Butterfly on the Storm

by Walter Lucius

  Farah’s heart skipped a couple of beats.

  ‘Have things taken a turn for the worse?’

  ‘No, but we’re planning to wake the boy up. Someone will have to tell him what happened to him and where he is. Would you mind doing that?’

  Without a moment’s hesitation, she set off and twenty minutes later she exited the lift on the ICU floor. Danielle, who was there waiting for her, immediately took Farah through the anteroom to the boy’s bedside.

  ‘Let me talk you through the procedure,’ Danielle said as they entered the room.

  Farah halted in her tracks. There, asleep in a big bed, bathed in artificial light, was a little boy. His body was intertwined with all kinds of tubes that were attached to a stack of machines and monitors. Seeing the tubes in his nose and mouth, she realized just how vulnerable he was.

  ‘We’re keeping him sedated because of the pain.’ Danielle’s voice sounded muted. ‘But we have to wake him up so the neurologist can test his brain function. He won’t realize what happened to him, and he won’t be able to talk because of the tube down his throat. There’s a very real chance that he’ll panic. You can help him with that.’

  ‘How?’ Farah asked.

  ‘By calmly talking him through what happened and why he’s hooked up to these machines. Explain to him why he can’t talk right now.’

  ‘Okay,’ Farah said. ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as the neurologist gets here.’

  Danielle exchanged a few brief words with the critical care head nurse. Then she introduced her to Farah.

  ‘This is Mariska, she’s looking after the boy.’

  ‘Thanks for helping us,’ Mariska said, shaking Farah’s hand.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Farah replied. ‘Can you tell me what this is for?’ She pointed to a complex construction of tubes which had been inserted into the boy’s carotid artery.

  ‘We use it to administer medication that could be a strain on his regular veins,’ Mariska said. ‘We’re giving him propofol, a sedative, and fentanyl, so he’s not in any pain.’

  At that moment the neurologist entered. The tall woman with glasses greeted Farah with a quick, professional handshake. ‘Let’s get started,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll discontinue the propofol in a minute,’ Mariska said to Farah as she began tying up the boy’s hands. ‘He’ll come to very quickly. The first thing he’ll want to do is pull this tube out of his mouth. As soon as you’ve had a chance to tell him what’s going on, I’ll untie his hands. It’s only a precautionary measure.’

  Farah was getting nervous. She wiped her palms on her trousers and took a couple of deep breaths.

  ‘I’m stopping the propofol now,’ Mariska told the neurologist.

  All four of them were standing around the bed, waiting for the boy to open his eyes. But nothing happened. Not a single reflex. He didn’t wake up.

  The neurologist’s impersonal voice came as an anticlimax.

  ‘It’s not unusual, but if there’s been no response in the next hour or so, we’ll have to do a CT scan and an EEG.’ She checked her watch. ‘Notify me as soon as there are any signs.’ And off she went.

  Farah saw the boy’s chest rising and falling with mathematical regularity and heard the sinister sound of the mechanical bellows providing him with air. Instinctively, she reached for his hand. It felt cold to the touch.

  ‘What could it be?’ she asked.

  ‘He has a head injury,’ Danielle said. ‘When the car hit him, his head slammed against the windscreen. There’s probably some swelling and this in turn can cause bruising of the brain and slow his reactions down.’

  ‘Will he pull through?’

  ‘It’s impossible to say with any certainty at this stage.’

  Farah could tell that Danielle was trying to put a professional face on it, but underneath it all, she was highly emotional.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what you told me this morning,’ Danielle said, her head turned towards the boy. ‘In recent years, I’ve only worked in war zones. The moment they’re brought in, the children with severed limbs, the mothers and fathers with bullet wounds, the soldiers with fatal injuries, I really don’t think about who’s fighting who, why and how unjust it all is. I set to work. I dive in head first. I start cutting, I open a chest, I amputate a leg. I try to save a life, because that’s my job.’ She brushed her hand across the boy’s forehead. Farah was silent.

  ‘The world knows next to nothing about these wars,’ Danielle said. ‘And when you’re in the middle of them, you don’t really think about it either. But since I’ve been working here these past couple of months I’ve been doing so all the more.’ She gave Farah a penetrating sideways look. ‘This morning you said “I haven’t even started yet.” What did you mean by that?’

  ‘The investigation into what happened,’ Farah replied. ‘This is an extremely complicated case.’

  ‘I want as many people as possible to finally see what’s happening to these children. You could play a key role in this. The case is topical right now,’ Danielle said. ‘There’s plenty of interest, especially after that television couple were arrested. And tomorrow something could happen that overshadows this story.’

  Last night Farah had seen a capable doctor at work. The way in which Danielle had taken the initiative in the midst of a crisis had commanded everybody’s respect. The woman in front of her now was guided by personal motives, trying to turn the situation to her own advantage. She shook her head.

  ‘I’m afraid it would be counterproductive to write a story about it at this early stage,’ Farah explained. ‘The story would be punctuated by “maybes” and “possiblies”. I’m after certainty. Solid evidence that the boy was smuggled into the country and that we’re really dealing with a Bacha Bazi ritual. As long as I don’t have that evidence, I won’t write about it. I’m sorry. We’ll have to wait.’

  They both looked at the boy, who was still not responding.

  ‘How long?’

  Farah heard the disappointment in her voice. ‘Longer than you’d care to, I suspect.’ She caressed the boy’s cheek. ‘I hope it wasn’t the main reason you asked me to come here.’

  She didn’t want to hurt Danielle’s feelings, out of admiration for what she’d done last night, but then again she didn’t want to spare her either. ‘The thing is, I’d rather not feel like I’m being manipulated.’

  ‘That sounds rather harsh,’ Danielle said coolly. ‘I thought we were on the same side.’

  ‘We are. I’m going to investigate this. But it may take months. The boy is probably only the tip of the iceberg.’

  ‘I see.’ Danielle sounded downright hostile now. ‘You’re only interested in the boy because he can lead you to something else. That’s all.’

  ‘That’s quite a lot,’ Farah said, her feelings hurt.

  ‘I should have known better. I’m too naive for my own good. Sorry to have brought you over here for nothing.’

  ‘Not for nothing. I want to help you in any way I can, but not with this kind of publicity.’

  ‘This kind of publicity?’ Danielle echoed cynically, but at that moment a slight shudder passed through the boy’s body. His eyelids trembled and slowly parted. Danielle immediately called for Mariska.

  The boy seemed to be staring into nothingness. But when Farah leaned into his field of vision their eyes met and it all came back. The recognition, the fear, the loneliness.

  ‘Shokr e Khoda.’ Thank God, she said, ‘you made it. Do you remember me?’ She felt his hand stirring feebly. ‘You pulled through. And now they’re going to patch you up.’ She looked at him so intently that she barely noticed the neurologist entering the room.

  Suddenly the boy began rolling his eyes and frantically trying to move his limbs.

  ‘His feet!’ Danielle yelled at Mariska when the boy began to kick. ‘Fasten his feet!’

  Farah saw the boy’s panicked gaze darting around the room, and tried to re-establish eye contact with him.


  ‘Ma inja hastom, peshet astom.’ I’m here, I’m with you. Look at me.

  ‘Heart rate!’ she heard Danielle shout. Mariska responded with a figure.

  ‘Calm down now. You were hit by a car. You’ve got very serious injuries. That’s why you’ve got all of these tubes sticking into you. Even in your mouth, so you can’t talk. But it’s all to make you better. Do you understand? Can you hear me?’

  The boy kept thrashing about and rolling his eyes. Unable to get through to him, Farah was close to tears.

  ‘If you hear me, if you understand what I’m saying, please nod. Or squeeze my hand. Khahesh mikonam. Please …’

  She wrapped her fingers around his tiny hand and felt him squeezing back, his eyes suddenly fixated on her.

  ‘Tell him everything,’ Danielle urged her. ‘From the beginning.’

  ‘You’re safe here. I’m with you,’ Farah began. The boy kept looking at her.

  ‘You were in the woods. Then a car came. And hit you. You’ve got a lot of injuries, to your legs and to your stomach. You’ve had surgery. And so that everything that was broken will grow back together again, they’ve put some clever things into your body. Things made of steel. They’ll be taken out again after a while. And then you’ll be able to walk again. Do you understand?’

  The boy nodded. He was starting to look less frantic.

  ‘All those tubes in your body, including the one in your mouth, are there to make you better again. That’s why they must stay in for the time being. When we untie your hands in a minute, you mustn’t pull them out. Do you promise?’

  He gave her an intensely sad look before nodding again. She wiped away the tears rolling down his cheeks.

  ‘Sha-bas.’ You’re very brave, Farah whispered and gave him a kiss.

  ‘You can untie his hands now,’ she said to Mariska. ‘And his feet too.’

  They stood by in silence as Mariska did her job. All were poised to react instantly if, in a reflex, he were to yank at the tubes, but he remained calm.

  ‘You’ve got beautiful eyes,’ Farah said. Although she was smiling, the tears were now rolling down her cheeks too. She heard Danielle’s voice.

  ‘How do I say “hello” to him?’

  Farah told her: salam.

  The boy looked at them with question marks in his eyes.

  ‘She found you,’ Farah said. ‘She brought you here and operated on you. She saved your life. Her name is Danielle. And my name is Farah. I can’t be with you all the time, because I don’t know much about all these machines.’ She turned around and asked Mariska to come and stand next to her for a moment. ‘This is Mariska. She’s here for you. Around the clock.’

  Mariska smiled reassuringly at the boy and asked Farah to explain to him that there was no need for him to be in pain. If he was, he should press the button.

  As Farah told him this, she could feel the pressure of his hand in hers weakening slowly. His eyes closed briefly before opening again.

  Danielle placed a hand on her arm.

  ‘We need to do some tests.’

  27

  From the monumental Blauwbrug, Marouan looked out over the River Amstel towards the Magere Brug – the bridge’s thin wooden structure clearly delineated by small lights. Five white swans in stately formation steered clear of an approaching tour boat that glided almost silently through the dark water.

  From his vantage point on the bridge, he gazed at the tall canal houses and Carré, the old theatre. After sundown this part of Amsterdam had the timeless allure of the early port city it had once been. The decorative use of lights and the old street lanterns gave you the feeling you’d stepped into the seventeenth century, the Dutch Golden Age.

  He’d also stood on this very spot in the middle of the bridge on a lovely spring evening some nineteen years ago, alongside his new bride, Aisha. He wanted her to feel at home in Amsterdam so he took her to visit the heart of it. With the hope of reaching her heart.

  He’d pointed to the lit-up wooden bridge, ‘The Dutch queen comes here every year when we commemorate the end of the Second World War,’ he’d whispered as if telling her a fairy tale. ‘Then, on a float in front of the theatre, a full orchestra plays for her. And people come and moor their small boats to listen to the music.’

  She was silent and looked at him at that moment as if an orchestra also began playing for her.

  She crept closer to him, and he knew then that what they shared must be love. And that this love would work miracles. Move mountains. Build bridges. Break down boundaries.

  He’d been coming here for nineteen years. The bridge felt like his anchor against all that was transitory in this life.

  As the tour boat passed beneath the bridge, his thoughts drifted back to this afternoon’s encounter with the journalist and her editor. It was their first undertaking after being reprimanded by Tomasoa, and Marouan had been determined to show Cal he was worthy of his loyalty. But basically he’d blown it. He’d let himself be provoked by a woman with breasts that no man could resist staring at. And what for? He convinced himself it was exhaustion. But he knew better. He was in need of solace. He knew he could find it there, where he’d riveted his eyes.

  Cal had given him another sturdy pat on the shoulder. ‘Go home, take a shower, talk to your wife. And get some sleep!’

  Aisha was already busy packing when he got home. Everything was straightened up and the house smelled of disinfectant. After taking a shower, he went into the kitchen wearing only his boxers to tell her what was going on. But nothing had to be said. She already knew the story. In recent years she’d long since made up her own story. A story he wasn’t interested in. One marriage. Two stories. And however contradictory these two stories were, they had one thing in common: mutual resignation. The knowledge that there could be no other outcome except sitting opposite each other in a kitchen that smelled of Dettol.

  Marouan stared at his wife from across the table. She had the elusive look of someone who was used to burying her feelings, her thoughts, even her personality on a daily basis. Thinking about the future for her meant thinking about the next day, filled with the same rituals and self-sacrifices.

  He knew it and she knew it too. When she arrived tomorrow late in the afternoon, tired from the flight, and embraced her family, all of the words and emotions, everything she had bottled up for the past year, would erupt. A three-week long torrent, a litany. A long, bittersweet lament.

  After his short monologue at the kitchen table – I’m sorry, problems at work, don’t believe everything people say, it’s been shown on television, you go ahead with the kids, I’ll come later – he’d staggered off to bed. Then came a brief, coma-like sleep. The smell of dinner woke him. For a second he thought he’d dreamt what had happened that day and the night before. But at the kitchen table Jamila and Chahid’s faces suggested otherwise.

  ‘Did Mum tell you?’

  They nodded. He could tell from their uneasiness that they’d seen the whole thing on TV. Also, they could tell he was embarrassed. Therefore nobody had much of anything to say. They ate in silence. Then he announced he had to go back to work.

  He’d left the Corolla in the Bijenkorf department store’s car park. He crossed the cobblestones in front of the Oude Kerk and stopped beside the church to watch her from a safe distance away. The way she stood there. In red lingerie. Behind the street-level glass door. He’d seen her for the first time weeks ago. She reminded him of Aisha when she was young. She recognized him, smiled and waved. He’d continued on his way.

  Now he was in the middle of the Blauwbrug. Alone. Nineteen years ago, on this very spot, he promised himself that he would protect his young, shy wife for ever. He would give her everything within his means. He would kiss the ground she walked on. He’d done his best. Given her two children. Bought her a house in a better neighbourhood. Paid for redecorating; let her furnish it how she saw fit. Made the yearly holiday to Morocco financially possible. Paid her monthly phone bills. Set
aside funds so Jamila and Chahid could study later on. All of this with only one purpose: to make sure she was happy in life.

  He walked on, across the Blauwbrug, in the direction of Rembrandtplein. He entered the Golden Game Casino on the square, bought some chips, headed directly to the large round table covered in green felt – surrounded by all-too familiar faces – where 8-Game Mix, Blind Man’s Bluff and Ace to Five Draw were his preferred choice of poker games.

  Nineteen years gone – having already lost so much, it felt like there was nothing left to lose.

  28

  Before she’d even left the hospital car park, Farah was playing U2 at top volume in the car. She flew along the ring road and into the Zeeburgertunnel, heading downtown. It wasn’t until she reached Nieuwmarkt that she stepped on the brakes and continued at a crawl among the crowds. The square was teeming with tourists and locals who’d all been drawn to the summer festival.

  Long after she’d found a parking space she remained seated in the Carrera.

  The meeting with Danielle Bernson continued to haunt her. The look she’d given Farah as they said goodbye was the provisional low point of an intense twenty-four-hour sequence of events and confrontations.

  Names from a remote corner of her past had been dredged up. The spirit of a dead man had stood silently beside her this afternoon. She thought of the cold hand of the boy in intensive care. Of the eyes of Paul Chapelle in the butterfly garden.

  Standing in her apartment, she noticed the orderly line-up of the cushions on the large dark-brown sofa, the symmetrical arrangement of the three sanded tree trunks she used as side tables and the careful composition of the photos on the cork board. It put her on edge. After making a pot of herbal tea and slipping an Anoushka Shankar CD into the player, she took an enamel bowl from the china cabinet in her fifties-style kitchen and mixed two tablespoons of honey with three tablespoons of yogurt. She carried the mixture through to the bathroom where she turned on the hot-water tap, undressed, lit some incense sticks. Then she went back into the living room to get Vogue USA and sprinkled a few drops of almond oil into the bathwater.