The Abrupt Physics of Dying Read online

  But before he had a chance to answer, to say that yes, he knew exactly what she meant, was living it even now, she stood, closed the door, turned and walked across the parking lot towards the hotel.

  He waited, hoping that she would turn and wave but she rounded the corner without looking back and was gone.

  A Way of Saying Thank You

  Early the next morning he left Aden running north through Lawdar, up to the edge of the great sand river of Ramlat as Sab’atayn and then across into Wadi Hadramawt from the west. On the high plateau the miles slipped by like drifting sand. Other than the occasional drill rig lancing a mesa and the new roads and oil pipelines that scored the hardpan, it could have been the Seven Pillars: the quiet of the tablelands, the wadis riven like scars across the earth, the sky a torn blue shroud, the relentless sun above.

  By the time he reached Marib his neck and shoulders ached from constant craning and swivelling. He had seen nothing that would indicate he was being followed, but he could feel the eyes of the PSO everywhere, checking off his progress through each village and hamlet. Karila and Parnell had probably already given them his itinerary.

  And Al Shams’ name was everywhere: whispered in streetside tea houses or around early-morning braziers, invoked in oaths and prayers, God protect him, imagined in small boy’s games, the towering hero slaying all enemies. Anointed by Allah, he would deliver to the people what was rightly theirs. Change was coming, they said.

  After the long descent towards Ash Shihir he turned west again and tracked along the base of the escarpment towards Um’alat. He was still shocked that Rania had delved so deeply into his past, his present, was shaken that his efforts at anonymity had been so easily pierced. Her parting words rattled through his head. The wrong direction, she’d said. Locked in. And in those dazzling eyes, those tears, he’d seen damage.

  Alone, he waited in the dust under a platinum Arabian sky. The mashayikh was already an hour late. He looked up at the ancient skyscrapers that rose as if by some miracle of mud and clay from the valley floor, their alabaster window frames paned in rainbows of coloured glass, and beyond, the bluffs that towered over the town and dominated the landscape for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. Except for the dilapidated truck parked nearby and the heaps of rubbish lining the street – plastic bags and blue polyethylene water bottles, car tyres, tins, batteries and moulded plastic parts – a century or more might have been wound back.

  A new silver Land Cruiser rolled to a stop in the town square. The mashayikh was alone, dressed in the same tweed jacket and thaub, a Kalashnikov slung over his left shoulder. He greeted Clay in the elaborate way of the region, touching fingertips to chest, lips and forehead, and extended his hand.

  Clay followed the Arab into a tall, whitewashed building and up four flights of worn stone steps. They entered a deep narrow room with big wood-framed windows ranged all along one side, the mardar. From here he could see out across the dry expanse of the coastal plain to the demesne of green farmland and palm groves huddled along the contours of the depression, and beyond to the flat scrubland shrouded in heat and dust.

  They sat on cushions at the far end of the room. An old man brought a bundle of qat branches and two bottles of drinking water. Following the mashayikh, Clay selected a branch, dropped it in his lap, and started to pluck the leaves from their stems between thumb and forefinger, choosing tender new shoots from the red stems as Abdulkader had taught him and wedging them between his lower gum and the wall of his cheek. The mashayikh nodded and chewed in silence, steadily adding to the ball of green mash that bulged inside his left cheek. It looked as if he was trying to swallow a fist.

  After two hours the subtle amphetamine of the leaves was in control of his nervous system. Sweat ran from his temples and trickled down his chest. The room was hot; there was no air. His heart rate spiked and dropped and spiked again as the cathinone raced through his veins. The effect was like dexedrine: not as strong, but a definite open-eyed buzz.

  Finally the mashayikh spoke. ‘At your request, Mister Straker, I am listening.’

  ‘Is the illness still with your people, Excellency?’

  ‘The children, Mister Straker, only the children. It has become worse since we spoke. Much worse.’

  He felt his thumb twitch once, then again, and then his index finger started to jump on its tendons, and the thumb again until his left hand was trembling visibly. He pushed the offending thing hard against his thigh, but the mashayikh had seen it.

  ‘I have discussed this with the General Manager,’ Clay said. ‘We have examined the information. The facility cannot possibly be causing the illness you described.’

  ‘Only in Al Urush are our people suffering in this way. It is closest to your processing plant. Does that not seem a strange coincidence?’

  ‘Al Urush is far from the facility,’ he said. ‘I have been there.’

  ‘The sickness travels in the air, as my son said. It can go far.’

  They would deal with it in the usual way. Clay pulled a manila envelope from his breast pocket and placed it on the floor between them. ‘My superiors understand your concern, and although this problem is not the result of our operations, we are committed to working with you and your people to maintain good relations as the project moves ahead.’ It sounded like someone else. Now came the real reckoning, Excellency.

  The mashayikh looked at him and down at the envelope. His eyes were moist; cataracts drifted there like clouds. ‘What is this, khawga?’

  ‘A way of saying thank you for your cooperation.’

  The mashayikh picked up the envelope and peered inside and replaced it where it had been. ‘Our concerns are significant, Mister Straker. I am sure you can understand.’

  ‘Can you assure us also of your son’s cooperation, Excellency?’ Clay remembered the handsome young man dressed in white, the way every tribesman in the room had turned to face him that day, gone quiet, nodded as he spoke.

  The mashayikh grunted, took a sip of water. ‘He is young and naïve. But he will do as his father commands.’

  Clay placed a second envelope on top of the first. The mashayikh considered the pile for a moment, stood, smoothed down his robe, and walked to the window to look out over his domain. ‘You may go, Mister Straker,’ he said, still looking out of the window. ‘But be aware, my friend, that I may have need of your thanks again.’

  Clay stood next to the mashayikh and looked out across the plain. ‘Tell Al Shams that I have done what he asked.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Tell him I want my friend released.’

  ‘What leads you to believe that I have any connection with that man? He is a terrorist.’

  ‘Spare me the bullshit, your Excellency. Tell him.’ Clay strode to the far end of the room, turned to face the mashayikh. ‘And warn him. The PSO are coming for him.’

  Soon he was speeding along the dirt track that led to the highway. This part of his job was done. That was how it went. One glance inside was enough to conjure up dreams and send hearts racing. It was like looking through the gates of paradise ephemeral. Part of him had wanted the mashayikh to reject the bribe, spit it back in his face. But of course it always worked. It was only a matter of how much. At first it had been exciting, it had made him feel somehow strengthened against the vicissitudes of the world. Learning that everyone was susceptible, that we were all whores, had changed him more than he could have realised, had made him harder, meaner, more resilient somehow. It was not a bad thing. Everyone had a price. You only had to dig down far enough, cut through enough layers to find it.

  At the turnoff to Al Urush he stopped the car and turned off the engine. The dust settled like a poured Guinness around him. Should he go back for another sample? By taking the money, the mashayikh had revealed the truth. The claims of illness were a hoax, a way of prising money from the company. Petro-Tex had set the precedent a year ago, paying off local leaders rather than dealing with their concerns directly,
and now they were stuck with it. And what did that say about Al Shams? Was all this concern for the people just a screen for his political agenda? Was Parnell right? And what did that mean for Abdulkader?

  He turned the ignition, jammed the car into gear and trod on the accelerator. Soon he was on the outskirts of Al Urush. As soon as he arrived, he could sense that something was wrong. The place was deserted. A pall of acrid haze swirled amongst the palms. He walked to a small mud-brick hut no larger than a garden shed, one of a cluster of similar buildings stumped at the base of the escarpment and banged on the door. After a minute a woman pulled the door ajar and peered out from the darkness. She held a fold of her dress across her face and spoke in a girlish voice. He was ushered inside.

  The place smelt of urine, stale sweat and kerosene, and something else he could not place, decay of some sort, sublimates, rot. His eyes adjusted to the gloom: a dirt floor, two wooden chairs, a small table set against the wall near the door, a gas burner propped on a stack of mud bricks.

  The boy lay on a steel frame bed at the far end of the room, a bicycle wheel clutched to his chest. He played a few notes on his instrument and looked up as if searching for encouragement. He was barely recognisable.

  Clay stood in the semi-darkness and stared down at the boy, and suddenly it was the face of the SWAPO soldier who had crawled off into the bush to die. Clay had come upon him just beyond the chana. The soldier had propped himself up against a mopane tree in the sun and sat there staring with that grey gone look in his eyes, hands clasped over his torn abdomen. Clay had given him one in the head just to be sure. It had only taken a moment. Raise the R4, the South African version of the famous Israeli Galil assault rifle, accurate and powerful, pull the trigger. Done. And ever since, that fraction of a second had replayed itself a thousand times, a million, looping over and over in his dreams until the very thought of sleep filled him with dread.

  Clay approached the bed, clenched his jaw. He forced himself to smile, but it felt twisted, fake. ‘Mohamed.’ Tears welled up, unbidden, burning. He blinked, pushed them back.

  Mohamed stretched his lips over swollen gums. ‘My friend,’ he whispered in Arabic. Clay put his hand on Mohamed’s head. The boy was burning up. In halting Arabic he asked the woman how long the boy had been like this.

  The woman spoke in shrill tones. She waved her henna-adorned hands above her head and pointed repeatedly to the escarpment, something about the smoke, sickness, other children, babies.

  ‘Only children?’ he asked. He measured a child’s height with a flat palm.

  Again the woman erupted in a flurry of shrieks.

  Clay pulled his camera from the pack, attached the flash and checked the film. He looked at the woman and pointed to the camera. She nodded. He took several photos of Mohamed and slung the camera strap around his neck, feeling like a ghoul, a calamity tourist.

  Clay reached in his pocket and handed the woman a hundreddollar note. ‘Hospital,’ he said, pointing in the direction of Al Mukalla. ‘Get him to hospital.’

  Of course, she had no way of complying. She looked at the bill, President and Independence Hall, and handed it back.

  Clay pushed her hand away and turned and stumbled out into the midday glare, gagging at the smell. Heat poured in liquid waves from the escarpment and flowed down and across the little hamlet like a plague. Beyond the trees a thread of dark smoke rose into the sky. Dogs barked in the distance.

  He walked quickly across the clearing to the cistern. He grabbed one of the plastic buckets that the villagers used, threw it in, let it fill, and pulled it dripping to the surface. He scooped some water into his hand and tasted it. It was brackish, estuarine, nothing like the water he had tasted only a few days ago at the pools a few hundred metres up-wadi from here. He pulled the conductivity meter from his pack, dropped the probe into the bucket and switched on the device. The readings oscillated and then stabilised, the glowing red digits burned into his memory. The water was much saltier than it should be. He measured pH, pulled his yellow fieldbook from his pocket, scribbled down the readings, poured some of the water from the bucket into a sample bottle.

  Clay shouldered his pack, clicked off photographs of the cistern and the boy’s house and the escarpment, and set off through the trees towards the smoke. A wail cut the air. It sounded like a pack of dogs howling. He walked on. The noise grew louder. He passed through a series of small fields shaded by palms and crossed a low earthen dyke to descend into a dark hollow. The place was strewn with rubbish, the air electric with the buzz of insects. The odour of decay was overpowering. Clay retched and jammed the tail of his keffiyeh over his nose and mouth. A pack of rib-cage dogs snarled and ripped at a heap of tiny glutinous carcasses, the eyes opaque and filmed over.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he choked through his scarf, still moving through the trees towards the smoke. Twenty minutes later he emerged into a rocky clearing at the base of a dolomite cliff. A small crescent of mud huts was built into the slope. A group of women stood in a loose semi-circle, covered head to foot in black, facing a pillar of fire. The flames danced up through the stacked wood, caressing a clutch of doll-sized bundles nestled atop the pyre. Oily smoke poured into the flawless sky. Embers leapt and spun into the void to be extinguished in mid-flight. The women wailed and moaned, hiding their faces in their hands, rocking their heads forward and back in a rhythm of grief. One of the women glanced up at him through a veil of tears. Their eyes met across the smoke. It was the girl he had seen washing clothes at the upper pool that day, no more than a week ago. There was no mistaking those eyes, even now. He took a step forward, raised his hand, but she looked away. There was no pity here for any of them, pinned to the stony ground beneath scorched walls of rock.

  One Man Is Nothing

  He set off from the village, still in shock, Mohamed’s mother in the back seat, her son in her arms. Seared fields of stone ripped past the open window, superheated air buffeting the side of his face, tearing at his hair. She was rocking the boy, whispering to him, stroking his matted head, the boy’s face pale beneath her long brown fingers, her thick cracked nails. Mohamed’s head hung limp, jerking with each bump in the road, his mouth open so that Clay could see the top row of little white teeth shivering in the rear-view mirror. Jesus, was he dead? Clay pushed down on the accelerator, urging the speedometer on. The Land Cruiser rattled along the washboard, the diesel whining at full power, road dust billowing through the windows. Clay reached into his pack and pulled out his keffiyeh and passed it back to the woman. ‘For the dust,’ he yelled, turning his hand around his head. She took it and laid it over Mohamed’s face. It looked like a shroud.

  An hour later he strode into the main entrance of the public hospital in Al Mukalla, Mohamed covered in road dust, limp and unconscious in his arms, his frail chest rising and falling. The boy’s mother followed close behind, face covered, the tourniquets of her fingers coiling about themselves, releasing, cinching. He doubted she had ever seen a hospital, let alone been inside one. A soldier in a camouflaged jacket lay slumped in a chair just inside the door, a huge wad of qat pushing out his cheek. He looked up at them with lost, bloodshot eyes and waved them in. Half a dozen people sat stern-faced on a bench set against one wall. At the far end of the room, a male attendant in a green smock sat behind what appeared to be an admitting counter.

  Clay made for the counter and stood looking down at the top of the attendant’s head. A newspaper was spread on the desk. ‘Salam,’ said Clay. The attendant did not look up. Clay tried again, more formally. ‘Salam aleikum.’

  ‘Aleikum salam,’ muttered the attendant, still not looking up.

  Clay used his best Arabic. ‘This boy needs a doctor.’

  The attendant reached under the desk and produced a green form and placed it on the desk, still not looking up. It was in Arabic, the script dense, impenetrable. Cradling Mohamed in one arm he pushed the papers over to the woman, took a pen from his shirt pocket and held it out for her. She looked at the
pen and up at him. Tears flooded her eyes. He motioned to the paper with his head, pushed the pen towards her again.

  ‘La,’ she cried. No. She trailed off into a back-of-the mosque lament that he could not follow.

  Clay turned back to the attendant, understanding. ‘Lau samaht,’ he said. ‘Please. She cannot read or write.’

  The attendant looked up from his newspaper. He was a youngish man, gaunt-faced, his skin pockmarked and oily. He glanced at the woman and then at the boy, and pointed to the form, speaking in rapid Arabic. Clay understood enough to get the message. The form was mandatory. He picked up the sheets and stared at the blank spaces, the tick boxes. He could feel the frustration taking bites out of whatever patience still lived within him. With Abdulkader here this would have been easy, but, now, it was impossible. He slammed the form down onto the desk. The attendant jumped back, looked up, wide-eyed.

  ‘Doctor,’ said Clay, tuning his voice for loud and authoritative. ‘Now.’ He jammed his index finger onto the desktop. Universal language.

  ‘No doctor,’ said the attendant, pushing his chair back from the desk.

  ‘Doctor,’ said Clay, more emphatic now. Behind him, he could hear the scrape of a chair. The soldier had awoken from his stupor and was watching them. Clay smiled at him and turned back to the attendant, sliding a fifty-dollar bill onto the counter top. The attendant looked at the bill, hesitated a moment, and snatched it up. Then he stood, took the form and a pen and asked the woman a question. She answered and he began to fill in the first boxes. Clay stood and watched the play of question-and-answer unfold, the woman becoming visibly more disturbed as they crept down the form, right to left. After a quarter of an hour the woman was in tears, the form only half complete.

  ‘Mushkilla?’ asked Clay. What is the problem?