every field trip. That is why I always think about it before I leave. And I always think about it when I return to work from holiday. Every time I wonder whether I am ready to take the risk. Is my job worth it? Up until now I have concluded that it is. But if one day I end up in the hands of al-Shabaab’s soldiers, I want my underwear to be modest, and as ugly as possible.
When I returned from the village, I phoned Gerard straight away.
‘Can you come? I don’t want to be alone.’
As always, Gerard came, smiling as warmly and innocently as a child, in a way which I find at the same time charming and irritating, made some tea and offered to massage my back.
Dark hairs grow on the backs of Gerard’s hands. He has black, curly hair and a face that is handsome in a male-model way. When we make love, he asks, ‘What would you like?’ so tenderly and annoyingly that sometimes I would just like to slip away and read a book.
When flirting, Gerard hints at unusual pleasures, but he touches me as conventionally as if he were sitting an exam. When I lie naked next to him, I often wish I were different from the way I am. I wish I were a softer and more open woman, one who could love Gerard as unconditionally as he deserves to be loved. Sometimes, at such moments, I hear Gerard’s mother’s footsteps on the other side of the wall, as clearly as if they were real.
Gerard is the only child of a French diplomatic family. He was a curly-haired, cherubic boy who spent his childhood in various African countries, spoke three languages before he learned to read, ate with a knife and fork while he was still in his high chair, on safari trips he sat in a miniature canvas chair wearing sunglasses during meals, looking longingly at the fuzzy-headed children who were kicking a football made of old T-shirts.
‘Darling, don’t drip mayonnaise on the chair,’ Gerard’s mother would say, cleaning up the drop of mayonnaise that had fallen from a piece of bread before it could leave a stain, spreading more sun cream onto her son’s forehead and promising that they would buy ice cream on the way home.
Gerard hated his canvas chair and did not want any ice cream. He wanted to be with the children whom he saw playing, laughing, running and squabbling around him, whether in South Africa, the Congo or Senegal. He looked on as the other children flitted around in flocks, wrestled, hugged and giggled, on the other side of the fence or the car window, and was too gentle to do anything but nod at his mother, who grasped him by the shoulders and took him inside to watch a movie.
I love that curly-headed boy watching other children from the outside. For the sake of that boy I wish that I could love the grown-up Gerard more.
Gerard’s fingers become softer, slipping downwards from my shoulders, caressing my back and my sides.
‘Massage me some more,’ I say. I sound irritable, although I try to hide it.
‘Am I doing something wrong?’
Gerard is never angry with me. That often makes me want to say something that will definitely hurt him, will make him lose his temper and shout out loud for once. Now Gerard’s voice has its familiar, annoying tone. He blames me, even though he doesn’t say so, I think. I say nothing.
When I was a child, father and mother would argue endlessly about the way they looked at each other, the words they used and each other’s tone of voice.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why?’
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Accusingly.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did.’
The arguments usually happened at night and they would often go on until the pale light of morning came through the gap between the curtains. My parents thought that Aslak and I were asleep, but we were always woken by the arguments. When we were little and still slept in the same room, Aslak came into my bed and I made a nest for us with the blankets, stroked my little brother’s petal-soft hair and read Finn Family Moomintroll out loud.
I was certain that if Gerard and I were still together in ten years’ time, we would argue in the same way. Sometimes I picture us older, surveying each other like dogs forced to fight, always ready to attack. Those images turn my stomach, like water drawn from a dirty well. They are one of the many reasons I do not want to sustain a relationship with Gerard or anyone else. I yearn for another person’s skin and the demands of his touch, not a life partner. The mere thought of couples’ dinners, date nights or working at a relationship makes me feel ill. I want to work for starving children, not at a relationship languishing for lack of passion.
‘No. My shoulders feel . . . Everything feels so pointless.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘While I was away, a child died in the village.’
‘What of?’
‘Diarrhoea.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Her name was Haweeyo. It means the elevated one.’
‘In these conditions what we can do—’
‘She was perhaps eight or nine years old. She wanted to be a doctor.’
‘You need to think about all the children who don’t die.’
I squeeze Gerard’s hand so tightly that it must hurt him.
‘Sometimes I think it would be better if they died too.’
‘Don’t talk like that,’ Gerard says. A red flush spreads across his neck. Polite, well brought-up Gerard can talk endlessly about literature, politics and the influence of terroir on the taste of wine, but blushes every time someone violates the limits of a respectable conversation with wrong opinions or words that are intended to wound.
‘What joy does what we do bring anyone?’ I ask quietly. ‘What joy is there in the medicines and peanut paste that will help them survive one famine, only to wait for the next, lurking immediately on the other side of the dry season, unless al-Shabaab kidnaps them to be sex slaves or soldiers before that happens?’
‘You mustn’t think like that.’
‘Why not?’
‘You can’t set a value on anyone’s life according to what happens in it.’
‘But that’s what we’re supposed to think!’ My voice rises to its highest pitch. A hysterical woman. ‘That’s what we’re paid for, so that we can buy an apartment in Paris or Helsinki and rent it out while we’re here. We know that we can pack it in whenever we want to and that we won’t have to worry about anything. After a couple of years’ work we get a pension on which we can live for the rest of our lives.’
‘This job is not about the money.’
‘It’s a pretty good perk.’
Gerard’s thumb presses so strongly into the hard part of my muscle that the pain flares through my entire body.
‘But for you that’s not what it’s about. Or for any of us,’ says Gerard. ‘Isn’t that the important thing?’
‘What’s it about, for me? Or us?’
‘Helping.’
‘Helping? Who on earth are we? Children from the last millennium? Hey, let’s go and help suffering Africans!’
‘Don’t be mean.’
‘I know you mean well. You always mean well. But you know as well as I do that we can’t help anyone here. And the word itself, helping, what does it mean? We’re not even pretending to help, are we,
but improving conditions together with the local people.’
‘And when we don’t succeed in changing the whole world, it’s pointless to be happy about the fact that we can sometimes save a few children from death?’
‘And then kill them just by making a mistake.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.’
‘Are we disagreeing? Everyone here is going on about how nothing will change. But we stay here, each for our own reasons. I believe that all those reasons are selfish ones, however much we try to pretend otherwise.’
‘You’re not really that cynical.’
Gerard strokes my hand. He sounds so unhappy that for a moment I consider giving up just for his sake, leaving the lonely, curly-haired cherub in peace. But I can’t give up. These things have been gnawing away at me for a long time, but speaking them aloud is never appropriate. Workers who come from abroad do not wish to hear this kind of thing; during work time they talk about work and during time off about things that take one’s thoughts as far as possible from here. The local people do their work in much more difficult conditions than we do, often at the risk of their safety or of their lives. They must believe in what they are doing, and it would be ridiculous for someone like me to complain to them about frustration. Now my words felt cleansing, like coming out of a fever at the end of a long bout of flu.
‘This isn’t cynical. It’s cynical to argue that we’re doing something important. That we’re doing something indispensable, when in reality we get paid incredibly well for artificially keeping people alive, people who have no future.’
‘You can’t define what the future means for an individual. Cultures are so different. People can be happy, even—’
‘. . . If they have nothing? Come on. That’s the world’s oldest and laziest way of salving a bad conscience. Ooh, lovely, poor and happy savages!’
‘Material goods aren’t the only way of defining the meaning of life.’
‘Don’t. You’re too clever for that. Any one of us would kill themselves rather than change places with anyone here.’
I’m shouting. Tears are welling up in my eyes.
‘But we’re here to make something happen. In the next generation things may be better.’
‘Do you really think so? How long have we been here? Ten years? Twenty? Thirty? What has happened in that time?’
‘What’s the alternative?’
Gerard’s voice is a whisper. He stops massaging me and sits on the bed beside me. His neck is sweaty with emotion. He has broad shoulders, big hands and nails which he always keeps short. I hug him tight. I press my face into his coarse, curly hair, which smells of soap imported from France.
‘Yes,’ I say into his hair. ‘We can’t even contemplate the alternative. We can’t imagine a world in which these people or their children could have any hope.’
‘This country is full of people who spend all their time trying to achieve something good. We are here so that they are not left alone. If we left, it would be much harder for them to work. You know that as well as I do.’
Gerard ends the conversation by kissing me, softly and tentatively as always. I undo my ugliest bra myself.
9
The restaurant’s lights are too bright. I almost never wear make-up here, but now I wish I had applied some powder. Under the bright lights my face feels too bare for the gazes of others.
The restaurant is not a restaurant but the dining hut of our barracks. In the middle is a row of long tables with benches on either side; the food is camel meat, rice and lukewarm tea. The same food as at almost every meal. Outside the walls many people have nothing.
At the door Gerard lets go of my hand. Public displays of affection are not approved of here. We have been in this country for long enough for the rules to be easy to remember. You can only walk in the area within the walls; if you leave it, you must wear a bulletproof vest and helmet. Women and men dress soberly and modestly, alcohol is expensive and it is drunk in secret. On holiday in Europe I walk the streets from morning till night, dress in sleeveless shirts and drink beer on park benches. I do things that I used to do before I came here, but they no longer feel the same. Everything that was once ordinary has taken on unfamiliar tones. When I do something that was once everyday and happened unnoticed, I see myself at the same time from the outside, as if someone from this country were watching me. She sits in a beauty parlour stretching out her legs for a slender-wristed woman to massage them. She runs through a dark town listening to the guitar music of the Touaregs and does not notice that the seams of her trousers are about to split. She takes home a man whom she met for the first time two hours ago. She orders in expensive food and reads a book in bed, even though it is only lunchtime.
The cook ladles rice and sauce onto the tin plates. I have been here for so long that, without my asking, she gives me exactly the amount I like – a little rice and a lot of sauce.
‘Mahadsanid,’ I say, trying to smile. I have learned enough Somali to be able to play with the village children and to have simple conversations with the adults. Many of the foreigners here do not know the language at all; that is why the cook and the guards smile at me for a little longer than they do at the others.
I slide onto the bench beside Gerard. Already there are two workers from an Italian refugee organisation and the director of a British food-aid charity who is always looking for a job elsewhere. The bench is too short; the smell of food and the touching thighs and the scents of sweat, hair gel, shaving cream and moisturiser make my stomach churn, like earth so softened by floods that the trees fall to the ground.
Haweeyo loved football, could run faster than anyone else in the village and wanted to make sure none of the village children died when she grew up. Her posture was so upright that it looked as if she were balancing an invisible burden on her head, something wide and heavy which must not be broken. Her eyes were intelligent and her movements focused, and her laughter sounded like the tinkling of wind chimes on a calm evening when someone runs past. She did not want to get married.
‘I don’t want to stop growing,’ she said as she helped me sort through the children’s health cards. ‘Everyone thinks that after the wedding the woman is supposed to shrink and leave space for the man to grow,’ she explained, passing me the cards, which she had stacked in a neat pile.
‘You only have one life. I want to decide what I do myself.’
Her neck was as long and slim as a heron’s; the muscles of her arms were strongly curved. Even though she was still a child, she looked for a moment as if everything in her were sculpted from strong timber swept by storm winds.
Her death was my fault. I could have saved her. I knew that there had been heavy rain in the village and that diseases had spread. I should have returned earlier, should have defied the security department’s ban. I had always managed here, and I would have managed now. I should at least have left the village nurses more nutritional supplements. I should have assessed the situation more quickly, done something differently.
When I left the village for the last time before Haweeyo’s death, she walked beside me to the plane, raising her hand to shield her eyes and staying to watch as the plane rolled down the runway, which had been cleared amid the brush, even when the other children had run off to go on playing or working. She dreamed of many things but got nothing. Everyone says that it was not my fault, but I know it was.
‘You’re still thinking about her,’ says Gerard.
‘Yes.’
‘Why her, in particular?’
I don’t know what to say. In this country you see people die all the time. Many of my local colleagues have died in car-bomb attacks; everyone has lost a member of their family. Children I have cared for are constantly dying of malnutrition, al-Shabaab attacks or illnesses that are curable elsewhere. Those who survive continue their lives shrunk by fear and violence; often their brains have been irreversibly changed by hunger.
In the first weeks, I wept every nig
ht. After work each day I curled up in bed, thrusting a fist into my mouth because the walls of my quarters do not insulate sound and crying until all my limbs hurt. Then I realised how ridiculous I was. No one in this country benefits from my tears. I have come here to work, and if I do my best I can even be of a little use. I stopped crying, imagining a tough bubble between myself and the world, and concentrated on my work. At night, though, I still had nightmares in which children’s faces floated towards me, unsmiling mouths and eyes which would not look away.
I admire my colleagues here. They mourn each death together but still go to work in the morning, run through the day’s tasks and set to. They say they are doing what they can and that they laugh whenever possible. Here people put their own lives in danger to save a neighbour’s child and go on with their lives after attacks and bombings, teaching their children how to read at home and returning to the market to sell fruit and fish. They walk with their heads held high, following what is happening around them, discussing politics and life, their eyes bright, pausing to admire the town when it is gilded by sunset and laughing many times a day. I admire their ability to function, their power to sustain hope, their courage to maintain their dignity, both their own and that of others.
I, too, try to concentrate on action. I try to do everything as well as I can, because the only meaning is in what I can achieve. My tears and my nightmares do not help anyone. My pain is the angst of the privileged. The small minority that has grown accustomed to thinking that dreams can be realised, and if that doesn’t work, you can demand better. A minority that can say, ‘Everything depends on yourself’ and ‘Good things happen to good people’ without a hint of irony and which loses its capacity to function when it finds itself in a situation in which bad things continually happen and almost nothing depends on yourself.
Now, suddenly, on account of a girl with a neck like a heron’s, everything collapses. I need to get away. I don’t know where. On holiday in Europe, images of this country slip without warning into my mind. I see in the human crowds of Paris, Rome, London or Copenhagen the faces of dead children; I listen to my friends’ conversations about music or books and start to cry without being able to explain why. All the same, I would like to be able to pack my bags and travel without a destination, going through unknown countries, concentrating only on how to reach the next place and where to sleep the next night, on border checks and darkening roads strictly controlled by police patrols.
When Time Runs Out Page 3