Right of Thirst

by Frank Huyler

  Rai smiled.

  “She cannot cast her out.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t care. Just tell her. Make it two hundred pounds if you have to.”

  “Two hundred pounds is better,” he said, and spoke to the woman again.

  The crowd began talking all at once. And then, from the back, a man called out, gesturing, and they fell silent.

  “What did he say?”

  Rai turned back to me.

  “He is saying that his animals are sick and that he needs money for his son and will you give him some also.” Rai shook his head again, then continued. “You see,” he said. “This is why there are problems. This is why you cannot give her too much.”

  “Tell him no,” I said. “Tell them that no one will get anything else.”

  “Yes,” Rai said, with approval, then turned to the crowd and spoke again. They shifted as he spoke, restless, and I felt a wave of hostility from them.

  “You must be strong with these people,” he said, turning his back again. “That is only what they know.”

  “Then tell her,” I said, gesturing to the woman, “that God has blessed her and that she should be thankful.”

  Rai translated, but the woman did not reply. And then the man who had spoken earlier did so again, loudly, waving his hand in the air for emphasis. He spoke for a good while, and he had the crowd’s attention. Rai listened, straining, I think, to understand.

  “What is he saying?” I asked.

  “I am not sure,” Rai said. “I think he is saying if God is blessing them then why will all these strangers come and take their wood. And why is there fighting now.”

  There was a murmur of assent, and then Rai spoke up, loudly, clearly asking a question. The man answered, speaking more slowly, but no less intently.

  “He says they will take their animals. He says they should go somewhere else.”

  The crowd shifted, and for the first time I was uneasy among them.

  Rai spoke again, his voice loud in the air. He went on for a good while, as we stood and listened and tried to make sense of what he was saying.

  “We must leave,” Rai said. “They are angry now. They are blaming us for the artillery, I think.”

  He turned his attention once more to the girl. He spoke to her mother, curtly. It was my turn then, and I opened my wallet, carefully counting out two hundred pounds of local money. All their eyes were on me, and it was nearly all the cash I had with me. She watched me with the others, and when I handed her the bills, she snatched them from me without meeting my eye. In an instant the money disappeared into her dress.

  She spoke, quickly, to her son, and he turned, holding out his arm for his sister. Then, without a glance in our direction, he led her slowly toward the doorway of the dark house. In was only a few feet, but it was the last of her journey, and she followed him, holding his arm with one hand. But just as they entered the threshold, she turned her head. She looked directly at me, expressionless, and I had one last image of her, with her flushed cheeks, her dark eyes and hair, against the weathered gray wood of the open door.

  Her face stayed with me all the way through the village, and the resentment of the crowd, and the shouts of the children, emboldened, who followed us. Rai did his best, and walked slowly, but it was an undignified retreat nonetheless.

  I thought of Homa’s brother, so lean and tireless, gliding up the hillside from the village, giving nothing away, and I thought of the others—those men knocking snow off the tents, untouched by the bitter cold, and how they had gone silent at my approach that day. How little I understood them, and even now they watched us, through the tiny windows of their houses, or from a distance in the background. Only the youngest followed.

  Just as we left the confines of the village, and began the slow ascent back along the river, something stung me on the back of the neck. My first thought was a fly, or a wasp from the orchard. I winced, and slapped the spot, and turned around, and suddenly there was a shout of triumph from the children in our wake.

  It was a stone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  They came that night. I must have been very deeply asleep. Rai shook my tent, and called out. He had a flashlight, which he rarely used, and shone it at the door, printing a circle of light on the nylon and filling the tent with shadows. Elise was with him.

  “What is it?” I asked, trying to wake up, my thoughts coming with difficulty. I unzipped the door.

  “You must get up,” Rai said. “Please get dressed.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “I will explain,” he said. “But you must get dressed.”

  “The army is here,” Elise said.

  I struggled into my clothes, and crawled out of my tent, and stood up. I could see the dining tent, lit from within, glowing in the darkness.

  “The army?” I asked, dumbly.

  “Yes,” Rai said. “I am being relieved.” He said it without expression.

  “What army?”

  “Our army, of course,” Rai replied.

  I blinked in the light, and then he turned it away, and began walking toward the dining tent. We followed him, in single file, and only then, I think, did I become fully awake.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, over his shoulder. “But I did not want you to hear them and come outside. I did not want any mistakes.”

  “What do you mean you’re being relieved?”

  “I will explain everything in a moment,” Rai said, in a tone that suggested further questions would be unwelcome. So I said nothing else, and simply did as I was told, and followed the bobbing light in his hand. It was a clear night, dark in the absence of the moon.

  There were armed men standing in the darkness. Two or three, I think, beyond the light from the dining tent door. Rai called out to them as we approached, and they murmured in reply. They appeared to be facing away from the tent, but it was difficult to see them well. They were not standing at attention, as best I could tell, but neither were they fully at ease.

  “Why are they standing out there?” I said. “Why aren’t they in the tent?”

  “It is unnecessary, I think,” Rai replied. “But they are keeping their eyes for the dark.”

  His phrase struck me.

  There were two men in the tent, both seated at our table, both drinking cups of tea. Ali was there as well, serving them. As we entered, they looked at us, and only then, slowly, did they stand in welcome.

  The older of the two wore a green wool sweater, identical to Captain Rai’s, and a dark red beret over his weathered face. The obligatory mustache, also, beginning to go gray. He looked fifty, but I suspected that he was younger. He was a large, imposing man. He looked far harder than Rai, far more ruthless, stern and wintry, and I instantly realized that he had little of General Said’s charm. Perhaps he was more intelligent than he appeared, but he had none of Rai’s spark, none of Rai’s alertness. He looked like a guard.

  Rai saluted casually, and made the introductions.

  “This is Colonel Raju,” he said. “He is the commander of the regiment.”

  I shook his outstretched hand.

  “Yes,” the man said. He nodded at Elise, but did not offer to shake hands with her.

  Colonel Raju said something to Rai.

  “The colonel does not speak English as well as he would like,” Rai said, translating carefully. “He hopes that you will understand.”

  “Of course,” I said. “But there is no need for him to apologize. I don’t speak his language either.”

  Rai translated, and the man replied.

  “He is not apologizing,” Rai said.

  There was a pause. I looked at him, and managed to smile. The man spoke again.

  “He says he is apologizing for the fact that you will have to go down in the morning, however.”

  “Ask him what is going on,” Elise interjected.

  Rai looked at her, clearly regretting that she had spoken, but then did as she asked. The colonel listened,
and glanced at Elise. But he replied calmly enough.

  “He says the situation has become complex. Beyond that he cannot go into details. But he says it is not necessary for you to be here any longer, and that tomorrow you must go down.”

  The other man stood, watching. He was about the same age as Rai, and similar in build and coloring, although his features were more classically handsome.

  “Who is he?” I asked, gesturing to the man.

  “I’m Captain Singh,” the man said, in entirely fluent, British-accented English. “I’m the XO. Pleased to meet you.”

  He took a step forward, and shook our hands.

  It must have been Rai’s radio call that did it, I realized—the flash I’d seen, the point on the hillside. They’d sent in the army. It seemed laughable, absurd, and yet there they were.

  Rai was as unreadable as I’d ever seen him. He was attentive, that much was clear, but he did not seem afraid, as he had with General Said. At first glance, Colonel Raju was a more formidable figure, much more obviously frightening, yet apparently Rai knew something that I did not.

  Just then I saw Ali, standing in the corner with his tray. He moved, and caught my eye. He was being as unobtrusive as possible, but the expression on his face was one of despair, as if he had heard the most terrible news. For the first time he looked alert to his misfortune, not dulled to it, and I wondered what it was that had upset him so much. But then I looked away, because the colonel was speaking again.

  “He says it is best if we stay together in the medical tent tonight,” Rai said. “And to please not go outside in the dark. He does not want one of his soldiers to mistake you for someone else.”

  “Who else?” Elise began. She was angry, and I could see it.

  “Elise,” I said quickly. “Don’t. Not now.”

  She shook her head, and I saw tears in her eyes. She shook her head again, and looked away. In that moment I realized that I didn’t want it all to come to an end. I wanted to continue as we had been, waiting for them to come, drinking our tea and talking together. Now these men had made it impossible.

  They did not invite us to sit down.

  “Well,” Rai said, finally, “we should go to the tent. There is much walking tomorrow.”

  So we shook their hands again, because we had to, and then they were done with us, turning away to their strategies and their weariness, snapping their fingers at Ali when their cups were empty.

  Outside, in the open air, Rai called out to the guards once more. Beyond them, in the darkness, there was movement, and rustling, and footsteps. I realized that soldiers were passing, just out of sight. Every so often one of the guards would call out softly, and each time there was an answering reply.

  Rai led us away.

  “How many men are out there?” I asked, finally, when we reached Elise’s tent.

  “More than two hundred,” Rai said.

  The number astonished me.

  “Why so many?”

  “It is a precaution only,” Rai said.

  I laughed, despite myself.

  “They sent hundreds of soldiers up here because we saw something on the ridge that we weren’t even sure was a man. Is that right?”

  “It is a temporary matter,” Rai said, more mildly than he might have. “They will only be here for a short time once it is clear.”

  “Once what is clear?”

  “That we are not weak,” Rai said. “That we will not tolerate their provocations. That there will be consequences for them if they violate our territory.”

  “I am supposed to pack now?” Elise said, sharply, interrupting us.

  “No,” Rai said. “Just your sleeping bag. We will pack in the morning. Tomorrow, it is important that we act the same. We will go to the dining tent early, we will eat breakfast, and then we will pack up our things and leave quickly. They do not know our soldiers are here. The soldiers will be in the tents, and so they will not see them.”

  “Why does it matter?” I asked. “I don’t understand this. What are you trying to do?”

  “These are my orders,” Rai said, calmly. “There may be some risk now. It is possible. So you must listen carefully and do what I say.”

  “We should just call a helicopter,” I said. “And fly out like we came in.”

  “This is too dangerous,” Rai said, ominously. “They might have a missile. An SA-7. They are light enough to carry and effective against helicopters. They might fire on the helicopter if they think they have been discovered. They have done this before.”

  “In your territory? Wouldn’t that be an act of war?” I asked, incredulous.

  Rai laughed softly.

  “What do you think this is, Doctor? A game we are playing?”

  A deep anger came over me as he spoke. All of it, or nearly all of it, for nothing. I lay there in the dark beside them, wondering why I had ever listened to Scott Coles, when all along I knew that he was not fully what he seemed, that the promise he had offered was half a fiction all along, one that he had sold even to himself. He was out of his depth, and his organization was hardly anything at all. I knew better, and yet I’d fallen for it anyway. I’d come all this way for an empty tent city and a one-legged girl. A wind-scoured field of stones on the other side of the earth. The whole endeavor, as I saw it, had come to this; the whole attempt to start again. My plunge into the unknown, my step into this other world, where I hoped to lose myself in an abundance of need—and so few of my hopes had come true. There was need, surely, there was need everywhere around me. But Homa alone had provided what I’d sought: redemption, the kind of clear personal triumph before which all the abstract questions recede. The rest of it, the cold roar from the heights, the absent refugees, the scraps of voices through static on the radio, all the questions of hierarchy and honor, the eagerness to spend precisely what they could least afford on conflict and war, to remake the struggle as one between men when it should have been one between hunger and food, between legs and stones—suddenly it infuriated me. I’d come for clarity, for Scott Coles’s promise of a reduction to the essentials, because I’d assumed the two to be companions. Instead they were the most uneasy of bedfellows.

  “Tell me,” I said, coldly, to Rai. “What is wrong with you people? Why do you do this? I’d like to know why I came all this way for nothing.”

  “What is it that you would like me to say, Doctor? That we should let them take everything as they wish?”

  “How many refugees could you have flown out of the mountains if you weren’t airlifting hundreds of soldiers every time something sparkled on top of a ridge?”

  “We are not like you,” he replied, tightly. “We have not stolen everything to be rich.”

  “We didn’t steal what we have. We earned it. And you’re not even competent as soldiers. Any Western army would wipe the floor with you.”

  “You have not earned it,” he said. “You are lucky, that is all. You have done nothing for what you have. We did not ask you to come here. And now that you cannot be a hero you are angry. You are trying to help yourself, not us.”

  The barrage rumbled on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Early the next morning, in the dining tent, I finally saw why they had come.

  It was windless and clear, cold, without a cloud in the sky, and the whole of the valley remained in shadow. The barrage, for the moment, had stopped. We left the medical tent together, and walked across the few meters of open ground.

  Rai called out softly as we approached, then opened the door halfway, stood to one side, and gestured for us to enter. There was a flicker of movement within the tent, the scuffing of boots, as a figure stood up and moved away.

  It was a soldier. As Rai let the canvas flap close behind us, I saw that a hip-high wall of sandbags had been stacked on the ground a few feet back from the door. Rising above the sandbags, a spotting scope, heavy and black, stood on a tripod. I realized that the soldier had been watching the ridges through a crack in the door, as Ra
i and I had done.

  At our table, beyond the line of sandbags, Colonel Raju sat with Captain Singh, drinking tea. There was a radio on the table, and several pairs of binoculars. Both men looked up at us and nodded.

  But it was the final soldier who frightened me. He lay on his back on a green rubber mat, next to the tripod behind the sandbags, staring at the ceiling, and he hardly glanced at us. Beside him on the mat sat a weapon—a heavy bolt-action rifle, with an oversized scope, its black synthetic stock scraped and battered. Two folding legs supported its thick barrel. It looked malevolent, functional; it had none of the elegance of General Said’s ibex gun, with its tooled leather strap and varnished grains of wood. Directly in front of the weapon a firing slit had been prepared in the row of sandbags. They must have worked for hours in the dark, filling the burlap with gravel.

  “What is this?” I said, sharply, my voice loud in the tent. Colonel Raju said something to Rai.

  “Please,” Rai said to me. “We will eat, and then we will leave.”

  “Why is there a sniper team in our tent?”

  Rai’s face tightened, and he reached out and grabbed my arm.

  “You must keep your voice down,” he said. “It is important that you control yourself now. Both of you.”

  Elise stood staring at the soldiers as I had done.

  “I do not want to eat,” she said. “I want to leave this place.”

  “Then we will pretend we are eating,” Rai said. “Ali will bring us our breakfast. We will wait here for a few minutes. Then you will go directly to your tents, pack up your things, and we will go. Do you understand?”

  “Send them somewhere else, at least.”

  “We cannot do this, Doctor,” Captain Singh said, from the table. “If they see movement in the other tents they will know others are here. But if they see movement in this tent they will not.”

  “But where are the soldiers?”

  “They are in the tents that are behind the others and more difficult to see from the ridge. They are lying down. They are not moving. But you are asking too many questions. Sit down, please.”