Effendi

CHAPTER 8 Sudan

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are . . .”

It was Zac who came up with the idea of turning off the river, a few days after antiquated F-111s bombed Masouf Hospital with his brother inside.

Ka had found a small radio and a pair of spectacles. The radio was one of those old, windup things made of blue plastic. Like the spectacles, its case was cracked, and the dial didn’t work too well, but it still got Radio Freedom, which was the government, and Radio Liberty, which wasn’t . . .

An old woman was talking about war. She sounded cross and upset. Close to tears. She didn’t think the hospital had been an arms depot at all, she thought it was a hospital.

Did she have any proof she was right?

Did anyone have any proof that she wasn’t?

How long did Madame Ambassador think the war would go on? The woman asking all the questions was younger, her voice brittle.

“As long as there’s water to be fought over,” replied the old woman tiredly. “As long as . . .”

“. . . the Nile flows,” Zac repeated, for about the fifth time. “That’s what she said.”

“Rivers aren’t taps,” said Sarah, flicking long black braids out of her eyes. Being reasonably open to new ideas, Sarah wasn’t contemptuous like Saul, just doubtful. She looked across their small campfire to where the sergeant sat, and casually asked Ka what they were all wondering . . .

“What do you think?”

It was Ka’s job to know.

“Well”—Ka poked at the embers with a stick, sending sparks flicking skywards—“rivers get bigger, right, Saul?” That was what he remembered being told.

Saul shrugged. He was older than Ka and bigger, only not as clever. And Saul wasn’t his real name any more than Sarah was Sarah or Bec was actually Rebecca. But they’d fought with Ras Michael and those were their given names. The shoulder patches might have changed after they swapped sides at Aswan, yet the biblicals had stuck. Mostly because they’d been with Ras Michael for so long their original names were lost.

“Gets bigger? Says who?” Bec’s voice sounded aggressive but then it always sounded aggressive. Hers was still a real question.

“I do,” said Ka, more confidently. “Rivers start as streams and then get bigger on the way down the mountain. So they must begin small.”

“What mountain?” Zac asked.

“There’s always a mountain,” Ka said. “Or a hill. So if we find the start we can block it . . .”

“And just how do we do that?” Bec demanded.

It was Zachary who answered. “With ash,” he said, then blushed. “You build the dam with stones, put twigs behind it and then throw ash in the water. That blocks the small holes.”

“Okay,” Saul said heavily. “Suppose we decide to turn off the Nile . . .” His tone made it obvious how stupid he found that suggestion. “How do you suggest we get to where it starts?”

“Follow it,” said Sarah, as if that was blindingly obvious.

“Rivers wiggle,” Zac protested.

Sarah looked at Zac, trying not to be cross with the small boy. “Then we’ll just have to follow the wiggles, won’t we?”

“Not necessarily,” said Ka, then stopped. Only he’d said too much already. And Sarah was looking at him, openly interested.

Reaching into his shirt pocket, Ka pulled out the dark glasses. They were warm beneath his fingers. From the moment he’d found them, day or night, whatever the temperature in the desert they were always slightly warm. As if their temperature was controlled by a tiny spider’s web of gold threads that ran beneath the surface of the frame.

“Wow,” said Saul. “He’s got shades.”

Ka kept his temper.

“Where am I?”

“What . . . ?”

Flipping up one hand, Ka cut dead Sarah’s question. He could still see the others but now the fire had become a white blaze. A split second later, the flames fell into focus and it was the others who backed into shadow. And then in front of Ka’s eyes, the picture changed. Maybe it altered inside his head or maybe the new picture happened on the lenses. It was hard to tell.

All Ka knew was that suddenly he looked down at himself. A boy with too-big boots sitting at a crude fire beside a girl in a vest and combats. Opposite sat another heavier girl, a small boy hugging a gun, and a large boy who was clearly the eldest but whose poorly mended arm put him at an obvious disadvantage.

Around them were dotted other fires, other groups. Ka was slightly shocked at just how many fires there were. Further away began real tents, where the real soldiers slept, their campfires fuelled by gas, not scrub or camel dung. Beyond this, a slope began and at the bottom was a wide river. And though the water level was low, fat hippopotami still hung heavy near the muddy banks, ignoring the jackals that slunk out of the darkness to drink.

Black birds with white crowns roosted in the ruin of an old tomb, its broken walls split apart so long ago that it looked like a natural formation, an outcrop of crumbling mud brick.

Lions were meant to sneak down from the highlands, ridden by white-whiskered monkeys who spoke a real language and lived high on a cliff face, secure from humans. Ka could see neither of these.

Though he could see movement, away to his right, human movement where dry wadis fed from mountains that ran along the distant coast like a spine. Beyond this, a thin strip of towns and small cities separated the spine from more water than Ka could imagine.

RED SEA.

The letters lit across his vision, but he didn’t need to read them because the name was spoken softly into his ears. Which was as well because Ka hadn’t been taught reading, though he could remember anything if he knew it was important. And sometimes he remembered things anyway, just in case they turned out to be useful later.

So he knew, without being told, that the white markings on the bonnets of the 4 × 4s racing down the dried oueds towards their camp belonged to the government.

They left their fire banked up and burning brightly. Their rucksacks made a huddle under Saul’s old blanket. At ground level it looked like they were still there and sleeping.

Ka led them through the early morning, heading west. Pickets were stationed at regular spots around the camp, but those on guard duty sat talking or smoking kif, which they hid in their hands so that ends stayed hidden from the grown-ups. Who, if they were wise, stayed away. Two nights back a ten-year-old picket had fragged a one-bar, ostensibly for refusing to give the password. Word was, she’d tried to confiscate his cache.

“This way.” Ka slid down a gravel bank to where silver water spread away into forever. Reality was less far than it looked, but far enough. Now was where he learnt if he actually had control over the group or not.

“We have to cross the river,” said Ka, his voice calm. As if asking them to brave the water was a perfectly reasonable request. For a second, he wondered whether to mention the armed trucks racing across the desert on the other side of the camp, each one filled with a dozen heavily armed soldiers.

Saul might want to stay to fight and Ka could live with that. It mattered very little to him what Saul did, or where. But Sarah might stay too, and that mattered much more. Bec, as ever, would do what was the least effort.

“What about crocodiles?” Zac asked.

“There aren’t any,” Ka said firmly.

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

Obviously enough he was lying, because he could see at least three. Loglike flickers that grew brighter the harder he looked. Crocodilus niloticus, according to the glasses, five hundred paces away. With luck, the reptiles would remain asleep. Without luck . . . Well, that applied to everything.

“Come on,” insisted Ka. “Move it. And hold your weapon over your head so water doesn’t go down the barrel.”

“I can’t move it,” said Saul quietly. Sounding, for once, less than certain.

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t swim.”

“Oh . . .” Ka hadn’t thought of that. “Anybody else?”

“I probably can,” Zac said brightly. He paused, suddenly aware that Ka, Sarah and Bec were staring at him. “I mean I’ve never tried but . . .”

Bec sucked at her teeth, crossly.

“Sarah?”

She was the only one Ka was really bothered about.

“Of course I can swim. My father was a fisherman.”

“So?” His father had kept camels and Ka hated the animals and they hated him. He never rode when there was an option to walk.

“So I can swim,” said Sarah. “Okay?”

“Well, I can’t.” Saul’s voice was getting angry.

The picture shifted and tightened, an overlay of wavy lines hanging ghost-breath in front of Ka’s eyes. Some spoke of height, being set tight to the edges of scars and cliffs. Others mapped the river. It took Ka a while to realize that these indicated depth, but that was because his attention was on something else.

Sarah volunteered to get the boat.

“Turn your backs,” she demanded, waiting until they had. Beneath her vest and combats she wore nothing except a ragged thong cut high at the hip. A Norwegian nurse had given the thong away, along with the rest of her spare clothes the day before returning to a family farm outside Namsos. The new owner died of a gut shot. Sarah had swapped the thong for a half packet of Cleopatra and an amulet from the person who owned it after that.

“Be back soon . . .”

Ka heard the slight splash, as they all did: but he was the only one able to watch as Sarah struck out across the dark expanse of water, head bobbing and legs kicking to the side. Except it wasn’t her head he watched but her back and buttocks, flesh thinned by hunger and endless marches that trailed the Ragged Army up and down the river.

Fifteen minutes later, Sarah was on her way back, puffing slightly but happy. Although what the others saw was a boat that glided towards them as if by magic.

“Turn round,” she demanded, scrambling up the bank and into her dusty clothes, ignoring the water that ran down her legs and between her small breasts.

“What’s with you?” Saul demanded.

Ka jumped.

“You’re standing weird . . .”

“I was listening,” Ka said hastily and regretted it the moment Saul asked him the obvious question.

“To trucks,” said Ka.

Which got their attention. Zac went fly-catcher, mouth hanging open, Bec looked round and even Sarah shot him a sideways glance as she squeezed water from heavy black braids. That was when Ka remembered he wasn’t going to mention the government.

“Blue hats?” Saul’s voice was raw.

“No idea,” said Ka, although he had. There were blue hats, militia and regular government troops. Plus two open trucks full of nasrani wearing black uniforms and swirling face paint. “But I don’t plan to hang round to find out.”

“You just going to run away then?”

Ka stepped back. “Which is more important?” he asked Saul. “Staying here or going to turn off the Nile?”

“We can do that later,” Saul protested.

“What if we’re dead?” Ka said. “Who’ll go then?”

The deck of the tiny felucca had been bleached white from a lifetime’s sun, the sky sail was rotten and the sycamore sides were warped. Cracks above the waterline had been ignored but any gaps below were stuffed with rope and crudely gummed over, both inside and out, with dollops of bitumen.

“It looks great,” Ka told Sarah.

Together they launched her boat, then stood back, up to their hips in the wide river as Zac pulled himself up over the side. Bec followed, hooking her dress above wide hips to keep it out of the water. Ka guessed she knew she wasn’t wearing any pants.