“So you reckon you can get another truck?” O’Rourke was saying to one of the soldiers, as we approached.
“Yes, I think it is possible.”
“How long will that take?”
“I think we will be finding one at Gof.”
“No. Not at Gof. What I am saying is that I do not want to set off in this vehicle. The back axle is fucked. Do you have another vehicle in Adi Wari?”
“It is possible.”
O’Rourke saw me and nodded. His patience seemed to be wearing thin. There was a heated discussion in Keftian among the soldiers. They were all leaning down and peering at the back axle. We edged away so we could talk without being overheard.
“I came to find you at the hospital,” I said. “What do you think about going on? They say it’s only four hours to where the locusts are. You don’t have to come, if you don’t think—”
“No, no, that’s fine,” he said. “I’ve talked to them. It sounds OK, but I’ll believe this four hours business when I see it. Listen, are you all right?” He touched my arm and rubbed it. “You’re frozen. Here take this.” He took off his jumper.
“What about you?”
“I’m fine.”
“But—”
“Just put it on, you’re shivering.”
It was a soft gray woolen jumper. I put it on. It smelt of him. I liked that.
“What’s happening with the truck?”
“It’s a heap. It’ll pack up within five miles. We’ll have to wait for another.”
It seemed Muhammad was all right. O’Rourke had operated on the stump that afternoon. He had managed to save the knee. For just a moment I thought, Oh, God, are we being mad going on? Will that happen to me?
It was dark by the time they brought another truck. O’Rourke inspected it thoroughly with a torch, got them to change a tire and put another spare in. He was being very good.
*
It wasn’t four hours to the locusts, of course. We drove at a snail’s pace, with shades over the lights so that you could just see a dim glow on the ground directly ahead and two red glows beneath the taillights of the trucks in front. It was very, very cold. O’Rourke and I were in the cab of the third truck. I was in the middle, between him and the driver. We put the blankets round us and I tried to sleep by leaning my head back against the seat. He said, “You can lean on me.” I tried laying my head on his shoulder but it was uncomfortable and he sat up and put his arm round me and I slept then.
I woke up when we reached the crossing point. The road tipped at an unfeasible angle, the gears and engine straining. We stopped at the bottom and got out. There was no moon. It was chill and dank down there with the great cliffs looming above. I could hear the river off to our right. It sounded shallow, like a stream. I had bad pins and needles so that I could hardly bear to move my legs. I was very stiff. The back of my neck was jarred, and my mouth tasted filthy. I got back in the cab and ate some grapefruit and bread and drank some water and shivered. We set off again in convoy, forded the river and climbed the other side of the gorge. When we were back on the level I dozed again.
At 4:00 A.M. we reached the dry riverbed where the grasshopper bands were supposed to be. It was still pitch black. We parked and waited. I got the camera ready.
The blackness was diluting. A patch of gray appeared ahead on the horizon. We were pulled up on the edge of a small hill with the shallow river basin before us and a broad escarpment, about fifty feet high, half a mile beyond.
Slowly detail edged out of the darkness, drained of color. I strained my eyes to see what was ahead and recoiled, stunned. The whole of the basin was alive, moving in waves. There was a carpet of insects half a mile across, covering the earth and the road ahead. They lay there, like something from a horror movie, glinting in the growing light.
A thin orange cusp appeared on the horizon. And as it rose the clouds tore open, letting color flood into the scene. As the first rays hit the carpet a shower of insects right across its surface fluttered up, dancing in the light like a snowstorm.
CHAPTER
Fifteen
We drove both ways along the edge of the escarpment, looking down onto the insect carpet. It stretched for five kilometers. At one point we walked down into it. The most unnerving thing was that the locusts didn’t react to us at all. They stayed put, clinging doggedly to the earth, even if we walked over them. They were like aliens with a secret common purpose. Occasionally, as the sun rose higher, a whole area of them would heave and shift for no clear reason. The man from RESOK picked a couple up and showed us their wings. They were ready to fly.
I was beginning to worry about how all this would translate into hard evidence. I wondered if our description and some odd-looking photographs would be enough—a carpet of insects is not ideal as a photographic subject. We put a few of the insects in a polythene bag to take back with us. I decided I should get some signed affidavits as well. Ideally, they should have been from disinterested parties. The trouble was, there were no disinterested parties.
The soldiers were getting jumpy about air raids so we drove five kilometers westward, to a village where there was an underground shelter. The village was fairly large: a huddle of about two hundred huts set in a little valley below us, with the dry yellow stalks of the crop growing in terraces all around. The people had started to harvest even though the crop was not ready, because as soon as the locust swarm moved, the wind would bring it this way.
There was frantic activity. The whole village was out in the fields. From a distance their curved backs moving up and down in the crop looked like maggots. They were harvesting strips in each field, starting to dig trenches in the bald patches left behind and filling them with straw, so if the locusts came they could light fires to protect the rest of the crop. The village sounds rose up at us, as we approached: a babble of voices, animal sounds, high-pitched cries from the children, a cock crow. It all seemed feeble and hopeless when you thought what they were up against. A couple of hours with a light aircraft and some pesticide could have solved it for them.
We were sitting in the KPLF compound, drinking tea in the shade, when a cloud passed over the sun. And at once a great cry went up outside, the high whooping sound the Keftians make when someone has died and we knew it was the locusts. We went outside the fence and saw that a shadow was creeping over the whole area.
Everyone was running towards the crop. The cloud came around us as we got there. The locusts felt like chips of wood, hitting your face, and any exposed part of you. Flames rose up from the trench directly ahead, and thick smoke followed as someone threw damp straw on top. It was almost completely dark. I abandoned the photographs for now, pulled my blue shawl over my head and ran into the field. There were figures everywhere, flailing at the air with beaters made from long sticks with a bundle of twigs tied at the end. Someone thrust a stick into my hands. I stopped to stare at a plant in front of me. Each of the narrow yellow leaves, and the pod of grain at the top, had seven or eight insects teeming over its surface. I watched one leaf disappear, with the locusts dropping below or fluttering up as it was finished. I started hitting the plant with the stick, over and over again, making it shake. The insects clung on, I couldn’t dislodge them. There was a great rushing roar all around. Immediately ahead, through the smoke, flames and darkness a thin old woman was beating at the plants. The brown cloth around her body had slipped down, her sagging breasts flapped in time with her beating. As I watched she let the stick fall from her hand. She raised one hand, formed it weakly into a fist and raised it. Then legs folded under her, as in a curtsy, she let herself fall to the ground, and rolled her head in the soil.
Four hours later there was nothing left of the crop. The people were out in the fields whooping, wailing, tearing their hair, beating their heads, raising their hands up and falling down to the ground in traditional histrionic public mourning. And as the sun bore down in the white midday heat, scorching the dry earth, shimmering on the horizon in a vi
cious mirage of water, you could understand their terror. The earth had nothing more to give for six months now. There was no more food.
We were supposed to be relief workers, but we were helpless. There we were, crawling on the surface of those tracts of dryness, watching a whole nation’s food drain away. What could we do? O’Rourke treated a few cases of burns and heat exhaustion. I took more photographs, feeling like a voyeur. We could only warn that there was little food to spare at Safila.
We slept in the underground shelter and drove on when it was dark. I hated the darkness now. Beyond the foothills, the road started to climb steeply. There were high mountain peaks all around us. The air smelt alpine. We climbed for a long way, then cleared a summit and dropped down again into a narrow valley, running at right angles to the road. We had the headlights on now that we were in the mountains. The Aboutians would not risk flying here at night, particularly when there was no moon.
Our driver suddenly held up his hand and said melodramatically, “Tessalay.”
Ahead of us was a wall of rock higher than anything we had come across before. A dip in this first range of peaks formed the start of the Tessalay pass—a four-mile corridor through the highest section of the western highlands. At this end the rocky corridor was closed off by a low ridge which formed the dip in the range. The road snaked up it and down the other side to enter it.
Before we even started to climb we were aware of figures moving along the edge of the road. A little group would be caught in the lights, with one of them leaning out into the road, hand raised, trying to flag us down. They did not look as though they expected us to stop since all they saw was KPLF trucks. The military had nothing to offer them. As we climbed the bends of the pass the numbers increased until there was a group every fifty feet or so at either side of the road. They all did the same thing as we passed, straightening up and raising a hand halfheartedly to stop us.
At the top of the pass all the vehicles stopped. I wished there was a moon, then, because it would have been an extraordinary view with the whole pass stretching below us, and I wanted to see the scale of the movement. The drivers tried to angle the lights so that we could see the figures climbing up from the floor of the pass. The people we were passing were not as bad as I’d feared. They were thin, but not starving, and they had possessions with them. I thought that maybe they had learned lessons from last time and decided to move while they were still strong enough to travel—but they had a long way to go to Safila. Tessalay was a dangerous place to be, because the Aboutians knew about the refugee movement and there were air raids most days. The road was impassable for vehicles now because of the bomb damage. The refugees traveled as far as they could at night and made for the underground shelters in the valleys off the pass, well before daylight.
It wasn’t long till dawn now. We thought we should set up in one of the shelters and do a survey. We found one just over the top of the ridge. It was cavernous, big enough to take all three of our vehicles. The ground at the entrance was covered in black engine oil and spare parts and military vehicles were everywhere. It was more like a mechanic’s shop than an air raid shelter. People were smoking even with all the oil about. I thought it was a death trap. I didn’t want to stay there. I said this to O’Rourke and he agreed.
In the end we drove as far as we could down the other side of the ridge until we came to a crater. We got out then, to walk to the next shelter, and left the drivers to take the trucks somewhere where they would be hidden and safe. It was a bit of a mistake to set off on foot, because as soon as the people saw that we were foreigners, who might have money or food we were mobbed. A crowd gathered around us quickly: crabby hands grabbed at my flesh and people were jabbing their fingers at their mouths aggressively. I wasn’t afraid because I had seen this before and it wasn’t that anyone meant us any harm. It was more of an elaborate pantomime.
The soldiers started hitting at the crowd with sticks. They weren’t hitting hard but, all the same, it meant that O’Rourke and I, caring angels from the West, were setting out through the mob to save the starving, while our soldier escorts cleared our path by thwacking at malnourished women and children. After fifteen seconds O’Rourke stood stock still and roared with the full depth of his voice: “WILL—YOU—STOP—THAT—BEATING.”
There was a stunned silence and the crowd fell away immediately around him.
“Put those sticks down,” he said, gesturing to the soldiers. “Put the sticks down.”
They looked at him as if he was mad, and held the sticks by their sides.
“Now clear a path,” he said, gesturing ahead of him at the crowd. “Make a path here, look,” and the crowd parted like the Red Sea so that we could make our way along. As we walked, I turned round to see that, sure enough, the soldiers had resumed their thwacking behind us, and some of the crowd were laughing.
The shelter they led us to was like a broad tunnel dug into the hillside, orderly inside with people sleeping in lines on mats or low wooden beds. There was an open area in the center where those who were not asleep were milling around. We set up a table, weighed and measured the kids, and asked questions. The height-for-weight ratio was about eighty-five percent on average, which wasn’t bad; eighty percent was the danger point. It meant that the people would be in a poor state when they reached us, but not as bad as the last time.
The refugees were coming from a fairly limited area of the western highlands within a band of about forty miles either side of where we were in the Tessalay corridor. So far, the crop losses seemed to be focused in this one band. That backed up what Gunter had said to me at the embassy party. But, then, this was only the start of the swarming season and it was hard to know what was going on elsewhere in Kefti. From the picture we were building up, we estimated that between five and seven thousand refugees were on the move, heading for Safila.
I asked everyone about Huda Letay but they said that no one was here from Esareb because it was a large town and the crisis was not affecting the towns as yet.
O’Rourke had set up in a corner, examining people who were sick. There were all the usual illnesses which went with hunger: diarrheas, dysenteries, respiratory problems, some measles cases, but nothing unexpected and no meningitis. Even so, if we didn’t have the drugs we needed it wouldn’t take long for these people to turn Safila into a death camp again.
We asked RESOK to make an announcement, warning the refugees about the food situation in Nambula, and saying that they might be better staying put, but these people just shrugged or laughed. It was obvious to them that where there were Western agencies and the UN they had a better chance of getting food than here. I remember looking round at the people, when RESOK were giving the address, and thinking—yes, I will see you all again and your skin will be tight over your faces, so that your mouths are trapped in a grin, and your hair will be thin, and you will not be able to walk and your children will be dead and there is nothing any of us can do about it. It is awful to feel responsibility and have no power. We set off back to Adi Wari at the end of that day, when it got dark.
When we reached the hospital, we found that Muhammad had already been taken back to Safila. O’Rourke stayed to look at some cases in the hospital, and I walked to the RESOK offices. I explained to Hagose about the low supplies in eastern Nambula. I suggested he try to disperse the refugees amongst the villages here which had food. But he gave me a familiar look which said, “Don’t try to kid me that the West can’t come up with food when it wants to. We know about the wine lakes and the grain mountains.” When I got back to the KPLF, O’Rourke had found a Land Rover, which we could take back to Safila, and had arranged for a truck to escort us to the border. From there we would continue on our own.
The air was getting warmer, and the soft earthy smell of Nambula drifted through the open windows. The truck ahead stopped, and O’Rourke pulled up too. After a few moments the truck set off again, branching off from the track we had been following. It was clear that we must be close
to the border. The KPLF knew where the line was. Half an hour later the truck stopped again, and this time the soldiers got out. We got out too, and said rather over-the-top good-byes, shaking their hands, sharing embraces, full of camaraderie as if we’d met on holiday and it was time to go home.
“Any second now we’ll be swapping addresses,” O’Rourke muttered to me as he extracted himself from the second effusive embrace with the same soldier. “If this goes on much longer, I’ll be bearing this man’s child and washing his socks.”
When the sound of their engine had died away we stood for a while in the open desert. The sky was a huge arc of stars, bursting with light.
“You did good up there,” he said, nodding back towards Kefti.
“Not as good as you.”
The air was heady. We were standing on sand which felt cool underneath my feet. We were standing very close, looking at each other.
“Shall we drive on then?” he said.
He was right that we should get away from the border because it wasn’t too safe around there. Besides, it was already ten o’clock and we were a good five hours from Sidra. I drove for a while. Then we swapped. We were both very tired. I think it was the relief at being out of Kefti which let the tiredness out. I could only just see him in the glow from the instrument panels. His shirt was rolled up over his forearms. His arms and wrists were strong, adult-looking. I had never really thought about wrists before, but suddenly these seemed like the most beautiful wrists I had ever seen, such strong wrists, such manly wrists, such brave wrists, such wondrous wrists.
“How far do you think we should go tonight?” he said, then looked slightly embarrassed, realizing what he’d said.
“You’re driving.”
A little later he brought the truck to a halt, and cut the ignition.
We lit a fire and sat by it on a piece of tarpaulin. O’Rourke brought out a bottle of whisky.