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 over 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 con-tinued. “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 Hud
a’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 began.
“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.
“Er. Don’t want to point out the Orville Obvious,” said Henry, “but surely there’s enough babies to go round? I mean, even if it’s orphans you’re after, probably a good few more up there. No reason why everyone has to have the same ones, is there? Or am I being a total thicko?”
Corinna was leaning against the caravan, smoking a cigarette. She saw me looking at her and gave me a sympathetic smile. She had been a different woman all afternoon, warm, sisterly, supportive. She walked over towards me now, leaned forward, brushed something away from under my eye and said “Tired?” I hoped the famine hadn’t turned her into a lesbian.
Betty was trying to get all the jeeps parked in a cozy circle.
“Come along,” she was saying. “We must eat. Nobody’s eaten a thing since breakfast. An army can’t march on empty stomachs. No use to the refugees if we can’t get on with the job. I made sure Kamal put some bread and corned beef in before we set off. Should be enough to go round, I think. I’ve even got a tub of mustard. Mind you, it’s English. I prefer a milder mustard myself.”
“What a woman. Thank goodness we’ve got Betty to look after us,” said Roy the soundman, reverently.
A hundred yards away, in the gathering darkness, Muhammad was leaning on his stick, staring towards Kefti, where the clouds were like coals against the red glow. I picked my way across the scrub towards him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, when I was beside him.
After a while, he said, “It is very hard to bear.” And then, “But she was wonderful, was she not?”
“Yes, she was.”
“And if there’s a time when it is true to say a person did not die in vain . . .”
“. . . then this was it.”
“But still, it is very hard.”
We were standing in complete darkness now, but it was the warm, enfolding darkness of those nights. There had been headlights approaching for some time from the direction of Safila, and now the vehicle was drawing up. Inside Betty’s circle of vehicles, the faces were lit by torches and firelight. All the group were together except O’Rourke, who was still with the refugees. The doors of the jeep opened and the troll-like figure of Vernon emerged fulsome bottom first. We could hear the tone of his voice but not the words. He sounded defensively blustery.
“Do you know what I fear?” said Muhammad.
“Tell me.”
“That even after all this, very quickly, for everyone else, it will be as if it never happened.”
“I know.”
We stood in silence for a while.
“They want you to go back with them, the television people, did you hear?” I said.
“No.”
“Would you want to?”
“And collude in that corrupt sickness?”
“Corrupt sickness is not confined to the West,” I said, “as we both know.”
“I mean the sickness of the chosen few,” he said. “If I despise the unfair division of the world, the uneven granting of gifts, then when I have my chance to be plucked from the anonymity of the disadvantaged and placed within the enclosure of the privileged, when the gifts are about to shower down on me, do I say yes, or do I say no?”
“What will you achieve by saying no?”
He thought for a while, and then said, “Spiritual treasures.”
“Well, I think that might be the length and breadth of it.”
He shook his head.
After a while I said, “If you go to London now you might be able to do something. You’re being invited to join the Famous Club. You’ll get lionized by the media, and you’ll have a measure of power. If you get the mass of ordinary people behind you, then sometimes you can change things a bit.”
“Do you really believe so?” he said. “Do you? This is the third famine which has smitten and destroyed us in my lifetime, and it is always the same.
Afterwards the cameras and the journalists come, and then the officials make plans, and they promise it will never happen again. Then all is well for a while, they grow bored, and then it happens again.”
“Maybe we have to keep trying. Maybe it gets a little less bad each time, there’s a bit more development each time, it makes you a bit less vulnerable. Maybe you have to go to London and push to speed it up.”
“And sacrifice myself?”
“It’s not much of a sacrifice. You’ll be pretty comfortable. You’d get a bit rich. You’d know you’d never risk dying of hunger again.”
“But of thirst,” he said, “spiritual thirst. I would be accepting the inequity of the system. I would be Britain’s tame, one-legged African refugee, a novelty, a token. No longer myself.”
Someone was making their way from the group towards us. It was impossible to see who it was, but we could hear them stumbling over the scrub. It was an uneven patch of ground.
“Hi.” Oliver emerged from the blackness. He looked very thin now.
“Well done, my friend,” said Muhammad. “You were a hero.”
“They’re all going now,” said Oliver. “Back to El Daman.”
“Now?” I said.
“Yes. They want to drive through the night and get back there tonight.”
“I will leave you,” said Muhammad.
Oliver and I stood looking at each other in the darkness.
“You did a very great thing,” I said.
“I made an heroic gesture. Anyone can do that once. Doesn’t last long, everyone sees, makes you feel fantastic.”
“You could have been killed.”
“Well, I wasn’t. It’s the O’Rourkes of this world who are the he-roes, slogging away unsung, surrounded by diarrhea. He’s still up there, isn’t he?”
“This wouldn’t have happened without you. All the work in the world would have made no difference without any food.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Then, after a moment’s thought, he said, “But actually it wouldn’t, would it?”
“No. You made it happen at every stage.”
“I feel . . . very . . . oh, I don’t know. Thanks anyway. Thanks for . . . I mean, God, I sound like Julian. I think—”