door. Even from eight meters away the waves of heat were
painful and he held his cardboard parasol out to keep the worst
of it off his face.
He glanced back. The rest of the crowd was still coming and
the cloud of dust had grown but he still had a fifty-meter lead
over the closest. As he got around to the passenger side his eyes
were on the water pouring out of the rents in the tank and he
dropped the parasol and began fumbling with the screw cap on
his jug.
And that’s when he heard the cries.
Someone was still alive in the truck cab.
The water was already slowing as it poured out of the
ruptured tank and the others were so close. With a curse, he
dropped the water jug and scrambled up on the step and clawed
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for the door handle.
The door came open about six inches and jammed. He braced
his foot against the side of the truck and pulled and it creaked,
then gave way suddenly and he fell to the ground, but he was
back up on the truck step without thinking about it.
On the far side the driver was clearly dead, his clothes
aflame, but there was a woman in the passenger seat moaning
and staring about with wide eyes. Her face was bloody and her
clothes too, but he couldn’t tell if it was her blood or the driver’s.
She was fumbling with her right hand, reaching across her body,
trying to reach her seat belt release. Her other arm was hanging,
apparently useless, and her shirtsleeve was starting to smoke.
Xareed reached for the buckle and screamed as it burned him.
He reached again, and instead of grabbing it, punched two
fingers into the release button. The tab slid out and he pulled her,
by her good arm, and, toppled back down onto the ground, her
weight pinning him to the ground.
“Christ, she’s on fire.”
The weight came off of him and he saw the stranger, the
white man, stripping off his shirt and smothering the flames that
had started on the passenger’s sleeve. Then the other stranger,
the woman, was there suddenly. Xareed thought he must’ve
passed out; for one moment she wasn’t there and then she was.
She looked angry and scared.
“You’re going to get yourself killed!” she said fiercely, but
then added, “She better go straight to hospital. One with a good
burn unit.”
Xareed blinked. What were they talking about? The nearest
hospital was over three hundred kilometers away. Even if they
could get a helicopter in, the chances of it being shot down were
high.
The man nodded. “Right. I’ll take her. Check on him, okay?”
He jerked his chin toward Xareed. “He pulled her out.”
The heat from the burning cab was increasing and the white
woman pulled him further away.
There was shouting from the end of the truck. The ruptured
tank was empty now and they were trying to get the other
compartments open but it was crowded. Xareed looked around
for his jug but it was gone. Someone in the crowd had snatched
it up.
He tried to scramble to his feet but the woman pressed him
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down. The man and the injured passenger were gone. He must’ve
carried her around the end of the truck and back to the camp.
“My water can!” Xareed said, struggling against her. “My
can she is gone!”
“Ah, good. You have some English,” the woman said, clearly
relieved. She still kept her hand on his shoulder, though.
“I must find my can! My family needs water!”
She nodded. “Water is important. I’ll get you some water but
let me see if you’re hurt.”
Xareed looked at her. “Are you crazy! They will take all the
water. There isn’t enough.” He tried to get up again but his six-
hundred-meter run, the heat, the lack of water, the fire, his burnt
hand—it was all too much. She was able to hold him down
easily.
“Shhhh. I promise I’ll get you some water. What’s wrong
with your hand?”
Xareed was cradling his right hand. “I, uh, fire, uh hot, it. On
the belt seat.”
“Ohhh. Burned? When you got her out? That was very brave
of you. Let me see.” She held his hand lightly by the wrist and
looked closely without touching it. “Ow. Looks like you’ll
blister. Wait here.”
She stepped back around the front of the truck, where the
smoke still billowed. Xareed tried to get up again but he was
suddenly overwhelmed by it all. They were pushing and shoving
at the other end of the truck. His hand hurt. The water jug was
gone and his mother and grandfather and sisters would go thirsty.
The woman stepped back around the front of the truck. She
had a cloth in her hand wrapped around something. She crouched
again, beside him, and said, “Put this against your fingers—it
will help.”
He held out his burnt hand, cautiously. He thought maybe she
had some salve, some ointment, but she gently pressed the entire
cloth against his hand.
The relief was sudden and shocking. It was ice, like they used
to have at his old school, like the tops of distant mountains. She
opened the cloth a little and took a chunk, a cube, from inside
and mimed putting it in his mouth.
He did. So cold. So good. He sucked greedily at it.
“Rest here a few minutes. I’ll go get your water.”
She brought him back a jerry can, plastic, with “5 gal”
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embossed on the side. It was full. More shocking, it was cold—
beads of water were condensing on the sides and it felt almost as
good on his burn as the ice.
He looked around for his makeshift parasol and it was there,
but the crowd had trampled it flat and the stick was broken and
the cardboard torn.
He couldn’t help it. He cried.
The woman picked up the scraps of cardboard. “Ah, I saw
this, when you were sitting in line. Clever.”
He nodded. “My parasol.”
“A nice bit of shade. What’s your name?”
“Xareed, Miss.”
“Call me Millie.”
The crowd around them was growing and on the other side,
someone was throwing dirt on the burning diesel oil. He put an
arm around the jerry can, holding it close.
The woman eyed the growing crowd uneasily. “Come on,
Xareed. I’ll help you carry this back to the camp, all right?”
They walked side by side, the can between them. She was
only a little taller than he was and they shared the handle, his left
hand, her right touching.
“Where are you from, Miss Millie?”
“Canada,” she said. “How long have you been here?”
“Three years. We were firstcomers.” He told her about their
mud brick house and his mother, grandfather, and sisters. “Is that
man your husband?”
“Yes. David.”
“Why did you come here?”
“To help, if we can,” she said.
She was sweating now, and Xareed was relieved. He hadn’t
been sure if she was human or not. He asked his next question
nervously. “How did you come here?”
She glanced sideways at him and then back at the dirt they
were trudging across. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s hard to get here. Sometimes helicopters come but the
rebels have rock … ats?”
“Rockets.”
“Rockets. And the roads have mines. And there is no
convoy.” He peered at her. “And I do not think you walk.”
She sighed. “No. We came our own way.” She did not
elaborate, but instead asked him what circumstances had brought
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him to the camp.
He found himself telling her the entire story, right up to
looking back at the burning farm, the burning tree.
“Ah,” she said. “Shade.”
“Yes.”
She left him at the edge of the camp where he was able to get
one of his trusted neighbors to carry the water can the rest of the
way in return for a liter of its contents. By the time he’d reached
the mud brick house, the ice was reduced to a handful of small
chips but there was still enough for his sisters, mother, and
grandfather to each have a small mouthful.
It was a miracle. A small miracle, but still a miracle.
*
Later, that afternoon, the next miracle happened.
“The tanks are full! The tanks are full.”
“Are the wells working?”
“Did more trucks come?”
Wildly different stories swept the camp. He got one version
from Yahay, who lived in a tent near Well #2. “It was that
stranger, the man who came with the woman, without a car.”
“What did he do?”
“He climbed up onto the water tower.” The water tower was
a metal tank on legs three meters above the ground. A petrol
well-pump filled it so gravity could drain it. It was three meters
across and four meters tall and held 38,000 liters when full. Since
the well had gone dry the month before, it had been mostly
empty.
“So?”
“He opened the inspection hatch and climbed down into it. I
was standing near. I heard water rushing and then the tank began
to creak. I ran to the tap and cold, cold water came out when I
held the valve open. I cried out in surprise and everyone came
running. In the excitement, I didn’t see him come out of the tank.
Maybe he didn’t,” Yahay said, wide-eyed. “Maybe he turned into
the water.”
Xareed remembered the man disappearing with the injured
passenger. He didn’t think the man had turned into water.
Especially when the other two tanks were found to be full very
soon after.
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Xareed went looking and found the strangers sitting with the
French IRC nurse and watching the sunset in front of the clinic
intake tent. He crouched down behind the tent flap and listened.
“It’s a respite. How often can it be done? We’ve been short
for a month now. Forty-five hundred people go through a lot of
water.”
The man—David—looked at his wife. “Can’t keep it up. It
will attract too much attention and it will be bad for us and for
the camp. But, I do have a longer-term solution, I think.”
“Yes?”
“Let me try it. You’ll know if it works.”
They left after that, walking out into the sudden dusk, and
Xareed watched carefully. He was wondering if he would see
another miracle when he saw another man leave the edge of the
camp and drift after the strangers.
While it was true that the rebel troops did not hide in the
camp, it didn’t mean that they didn’t have their spies among the
refugees. This man was a bit too well fed, a bit too well dressed.
He wore boots and pants, not sandals and the robe, and his
shoulder-slung bag was shiny new.
Perhaps he too was interested in the miracle of the water.
Xareed looked around and then followed, swinging wide to
the north. He kept his head down, like someone looking for
firewood. Anything near the camp was long gone, but that didn’t
keep people from looking.
David and Millie kept moving, crossing quickly over the dip
that marked the old lakeshore and then down the slope. They
were moving by feel and starlight now.
Xareed found a shallow gully that marked an old streambed
and ran down it, using it to hide his passage. He passed David
and Millie and crouched low as they walked closer.
Millie was saying, “—find Canadian salmon here and it will
blow the whole thing.”
David said, “Yeah. Pity. There’s an awful lot of snowmelt
going to waste up there. But you’re right. And there’s the
hypothermia danger. BBC Meteorological says it’s raining
around Lake Tanganyika. That’ll do.”
From Xareed’s position in the gully they were all silhouetted
against the fading sunlight on distant wisps of clouds, so he saw
the follower close the distance and take the gun and something
else from his bag.
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Xareed felt a rock under his knee and dug it out of the dried
mud. It was bigger than his fist and sharp cornered. He threw it
as hard as he could, aiming behind and above the gun.
Light from a flashlight stabbed out and then there was a
smacking sound and a cry. The flashlight tumbled to the ground
where it shone across the submachine gun lying by itself in the
dirt. Then he saw a hand, a white man’s hand, reach into the light
and pick up the gun. The flashlight came up and shone down on
the man who’d followed them from the camp.
The man was clutching his head with his hands and blood
stained the side of his face. He was groaning and Xareed said, “It
is deserved.”
The flashlight turned his way and he blinked in the sudden
glare. “Ah. You, eh? From the truck? What did Millie say …
Jareed?”
“Xareed. Where is Miss Millie?”
The flashlight swept around in a circle. There was no sign of
anyone else.
“Ah, well, she’ll be back.” David’s voice didn’t sound
puzzled at all by the woman’s disappearance. “What are you
doing out here?”
“I saw him follow you from the camp.”
Millie was there, then, wild-eyed, a baseball bat raised high
and swinging.
The flashlight moved sideways three meters. No. It was
suddenly three meters to the side—there was no movement. Just
as Millie had not been there and then she was, the flashlight was
one place and then another.
“Whoa, Millie. It’s okay!” David turned the flashlight on
himself, then pointed it at the man on
the ground, then at Xareed.
“Xareed got ‘em. With a rock?”
Xareed’s mouth was open and he felt numb. With some effort
he said, “Yes. I throwed a rock. How did you do that?”
“Don’t think about it, Xareed. It’ll only make you crazy,”
said David.
“I think maybe crazy is what I am.”
Millie lowered the bat. “No. David is the crazy one.” She
glared in the light. “You scare me like that again and I’ll …”
“It wasn’t me,” David said in an offended voice.
The man on the ground had stopped moaning and was
looking at them all, wide-eyed. Suddenly he jumped to his feet
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and ran out into the darkness, down the slope into the lake
bottom. David swiveled the light to follow his flight but the man
didn’t turn back and soon dropped out of sight into one of the
gullies below.
“You did not shoot him,” Xareed observed.
David looked down at the submachine gun dangling in hand,
as if he were surprised he still held it. “No. Not me.”
“He is a rebel. He may bring back more. Sometimes they hide
down there.”
David looked vaguely concerned. “Oh.”
There was a flash from several hundred meters ahead of them
followed by a loud noise. Ten seconds later there was an
explosion in the camp behind them, followed by distant screams.
Xareed shuddered. “Mortars. They’re firing on the camp.
Give me the gun. I will go stop them.”
David looked down at the gun in his hand. Another mortar
went off. He shifted the gun in his grip and Millie said, “No!
That’s not the way!”
“Then what?”
“Water runs downhill.”
David blinked. “Oh. So it does.”
He handed the flashlight and the gun to Millie and vanished.
Xareed recoiled and fell backwards, then scrambled back to
his feet.
Millie gestured with the flashlight. “We need to get up the
hill a bit.”
“Why?”
She pulled the clip from the gun and threw it out into the
darkness, then worked the slide, ejecting another bullet from the
chamber before she threw it in the other direction. “You’ll see.”
They backed up the hill, toward the camp. Another mortar
shell exploded in the camp and Xareed thought of his sisters,
probably tucked in the corners of the house, their one mattress
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