Stone Kingdoms (25 page)

The soldier on the roof of the clinic saw me first, and as I walked into the clearing in front of the compound he stood up and shouted to those below. At the open gate they swarmed out, holding their guns in readiness but no one came close or tried to place me under his control. I kept on walking; past their staring faces, and then one of them made a joke and they laughed and someone shouted and there was more laughter.

He was waiting for me on the veranda outside the clinic, flanked by two of his men. When I reached him, I bowed my head and told him my name, then gave my nationality as Irish. At first he didn't understand, asking again and again if I was American or English. It felt safer to be Irish, less important, and finally he understood what I was saying but there was suspicion in his eyes.

‘Where have you been hiding?' he asked.

‘Outside the camp. In the bush.'

‘Who has helped you hide?'

‘No one. No one has helped me.'

He smiled his disbelief and said something in his own language to the soldier beside him and they looked me slowly up and down, feeling no need to disguise the intensity of their examination.

‘Why did you come here?'

‘Because I heard you were looking for me and that you would do me no harm.'

‘Who told you this?'

‘Some children. I do not know their names.'

‘Why do you wear the clothes of my people?'

‘I have no other clothes. I wish to be as one of your people.'

He shook his head as if denying the possibility of such a thing, and then broke into conversation with the two soldiers,
emphasizing
his points to them with slashes of his hand through the air. For the first time I was able to look openly at him, and saw that he was tall, with a sinewy body that didn't fill his uniform, and just below his high-pointed cheek bones his skin was marked by dark ridges that looked like tribal incisions. As he grew more animated his right hand moved rapidly, like a tongue, its speech full of urgency. Once he looked briefly at me and pointed, his finger insisting on something to the other men. I shifted slightly and silently, trying to see past their bodies and into the shadows of the clinic, but as the argument ran on they moved constantly, readjusting and realigning themselves with their differing points of view. Finally it was finished and as they turned again to me, whatever divergencies had existed had vanished, replaced by a cohesion that showed itself in the way they angled themselves to each other.

‘There are many questions. You must answer everything with truth.'

I nodded, following when he motioned me into the clinic. As I stepped into the cooler, shadowy air, at first I saw only the two soldiers slouching on the chairs, their guns resting on the floor and held loosely between their knees. I tried to hide my desire to rake the room with my eyes, knowing that my indifference would serve her better than my concern, but as they gestured me to a seat, my eyes found her where she stood with her back against the wall, half in shadow and half in the light of the open doorway, and in the seconds before I turned my glance away I saw the cut and bruise of her face. She didn't look at me but stared at the floor, holding herself motionless and silent as if part of the wall itself.

He stood a few feet in front of me looking down, and I tried to hide my fear and look openly at him without bowing to the weight of his gaze or trying to evade it. Other soldiers came and stood in the spaces of the room, and the scent of their sweat
mingled
with the cold oiled smell of their guns. One of them sat jangling a bunch of keys he had found in a drawer.

‘Why did the Agency leave?'

‘After what happened in Baran they were frightened. They were given orders to leave because it wasn't safe.'

‘Where is your passport and your belongings?'

‘They were all taken on the truck.'

‘Why did you not go also?'

‘I don't know. I wanted to stay and help the people of Bakalla.'

‘Are you a doctor?'

‘No, I am a teacher.'

‘Have you food?'

‘No, I have no food.'

‘Then how can you help Bakalla?'

‘I don't know. I was confused. I just wanted to stay.'

The bunch of keys jangled more loudly. Over his shoulder I could see only the part of Nadra's face that was in shade. He came closer, blocking her out.

‘Perhaps you are a spy left to report to the enemies of our country.'

‘I am not a spy.'

‘Where is your radio?'

‘I have no radio. I am not a spy, I am a teacher.'

He took another step towards me, and when he spoke I felt the angry warmth of his breath. ‘Tell me the truth. Why did you stay in Bakalla?'

‘I stayed because I was ashamed to leave, because I wanted to help.'

He shouted an order, and one of the soldiers grabbed Nadra and pummelled her forward, almost making her fall to the ground. Then they pushed her to her knees in front of me and pulled back her hair so that her beaten face was raised towards me, but still her eyes refused to meet mine. I turned my gaze away from her and back to him.

‘
She taught in the school. She is your friend.'

I shook my head, saying she meant nothing to me, that she was of no importance and they should let her go. Above us, a soldier was walking on the tin roof, each step rattling in the snatch of silence. The leader stretched out his hand and lightly touched a strand of my hair, then quickly pulled away again. Suddenly he was shouting at me in his own language, and at his order they pulled Nadra off her knees and lifted her on to the trolley that served as an examination bed in the clinic. I told them again that she was of no importance, that she had done nothing wrong, but the rising panic in my voice betrayed the truth, and as they pinned her arms to her sides he turned again to me.

‘You are a spy.'

‘No, I'm not a spy. I am a teacher.'

And then they pulled away her lower clothing, and at first she didn't struggle or make any sound but suddenly she started to squirm and tried to free her limbs from their grasp, but they held her more tightly and as he took his gun from its holster and placed it between her open legs, she fell back motionless, only her broken, frightened breathing pleading for release.

‘Tell me the truth.'

He pushed the gun against her and then, looking at me, started slowly to enter her, turning the butt from side to side, until over the top of her rising cries I screamed for him to stop and as they turned their excited faces towards me I shouted, ‘I am a spy, I am a spy!'

19

They
shut us in one of the buildings that had been used as a store for food. It was empty now; only some ripped hessian sacks making a mosaic of the earthen floor, and the sprinkled flecks of grain like dried-up confetti, indicated its former use. The walls were bare, unplastered blocks of concrete, and where they met the tin roof there were regular ventilation gaps which let milky-white light filter into the darkness. Nadra sat slumped against the back wall with her face pushed into her raised knees. She hadn't spoken or looked at me since we had been locked inside, the laughter of the soldiers and the clang of the metal bucket they had thrown after us our final contact with the world outside. When I knelt down beside her she didn't move or turn her head, but slowly I felt her body lean into mine and I put my arm round her and cradled her. Sometimes the silence was broken by voices shouting in the compound, and once there was the sound of an engine starting and driving away. But when they faded there was only Nadra's broken breathing and the fistle and scurry of a rat down in one of the far corners of the shed as it sought out the remnants of the grain. Sometimes it seemed she was asleep, but then she would move her hands or nestle her face more tightly in the cushion of her knees. A long time passed until, able to stand it no longer, I knelt in front of her, my face close to her bowed head.

‘I'm sorry, Nadra, I'm sorry.' But the words seemed only to freeze her even stiller, pull her body into a tighter knot. I was close enough to see the rucked and mottled bruising on her
cheek,
the swollen cut in the corner of her mouth, and I stretched out my hand and touched her chin, slowly raising her face until it was level with mine. But her eyes still wouldn't meet mine, staring instead into the layered pools of shadows at the base of the wall. ‘I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.' And then it broke inside her and she started to cry, but silently, until everything inside her was subsumed into the shudder of her body and her hand clamped itself to her eyes trying to staunch the tears that washed the bruise of her skin. I whispered it again and again and then I took her hand away from her eyes and held it to my lips and she looked at me for the first time and when I held out my arms she came into my embrace. I held her gently, until her sobs broke free, her cries beating like startled birds into the hollow spaces of the shed and echoing back from the corrugated roof. As I rocked her I talked, told her that everything would be all right, tried to ease the shudder out of her body with the only salve I had, until gradually it seeped away and she slipped into a steady rhythm of breathing. Using the hem of my skirt I cleaned the smear of tears, careful to avoid the pummelled, livid bruise of her cheek. As the pearly light squirmed into the shed, opening the shadowy corners and lightening the dark bevel where floor and wall met, we sat with our backs against the wall, and then I gathered the hessian sacks and made a bed for her, covered her with them as she lay with her head in my lap.

She dozed a little, sometimes speaking in her sleep, her body twitching then searching out a new position as she sought respite from her dreams. Once a rat came close, snuffling and sniffing for grain, and I threw a stone at it, sending it scuttling away into a dark corner. Then finally she curled into herself in a deeper sleep.

Their questions had gone on a long time, the same ones over and over, things about which I knew nothing but for which I invented answers, guessing at what they wanted. At first they assumed I had some close knowledge of the changing political
situation
and the West's response. It seemed foolish to know either too much or too little, so I tried to strike a middle course, but as the night wore on their aggression drained away and I think they knew I had told them the truth when I said I was a teacher. They asked questions about the West and the way people lived, the things a man might own, the position of women. Sometimes there would be discussions about what I had said and, when the leader's questions dried up, others would clamour to ask theirs, using the translation of my replies as proof of their own knowledge, to score points off their comrades. Then they concentrated on establishing exactly which agency I worked for and where it had its base in the capital. Eventually, I understood that they would hold me until they could extort as much money as possible. I tried to ask the leader for Nadra's release, promising that I would co-operate with them, but he dismissed my pleas and I knew that they valued her ability to speak English and the leverage with me she gave them. As the questions went on I watched two of the soldiers share out half a dozen stems of
khat
which they carefully unwrapped from a banana leaf, peel off the leaves and bite into the stems. Soon their jaws were working it into a green paste and spitting out the excess from time to time on the clinic floor. One of them came over to me and offered a stem, his lips flecked with green, and the others laughed until the leader's angry shouts silenced them again.

I looked round their faces, the faces of young men. When I stared at them, they were embarrassed by my gaze and turned their eyes away, preferring to study me from the safety of the group, but I saw too the excitement that their sense of power over me gave them. A couple were no older than Iman and Ahmed, carrying themselves and their weapons with self-conscious nonchalance, proud of their election to manhood but betraying themselves with expressions and movements which belonged to childhood. I wondered with what zeal they had sought to impress the older men, what it had cost them to
win
their spurs, and saw, when they became bored, how their attention turned to their guns, the soft caress of their hands as they balanced them in their gentle grasp. Others rummaged in the cupboards and drawers of the clinic, inspecting the little that was left with curiosity and stashing objects in their pockets.

When the interrogation was over and the leader had walked out to the compound, one of them came over and sat on the chair opposite me. He wore a green T-shirt and a red cotton macawis and his gun rested across his lap. He said nothing for a few moments, then asked me the name of my country.

‘Ireland, I come from Ireland.'

‘Where is your country?'

‘Ireland is an island close to England. It is a small country.'

I don't think he understood but he nodded his head as if I were telling him something he already knew. I asked him where he had learned to speak English, and eventually I grasped that he had worked in the docks. Before the fighting he had been given a job in the customs office. When the fighting was over, he would go back to it.

‘Why did you come to our country?'

‘I came to help your people, people who have no homes or food.'

He shook his head. ‘You want to buy our people with your food, you want to make them your slaves, to have power over us. Now we take our country back,' he said, patting the gun on his lap.

‘How will you help the people of Bakalla? These are your people, how will you help them with that?'

‘Bakalla?' he said, and spat on the floor. ‘They have made themselves weak. They deserve nothing. They bring shame on us.'

I saw the anger in his eyes and said nothing, turning my head away to watch one of the soldiers squirt water from a syringe at where Nadra slumped on the floor. From the compound came
the
sound of voices and beyond the fence the low murmur of the camp itself. Above our heads, the sentry walked across the roof.