‘I will get you out, Sherif. Yes, darling, you don’t need to go back. I will get you out.’
‘That’d be nice,’ murmured Sherif with a little stutter of laughter.
‘Where were you?’ she whispered. She looked around to see if anyone was listening. No. The captain was outside by the counter, talking to the guards.
‘Don’ know,’ said Sherif, struggling with the words. ‘They said Kassala but I think I was here all the time. Moved me once. But only a short way.’ He got a fit of stuttering laughter again. ‘They don’t give you any exact address.’
Prim stood and took firm but gentle hold of either side of the hem of the sheet which covered his lower body. She lifted it deftly, in a manner meant to cause no pain. No one was there to tell her to desist. His penis and scrotum were swaddled more or less in the manner of his ribs. From Amnesty reports she knew that torturers, from Chile to Northern Europe, infallibly settled on the genitals, male and female, converting love to loathing, fertility to ashes. Beloved Sherif had the mark on him of the twentieth century – the bite-marks of electro-genital torture. Prim swallowed tears, said nothing, lowered the sheet.
A nurse, frowning behind an elegant white mask, emerged from the deeper, bluer corners of the room and wagged a finger. The nurse remained, supervising, for about twenty seconds during which Sherif turned his eye slits satirically to Prim. His pervasive attitude seemed to be one of manic amusement, more odd than welcome.
‘Forgive me,’ Prim whispered to him. ‘You had a beautiful body and they’ve ruined it.’
‘A few dents,’ said Sherif, overtaken by painful hilarity. ‘No permanent harm.’
Behind her Prim was aware that orderlies were moving out the shrouded body, and the two white-clothed parents moved by in its wake, guttural grief in their throats.
But the spirit, thought Prim, weeping for Sherif.
He muttered, ‘Don’t let them make you do anything …’
‘I’d do anything,’ she said. ‘I’ll sign anything. I’ll take you back to Australia …’
‘Waltzing Matilda,’ he said. ‘Awt-zing Matiya,’ it came out. And was he trying to wink with one of his swollen eyelids? ‘Don’t do everything they ask.’ Then he grinned painfully and seemed to say, though she couldn’t have sworn, ‘I’m at home in the cupboard of screams.’
She wanted to ask, ‘Cupboard of screams?’ Yet it was cruelty to make him reiterate.
‘Don’t feel you have to talk,’ she said. She sat close by him so that he could hear her breath. She thought for some reason that might be a comfort. It may have been, for soon she could tell by his breathing that he was all at once asleep. She got up and walked to the door. The captain was not visibly there, though she could hear him still talking to someone in the office. The parents of the dead boy occupied a bench, the woman mourning softly, the tall husband leaning across her and holding her with a hand on each shoulder. Their posture, a little short of intimacy and all the more poignant for that, jolted her. She had not had time to recognise them earlier, but she recognised them now. The man looked up when he felt the weight of Prim’s inspection. It was Professor el Rahzi.
‘Primrose,’ he said, ‘Did you hear?’
He thought she had come to console them in something. But the boy in the corner? The captain had called him a young martyr. He must have presumed that. A hero of the Southern war.
‘You were in there?’ asked Khalda el Rahzi.
‘I was visiting Sherif.’
The el Rahzis stood and Khalda’s lovely eyes rose to her but they were blurred and unknowing – loss had driven all reason from them.
‘Sherif?’ asked the professor.
‘He’s safe,’ Prim said. ‘They are letting him go.’
‘Oh,’ said the professor. ‘Thank God.’
‘See,’ insisted Khalda el Rahzi, ‘how we are placed, Primrose? Our son Safi …’
Her mouth cracked apart in a low, twisted plaint.
‘That was Safi?’ she asked.
The professor helped his wife sit again on the bench. He said, ‘We are waiting for the undertakers.’ He too was overcome a second. ‘The funeral is to take place in the morning. We will bury him here in Omdurman, for he has ancestors buried here. You cannot join the funeral procession, of course. You must be with Sherif. But would you, if you have time, join us for hidad tomorrow evening? Or the next day?’
‘Of course I would. What …?’
‘They tell us a truck hit a mine. But it is not a mine injury. It’s all contusions and fractures. A mine is different. We think he was beaten and thrown from a truck.’
‘Oh dear God!’
‘We wonder which indiscretion we have been blighted for. Our only child and only son. Too late for Connie Everdale now. Too late to send him to England or America for graduate work. We might bear an accident. But we cannot bear the conviction that it was capital punishment.’
He reached his hand down to Khalda’s shoulder but did not himself sit. ‘Is it for one of those articles I wrote about the university crisis? Our people deserting a dozen at a time and going away. The entire economics department. Teaching cost-accounting in America. And here in proud Khartoum, no one but senior students teaching the undergraduates! My silent colleagues seek safe refuge in Nebraska and California and the University of East Anglia. And their children breathe.’ He looked away a second, not wanting Prim to see his dolorous eyes. ‘Or was it the slave thing? Was it that? Or was it Safi’s own activism? He was such an opinionated young fellow. But that’s what being young is for! We are a reckless family but do we deserve the death penalty?’
Prim sat by Khalda and held her, felt the woman’s convulsed and juddering frame within her arms.
The professor said, ‘But they have let Sherif go, so not everything is destroyed.’
Khalda began to murmur to herself in rapid Arabic, but her voice rose, so that el Rahzi also sat down to console her. At that second the captain appeared in the office doorway.
‘Well, Miss Bettany?’ he asked.
Prim turned from the el Rahzis. What could be done for them anyhow, in the absoluteness of Safi’s loss, and the absoluteness of Sherif’s redemption?
‘I shall drive you to the ministry,’ he said.
‘Tonight?’
The policeman nodded.
‘I will say goodbye,’ she said.
‘He is asleep,’ said the captain, squinting into the ward.
‘But I shall say goodbye.’
‘Be quick.’
She went and woke Sherif. She did not want him to find her gone and wonder was her visit a delusion.
He smiled creakily through his engorged lips.
‘I’ll be back,’ she said.
In her weeks of waiting for the reappearance of Sherif, Prim had received many faxes of counsel from the director of Austfam, Peter Whitloaf. The picture of Prim and her placard had appeared in most Australian newspapers, it seemed. The board of Austfam felt a responsibility for Sherif, who had worked under contract to them, and had written letters of protest to the Sudanese Command Council, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of the Interior. They were negotiating with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs in the hope that a formal Australian government protest might be mounted, though Peter Whitloaf said the gorvernment was loath to act without due investigation, given that Sherif was not an Australian national, and the true nature of his crimes could not be ascertained.
Whitloaf had apologised to Prim for leaving her on her own without colleagues to turn to. Austfam was sending a man named Mike Lunzer from the Melbourne office. Mike had the benefit of being a lawyer as well as having headed a large Austfam team in Cambodia. He was due in a week – there had been delays getting an appropriate visa, not least because of her public protest in Central Khartoum, and Whitloaf, on the very morning of the day she saw Sherif in the Military Hospital in Omdurman, advised her to go on holding her fire until Mike arrived. She should hold off any further demons
trations, and not enter any negotiations with the Sudanese government, if that was what she was thinking of.
But on the drive back to Khartoum that night, all this advice was distant static to Prim. She neither objected to nor felt afraid at being locked in the back of the vehicle on this journey. What she had seen in the blue-lit ward made all caution seem fatuous. Trailing behind the captain along verandahs and through corridors at the ministry, she was distracted by fear and hope, but also seemed to be walking into distance, like someone walking down one of those long chutes which, at modern airports, funnelled passengers into planes. The misery in which the professor and his wife Khalda were sunk seemed already part of the landscape of an abandoned country.
Through outer offices, past abandoned desks, the captain took her straight to a double door. Here, he reached for her elbow, as if to position her correctly, and then knocked.
‘Idxulu,’ she heard uttered softly from within.
The lighting of the office into which she was ushered was low, but a computer glowed splendidly at the large desk behind which sat a youngish man, slim and handsome, in a cream suit. His tie was a ribbon of plain green silk. He had the features of an unviolated Sherif. Dr Hamadain, Sherif’s cousin. He had been out of the country, part of some delegation, when Prim in desperation had tried to contact him to help Sherif. The captain led her to a seat opposite this stylish bureaucrat, said ‘Good night’ twice in English, and left.
‘I shall send you home with my driver, Miss Bettany,’ said Dr Hamadain, one eye on the glowing machine, one hand entering or altering data.
‘There is no need,’ she said. ‘I could catch a bus. Khartoum has been my home city for six or seven years now.’
‘Ah,’ he said, still distracted by the screen, ‘but I don’t think it was quite your home, was it?’ He concluded his work and hit the enter button. ‘For example, I’m not sure that you ever quite understood the Sudanese way.’
‘I regret it if I haven’t. But if the Sudanese way has anything to do with what happened to your cousin, I don’t mind not understanding that bit.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I am sure Sherif was beaten. Of course, this would never happen with Western justice systems.’
‘Sherif seems to have been through genital torture.’
‘That didn’t happen,’ said Dr Hamadain. He was very sure on the point. ‘Blood is thicker than water. If there were so-called “ghost houses” and electric shocks, would I not be concerned?’
‘Visit him! Look at him!’
‘We are trying to create a particular state here in the Sudan. An Islamic revolutionary state, secure, prosperous and fraternal. In the process – well, every penal system has its sadists. The world over, Miss Bettany, revolutionary, reactionary. The French police? Well, I don’t have to say more! If Sherif were an Algerian, how do you think he would fare if he refused to help with the processes of French state security?’
Prim asked, ‘That’s why Sherif was tortured? For refusing to help the – what is it? – “processes of state security”?’
‘I’m told something like that. But don’t quote me. It’s not my area. This is the Foreign Ministry, and you are more an issue for me than Sherif is.’
It was true. The only question was what she must do to make Sherif safe. Dr Hamadain returned to his computer, brought up a file, and as he pressed keys, his printer began to hum. A page rolled from it. He picked it up and handed it to Prim.
‘This is the statement you must make. Once you do so, the security people are willing to clean the slate on Dr Sherif Taha. The police and the Justice Department are willing to take into account the time he has served and do not intend to proceed to charges. So read it, Miss Bettany. Amendments are possible. But in the end you can sit in the Sydney Opera House and tell everybody how benighted we are. Is that a fair contract?’
She scanned the page. It said,
My name is Primrose Bettany, and I am an aid worker representing the Australian NGO Austfam in the Sudan. In my time in the Sudan I have been guilty of a number of unauthorised acts, including espionage. Contrary to the permitted and agreed limits of my task, I interviewed enemies of the Sudan and broadcast their unfounded opinions of the Sudanese revolutionary government as fact throughout the world and to sundry international organisations. I was guilty of being involved in unauthorised landings in southern Sudan and of participating in the removal of a number of Sudanese nationals without authorisation to a foreign country. When a friend of mine was detained under emergency laws, instead of working through appropriate government channels, I orchestrated a prejudicial and vainglorious event for the international media. I regret these activities, and acknowledge that the Sudanese revolutionary government has no choice but to expel me. I ask its pardon, and the pardon of the Sudanese people whom I have wronged.
Prim looked up at Dr Hamadain. The words ‘prejudicial and vainglorious’ coloured her mind and threatened to undermine her. ‘Which Sudanese people have I wronged? I haven’t wronged Dinkas, or Nuer, or Nuba.’
He sighed. ‘Do you care to quibble, or do you want to get Sherif out?’
‘I want to get Sherif out. Will he be given an exit visa?’
‘I can’t give an absolute guarantee, but I shall bring my influence to bear on that. I mean, I’ll seek to ensure it happens. You have my word.’
‘And will you expel Austfam itself?’
‘That’s still being considered. It’s very likely. But after your poor behaviour, I can’t make any deal on that!’
‘But you solemnly pledge Sherif’s visa.’
‘I do, to my utmost goodwill and ability, yes. Let him go away and complain about us to the kangaroos!’
‘When will I see him again?’
‘When he’s released from hospital. I believe that will be in a few days.’
She knew she must sign the statement. ‘I would like to add Austfam to the list of those I apologise to.’
‘I’m sure the government has no problem with that,’ he said, looking at the screen. He keyed in a sentence, and the printer whirred again, producing three pages, one of which he passed her.
She read it and nodded. ‘Do I sign it?’
‘You sign all three pages of the statement. Then you will read it. We have a television and audio studio here in the ministry.’
‘When will I read it?’
‘Tonight. As soon as you’re ready.’
‘My God,’ she said, and began to tremble.
‘You’ll be fine, Miss Bettany,’ Dr Hamadain told her as if she were a nervous actress.
‘But if it will be on television, I must see the Arabic translation.’
Hamadain shook his head in amused disbelief. ‘We don’t have the time to argue over an Arabic draft. I tell you it will be fair. You are making a very thorough confession anyhow. It will not be softened by Arabic. On the other hand I assure you we won’t call you Satan incarnate or such. We want you to go home safely.’
He was solicitous as he guided her from the office and, trailed by some sort of bodyguard in a white galabia, accompanied her into the small strobe-lit room where two men – a camera operator and a sort of floor manager – were covering with white cloth the wall-sized view of Khartoum in front of which members of the Command Council generally made their pronouncements to the people. She was unworthy to be identified with Khartoum, unworthy of the Elephant’s Trunk, the confluence of both Niles.
It was Hamadain himself who became her director: after the first read-to-camera, he said, ‘Maybe once more to be safe.’ Both times she read without emphasis but without playing tricks, without twitches, winks, or avoidance of the camera with her eyes. What was the point of ambiguous gesture when the confession was so comprehensive? And in so far as there was life in the confession, she wished to convince herself that it was the sort of life which would signal to those she loved – the el Rahzis, Helene, Dimp – her fundamental unrepentance.
‘Thank you, Miss Bettany,’ Hamedain said.
The cameraman stood back from the one fixed-angle camera. He looked very bored for a man who had just heard the utterances of an enemy of his people. Accompanied at a distance of perhaps four metres by the bodyguard in white, Sherif’s cousin escorted her out of the front door of the ministry. Any idea that she could find her own transport now was a little fanciful. All her efforts went to combat the numbness in her neck and shoulders, and the grotesque urge to lean against a wall and vomit. A Mercedes stood below the stairs, and a driver, smoking, was propped against the passenger-side door.
In a lowered voice, Dr Hamadain said, ‘I’m glad we could finalise this. There will be policemen in cars placed either end of your street to prevent harm to the Austfam offices and to you. They may follow you when you drive too, so don’t be alarmed. You won’t hear from me again. But if you get anxious because Sherif seems a little time in hospital, call me at this number.’ He gave her a card. ‘Don’t worry. We are not playing ducks and drakes. You are too ruthless. What you did in Central Khartoum, that was ruthless.’
‘There are societies,’ she said, swallowing, ‘where it would be a routine little gesture.’
‘And a futile one,’ said Dr Hamadain. ‘Peace be with you. I believe your Sydney is a golden city, and perhaps in happier times I shall see you there.’
‘Then you should look in the telephone book under Sherif’s name.’
‘Sherif’s name? Very well.’
Pulling her head shawl tight so that the driver could not see her tears, her facial tremors, the agony of her nausea, she stumbled to the car. There was a sibilant expulsion of breath through his teeth as he extinguished his cigarette and prepared to drive.
I CONSTRUCT A LETTER
Before an answer was even possible from Messrs Evans and Pauley of London, I noticed with some alarm that my father was fretting in expectation. His appetite had certainly waned, yet he drank even more. Scales of dead flesh appeared on his cheeks and around the rim of his beard, which he let grow wildly. I had hoped that the book was a fad and would now be half-forgotten. In fact it was the dominating issue of his life, more significant than his sins or the matter of what my mother might be doing, and how faring, in Van Diemen’s Land.
Bettany's Book Page 73