I kept looking at my watch, then down at the camera crew, but the situation still seemed the same. People kept driving off down the corridor and coming back again. I couldn’t understand what was going on. I thought Corinna and Julian should be down there, rehearsing by now, but they were in the next enclosure, helping with the distribution of the biscuits.
“I think I’d better go down and find out what’s happening,” I said to Muhammad.
As I walked across the slope towards the vehicles, Oliver was coming up to meet me. “It’s not working,” he said, as soon as he was close enough. His face was screwed up in a scowl, self-pitying.
“Why not?” I said, swallowing hard.
“There’s a problem with the dish.”
“What?”
“It’s got dented.”
“Dented?” I was blinking very quickly. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. They reckon a stone must have hit it when they were driving.”
“Is there anything they can do?”
“They’re trying to hammer it out but it’s a delicate job. It has to be absolutely smooth.”
“Will they do it, do you think?”
“To be honest, Rosie, we’re stymied.”
I rubbed my forehead frantically. We didn’t have enough food. There was another Circle Line plane waiting at Stansted. It could be loaded and here in twenty-four hours. We could have airlifts every other day till the crisis was over, but not if there was no broadcast. The lives of all these many thousands of people actually depended on a piece of television equipment which was dented. It seemed a stupid way for the world to be but there we had it. And now there was only half an hour to go.
“Do you know what you’re going to do in the program, if they can get it working?” I said.
“Yes. I’ve worked that out at least,” he said.
“Don’t you need Corinna and Julian here? Where’s Kate?”
“She’s in the Land Cruiser. There’s no point bothering with her.”
I looked over. She was sitting sobbing, pulling at her hair.
“Yes, you might as well send Corinna and Julian down. But you carry on with the feeding. I think that’s going to be more use, to be honest. We’ll call you if we have any joy.”
I tried to carry on but it was very hard to concentrate. I knew that we had just one hour between five and six to blast this horror out to the world and it was our only chance. But there was nothing I could do.
At ten minutes to four, a shout went up from the camera crew. I saw the cameraman starting to point the camera at Julian and Corinna. Corinna was looking towards me, giving a thumbs-up. I stuck my fist in the air, made my way out of the enclosure and started running towards them. As I drew close, panting and stumbling over the stones, Oliver roared out of the corridor in the Land Cruiser.
“We can’t get the fucking signal,” he was shouting as he strode across the sand. “The dish is working but we can’t get the signal. We’re in the shadow of the fucking mountain. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fucking Vernon. We should have stayed where we were.” He was banging one fist against the other, striding around, uselessly. It was five past four now. The show would be on the air in England, with no link from Nambula.
“Muhammad,” Oliver said suddenly, “is there any way of getting a vehicle higher up?”
“Yes, there is a track but it is very steep. If you go out and follow the edge of the mountain to your left, you will find it after two hundred yards.”
“Where does the track lead to?” said Oliver. “Is there anywhere we can drop the cable down?”
Muhammad pointed to the mountains above the enclosures, squinting into the sun. They were almost sheer: great curves of red rock. “The road is climbing up there on the outside behind the ridge, but you will find there is a place where you can look over the plain. Perhaps you can throw the cable down there, above where they have built the enclosures.”
“OK,” said Oliver, already striding towards the vehicles. “I’ll go up there with some of the lads. Get the camera over there in the feeding center and we’ll drop the cable down to you.”
At twenty past four, with forty minutes to go before the broadcast ended, Julian and Henry were waiting at the foot of the mountains, holding the end of the cable, looking up, hopefully, surrounded by crowds of Keftians. The rest of us were a hundred yards away on the other side of the wall, inside the wet rations enclosure. We were working out where the camera should be, and what we should do. I kept looking around the plain at all the people and thinking how much we had wanted this not to happen. We had brought the cameras to it too late, and still we couldn’t make the program work. A man came up and spoke to Muhammad, and he looked as though he was going to collapse.
“Huda is here,” he said. “Will you come with me?”
It was Huda Letay, the woman he had asked me to find up in Kefti. Muhammad was kneeling beside her, holding her hand, moving the blanket higher over her chest to where the bones of her shoulders stuck out through the skin. Her hair was reddening and frizzy, only clumps of it remaining because of the marasmus. At the other side, Huda’s mother was holding her twin babies. They were screaming and the skin was wrinkling on their legs because there was no muscle underneath. They were about a year old, two little boys, with big eyes. When they stopped crying they had grumpy expressions, which were very appealing. Huda was lying with her head back, her bulging eyes staring up at the sky, moving her head from side to side. I think she knew who Muhammad was because as he spoke to her she made a little noise.
I turned back to see what was happening on the mountain. Julian and Henry were clambering up the boulders which lay at the bottom holding their end of the cable, and looking up all the time. The rock rose in a clear, smooth sweep above them. Then the mountain fell back through another area of boulders and loose rocks, before rising up in a perfectly smooth shoulder to the summit. High above us, standing at the top of the loose rocks, were Oliver and one of the crew boys. Two more of the boys appeared round the side of the rock carrying a large coil of cable on a metal frame.
It was going to be difficult to get the cable down to the sheer drop, unless they carried it over the area of loose rocks, but that was steep and looked as though it would shift if they walked on it. Oliver joined the men bending over the cable and I watched as they started lifting something. They brought it a few feet off the ground and started swinging it. They swung, once, twice, three times, and then they threw it. It was a boulder in a net. It bounced down over the loose rocks, dragging the cable behind it, towards the sheer drop. As it bounced it loosened the rocks below which were falling with it. Six feet from the edge it stuck behind a pinnacle of rock. An avalanche of stones began to roar over the precipice, crashing down onto the rocks below, making the people scatter.
Oliver started to make his way, gingerly, down over the loose rocks and boulders towards where the cable was stuck. Suddenly a whole section began to move underneath him. He was sliding with it towards the sheer drop. Corinna screamed.
More stones were falling over the edge now, Oliver was grabbing with his hands, trying to get a hold, then he flung himself sidewards and caught hold of the pinnacle, kicking at its base. He clung on, as the rocks rushed beneath him over the edge, and as they fell, among them was the boulder attached to the cable, which was snaking down the drop now.
Oliver was still clinging to the pinnacle. I couldn’t see what was happening at the bottom of the mountain, because the refugees were all crowding around. Suddenly there was a commotion behind us. I turned and saw the cameraman blundering towards us, pointing the camera. Corinna was following. “Go go go,” said the cameraman to no one in particular. “Go. We’ve got the link. Go go go. Go go go. Twenty seconds. Stand by.”
The soundman was holding out an electronic box and an earpiece. I grabbed the electronic box, shoved it in Muhammad’s hand, and the earpiece in his ear. The cameraman pointed the camera at Muhammad and the soundman picked up the boom and held it ov
er Muhammad. “You are on a wide shot, yes?” Muhammad said to the cameraman coolly. “If you raise your hand when you are ready for me to speak I will speak.”
I glanced at my watch. Ten to five.
“Ten seconds till they come to us,” said the cameraman.
“A really wide shot first,” ordered Muhammad, “so that the viewers can see the whole plain.”
I could hear angry voices coming out of his earpiece.
“But I am the man on the spot,” said Muhammad indignantly. “You must play music over the wide shot then fade it when you come to me. You have music there?”
There was more angry shouting from his earpiece.
“They want one of the celebrities,” said the cameraman. “Corinna, come on love where are you?”
“Let Muhammad do it,” Corinna said.
The cameraman looked at her.
“Let Muhammad do it,” she said again.
“Yes, let him do it,” said Julian.
I looked up at the mountain. Oliver was slowly hauling himself back up towards the crew on the end of a rope.
Muhammad was speaking to Huda and her mother, and watching the camera out of the corner of his eye. The camera was panning round the feeding center as Muhammad had ordered. Huda was weak, but listening to what he was saying, nodding slowly. The cameraman started to raise his hand and Muhammad looked at Huda for a count of two then slowly turned to stare straight into the lens.
“Nearly twenty years ago,” he began, “Dr. Henry Kissinger made a proclamation to the World Food Program in Rome. ‘We must,’ he said, ‘proclaim a bold objective: that within a decade, no child will go to bed hungry. That no family will fear for its next day’s bread. And that no human being’s future and capacity will be stunted by malnutrition.’”
He paused, and helped Huda to sit up higher.
“For six weeks now, the United Nations, the EEC, the aid agencies and the Western governments have known that tens of thousands of people in the highlands of Kefti had no more food. They knew that they were traveling here to seek help, walking day and night with empty stomachs, watching their children and old folk die on the way. The Keftian people were starving to death as they walked but still traveling in hope that they would find sustenance here on the borders of Nambula. And what have the UN done in that time? What have the Western governments sent? What is waiting for these people here? Nothing.”
He gestured out towards the plain and the cameraman followed his arm.
“Year after year you have seen—and you will see—pictures like these on your screens. Year after year your governments, your organizations, with their grain mountains and colossal budgets, fail to help us in time. Year after year, you, the ordinary people like us, are asked to reach into your pockets to save us when it is too late. And now we are asking you to save us again. Why?”
He turned to Huda.
“This is Dr. Huda Letay, who was my college friend when we studied economics together at the University of Esareb.”
He waited for the camera to find her. Huda’s head was rolling on the earth. Her mouth was open as if in a scream.
“She is twenty-seven.”
Muhammad reached round and put his arm behind her shoulders. He beckoned the microphone to come closer. Huda’s mother laid the twins beside her. And Huda raised her head to speak. “These are my children,” she said, in a voice that was scarcely a whisper. “One week ago their sister has died of hunger. Four days ago their brother the same.”
The soundman was looking at the cameraman, trying to get the boom lower, closer to her head.
“Yesterday their father too.”
She was leaning closer to the camera now, staring straight into the lens. A movement caught my eye. Kate Fortune was standing behind the camera, gesticulating, wearing her peach turban.
“Half the world is rich and half the world is poor,” Huda continued. “I am not resentful of you, who live in that rich half, only I wish that I and my children live there too.”
She paused to cough. The babies had begun to cry, and the soundman was still trying to get the boom closer.
“I was born in the wrong half of the world,” she said. Her voice was hoarse now. “I do not wish to die. And if I must die I do not want to die like this, without dignity, lying in the dirt like a beast.” She started to cough, and closed her eyes, leaning back against Muhammad’s arm. He eased her up a little, whispering to her.
She opened her eyes again and lifted her head. “I was born on one side of the line and you on the other. I will die here. My children and my people need food and so I must abase myself and beg.” The coughing overcame her again. “We need help from everywhere and every place. Really we need that help. Not for to dance or to feel . . . comfortable, only to live.”
And then her eyes closed and she sank back against Muhammad’s arm again, coughing, then lying still as he stroked her head.
CHAPTER
Thirty-one
Absolutely definitive.” The director’s voice, two thousand miles away in London, was still beaming down to us from the skies. “Seriously moving to have a live death.” It was beyond sunset now, and the desert was red. Oliver and I were in the control van, which was parked outside the mountains at the foot of the track leading up to the satellite dish. The broadcast had been over for an hour and a half. Credit card donations were flooding in, and so were the accolades. The back of Oliver’s shirt was torn and his forearms were covered in cuts from the rocks.
“Oliver, I think you should tell him that Huda’s in a coma. She’s not actually dead,” I whispered.
“. . . Vernon with you?” crackled the voice of the director over the sound system.
Oliver pressed a button and spoke into the microphone. “Not at this precise moment,” he said. “Vernon is a little unwell.”
“Tell him we’ve had a call from the Independent Television Commission congratulating CDT. Looking good. Looking good.”
There was a pause while the line crackled.
“Just had a phone call from Stansted. Circle Line plane took off five minutes ago. Should be with you . . . twelve hours’ time. Oh-oh. Hang on. New total, two million three hundred and ninety-seven thousand pounds aaaaaaand counting . . .”
There was the sound of a champagne cork popping. “Oh-oh. Hang on. Wait a moment. Wait a . . .”
Oliver broke into a smile. “Two million three hundred and ninety-seven thousand pounds,” he said to the group which was gathered outside the door.
“Hey! I’ve got the News on the phone,” said the director’s voice.
“. . . want to airlift out the twins. The dead woman’s twins.” More crackling.
I grabbed the microphone, and pressed the switch.
“Can you confirm that they want to evacuate two infants out of twenty thousand people?”
There was more crackling.
“Affirmative,” said the director.
“And does it have to be those two?”
“Affirmative. The dead woman’s kids.”
“What if they’ve died already?” I said. “Will they take a different two?”
“Confirming that it must be the kids of the woman who died on the program . . . twins . . .” More crackling.
“But she isn’t dead yet.”
“OK . . . Daily News guy here in the studio wanting to talk to his photographer . . . got the photographer with you?”
Outside there was the cry of an animal, somewhere far away over the sand. The photographer appeared in the doorway and came up the stairs. Oliver pressed the microphone button for him.
“Steve Mortimer here,” said the photographer, turning round with a flourish and hitting Oliver in the face with his camera bag. There was a pause for the time lag.
“Steve, hi, Rob here,” said a different voice over the talkback. “How yer doing, mate? Listen. We want the kids. You got the pictures? You got the live death?”
“Sure,” he said.
“But—” Oliver beg
an.
“OK, that’s enough. We lose the line in five. Big thank-yous to everyone. Absolutely fantastic. Out of this world. Oh-oh. Hang on. One last thing. The guy that spoke at the end, the one holding the dead woman. They want him brought over . . .” The line was lost in crackle. “Natural . . .” Crackle, crackle . . . “Want him as regular on CDT before the franchises. Get him brought back with you or send him with the kids. OK. This is it, Nambula, we’re losing you. Well done again, everybo—”
And then there was nothing more: just the hollow note of the drum and the loud, ringing silence of the desert.
The mountains were dark shoulders against crimson. A jeep was drawing up. Doors opened and slammed shut, voices rang out through the dusk. Julian, Muhammad, Betty and Henry were all emerging.
“Rosie!” Julian was making his way towards me, his face furrowed with concern. “Rosie,” he said. “I know what I want to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, first of all I want to give all the money I can. And I’m going to really work when I get back to keep the campaign going. But I want to do something more. I’m going to adopt those babies,” he said. “The little twins, you know, the orphans. You know the mother’s dead now?”
I looked for Muhammad. He was limping away from the vehicles, on his own.
“I want to help the family,” Julian went on. “I’m going to bring them back to live with Janey and Irony and me.”
“I’m having those babies,” snapped Kate Fortune.
“But you’ve already got a Romanian baby,” said Julian indignantly.
“Sorry, loves, the News has got ’em,” said the photographer.