The Water Thief

by Claire Hajaj

  The sounds of celebration followed them from the courtyard, dwindling as Margaret gave him her key and he unlocked the door. He stepped inside, into the dark room with its drawn curtains and ceiling fan humming faintly. He was drifting away from his body; he almost didn’t feel her fingers reach his face, the touch of Bako’s beads cool on his cheek, the electric pressure of her lips, the sudden warmth of skin beneath his hands. And then the door closed behind them – crashing over them both, like the break of a returning wave.

  January

  Nicholas is late to pick me up from school. The other students already went home. He promised to take me with him to the Town today. Mama said it’s OK for me to go. Since she and Nicholas came back from the capital, she says yes to everything.

  Today is an important day, Nicholas says. The governor is bringing some village heads and even the emir to see the hospital. Nicholas says they will take pictures for the newspaper. I brought the governor’s cap to school with me so I can wear it in the photographs.

  Some days I am still angry with Nicholas for leaving me behind. I thought I could not forgive him. The day he left, I pretended to sleep when he came to my door. I stayed until I heard Baba come back into the house. Soon I heard him open the toolbox for the clock.

  Later Hanan came to collect Nagode. I heard her speaking with Baba in the kitchen.

  She said: ‘There is talk, Baba. Bad talk. About your guest.’ She calls him Baba sometimes, to show her respect. Adeya has no real baba. He was a stranger from the south, like Mama. He left one day and did not come back.

  Baba’s voice sounded tired. He told Hanan: ‘The Prophet, peace be upon him, says that Hell is reached fastest through the harvest of our tongues.’

  ‘Do not be angry with me, Baba,’ I heard Hanan say. ‘I do not want you to suffer as I did.’

  ‘Only the innocent suffer,’ Baba says to her. ‘For the rest of us, adversity is necessary.’

  Hanan does not understand when Baba speaks this way. I do not either.

  But I am thinking of Adeya and her baba. Did she cry, when he went? Does she still wait for him?

  Adeya does not come to school any more. Baba says they have no money after the fire. And she cannot write with her burned hands. Each day I see her desk, where she used to sit. I cannot forget her face when I let them laugh at her.

  After Hanan went home, I came from my room. There was Baba, on his knees. He had opened the side of the clock and was pulling something from the inside. He was pulling and pulling, but it would not come.

  ‘Ah, Yahya,’ he said. ‘Hand me the pliers if you would.’

  I brought them to him. Together we worked quietly. Baba, he does not talk. I missed Nicholas. He talks to me all the time. And just then, I felt fear. Suppose he did not want to come back? Suppose he did not teach me any more about trigonometry and pi. I would not be an engineer. Then I would stay here forever, with Baba and this clock.

  Then I wanted to run after Nicholas, to call him back. To say: I am sorry I was angry. I promise I will not fight any more if you come back soon.

  My throat hurt from swallowing. I could not help asking Baba: ‘Why did Adeya’s baba not come back to them?’

  I saw Baba stop for one moment. He said: ‘So, you are worrying, too?’

  I did not understand. So I asked again: ‘Do you know why?’

  Baba took off his glasses and leaned his weight on the clock.

  He said: ‘Each of us is a mystery, Yahya. We expect understanding from others when we do not even know ourselves.’

  I wished Baba would answer me. So I said: ‘Maybe he was tired of this place. Maybe he wanted his home.’

  Baba started pulling on the clock’s insides again. He said: ‘There are people like that, always running. We humans want to be birds, flying where we like. But this is not what Allah intends. He made us more like the tortoise. A tortoise cannot run from what it carries on its back.’

  Then he said: ‘There!’ I heard a clicking sound. And the clock, it started to tick again: tock, tock, tock. For two days this was the only sound in the house.

  But on the day Mama and Nicholas came back, we came alive again. Mama was laughing like she had the fever. She hugged me and asked so many questions. She took Nagode and squeezed and kissed her so much that my sister started to cry. Mama closed her eyes, as if she could not hear. I said, ‘Careful, Mama!’ And she opened her eyes, like someone waking.

  When Baba came, Mama started to talk fast to him. She was telling him about my uncles and aunts in the capital. She said they thanked him for the gifts. He asked her, ‘Did you see David?’ She answered: ‘He was travelling. I saw Sarah. But I am glad to be home.’

  Baba, he smiled at that. But under his smile he looked sad. He said: ‘We missed you, my dear. Isn’t that so, Yahya?’

  I said: ‘I missed you, Mama.’

  She knelt down and kissed me. I could not tell if she was smiling or crying. She took my chin in her hand. She said: ‘You are growing tall as a tree.’

  I asked her: ‘Did my aunt Sarah like my letter?’

  Mama, she smiled at that. It was a funny smile. She said: ‘She liked it very much, JoJo. You write so well.’

  ‘Do I have cousins?’ I asked her, but she had already moved away.

  So I went to see Nicholas in his room. I knocked on the door. There was no sound. I went inside.

  There he was, sitting on the bed. His face was in his hands as if he was very tired.

  I said: ‘Nicholas.’ He looked up, quick and surprised. He said: ‘JoJo. Mate.’ Then he hugged me. Like Mama – so tight, I thought my bones would break.

  I asked Nicholas about the capital. How big is it? What do they have there? How are the buildings? Nicholas told me about the fireworks and the skyscrapers and the university and stadium. I showed him my workbook for the trigonometry. He said he was proud of me.

  I said: ‘Baba has been missing you too. Even Miss Amina was missing you! She told Baba you promised to buy milk from her goat and you did not. She says you Christians cannot be trusted. You are all thieves.’

  Nicholas, he laughed. He said: ‘Well, I must go and see your father.’ He took a deep breath when he said it. Then, at dinnertime, he was very loud and happy. We were all together, like one family.

  The next day Nicholas started to teach me again. I showed my workbook to Akim. He said, ‘What kind of writing is this?’ I told him: ‘This is the quadratic equation.’ Akim, he is no good at sums. So he pretended to laugh. ‘This is girl’s writing,’ he said to me. ‘You are becoming a girl, JoJo.’

  I told him about the well, too, the one Nicholas and I will build together. It has been so long since the rains. Everything died and the dust hurts our eyes. The teacher closes the window in my class, but still the dust comes in. Every morning I write my name on my desk in dust. Some days I write Nicholas’ name, or Adeya’s. Once I wrote Bako’s name, but then I rubbed it out. The dead are spirits, Juma used to tell us. They watch us. The witch, Binza – she brings them. Sometimes her place looks far away. But now the lake is small. And Binza’s place, it is getting nearer every day.

  From here, beside the school gate, I cannot see the lake. Just the road, the empty road, and the mosque ahead of us. My shoes hurt from standing here, waiting. Nicholas promised it would be our first trip together since he came back, just him and me. I do not think he would forget. Nicholas does not forget things, like Baba. He is not old.

  I can see men leaving the mosque – Mr Kamil and Imam Abdi, Akim and Juma behind him. They will be going to speak about the drought. Akim tells me sometimes Danjuma sends a man, too. The price of water is too high. Soon there will be sickness, Imam Abdi says. The sickness will be like a fire from Allah.

  Akim comes running. ‘Hey, JoJo,’ he says. ‘Did the white man forget you?’

  I tell him: ‘No – we are meeting at my place.’

  Juma laughs behind him. ‘Mr Nicholas is making his business with a different boy today.’ He rubs his finge
rs together so I know what he means. Last week he showed me some magazines he stole from Tuesday – the ones in the back, with the milk powder and cola. Men and girls, and everything. They had a smell on them. The pages, they stuck together.

  ‘Your dick must be tired from those magazines,’ I say to Juma. He makes a snorting sound.

  Akim does not smile. I know he joined The Boys. He cut two lines into his face, one on each cheek, like the old people do. He put ash on it, but it got an infection. Mr Kamil had to bring him to Baba. Mr Kamil beat him, he told me, for costing money. Mr Kamil is village head, Baba says, so he can afford to pay.

  I start to walk with him, back to my house. Juma goes ahead, to Tuesday’s shop.

  Then I see Mister. He comes out from Tuesday’s door. A big bag is over his shoulder. His shirt is closed today. The knife, it is hidden, and the scars from his beatings. But Mister, he is the knife himself. White and cold.

  Akim stops still beside me. Juma is shaking Mister’s hand. He calls: ‘Akim! Get here, boy.’ But Akim, he does not move.

  I ask him: ‘Why don’t you go with them, Akim?’

  Akim says nothing. He looks at the ground. His face is red from the knife, where it cut him.

  Then I understand. I say, very quiet: ‘Tell them we are going to my house. I will ask Nicholas to take you to the Town with me.’

  Akim looks up. Now his face, it twists like a snake. He says: ‘I do not want to go anywhere with you, JoJo. I am a man now. I am saving the village. While your baba plays with his clock and your mama fucks that white man.’

  I hit him. We fall onto the ground and my mouth is full of dust. My hands are hard. I hit and hit and I do not need to stop. Akim’s skin tastes of salt. His body is thin. I can hear nothing except his crying.

  Then I feel someone lifting me up. It is Mister, laughing. He holds me by the collar of my shirt. I try to pull free from him.

  ‘Hey!’ he says. ‘Wild boys! Look at these two. Two dogs, eh? Come on, dogs, let us see you bark.’

  Akim is lying on the ground. He is white from the dust. I try to spit on him. The water, it burns my mouth.

  ‘Hey!’ Mister is speaking again. ‘It is finished now.’

  ‘You are crazy,’ Akim says to me. He is crying, his face red.

  Juma is looking at me and at Mister. Akim coughs and tries to stand – but Juma does not go to help him.

  I can feel water coming from my nose. I lift my hand to clean it. There is red mixed with the dust.

  Mister takes me by my school shirt. He holds me close. He is warm. His eyes, they are blue. I look at them and I feel quiet.

  He says: ‘Is it finished?’

  I nod my head.

  ‘OK,’ he says.

  He lets me go. My body hurts. My hand hurts. Something inside hurts, but I cannot feel where.

  ‘Cut him,’ Akim says. ‘He’s a traitor.’

  Mister walks over to Akim. Akim, he grows small. Mister says: ‘Do you tell me what to do, boss?’

  Akim’s eyes, they are white. Once I saw a dog that caught its leg in a trap. It had eyes just like that.

  Mister says: ‘JoJo is no traitor. He is a fighter, like us. We are waiting for him. He will come when it is time.’

  I say nothing. I want to be home. I want to feel Mama’s hands and have her wash my face. I want to know why Nicholas left me again.

  ‘See you later, boss,’ Mister says.

  I run. My eyes are full of dust. The mosque is quiet in the square. They have all gone home. Tuesday’s shop is closed and the sun is too bright. I see Jalloh’s car parked behind there, and another car I do not know.

  I can still feel the blood coming from my nose. Mama will ask questions. I run past Miss Amina’s house. Beyond there is Adeya, and Binza. Beyond them are the spirits that drink at the lake.

  I run to my garden and open the gate. The car the fat man gave Nicholas is there, but Baba’s car is not.

  I go around the back to wash my face before they find me. It is quiet in the house. There are sounds in the kitchen, but they are small. I wonder if Nagode is there, crying alone.

  I am afraid now. Where is Mama? But then I hear her voice. It sounds like she is singing. It is a sad song, with no words, like crying.

  Then I hear another voice. Nicholas. He says one word: ‘Beautiful.’ Then he says it again.

  I walk very slowly to the kitchen door. I cannot even fit my fingers into the crack. But I can still see them.

  Mama, her eyes are closed. Nicholas is pressed against her, like the people in Tuesday’s magazines. And Nicholas is saying the same word again and again. He says: ‘Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.’

  Something slammed; Nick heard it through the rush of his blood. Was it a door, or an engine? He pushed himself back from Margaret. Her eyes opened, caution giving sudden definition to her face – that reserve he loved so much in its dissolution.

  Now her arms untangled from his. ‘Is he home?’ she said, voice hoarse, her neck flushed from the pressure of his lips.

  ‘He has his market surgery after prayers.’ Nick could see nothing through the dim cotton curtain, just shadows moving on the road. ‘He can’t be back yet, Margaret.’

  She breathed out slowly. Her fingers covered her face, clenching into the halo of hair, head bowing to rest on his chest. ‘We are doing wrong,’ she whispered.

  We are doing wrong. The moisture on her breath warmed his skin. He’d carried guilt every day since boyhood, a parasitic worm winding around every other sensation. But the slam of Margaret’s hotel room door had killed it dead. When he returned to JoJo’s eager arms, to Dr Ahmed’s welcoming handshake and Kate’s stationery on his desk – his shame had been nothing compared to the ecstasy of a life sentence unexpectedly commuted. He’d touched her tears as loneliness melted from her in the merging of breath and bodies, feeling the dizzy faith of the high-wire walker. They’d sworn not to touch each other after their return – a promise broken the very next day, in the hot, dark air of Nagode’s room. He’d become hardened to greeting Dr Ahmed every morning with the taste of her lips still in his mouth. ‘He cares about me,’ Margaret had said. ‘It’s not the same as love.’ Love was reason enough to believe this was still goodness, as if they’d crossed into some secret, more hallowed universe blind to sin – like children playing in a sunlit meadow while tall, unconquerable cliffs loomed over them from all sides.

  ‘This isn’t wrong,’ he whispered, insistent, his chin resting on the back of her head, hands stroking the angles of her back. As she’d unwound beside him into sleep that first dawn, he’d stroked the year’s fresh light as it illuminated pathways on her skin, feeling the spirit flowing under the flesh.

  Margaret broke away, turning back to the kitchen sink and the half-peeled vegetables smelling of wet earth. She started flensing a yam – chocolate flakes peeling back from pink flesh. Their vegetables lay in a bowl of scummy water, brought from the lake. They were lucky still to have water for washing; Nick had long since swapped his shower hose for a stale bucket that collected flies every night.

  He moved to stand close behind, watching the hands that had explored every inch of his body under the hot, quiet darkness, a hunger with no hint of shame. Outside, the bones of Miss Amina’s porch were flaking under the lash of the wind. Two days ago he’d seen her beating dust from her favourite orange abaya as rheum streamed from her eyes. She’d brandished the fabric at Nick and Dr Ahmed as they passed, making futile jabs at the burning sky. ‘She is right,’ Dr Ahmed had said later. ‘I cannot remember a worse season.’

  Margaret glanced over her shoulder towards Nick, her smile almost shy. ‘Is your mother a good English cook?’ she asked. ‘The kind who makes puddings for her little children and then beats them and sends them to bed?’

  Nick stroked her back. ‘Is that what English cooks do? Like African cooks roast their enemies for dinner?’

  ‘Some people need roasting.’ Margaret wiped her hands on her dress, leaving tear-like spots. ‘I
can teach your mother how.’ She looked up at him, shafts of sunlight highlighting the smile-lines around her eyes and mouth. ‘If I meet her one day.’

  Nick’s throat tightened. He imagined them together walking in his childhood garden, Margaret’s fire infusing his mother’s drowning spirit, a joyful coming to life.

  ‘You’ll meet her,’ was all he could say in reply. She reached up to his face, her thumb wiping away imaginary tears. Nick caught it, smelling the musty sweetness on her skin, under dark tones of stagnant water. Madi had said the same thing once. ‘I like talking to your mum,’ he’d admonished Nick, in a moment of unguarded seriousness. ‘She knows what you mean without asking anything.’ All the things that made Nick pull away from his mother – the bewildered disorder of her clothes and hair, the sudden collapse of her sentences into yawning pauses, the times he’d walked into a silent room to find her motionless there, a sliver of emptiness – none of that had mattered to Madi. His own mother was a dark absence, a void they skirted around by unspoken agreement. No pictures hung on the brown walls of the council flat, no keepsakes were visible on the scratched cream of the coffee table donated by the Salvation Army – just the scuffed, frayed spines of Madi’s father’s books. ‘She ran off when I was a baby,’ Madi had said, in the early days. ‘She had a boyfriend. But if she hadn’t gone, maybe my father would never have taken the boat here. We’d have stayed. And then I’d never’ve met you.’

  ‘Don’t you have your big appointment in the Town today?’ Margaret asked. She would sometimes step away from him, as if to remind herself she still could. ‘It’s already late.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Remorse twisted in him. ‘I was supposed to pick JoJo up from school. This ridiculous bloody inspection – I can’t believe I forgot!’

  ‘Then go,’ she said. As he passed her, she grabbed his hand, bringing it to her lips.

  He ran out into the yellowing garden. Even Nagode’s tree had shrunk into skeletal faintness; its delicate fronds rattled with every lift and sway of the wind.