by K J Griffin
Hasan started the Land Rover behind them. The roar of the retreating diesel engine made Sophie feel suddenly vulnerable and alone. It was one on one. They watched Hasan drive off and Omar put a hand on her shoulder.
‘First time in Africa, Sophie?’ He was standing face-to-face, strands of off-blond hair wafting in front of his sunglasses in the breeze.
The slap came from nowhere, sharp and unexpected on the side of his face. He stared back at her coolly, then turned his gaze towards the elephants in the dip.
‘Well, that makes us even, I suppose,’ he sighed.
But Sophie’s anger had only just returned; and now she had it back, she didn’t want to waste any.
‘Oh, no. We’re a long way from even, Omar. You’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do, and even if you had an eternity to do it, you could never explain away the callous cruelty of that car park. You can take back your house—and your money, too. I don’t want anything more from you, except an immediate flight back home.’
He turned and walked abruptly away. For a second, it occurred to her that he might simply disappear on the motorbike, leave her stuck in the wilderness in some pathetic damsel-in-distress routine. Perhaps that was the point of this raw nature location, to make her realize her vulnerability and re-establish a bond of dependency on him.
She was fractionally relieved to see him disappear inside the tent instead, reappearing moments later with a beer in each hand. Sophie snatched at the ice-cold bottle he offered. In the heat of the fading afternoon sun, she could think of nothing she wanted more; every desire she had ever experienced was encapsulated inside that plain amber bottle of Safari Lager.
‘Cheers!’ he said, clinking her bottle. She scowled back at him, but her anger only seemed to amuse him. ‘And welcome to Tarangire Tented Safari Camp, Sophie! Why don’t you join me in the main bar and game-viewing lounge,’ he added, pointing to the tree stump on a knoll at the crest of the rise. ‘We can discuss all your concerns there.’
‘Is this the luxury tented camp advertised on that billboard outside the park?’ she asked in amazement, aware that he was succeeding in deflecting her attention away from the direction of her anger.
He grinned, ‘That’s right. I’ve had a lot of work done on the place since I bought it two years ago. Once a thriving tourist-class resort, made up of forty luxury, fixed-fitting tents, bar, restaurant, swimming pool and game-viewing terrace; now, totally reverted to nature! I’ve greatly simplified the design, and I must say that I am delighted with the results. Look!’ he laughed stonily, pointing to an area of bare earth behind her back. ‘You can see what a job it was to remove every last damned piece of concrete from the place. The swimming pool, in particular, was hard work.’
‘What on earth would you want to do that for?’ she asked, relaxed enough by the cool beer to indulge his side-track. ‘A swim would be the next best thing to a cold beer right now.’
‘Them again, I’m afraid,’ he sighed. ‘They were here, you see—profit sharks from the open seas of the global free market, smelling blood, wanting to turn this simple perfection into another concrete resort for the idle rich. Development, they call it! Just think of the value judgement inherent in the name! As if their buildings, swimming pools, roads and rubbish tips constitute any sort of improvement on what you can see all around you. Tell me, how the hell do they think they can improve on all this?’ he shouted, swinging his arms around in a full arc and slopping beer.
‘So you bought the camp with the express intention of pulling it down?’ she asked robotically, her mind still focused more on Ramliyya than Tarangire.
‘Of course! And I’ve bought other similar places throughout East Africa. The Tanzanian government thinks I’ve pulled down the camp to build a luxury resort lodge. I have to pay heavily in bribes to government officials, park rangers etc., but I pay more generously than the tourists do, so everyone stays happy. But whatever I can save here or elsewhere will only slow the cancer down by a few years. The plutocrats, corporate executives and the politicians they keep in their pockets are too powerful in the long-term, even for me. That is why I must take the fight to the very heart of their System.’
Sophie ignored the implications behind the last comment for the time being. Just more of the same dark, unspecified threats.
‘But isn’t tourism good for countries like this, Omar? After all, you’ve got to admit that it generates local jobs and provides a lot of much-needed foreign currency.’
He glared at her ferociously. For a second she thought he was going to return the slap; instead, he sighed and turned away.
‘Can’t you see what will happen—is already happening here, and all over the remaining ‘undeveloped’ world? Oh yes, it starts with a few discreet hotels or bush camps like this one, built to gratify the desire of a small international elite. They come in four-wheel drives to spend some vacation time and a modicum of their blood-sucked cash among the wonders of raw nature, careful to ensure that ‘getting close to nature’ entails no compromise to their own personal comfort. Next they build another hotel, pave the roads, a casino maybe, shops, shanty houses for the subsistence-salaried workers. You can imagine the rest. It’s the Midas touch. Before long they’ve irretrievably lost whatever they came here to find—freedom, untamed nature, wild animals. Look at the Costa del Sol or the Algarve. Not so very long ago they were beautiful backwaters full of orange and almond groves, scenic coastline and quaint Mediterranean villages. Now all that cash and development has created Birmingham-on-Sea, with more sun and cheaper booze. It’s all a result of the Growth Process, the ‘More Syndrome’; unfettered capitalism…call it whatever you want, the ideology is the same: take as much as you can while it’s still there—and sod the consequences!’
Animated by his usual political angst, he took Sophie’s empty beer bottle and walked off to the tent to fetch fresh ones. Two Masai herdsman appeared in the dip below, moving their cattle past the unconcerned elephants. Their arms hung gracefully from the ends of their spears, which were draped over shoulders and supported against the backs of their necks. The first Masai raised a hand and waved nonchalantly towards Omar. It was a salute of equals.
‘Now the tourists have gone, I told the rangers to allow the Masai and their cattle back in the park. After all, if the land belongs to anyone, it’s really theirs. Look at them! Once the most feared tribe in East Africa, now chased off the land they grazed for centuries. And do you know why? Because they were not greedy enough! They never built fences around their land, or carved it up into strips of private property. These people lived with the land; they were part of the environment, not its exploiters. Perfect symbiosis. And because none of them owned an individual plot, everybody cared about the whole. Then our system came along. To the System, no fences and no title deeds meant it was all there for the taking. Ripe for development! So now the Masai will have to join the rest of the world in the System game. And they start at the very bottom of the cesspool of global capitalism, down in the foulest smelling drains, where the majority of mankind lurks, each man and woman pretending they believe the lie that one day they, too, will get to drive round here in Toyota Land Cruisers, drinking ice-cold Coca Cola before hurrying back to luxury apartments to check the closing prices of the Nikkei exchange from their laptop computers. It’s a sick farce. Surely you can see that, Sophie?’
‘As sick as a public beheading in Ramliyya, for example?’
He looked at her intently, the ironical malice of the early days back on his face.
Why did you do it, Omar?’ She was all the more urgent for having been kept waiting. ‘How could you let that poor man die so horribly? What had he done to you to deserve such terrible punishment? No one deserves what he suffered.’
But Al-Ajnabi just shrugged nonchalantly, unmoved by the passion in her voice.
‘Phil Goss was a brutal murderer and an incorrigible bully, Sophie. You needn’t worry too much on his account. But anyway, who said it was my decision to hav
e him executed?’
‘It was you, I’m certain of it. Come on, there’s no use pretending to me any longer, Omar. Why else would you have dragged Marcus’s father there to witness the execution? You had some grudge against that poor, unfortunate Goss, or whatever his name was, and you wanted to humiliate Marcus’s father as well. Isn’t that how it was? Well, I hope it was worth it. I hope you enjoyed your pound of flesh!’
The sun was setting in front of them, flecking the yellow land and dark acacias in its most delicious hues. Weaver birds whistled overhead. Three giraffes had joined the elephants, their tawny hides smudged golden in the amber sunlight. Omar got up, arranged three large stones into a fireplace and started snapping brushwood. Sophie stayed sitting on the tree stump, anger smouldering stronger than the kindling fire. But at the same time, just sitting on the tree stump, gazing out at the primeval beauty of dusk over Tarangire threatened to distract her fury; it was a powerful, gravitational counter-pull on the soul.
‘Marcus’s father did not just go to Ramliyya to witness the execution,’ he sighed eventually, watching the first flames flicker high in the fire. ‘Colonel Easterby was there at the execution because he himself had chosen it.”
‘What? You’re trying to tell me that Marcus’s father ordered that man’s execution? Rubbish! That’s impossible!’
‘Not impossible, Sophie,’ he said dryly. ‘And I can prove it to you. In fact, when you return to London on tomorrow’s flight, your friend Darren Chapman will probably have splashed the details over the front page of the Guardian.’ His voice was matter of fact, but Sophie could feel the latent hostility concealed underneath. And once again, she had the shudder of a suspicion that some of it was directed against her.
She looked at him in shock, certain, at last, that he wasn’t lying. ‘Oh my God!’ she moaned. ‘But that’s awful! Then her eyes narrowed again. ‘But hang on a minute, Omar. How could Colonel Easterby have chosen it, as you say? He can’t order executions in Ramliyya.’
“No, he can’t. But Goss was working for Colonel Easterby’s company, British Defence Systems, at the time of his arrest. There was no question of Goss’s guilt. He slit the throat of a Ramli citizen when our police swooped to arrest him for his role in organizing an alcohol and drug smuggling operation. Murder is an automatic death sentence in Ramliyya, but we gave Colonel Easterby a choice: termination of his company’s substantial arms contract in our county, or Goss’s life. You yourself saw what he chose.’
Sophie cupped her head in her hands. Suddenly even the thought of Marcus revolted her. What was it the Bible said about the sins of the father?
‘But it was still you who gave Colonel Easterby that choice, wasn’t it, Omar? And you wanted to make him responsible for the execution. Don’t think I didn’t see the way you were looking at him and Marcus throughout your dinner party. Why are you so hostile to them? Is it something to do with me and Marcus?’
Omar laughed briefly and humourlessly, then busied himself with tending the fire. Black smoke curled upwards towards the earliest and brightest stars. The dusk was splendid and short-lived, provoking a riot of noise from animals and insects that teemed unseen for miles around. He lit a paraffin lamp and passed it to her.
‘Why don’t you fetch a couple more beers from the tent, Sophie? It’s a long story. I’ll cook while I talk.’
She did as he suggested, handed him another beer, and sat back on the tree stump, despondent at what she had just heard about Colonel Easterby, yet at the same time deliciously awestruck by the splendid starscape and the beautiful loneliness of the fidgeting bush.
When he had finished throwing a hotchpotch of ingredients into smoking pot, he turned to face her:
‘You think I would go to all that trouble just to get at your boyfriend?” The sneer was emphatic. ‘Oh, no, Sophie. There’s much more to it than that. Much, much more. Let me take you back well over twenty years, back to the time when a young man was just graduating from university, same university as you, same college as well. He and his best friend were both on army scholarships, and as soon as they left Oxford, it was to begin a three-year commission.’
‘This young man left behind a college sweetheart he adored when Sandhurst swallowed him for seven months’ training. Barrack room life was dull, training hard, but at least he had his best friend with him to alleviate the boredom. When they graduated and both received their commissions after Basic Training and Officer Training, both were assigned as second lieutenants to D Company, the Parachute Regiment, stationed in Northern Ireland.’
He broke off from the narrative to take a long pull on his beer, peering intently into the darkness. His face was only dimly lit by the firelight, but Sophie didn’t have to see it to know the expression.
‘So really you’re British, then by origin?’
The revelation bewildered Sophie more than it should have; she knew she should have guessed that a long time back.
He nodded. ‘That was my nationality—a long time ago.’ The admission must have left a bad taste in his mouth, for he turned round to spit into the fire.
Curiosity had conquered Sophie’s anger. Now she was anxious to hear more.
‘So how did a second lieutenant from the Parachute Regiment turn into a Ramli prince? But wait a minute, Omar. Before you tell me that, don’t you think you should tell me your original name. I don’t suppose you were called ‘Omar’ back in your army days.’
He sighed:
‘Back then my name was Robert Bailey. In South Africa, I changed it to Frank Russell. I suppose you should call me Robert.’
They both fell silent; Sophie felt awkward with the new name and waited for him to carry on.
‘I was based in Antrim for the first two months, getting to know my new platoon, finding out how useless most of what we had learned in training was in Northern Ireland.’
‘Back then I was opinionated too, but only moderately socialist and proudly patriotic. One night in Antrim, I got drunk in the officers’ mess and ended up in a raging political row with my commanding officer. Bad mistake, but I wouldn’t back down. And I soon found out what a vindictive bastard he was. From then on he was at me the whole time, watching my every move, waiting for me to trip up.’
‘You’re talking about Marcus’s father, I suppose?’
Bailey nodded.
‘But Major Easterby wasn’t the end of my problems. I was doubly cursed with a devil of a platoon sergeant, a brute and a bully who had taken a violent dislike to me from day one. Goss had run the platoon his way for some time. In it, he was God, and everyone, including the platoon commander I had just replaced, was taught how to say their amens and hallelujahs.’
‘Oh my God,’ Sophie stammered. ‘Did you say Goss? That’s the man who was beheaded yesterday, isn’t it?’
His silence did for confirmation.
Sophie felt suddenly sick now that she could match an identity to the head that had plopped so heavily onto the green mat in the car park in Ramliyya. And she felt angry again with Omar—or Robert, or whatever his wretched name was—angry that he had persisted with a revenge far more terrible than anything his army tormentors could ever have meted out against him.
But Bailey forged ahead before Sophie could find words for her emotion.
‘After two months on the border country we were moved up to barracks in Lisburn, North Belfast. Platoon morale was low. Major Easterby was giving us all the worst duties and Goss was on my back all the time, trying to ridicule me in front of the men. Added to that, we were carrying a lot of raw youngsters like myself.’
‘April, over twenty years ago. We were on patrol in West Belfast. You probably know the date; it’s infamous enough in British history.’
She had not, so she waited for him to explain.
‘There had been trouble in the district all week—riots, stone throwing, that sort of thing. As we turned into the Falls Road from Whiterock Road, we ran straight into a mob of angry youngsters. We were exactly what they wer
e looking for. A couple of young Catholics had just been shot up early that morning at an RUC roadblock. Before I knew what was happening, there were stones and petrol bombs raining down on us. Then came the shots. IRA snipers had taken positions in several houses further up the road and were opening up on us, using the youngsters in the crowd for bait and cover.’
‘Goss rushed over. His blood was up with me and with them. One of our lads was down and Goss wanted some payback—fast. I refused and radioed in. But Major Easterby was in no mood for compromise either. I’d heard him often enough before to know that he wanted to teach the IRA and their sympathizers a lesson. ‘Short, sharp shock therapy,’ was what he called it after a couple of whisky and gingers in the Mess.’
‘Easterby told me to, ‘Do what you have to, man.’ I prevaricated and objected. That was when Goss stepped in. He snatched the headset from my ears and jumped the chain of command to get Easterby’s support. I knew what Goss wanted, and Easterby gave him the green light. For a split second I could have killed Goss, emptied my magazine right into his beefy chest. But the bullets only ended up as a punch into his jaw, as hard and as vicious as anything I could manage. Stupid idea! Men like Goss have rubber jaws. He took the blow easily, then felled me with a head-butt.’
‘The next bit was the worst. I wasn’t properly unconscious; if anything, I was probably more acutely aware of every detail going on around me, just powerless to get up. I heard Goss give the order. Then came the shots. Steady taps of fire, all the more sinister for their controlled discipline. I wanted to shout out, scream at the lads to stop, but I could only lie on the pavement like a beached jelly, clasping my forehead, moaning gently. I could hear the kids’ screams, hear them running in pandemonium up the street, hear Goss revelling in every bullet that hit its mark. Later, when the ambulance men arrived to scoop up the bleeding, dead and dying, they counted twelve bodies, eleven of them under twenty years old.’
Sophie flicked her hair back. ‘It’s the Falls Road Massacre you’re talking about, right?’