The Killing Sea (8 page)

While Ruslan went
in search of coconuts, Sarah went to find a secluded place to go to the bathroom. On her way back she momentarily lost her way and came across a well with a plastic bucket still attached to a rope tied to a wooden beam. She tested the well water. Salty but clean. Sarah looked around. Nobody was in sight. She stripped down to her bikini bottoms to give herself and her clothes a good soak.

She first washed the clothes, stomping on them with her feet to try to clean them of the dirt and mud. After draping them on the cement lip of the well, she hoisted up a bucket of water and poured it over her head. The cold delicious rush of it on
her sunburned skin made her shiver. After several more buckets she put on her wet clothes, thinking wistfully of the dry clothes back home in her closet that she hardly ever wore. She had just tugged on her T-shirt when she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, shadows moving furtively among the palm trunks. Moving toward her. She instinctively screamed.

Ruslan charged in from out of nowhere with a yell, his machete raised. Two men had emerged from the palms. One of the men yelled something back at him. He stopped and lowered the machete. After an exchange with the men, he said to Sarah, “It's okay. They didn't mean to scare you. They are looking for help.”

“Oh. Sorry.” She noticed that the two young men were twins, identical down to the fuzzy mustaches they were trying to grow.

The twins joined the camp. Sarah's damp clothes chafed her, but that was nothing compared to her aching muscles and cuts. She and Aisyah coaxed Peter into swallowing a few mouthfuls of coconut. Then there was nothing else for them to do but try to sleep and wait for morning. Peter fidgeted with constant coughing. His hot, dry skin felt like paper.

Ruslan said something to Aisyah, who nodded, and he slipped out into the night.

Where was Ruslan going? In the constant, step-by-step struggle to make progress to the doctor at Calang, Sarah hadn't given him much thought. But he'd been there to help rescue Peter from the surf, and he'd rushed in with the machete when the two strangers had appeared. His absence now made her worry. She didn't feel as safe.

A minute later, though, he returned with a bucket of water. Aisyah tore part of her headdress into a handkerchief and dipped it into the water. She placed the wet cloth over Peter's forehead.

“Thank you,” Sarah said, reaching for the cloth. “But let me do that.”

Aisyah gently pushed her hand away and said something, which Ruslan translated. “She says you need your sleep. It's going to be a long walk tomorrow.”

Ruslan's voice came across a vacuum. Sarah's mind seemed to be bubble-wrapped with fatigue. The tsunami had happened to another girl. She was just a hollow copy. She'd sleep for an hour and then wake up to take her turn nursing Peter.

When she did wake, it was dawn. Peter seemed to be sleeping deeply, although his breathing was wheezy and he was still hot to the touch. Ruslan and the twins were outside the tarp tent, murmuring their prayers, kneeling, and bowing on the ground.

What good would prayers do? If she got on her knees and prayed, would an angel appear and touch Peter's brow to make him better? Or maybe say,
I have a surprise,
and then their mother would walk in?

Her mother—her own mother—was dead. Odd how she still felt nothing.

Aisyah ducked under the tarp, with Surf Cat at her heels. She held a twisted white root the length of her palm. She washed it and ground half of it up between two rocks, then mixed the ground root into some coconut milk.

“It's
jamu
for Peter,” Ruslan said. “Jamu is traditional medicine. This is for fever. She says the cat led her to the plant. She thinks the cat is a, what do you say, a devil.”

Peter's eyes flew open and he sat upright. “Surf Cat is not a devil.”

Ruslan lifted a hand. “No, no, not a bad devil. We call it a djinn.”

“Genie,” Sarah said. She stroked Surf Cat's fur. “He is a little strange.”

Peter scowled. “He is not.”

That scowl cheered Sarah. Some of her old brother was still there.

The band started hiking again. An hour later, with the blue sky already exuding an oven's heat,
they came to the remains of a fishing village. A man squatted on his haunches in the middle of one foundation, idly scratching in the bare cement with a rusty nail. He glanced up at the passing group, watched for a second with a deadened expression, not even registering surprise at the sight of two Western children, and then threw the nail away to join them without a word.

Other survivors joined them. A middle-aged man with lopsided glasses, one of the frame's earpieces having snapped off. A woman and her elderly but wiry mother. Two more men, with one of the men's sons, who looked hardly any older than Ruslan but already wore a wedding ring. Another girl wearing shorts and a dirty towel over her shoulders to cover her budding breasts. She appeared oblivious to most everything, never speaking a word. Whenever the band paused, she squatted and pulled the towel over her head as though to hide herself. The middle-aged man, who carried himself with professorial dignity despite his lopsided glasses, and whom the others respectfully addressed as Bapak, shook his head and said to Sarah, “Mama, Bapa, family,
semua habis
.” His hands translated: all gone.

Later it would seem to Sarah that these survivors had all joined at the same time, but in fact, they drifted in over the course of that day and the
next. She couldn't remember when exactly. Except for the mute girl. She was the last, appearing out of a swamp toward the middle of the second day.

Those two days were a blur of swamps and sunken beaches and drowned oil palm plantations. The struggle of each hour, to get around or over or through some obstacle, seemed identical to any other hour. Ruslan and the others, including the tiny but strong grandmother, took turns helping Peter. The hills of Calang never seemed to get closer.

The second night they made camp in the ruins of a seashore mosque. Aisyah ground up the remaining half of the root and gave Peter a second dose of the
jamu
. He seemed to be holding his own—at least his fever and his cough weren't getting worse. Maybe the root did help, even if it wasn't real medicine.

By that time, Sarah was starting to think that perhaps Calang had been destroyed like everything else around them. There were those hills, though, with visible tree lines. The man in that paddleboat had seemed confident there was a doctor. The hospital had to be on one of the hills. She asked Ruslan about this before she went to sleep. He was lying on his back, staring up at the stars.

“Probably,” Ruslan said, still gazing up at the
stars. “I don't know Calang very well. I'm not really going there, but to a village in the hills, where my father is.”

“And the rest of your family?” Sarah asked delicately.

“No brothers or sisters. My mother died when I was little.” Ruslan frowned in thought. “Maybe I am lucky.”

Sarah understood the horrible logic of that, although she sensed a certain bewildered ache in his words, that he should have had no mother at all. “My mom drowned in the tsunami.”

He turned his head to look at her. “I'm sorry,” he said, with honest simplicity. And then, “The tsu-what?”

“The tsunami. It's a Japanese word for the big waves caused by earthquakes.”

Ruslan was silent for a moment. “Is that what it was?”

“What did you think it was?”

He rose up on his elbow. “An Imam said God's punishment was coming.”

“It was an earthquake, Ruslan.”

A longer silence. “They didn't teach this at school.”

“I didn't know what it was either at first.”

Ruslan slowly nodded. “Your father?”

The question provoked a sharp anxiety.
Dad, be safe. Hang on.
“He's okay, except he broke his leg running from the wave. I had to leave him on Tiger Island to find my brother a doctor. You think they can organize a search party from Calang?”

“I'm sure they can,” Ruslan said.

Sarah did not allow herself to doubt Ruslan's reassuring answer. Of course they would.

On the morning of the third day, the swamps at last gave way to higher ground, much of it planted with rice fields, now destroyed. The band made quick progress along remaining footpaths through the fields. The hills of Calang grew larger, and Sarah's hopes grew as well, only to be dashed when they came to an estuary and swamp too wide to ford. They would have to detour inland around it, adding another night to their trek.

Toward sunset, as they approached a small knob of ground upon which a farmer had built a shack, a faint drone sifted into the dull quiet. Sarah looked up and saw a dark speck low against the reddening clouds. A small aircraft, with a single engine and fixed wheels. The plane held a low and steady course just off the shoreline, but then abruptly banked and headed for the small band of survivors. It circled above them, descending lower with each circuit until it
roared a hundred feet overhead. Framed in the open side door was a photographer, his blond ponytail whipping about in the wind as he aimed his camera at them.

“Help us!” Sarah screamed, waving her own arms. “Get us out of here!”

The photographer waved back. He lobbed something out of the plane that winked brightly as it fell to the ground a hundred feet away, landing by a goat dead on its side, legs stiff in the air. Sarah raced over to the object.

It was an almond and cranberry trail mix bar, looking as though it had come straight from a supermarket shelf. Sarah's mouth salivated. She tore open the wrapper with her teeth, the honeyed scent making her swoon. She was about to take the first wonderful bite when she stopped.

Don't be so selfish,
she could hear her mother say. One of her constant annoying mantras.

Still, Sarah had the distinct and uneasy feeling that right at this moment her life was somehow in the balance. She could eat the trail bar, true, but afterward she'd forever be a certain kind of Sarah.

Nonsense,
a sly voice said.

True, it was nonsense. Nonetheless, she broke the trail bar and gave Peter one of the halves.

The other she offered to the silent girl.

The girl sniffed it, nibbled a corner, and then crammed the whole of it into her mouth.

Bapak adjusted his glasses on his nose and scolded her, clearly telling the girl to thank Sarah.

“That's okay,” Sarah said. She wished she had another bar to share. Maybe be like Jesus with the bread and fishes, multiplying the trail mix until everybody had enough to eat.

They climbed the thirty-foot-high hillock, rising neat as a button from the flat fields. Its lower slopes had been planted with corn, the plants ruined by the tsunami. The hut was nothing more than a thatched roof on crooked poles, with a rickety bamboo platform to rest upon. A stacked metal container held an untouched meal of moldy rice and greenish chicken legs. On the platform was an old shortwave radio. Bapak turned it on, and a voice crackled from the speaker, speaking a language Sarah didn't understand. The others gathered around to listen.

Ruslan stood separate from the others, staring at the distant foothills.

The way he was looking at them, Sarah became anxious. “You'll help us find that doctor, won't you?” she asked him. “I mean, what if he doesn't speak English?”

Ruslan turned and looked at her. The low sunlight threw his cheeks into high relief. And his eyes—she
hadn't really noticed before how deep and clear they were. “Most doctors have some English,” he said.

“But you'll help us?”

His lips pressed together for a moment and then he smiled, those eyes widening, light sparkling at the bottom of those black irises. “We're helping each other.”

That reassured her.

After a quick meal of coconut, Bapak discussed something with the others and then spoke to Sarah. Ruslan interpreted, gesturing at the bamboo platform. “You and your brother can have the bed.”

“No, no,” Sarah said, and put her hand on the grandmother's shoulder. “Let her have it.”

The grandmother scolded her. The bed was Sarah's. Sarah knew that the only way she could repay this touching kindness was to accept it.

“Thank you,” she said.

Aisyah picked Peter up and laid him down on the bamboo slats.

“How you doing, champ?” Sarah asked him.

“Okay,” he said, but the deepened flush of his skin and the listless, fevered look in his eyes told Sarah the truth. She kept her sense of helplessness at bay by thinking of the doctor at Calang. “We'll get you there tomorrow,” she said.

Sarah asked if she could borrow the radio.
She spun the dial until she found an English news program. She learned then that the deadly tsunami had struck as far away as Thailand and India. Some commentators added their concerns about potential epidemics. One woman spoke of another danger, that of criminals presenting themselves as relief workers in order to abduct young orphans to sell elsewhere.

The silent girl approached out of the night shadows and sat beside her.

Sarah combed her matted hair with her fingers, working out the worst of the tangles. The girl slumped forward, sound asleep. Sarah put her down on the mat beside Peter and lay on the hard dirt floor, overcome with exhaustion herself.

Peter was restless and coughing. His fever seemed to be climbing. Aisyah had no more of the root to give him. She stroked his head and sang a lullaby.

The sweetness of it was nearly unbearable. Worry for her father returned with a piercing vengeance. And her mother—but to her horror, her mother's face was a blank.

Ruslan didn't sleep
well that night on the farmer's hill. The evening's meal of coconut was sour in his stomach. By God, he was getting sick of the stuff. He didn't want to eat another coconut in his whole life.

But that wasn't what was really bothering him. Sarah had asked him to go with her and Peter into Calang. He didn't want to. He should start heading into the green hills to Ie Mameh. Bapak and Aisyah could help Sarah and Peter.

Sometime in the morning he would say his good-byes and veer off to the north, making his way on his own. He had his father to find. Surely Sarah would understand.

When the band descended the hillock at dawn, Ruslan led the way. He was eager to get to Ie Mameh. He was certain that by the end of the afternoon he'd be hugging his father, kissing his cheeks. The thought of it cheered him so much that he started whistling. As he jumped a small ditch, he noticed Sarah staring at him, and he fell silent, feeling guilty.

“No, no, don't stop,” she said. “It's so good to hear somebody whistling.”

He bowed to her and finished the tune.

“My dad could whistle,” Sarah said. “He couldn't sing, though. It was torture to be with him in the car, him and Mom singing stupid love songs. Wasn't it, Peter?”

The twins had fashioned a stretcher from some scavenged bamboo and burlap and were carrying him. Surf Cat, too, was hitching a ride, snoozing by Peter's side. Peter smiled weakly. “Awful,” he agreed.

Ruslan had no idea what Sarah's parents were like, but the image of them singing duets in a car made him grin. “Love songs?”

“Yeah, like this one.” Sarah began to sing a song about feelings, feelings of love.

Ruslan winced exaggeratedly, pressing his hands to his ears. Sarah laughed and hit him lightly on the arm. It was the first time he'd heard her laugh. It was
a nice sound, a normal sound, a sound from Ruslan's previous life, when the sea had still been steady. The small happiness of hearing it was like the sweet juice that broke each day of the Ramadan fast.

An hour later they came to a shallow place where they could ford the estuary and then backtrack to a road that led into Calang. Several miles to the right stretched the first of the green foothills. Ruslan stepped to the side, letting others pass, and stared at the valleys. Ie Mameh was on the slopes of one, but he couldn't remember which one. Well, there'd be other villages. He'd find out.

“What's wrong?” Sarah asked, startling him. He hadn't noticed her approach.

He pointed to the hills. “That's where my mother's village is. My father's there.”

She frowned. He had to look away as she said, “You're not leaving us, are you? You promised me, Ruslan, you promised me you'd help me find the doctor.”

He shook his head. “I didn't promise you.”

“But you have to help us. Please. Peter's sicker this morning than last night.”

“Sarah, I have to go find my father. Bapak and Aisyah will help you.”

“We need you, Ruslan. We're foreigners here, nobody else speaks English, and Peter is sick, you
have to help us. Please. Your father is okay, he'll be okay for a couple more days—”

Ruslan whirled on her. All the fear that he'd kept way down at the bottom of his heart broke to the surface. “How do you know he is okay? He is up there with the rebels. You are right. You are a foreigner. You don't know anything about this country. You don't know how dangerous that is. I have to go find him. I am
his son
.”

He was aware of how his voice shook. He was aware too of how tears filled Sarah's eyes. They tore at him, but some duties were higher than all others. What did his father say?
A man's duty is first to God, and then to family, and then to those who ask for help.

Sarah opened her mouth to speak, but before she said anything, the buzzing of a helicopter broke through the morning's silence. Her gaze snapped away as she stared over his shoulder. Ruslan turned to see a red helicopter zooming toward them. It banked around the hillock that the band had left earlier and headed toward them, slowing down to hover above a patch of broken road a hundred feet away. Ruslan's head throbbed with the roar of its blades and the piercing whine of its engine. Through the whirlwind of dust and dirt, he saw a white man in the passenger cabin point at Sarah.

The helicopter settled to the ground on its skids. Apart from some numbers and letters on the tail, the helicopter bore no markings. The man got out, scurrying over to Sarah in a crouch. A bigger man followed, his round belly jiggling.

“We come to get you,” the first man shouted to Sarah over the helicopter's noise. His gaunt jaws held a dark shadow of beard.

“Your brother?” the fat man asked, with an even heavier accent, pointing at Peter in the stretcher. The man's small eyes peered out from underneath a thick brow scalded by sun.

“Who are you?” Sarah said suspiciously.

“United Nations,” the second man said.

Ruslan frowned. United Nations? The man was lying. The government would never let the United Nations fly around Aceh so freely like this. He caught Sarah's eye and shook his head.

She asked, “Do you have any ID?”

The fat man grunted and turned to the other. They spoke briefly in a guttural language. “I am Hans and he is Iverson,” the fat man said. “This is the emergency situation, we don't have our papers. Come now, the helicopter is waiting.”

Sarah shook her head. “I don't know you.”

“You must come with us,” the first man said. “The rebels, they are here and they shall kidnap you.”

The helicopter pilot made hurry-up gestures.

The fat man grabbed Peter from the stretcher.

“Let him go!” Sarah shrieked. She flew at the man and sank her teeth into his elbow. He roared with pain. Aisyah snatched Peter away and hugged him to her side.

Bapak raised the machete in a menacing gesture.

The skinny white man took a precautionary step backward. “There are rebels!” he shouted at Sarah. “It is dangerous! You shall come!”

The mute girl picked up a stone and threw it at the helicopter. The stone fell far short, but Ruslan and the others also picked up rocks and cocked their arms. The skinny man cursed, and he and his companion rushed back to the helicopter, which took off in a shrieking blast of air.

In the silence that backfilled the chopper's racket, Ruslan could see how Sarah trembled. She took several deep breaths and then gave the mute girl a hug. “The way you scared off the helicopter, that was something. Thank you.”

The girl gravely nodded.

Ruslan chucked his rock aside and touched Sarah's arm. She glanced up at him. “Oh. Thanks for helping. Bye, hope you find your dad.”

Ruslan smiled. “If we're going to Calang, we'd better not just stand here.”

Her face was blank for a moment, and then joy rose into her blue eyes. “You're coming?”

“You're right. My father will be okay.” Beneath his smile, Ruslan hoped so. But sometimes one's duty to God is exactly the same as one's duty to others. Especially, perhaps, to foreigners in one's country.