Far From My Father's House

by Jill McGivering

  ‘Two people are killed.’ The worker ran a finger across his throat. ‘A man and a girl.’

  Frank looked around. ‘Take a doctor down.’

  The worker shook his head. ‘No need getting a doctor.’

  The chants were becoming clearer and more unified. The worker shifted from foot to foot. Frank started to issue orders, organizing groups of men to secure the supply trucks and drive the vehicles away from the camp. The men scurried to and fro. Ellen listened hard to the chanting. She could hear other noises now, underpinning the voices. Screams and the splintering of wood. Frank was on his radio, calling for backup. The guards, mostly thin, elderly men, stood quietly, watching the frantic activity, hugging their guns to their chests. They looked afraid.

  ‘What is it?’ Britta emerged from the medical tent and came to join Ellen in the sea of rushing men.

  Ellen said: ‘Two deaths.’

  Britta stared. ‘Typhoid?’

  ‘Killed. There’s some sort of riot.’

  ‘Killed?’

  Frank called over. ‘I’m evacuating. The police know. What help do you need getting the patients out?’

  Britta shook her head. ‘They’re too sick.’

  Frank looked impatient. His radio was squawking in his hand. ‘Think what you need and let me know.’ He attended to the radio.

  Britta turned back to Ellen. ‘These women are very sick.’ Her hand strayed up to her cross and she started to run it up and down its chain. ‘I can’t move them.’

  The men had finished loading. Frank’s right, Ellen thought. We must get the women out. It’s not safe. The men slammed shut the doors of the first truck and revved up the engine. It played a jingly mechanical tune as it reversed out through the gates.

  Frank was striding back towards them. The shouts and bangs were getting louder. ‘So how’re we doing this?’

  Britta stood her ground. ‘They stay here and I stay too.’

  Frank tutted. ‘I don’t think that’s smart, the—’

  ‘Men can’t move them. Don’t you see? They think that’s indecent.’

  He considered this. ‘They can’t walk?’

  ‘They can’t walk.’

  ‘Can they get in a truck?’

  ‘They can’t be moved.’

  ‘I don’t think you get this. They can’t stay. It’s not safe. These men are out of control.’

  Britta’s face was set. Her feet were firmly planted. Frank sounded exasperated but Ellen could see he wasn’t going to persuade her. There was an uneasy silence.

  ‘I’ll stay.’ Ellen nodded to Frank. ‘You go. We’ll be OK.’

  He didn’t look convinced. His radio was spitting voices again and he lifted it as far as his cheek, then hesitated. ‘What if—’

  ‘We’ll be fine. Go on.’ Ellen put her hand on his arm, and pushed him away.

  He shook his head, still looking at her as he put the radio to his mouth and started to speak.

  Ellen looked through the ward’s half-light at the two lines of cots and the shapes of the women curled listlessly on top of them, covered with sheets. The few thin columns of sun which penetrated were swirling with motes of dust. The noises from outside were muted. Inside, the ceiling fans pulsed. The medical equipment emitted a steady mechanical whirr.

  At the far end of the ward, a young assistant was washing the pouched skin of a frail elderly woman, turning and positioning her with care.

  Ellen turned to Britta, calculating. ‘Where’s Fatima?’

  ‘Off this morning. She worked so late last night.’

  So just three of them. They would have to work quickly. ‘Let’s move the cots away from the walls.’ The canvas didn’t offer much protection. ‘We’ll tell the patients there’s a storm coming and the tent might leak.’

  Britta gestured to the assistant and they started tugging the cots out, one by one, trailing the drips on their stands. Ellen ran to the entrance and unfurled the heavy flaps. They zipped and fastened. She weighed their thickness. They wouldn’t be hard to breach. She stood for a second, thinking. They needed more protection. Some sort of barrier.

  She crossed the ward to the far end and ducked through the canvas into the back rooms. Britta’s laptop was on, shedding eerie blue light. Around it, the table was a mess of accounts and orders. The walls behind were stacked with large cardboard boxes of medical supplies.

  She laced her arms around a pile of three boxes and tried to drag them away, digging her heels into the floor. Her back bowed with the strain. Solid. Just too heavy. She couldn’t budge them an inch.

  She tried again from a different angle, this time squeezing in between the stacks and lying with her shoulder against the lowest box to push them out. They wouldn’t slide. Nothing. The boxes didn’t even shift. They were leaden. She sat on the floor, breathing hard. There must be a way.

  She pulled out Britta’s chair and climbed up alongside the stacks, reaching to the top box to rip off the tape and tear open the flaps. Her fingers scrabbled through packets of medicine. She plucked them out by the handful. Aspirin. Dehydration salts. She threw them to the ground. Antibiotics – a whole layer of those. Tubes of antiseptic cream. They bounced and scattered at her feet.

  Her fingers delved further. They found something more solid. Underneath the medicines, a second layer. Not cardboard packets but cold, smooth metal. She ran her fingers round the edges. Too big and heavy to lift. She raised herself and peered in. Cooking oil. Not one tin but a lot, a dozen or so. And large. Gallon tins, maybe. Each one could last a family for more than a month.

  She rested her forehead on the edge of the box and closed her eyes, trying to catch her breath. Her face was damp with sweat. This made no sense. Outside, the shouts were louder, moving nearer. She got down and moved the chair further along, then tore open another box and rifled through. The same thing. On the top, a shallow layer of medicines, bandages and medicated cream. But underneath these things, rice. Family-sized sacks. Salt. She moved again. This time, she put her hands behind the box and pushed. It shuddered, shifted, then fell crashing to the floor. It bounced, burst down one seam and settled. Medicines spilt across the ground. Underneath, metal cooking pots clanged together, shining through the split cardboard. Blankets flopped round them, oozing out through the gaps.

  She sat down heavily on the chair and put her head in her hands. A layer of tablets across the top of each box would fool someone making a quick spot check. The weight was the only clue that these were not normal boxes of medicines. Her eyes moved along the wall of boxes, calculating the amount, the value of the hidden household goods. This was just one room. There were even more boxes stacked next door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Britta was in the doorway. She stared at the mess.

  Ellen pointed to the cooking pots and blankets. ‘What’s this doing here?’

  Britta looked confused. ‘They must have sent the wrong box. This is medicine.’

  Ellen couldn’t look at her. She paused. ‘Do you do the orders yourself?’

  ‘I place them. Fatima takes care of delivery. She is so efficient.’

  Ellen thought of Fatima’s photographs of her children back home in Cairo. The girl with neatly clipped hair and the younger boy with shy brown eyes.

  She got to her feet, brushed off her clothes. ‘I thought we could move these onto the ward. Make a barrier. But let’s forget it. They’re too heavy.’

  The three of them crouched together between the cots. The shouts from the men were raucous and steadily advancing. Layla’s sister was softly moaning. The Pakistani assistant reached over and stroked her hand, murmuring to her in Pashto.

  We shouldn’t be here, Ellen thought. Frank was right. It isn’t safe. She looked round the ward. The mob could easily set fire to the tent. There were only the three of them inside who could walk. They’d struggle to get the patients out.

  She turned to Britta: ‘Where’s the fire extinguisher?’

  Britta bit her lip. ‘It’s on order.’
<
br />   Water. There was a drum of water at the back of the ward. It wasn’t much but it might douse a small fire. Ellen assessed the distance. She could reach it in a few seconds. It would buy them time to move.

  The chanting was getting louder. The voices were heady and excited. The pounding of feet was so close and heavy now that Ellen could feel tremors through the soles of her boots. A crash. Nearby. Splitting wood. The young assistant whimpered.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Ellen kept her voice level. ‘Stay calm.’

  Britta had closed her eyes. Her hand was clutching her cross, her lips moving silently. She seemed to have entered a world of her own, detached from the rest of them. The young Pakistani woman crawled across the floor to Ellen and groped for her hand. Her fingers were hot and hard. She was wide-eyed with fright.

  The men loomed outside, dark shapes against the canvas. The chants had become ragged bellows. Ellen couldn’t make out the words but she heard the aggression. The crowd had spun out of control. Her legs juddered. At the first sign of them breaking through, she thought, we must move fast. The distorted shadows of the men rose on the tent wall. Sticks or guns lengthened their waving arms.

  There was a sudden thud. A rock. The canvas billowed where it struck and bounced off. The men outside roared. The assistant screamed, then put her hand to her mouth. Her cheeks were pale.

  The canvas is damp, Ellen was thinking. If they torch it, it may take time to burn.

  There was a second thwack against the canvas wall. A cry of jubilation from the crowd. A third rock was thrown.

  The Pakistani girl was crushing Ellen’s hand. Ellen prised off her fingers, one by one, and patted her arm. She ran along the back of the cots. The flaps across the main entrance were still fastened but dark shapes were moving beyond them. They were swarming there. If they decided to cut their way in, it would only be a matter of minutes. She looked back at the cluster of cots, the patients. Very few of them could walk, even a short distance. They could carry some but it would be slow work. We’ll drag them in blankets, she thought. One at a time. We should start.

  She called to the assistant to help and ran to the nearest patient. A girl, only about nine or ten years old. She was lying on her back. Her cheeks were hollow, her eyes large and wet. Ellen lifted her shoulders and tried to ease her into a sitting position. The girl clung to her. She was skeletal, a mass of protruding bones. I could carry her a short distance. She can’t be heavy. The assistant crouched, staring, her face puckering.

  ‘Please.’ Ellen gestured to her. ‘We need to get moving.’

  The rocks were coming rapidly now. They pelted the canvas with heavy thuds, made sudden black circles, then crashed to the ground. They’ll grow bored of that soon. They’ll want more. They always do. Ellen’s muscles were taut. She was bracing herself to take the girl’s weight. Her senses were straining for the acrid smell of smoke, a burst of flame.

  Outside, a man started to shout, louder than the rest. His voice was piercing. The assistant put her hands to her face.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Praise be to Allah.’ The assistant’s mouth was hanging open.

  The chanting died back. The man’s voice rose above it. He was giving some command. Whatever instructions they were, the men were listening.

  ‘What is it?’ Ellen hugged the patient to her chest, one arm under her legs, ready to swing her off the cot.

  The assistant started to laugh. Her eyes were screwed shut. ‘No problem.’ Her face flushed, colour rushing into her cheeks. ‘No problem, madam.’ She flapped her hands at Ellen, making no sense.

  A scuffle. The dark mass against the canvas shifted. Footsteps. Another shout.

  ‘What? Do we need to move? Tell me.’

  The assistant opened her eyes. They were shining with relief. ‘Not here. He said that. He said, “Go to another place.”’

  Thank God. Ellen rocked the young girl in her arms. Her hot cheek was pressed against Ellen’s neck, her breath moist. Thank God.

  ‘Good.’ Britta opened her eyes. She had come back to them. She stretched out her legs, adjusted her clothes.

  Ellen lowered the girl back onto her pillow. ‘It’s all right,’ she told her. ‘All over.’ She smoothed the girl’s hair away from her face and realized how hard her own hands were shaking.

  ‘I knew they wouldn’t hurt us.’ Britta looked pleased, almost smug. She was getting to her feet, looking round the chaos of the gathered cots.

  Ellen watched her in disbelief. So close. Another minute and they’d have been inside. Those men could have burnt the place down, killed them all.

  Britta grasped one end of a cot and gestured to the assistant to take the other. The assistant, still curled on the floor, dipped her head. She looked limp with exhaustion.

  Britta clapped her hands. ‘Come on. Hurry. Hurry.’ She was all smiles and jollity, as if nothing had happened. ‘Let’s move these good ladies back to their normal places, no?’

  The assistant’s face crumpled and she began to sob.

  An hour later, Ellen set off through the camp with Frank and six policemen. A guard from the camp trailed behind, dragging his gun. The presence of the police undermined his authority and he seemed sullen with resentment.

  None of the villagers she passed would look her in the eye. The men crouched, embarrassed, beside their broken shelters and turned away their faces. It was impossible to tell who amongst them had been part of the rampage and who victims of it.

  They followed the route the rioters had taken. There was evidence of destruction everywhere. Shelters were in ruins, their struts split and gaping. Plastic sheeting, the only defence against sun and rain, lay torn and trampled underfoot. Two women, a mother and daughter, bent low, sifting through the wreckage. The daughter extracted a bent ladle, straightened it across her knee and added it to a pile of recovered possessions beside her. Her small boy crouched in the dirt next to her and watched in silence as they passed. A stillness hung over the camp, a mixture of despair and the exhaustion of spent anger.

  The two bodies had been dumped on waste ground amongst sweating heaps of rubbish and cooking filth. They were untended, unmourned. The policemen stopped a few feet away and looked to their senior officer for instruction. Frank turned to speak to him. Ellen picked her way alone through the litter-strewn mud and stooped over the corpses, shielding her mouth and nose with her scarf.

  Doc was lying on his back. The gash across his throat was black with feeding flies. Beside him, the young girl’s body was grotesquely twisted. Her dupatta was narrow and tight round her broken neck. Ellen recognized her from Khan’s party, one of the five girls who’d huddled together and shared a cigarette.

  She still had the rounded prettiness of a teenager. Her plump skin was cheapened by heavy powder which had caked and creased into lines near her lips. Her eyes, wide and staring, reflected the slowly shifting clouds overhead. Ellen leant down and gently closed them. The eyelids were thin and dry. When she pulled away her hand, her fingertips were specked with mascara.

  Frank and the policemen watched in silence. Ellen stepped back to join them.

  ‘I’ve seen her before,’ she said. ‘At the hotel.’

  Frank didn’t reply. He made a sign to the police officer and his men moved in, unrolling thick sheets of plastic. They lifted Doc’s body first, one taking the shoulders and the other the feet, and swung him onto one. Then they did the same with the girl. They wrapped each of them round and, staggering, carried the two bodies away. The senior officer nodded to Frank as they passed.

  Frank was half-turned from her, his hands on his hips. She followed his gaze across this outlying area of the camp. A wooden stave had been broken in two, its jagged end splintered. It was sticking up like a battered mast in the sea of trampled sheeting and dirtied canvas. A kicked cooking pot, half-hidden, nestled on its side.

  ‘You shouldn’t have stayed.’ Frank sounded weary. ‘They could have killed you.’

  ‘But they didn’t.’
r />   A dog trotted onto the waste ground and nosed through the debris. It was mangy, panting lightly. Its tongue dangled from one side of an open mouth.

  ‘Now what?’ Frank spoke softly. He shook his head, sighed. ‘We rebuild all this. All over again.’

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  He shrugged. ‘Taliban. Making it clear they can strike when they want to. Just in case anyone was starting to feel safe here.’

  Ellen thought of the young man who called himself Saeed. ‘You know who they are. Do something. Lean on the police.’

  ‘I can’t.’ He moved a little away from her, lifted his hands from his hips and rubbed his face with his palms. ‘It’s not like that.’

  The clouds were massing. A breeze whipped low across the plains. If it rained now, there would be nowhere to shelter.

  ‘Why choose Doc and the girl? Punishing them for immoral behaviour?’

  ‘I guess so.’ He seemed distracted.

  Ellen wanted to shake him. ‘These men are thugs, Frank. Murderers. Why won’t you do anything?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’ He was barely listening.

  She reached out and seized his arm, forcing him to pay attention. ‘I saw him. Saeed. Going into your room.’

  Frank looked away. He didn’t speak for a long time. Then he said, without energy: ‘So what?’

  ‘So what?’ She wanted to shake him.

  He wouldn’t look at her.

  ‘Are you talking to them? Doing some deal?’

  He lifted her hand from his arm and used it to turn her until they both faced out towards the mountains. He let her hand drop. ‘That’s what you think, huh?’

  The peaks had disappeared into mist. Dark rivers of birds were flying low over the foothills, twisting and wheeling. He was tense. When he finally spoke, his tone was even and his voice low. ‘I got fired from my last job. I guess you heard.’

  She didn’t speak.

  ‘You know why? For paying rebels so we could get aid through. Everyone did. We had to. They controlled the road.’