The Water Thief

by Claire Hajaj

Margaret laid her cheek on Nagode’s head, hands tracing the soft bones of her daughter’s back. Dr Ahmed’s face was pale against the evening shadows. ‘You are leaving?’ the doctor asked.

  Frustration scorched Nick’s stomach. ‘We’re all leaving. Eric says he’ll take us to the capital. It’s not safe here.’

  ‘And then what?’ Dr Ahmed walked towards Margaret and put his hand on her shoulder. Beside him, the grandfather clock stood tall and silent.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Nick’s heartbeat was becoming a hammer. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We will have no place to live there, no money. You will not be able to help us, Nick. This you know well.’

  ‘J.P. will help you.’ The dizziness was returning, the world tilting beneath him.

  Dr Ahmed shook his head. ‘J.P. owes me nothing. I will not make my burdens his.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Nick was shouting now. ‘This is your family. Your children. For God’s sake, just come!’

  ‘No!’ Dr Ahmed’s voice rang like the crack of a gun. The old man’s hand came down in a fist, beating into his palm – a fury so raw that Nick felt his own rage quail and grow still.

  ‘Do not lecture me, Nicholas. You are my guest, not my teacher. You have your own home and your own life. But everything of mine is here. Everything I have given to this place and these people. We will not go with you to become beggars at the door of J.P..’

  ‘I don’t mean to lecture you.’ Nick was pleading now; they were two ships passing so close to each other but somehow driven by different winds. ‘I’m trying to keep you safe.’

  Dr Ahmed came over to him and bent his head. Their eyes met, dark into blue.

  ‘I also want to keep us safe,’ he said. ‘And I fear that the real danger hides in here.’ He tapped Nick’s chest. ‘And not out there.’

  Nick looked towards Margaret, watching them in silence. Her blue dress shaded to purple in the failing light, Bako’s bracelet in its place around her wrist.

  The sight of her overwhelmed him, this woman he loved; in that moment the whole of his life, his path to this point, seemed to be written on her body: her dress the flick of colour on his mother’s canvas, her eyes the dark liquid flowing from Madi onto the playground floor, her red beads the sway of Binza’s curtain, her lips the wings of black birds circling a hotel swimming pool.

  ‘Margaret,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  She pushed herself to her feet, Nagode resting under her chin.

  ‘I must stay with my family, Nicholas.’ Her pupils were large in the darkening room; he could not see if they were wet or dry.

  JoJo stood in the corner, his back against the grandfather clock. The space between them seemed full of dark flecks, as if the unsaid truths were crystallising, becoming visible.

  ‘JoJo.’ The boy’s head came up, his gaze blank, looking without seeing.

  ‘I’ll go for help,’ Nick promised. ‘But I’ll come back. OK?’

  JoJo said nothing. His expression shifted in the half-light, glimmers of disbelief easing across the indifference.

  ‘You had better get ready.’ Dr Ahmed spoke into the silence. ‘You have a long journey ahead.’

  I am asleep, Nick told himself, as his feet carried him out of the room, as he piled T-shirts and his passport into a bag. This is a dream. His limbs had the strange fluidity of a dream. They moved without a will of their own, lifeless as atoms pushed and pulled by unfeeling forces.

  Eric pulled up outside the house at sunset. Nick heard his horn, setting dogs howling at the desert’s edge.

  Nick emerged, a bag over his shoulder. Eric wound down one window and thrust his arm out, slapping the door.

  ‘Come on, let’s be going now,’ he yelled.

  Miss Amina sat on her porch, smoking from her pouch of herbs. She scowled at the noise. Nick looked into the gathering darkness, towards Adeya’s house. A line of pale light marked the gap between Hanan’s curtains and the window. Could he at least get them? Or why not Miss Amina? Or Mr Kamil and Aisha and Akim? Confusion gnawed him, its teeth sharp. If I have the power – what’s the right choice? Save some? All? Or none?

  He walked down the steps and the garden path. Time was a flood, sweeping him along. His hand was on the gate latch, flicking it upwards. The gate swung open and he stepped outside.

  Eric had opened the passenger door. Nick climbed slowly into the seat. ‘There we go,’ Eric said. ‘Not so hard.’

  Margaret stayed by the door with Nagode, one hand on JoJo’s shoulder. He could barely see her in the dusk. Dr Ahmed walked down to meet them. He leaned over the bonnet and offered Nick his hand.

  Nick took it, feeling the electric pressure as their palms met. He’d shaken his father’s hand during their last, awkward visit – a mechanical movement of tendons and muscle. But now he remembered why as a boy he’d found Madi’s handshakes more intimate than hugs. It was the firing of millions of nerve endings together, the violence of bare contact dissolving barriers between thought and skin.

  ‘Travel well.’ The bite of Dr Ahmed’s fingers travelled up his arm.

  Nick swallowed. He knew there must be a key to this moment – but he was grasping in the dark.

  ‘I hope you fix your clock,’ he said. ‘It’s worth cherishing.’

  ‘I will.’

  Nick looked over to Margaret and JoJo on the steps. Dr Ahmed’s eyes followed his.

  ‘I only wanted good things for them.’ Nick felt numb as he looked back at his host. ‘If I caused you pain, I . . .’

  Dr Ahmed turned away, his back a solid shadow.

  ‘I told you once that time judges us more honestly than men.’ His voice was hoarse. ‘Maybe life will surprise you, Nicholas. Maybe you are better than you know.’

  Then he was walking away, a tall line against the gathering dark, moving up the porch steps. Nick tried to wave to Margaret, Nagode and JoJo, but their forms were blurring together into a single outline.

  Eric put the car into gear. But then a shape detached itself from the doorstep – Margaret, running down through the gate past her husband towards Nick’s open window. Her scarf fell back as she ran, her hair a dark halo in the rising wind.

  She put her hand on the edge of the window and leaned towards him, a violet line between her lips where they parted, her face alive with its own light.

  He lifted his hand to hers, oblivious to Dr Ahmed, to Eric, to everything except the sense of this moment stretching on its way from present to past.

  ‘Remember our garden,’ she told him, hushed, her words falling over each other. ‘You know – in that other life, when we grew old, you and me? Don’t forget.’

  ‘I won’t.’ There was no more time; she touched one finger to his lips, stepping away from him. Eric put his foot on the accelerator – and she vanished.

  I see him go. I think: he will be out of the village soon. And tomorrow he will be leaving. Leaving on a jet plane. Bye bye, Nicholas. Bye, mate. Soon I will forget you and all of your lessons.

  Baba says to me: ‘Come inside, Yahya.’

  Mama, she says: ‘Ahmed, if they are really coming, what shall we do?’

  Baba, he looks at me. Then he says, ‘They will go to the square, like the last time. We must gather the council and the police and reason with them there. You and the children should stay here where it’s safe.’

  ‘Not all men can be reasoned with,’ Mama answers. And Baba, he nods. He says: ‘I know, my love.’

  I see her eyes. She is crying. My love. I wonder if I will ever say it. I can try it sometime. I can say, ‘Adeya, my love.’ She will laugh at me, but she will like it. She will pretend to laugh, and I will pretend to be joking.

  Mama, she wipes her eyes. She gives Nagode to Baba. She says: ‘Go to your father.’ Nagode puts out her hands and says: ‘Baba!’ He loves this. Once I was small like her. Once I also did those things.

  Baba, he takes Nagode and kisses her. He holds her tight. He is crying under his glasses.

 
He says: ‘I would not have stopped you, Margaret. You are free, always.’

  Mama, she bites her lip when she smiles. She puts her hand on Nagode’s face.

  ‘I am free,’ she says to him. ‘And I am here.’

  She is touching Nagode’s face, and Baba is holding Nagode. He looks at me and says: ‘Yahya. My son.’

  I can hear there is water inside him, not fire. He puts his arm out to me. I come to him, and he pulls my head to his chest. I can smell the polish on his shirt. I can smell Nagode’s legs. I can feel his hand tight on my shoulder. And Mama’s hand is here too, and we stand in our house, together, like a baobab tree.

  Darkness touched down as they drove south along the dirt road, headlights on full beam. Eric’s hands were white, gripping the wheel. Nick sat in silence. The world seemed on pause.

  I’ll get help and come back. But what was one more broken promise among so many? Blackness swished past the window, hot and relentless.

  A ridge marked the end of the dirt track; a pothole had opened in the tarmac beyond. The tyres screamed as Eric forced the car over it, sending punishing jolts through the suspension. When the rear wheels finally settled, one side tilted towards the ground.

  ‘Fuck,’ Eric said. He pulled up the handbrake and got out to check the wheels. ‘Fuck!’ he yelled, from the back of the car. ‘Fucking driving at night in this godforsaken place.’

  He came to Nick’s window.

  ‘I have a spare in the back,’ he said. ‘Give me a hand, eh?’

  Nick climbed out of the car. Eric’s back was to him, broad in the red flash of the hazards. He took a torch from the boot and handed it to Nick. The light was a narrow beam, boring into Eric as he hauled out his toolbox.

  Streams of warm wind blew past them, but Nick was shivering. The torch trembled in his hand.

  ‘Do they really know who killed the governor?’ The question burst from him, even while he dreaded the answer. He saw Eric’s back tense.

  ‘They say one of Danjuma’s people. From the village.’

  Nick swallowed. The darkness closed in, tense and silent. Suddenly he could not bear it any more – this agonised wait for judgement, a hidden sword ready to fall.

  ‘I know who killed him,’ he said.

  Eric stood up slowly, the jack in his hand. He turned towards Nick, the torch flooding white light up onto his face.

  ‘I don’t want to know.’ Eric’s voice was quiet. ‘I’m no one’s fucking priest. You understand me?’

  Nick swallowed. More moments slid past on the wind, too fast to catch.

  Eric turned back to the broken wheel. ‘What’s done is done,’ he said, fitting the jack to the metal frame. ‘We’ll fix this and be on our way to the airport. You can say hi-de-hi to your lady in England for me. There’s been enough damage here already.’

  I smell them before I hear them. They come with smoke and fires.

  Baba, he stands by the window. Mama is singing to Nagode, the same song we sang with Nicholas, the one where the man does not want to leave his woman, but he leaves anyway. He says goodbye and takes his jet plane and flies away from her and all of us. And even though he says he may come back, I know he never will, because he says ‘goodbye’ – and people who come back do not say this. They say: ‘I will see you again.’ And Nagode, she sings with Mama. She puts her hands on Mama’s face and sings: ‘Na na na, ’bye.’

  Then we smell it.

  Mama, she stops singing. She says: ‘Something is burning.’

  Baba, he looks out of the window. He says: ‘There is a fire in the market.’

  We come to the window. Behind Miss Amina’s house, away to the north, the sky is red.

  Then I hear it. Crack crack crack. It stops. Then it comes again. Crack crack crack crack.

  I say: ‘Mama!’ Mama, she puts her hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Ahmed,’ she says. ‘Ahmed, what is happening?’

  Baba says: ‘I will go to Kamil’s house. We will call the council and find out. We will meet these people, whoever they are – and see what they want.’

  ‘No!’ Mama and I, we shout it together. Mama, her eyes are big, like Nagode’s. She says: ‘Are you mad? Stay here, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I have to go,’ he is saying. ‘I must. We must stand together.’

  In the red light he looks old, so old. I cannot let him go outside. Outside there is Mister and Binza and the thunder and the lightning. Outside are the spirits. Outside is the gun, with its hungry mouth. It will swallow him and he will not come back. ‘No, Baba,’ I say to him. ‘Please.’

  Mama, she takes his hand. She says: ‘I stayed with you, Ahmed. Now you stay with me.’

  Other sounds are coming closer. I hear someone, screaming. It is a woman. ‘Adeya!’ I run to the door. ‘That’s Adeya!’

  ‘No,’ Mama says, taking hold of me, one arm around my chest, another on my forehead. I can see Bako’s bracelet, red, like the fires.

  ‘It’s not Adeya,’ she says. ‘It comes from the mosque. But they will come here, Ahmed. Soon.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Baba says. ‘Why are they doing this?’

  Mama looks at me. I cannot answer. There is a hole deep inside me, full of water. I will drown if I fall in.

  She puts her finger on my heart, and I feel her there. She says: ‘Men’s reasons are worthless. We must wait for God’s.’

  The sounds are nearly in our street. I run to the kitchen and open the door. I see them – across the garden wall, over Nagode’s sleeping tree. Cars, their lights bright, and men. They carry fire, and they are shouting. There is red in the sky.

  ‘Baba!’ I shout. ‘They are outside the garden! We must go. Now, now!’

  ‘Come here, Yahya!’ he calls to me, and I run.

  He is on his knees – he has opened the big box, the one with the tools for fixing his clock. All of the tools, they are on the floor. The box is open, like a hole. Like the grave they put Bako into.

  And then I know what he wants.

  ‘No, Baba,’ I say. ‘No way.’

  ‘Yahya, you must,’ he says. ‘You and Nagode. Get in here. Right now.’

  ‘No!’ I am crying. ‘I want to stay with you! I can fight! I can fight!’

  ‘Yahya,’ he says to me, ‘JoJo. Listen to me. Listen!’

  Then he says: ‘This grandfather clock, what makes the tick?’

  ‘What?’ I am crying still.

  ‘Answer me!’ I can see his eyes. They have a grey circle around them. I look at the circle and I say: ‘The machine inside.’

  ‘And what makes the machine work?’

  ‘The weights,’ I say. ‘The earth pulls them down. This is what Nicholas taught me.’

  ‘And the force that makes the weights fall down, where does it come from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t know, Baba.’

  He puts his hand on my chest. His hand is warm. He says: ‘All things come from the same centre. What drives the clock also drives the sun and the rains and your heart and mine. We are all joined in this place. We are never, ever alone.’

  I do not know what he means. But from love, I nod my head. I step into the box. Mama runs to us, with Nagode. She puts Nagode in the box beside me. Then she takes Bako’s bracelet from her arm, and ties it on mine.

  ‘It will keep you safe,’ she says. ‘As long as you wear it, I am with you.’

  Then Nagode is in my arms, and we are lying down in the smell of oil and metal. And Nagode’s face is on my chest, and I can feel the water from her mouth and hear her heart. I see Mama’s face, her eyes the same as mine. Then the lid comes down, and we are in darkness.

  Eric tightened the last screw on the tyre. ‘Done.’ He stood up.

  Nick looked down the highway. Time to go. He’d imagined a different homecoming. He’d seen it: the green rise of an English spring, going together to lay flowers on Madi’s grave, leading Margaret through his mother’s garden towards the kissing gate to meet the path to the sea.

>   ‘Ready?’ Eric slammed the boot shut and began to walk back to the driver’s side-door.

  Nick took a breath.

  Across the road the jacaranda tree marked the village outskirts. Before it had been bare and studded with buds. Now every branch was wreathed in living flowers, brilliant red against the dark.

  As he stood there, an inner pendulum suspended its long, upwards arc – poised before surrender to the earth’s pull.

  The words came without thinking, becoming truth in his mouth. ‘I’m going back’.

  The pendulum was swinging downwards now, accelerating through the air in the terrible lightness of free-fall. His feet were already moving, the smooth tarmac reverting to rough stones.

  He heard Eric yell after him, words telescoping, like a siren shooting past. ‘Don’t be fucking crazy! They’ll kill you.’

  ‘Tell J.P. I’m sorry. I have to go.’

  ‘Nick!’

  But he was already running, back into the blind night, towards Margaret and JoJo and the distant line of red.

  Tock, tock, tock. This is how we wait. I whisper in Nagode’s ear. ‘Hush, Nagode.’ Tock, tock, tock. Her body, it shakes. She is hot and we sweat. We are water and breath and hearts – nothing else.

  I hear voices shouting outside the house. They shout: ‘Come out! Come out!’ And I think: they know. They have found us.

  The voice is nearer now. The door breaks, it breaks open. They are inside. They are in here with us.

  The voice shouts: ‘Where is your boy? Where is he?’

  Baba says: ‘Please. We are not your enemies. There are no enemies here.’

  ‘Where is he?’ the voice shouts, again. Now there are more sounds, other voices. The soldiers, the governor’s knights. I can see them in my head. Their long legs. Their long guns. Then I hear Mama – she cries out. She screams like Nagode when something hurts her.

  ‘Leave her be! No! No!’ It’s my father. He is crying too. Baba is crying: ‘Allah is great! Allah is great!’

  There is a crash, and I close my eyes. I pray. Not Baba’s clock. Please, he loves his clock. Nagode, she makes her water quietly on my leg. ‘Tock, tock,’ I whisper to her. ‘We must be quiet. Tock, tock.’