God Is Dead (10 page)

Q?

We might have died there if it hadn't occurred to us, for the first time, to talk to one another. To use our new knowledge, share our thoughts and figure out a potential solution. This was our third night in the caves. With an enthusiasm that in our former lives had been reserved only for stalking prey or mating, we cast our minds further north, searching for the right person to reveal ourselves to, a person with intelligence, learning, and an intellectual curiosity that would allow him to get past the initial shock of being spoken to by a dog. After several hours we decided on Khalid Hassan Mubarak, a professor of theology at the University of Khartoum. Mubarak kept up appearances as a pious Muslim for professional reasons, but years before had jettisoned all religious conviction to make way for an innate and blossoming egomania. In our zeal and naïveté we neglected to consider Mubarak's character as well as his intellect, a mistake we would all come to regret.

Q?

We were anxious to get under way, so we returned to the oasis while the village still slept, and drank from the spring pool until our guts bloated like water skins. We headed northeast, trotting a straight line to Khartoum, again over hills and across great stretches of sand, pausing only for an hour or two each day when the sun rose to its apex and beat every living thing into hiding. We hunted without much success; though all of us had been accomplished predators before, now we stalked like pups, clumsily and with little teamwork, managing only to kill an old plated lizard none of us had much interest in eating. But not even hunger could dampen our optimism or slow our pace, and soon Khartoum's slender minarets rose from the desert like a miracle.

Q?

No, I don't believe in miracles, not in the way I think you mean it. Sorry to disappoint. I never had an opportunity to believe. One moment I was ignorant of the very concept of miracles, and the next I knew far too much to believe them possible. I use the word as a figure of speech, to describe the shock of seeing this huge city materialize out of nothing but wind and sand.

Q?

What can I say, really, about my first impressions of Khartoum? It goes without saying that none of us had seen anything like it before. The noise and bustle. The people packed together, shouting and grabbing at sleeves, demanding the attention of others but never offering their own. The broken, bullet-pocked cars jockeying endlessly for position. The riot of the bazaars, the stink of rotting fish and apple shisha, the vacant stares of loitering war-wounded. We became lost as if in a sandstorm, unnoticed except when a soldier or shopkeeper kicked at us. We scurried through the streets for most of the afternoon until we arrived, more or less by accident, at the campus of the university.

Q?

We waited outside the building where we knew Mubarak lectured. After an hour he emerged, tall and pale in a plain white dishdasha and embroidered skullcap. I approached him and, for lack of any suitable entrée, said simply “Hello.”

Q.

It was somewhat absurd, but there seemed no reasonable way for us to introduce ourselves.

Q?

Well, as you can imagine, Mubarak was taken aback. At first he didn't notice me at all, and looked around to see who had spoken. The only other person on the common, a man in a crimson tunic, had his back to Mubarak and was well out of earshot besides, receding around the corner of the Agriculture building.

“Down here,” I said. “At your feet.”

Mubarak looked down and, seeing me, muttered a reflexive curse to a God he no longer believed in.

“Professor Mubarak,” I said, flanked now by the others, “we've come to ask for your help.”

“Have I gone mad?”

“No,” I said. “I don't think so. I'm speaking, in a manner of speaking, and you're hearing me. This is real.”

Mubarak was silent for a few moments, staring down at us. Absently he put a hand to his skullcap and adjusted it. “What…?” he said, his voice trailing off, but already we could sense his disbelief waning a bit, giving way to the intellectual vitality with which he'd mastered seven languages and established himself as one of the leading translators of the Qur'an. I saw this opportunity and seized it, rushing headlong into an explanation: the Janjaweed, the refugee camp—

But Mubarak interrupted me. “Not here,” he said, still seemingly dazed. “Whether this is real or not, I can't be talking to dogs in public for everyone to see. I'm walking home. Follow me—at a distance.”

So we did. Mubarak left the campus and headed east, and we trailed him, thrilled at the possibility, so close now that we'd found our ambassador, the one who would introduce us to the world of people and help us belong somewhere again. In our excitement we failed to notice Mubarak duck into a grocery stall to buy a pack of Dunhills. Without realizing it we passed him and reached his home before he did; we were waiting outside the gate when he arrived.

“How did you know where I live?” he asked.

“We'll explain everything,” I told him. “Insofar as we understand it.”

Q?

We went inside and told him our story. Mubarak listened and chain-smoked. An amused little smile played beneath his mustache, as if he had accepted that none of this was real and decided to have fun with it, to hear us out and discover the fine points of his madness. Even the air he breathed, heavy with tobacco smoke and spices from the shwarma stand beneath his window, was suspect.

“Right now I could smoke a thousand of these without consequence,” he said, holding up a freshly lit cigarette. “Because none of this is actually happening.”

“Professor,” I said, “we understand that you want to believe that's the case. That you need to believe it, because in your mind there are only two logical explanations for what is happening—either you're dreaming, or you're insane. But we assure you that this is very real.”

Mubarak absorbed this in silence, then suddenly rose and stalked out, leaving us alone in the apartment. He returned several minutes later with a sodden package of chicken livers wrapped in newsprint. The mischievous smile was gone from his face.

“You must be starved,” he said, gazing down on us warmly.

Q?

For three days we fattened up on raw liver and goat's milk, and slept on woven rugs. Mubarak bathed and brushed us, switched on ceiling fans and drew the curtains to shut out the afternoon sun. In the perpetual twilight of the living room, we dozed and were thankful. For the first time, I licked a man's hand in affection.

Still, despite the luxury we were restless, and when we asked when he would introduce us to the larger world, Mubarak told us soon, soon, but first we would have to return to the refugee camp. He said that for practical reasons only I could accompany him; the others would have to stay behind at his apartment. He took leave from the university and quickly made plans for an expedition south. This was also when he introduced the cages, stainless-steel kennels padlocked from the outside, which he said were for our protection and comfort. When not in the kennels we would need to be leashed, again for our own protection.

Mubarak purchased a used Land Rover, loaded it with gas canisters, food, water, and several body bags purchased from a man he knew who trafficked in illicit arms, and off we went. He worried aloud that the rains would arrive early and turn the roads to impassable mud holes; as a consequence we traveled faster than was safe and arrived at the camp in just three days, having used both the spare tires. Small groups of aid workers had returned and were busy cleaning up the dismembered, putrefying corpses. Mubarak cursed when he saw them.

“They haven't retrieved the Creator's remains yet,” I assured him.

“Where?” he said. “Show me. Quickly.”

We rolled through the collection of makeshift shelters, most of them knocked flat or burned to cinders, past the communal well, and out to the edge of the camp, where we found the Creator's body exactly as we had left it three weeks earlier.

“There,” I said.

Mubarak put the truck in neutral and engaged the parking brake. “It hasn't decayed at all,” he said, and he was right. The Creator was dead, certainly, and picked over, but while the other corpses were so badly decomposed they'd begun to liquefy in places, his flesh was still fresh and supple, as if he'd died only a few hours before.

Without another word Mubarak leapt from the truck and began stuffing the body in one of the black vinyl bags. He moved hurriedly, continuing without pause even as he gagged on the almost visible stench that hung in the air. An aid worker, standing amidst a group of corpses perhaps fifty feet away, called out in muffled English through his respirator: “You! What are you doing?” The bag protruded here and there with hastily packed knees and elbows, and Mubarak gave up trying to zip it as the worker and two others approached. Instead he dragged the body to the back of the truck and heaved it inside, then clambered into the driver's seat and jammed the accelerator even before he'd closed his door.

The aid workers ran to stop us, but a cloud of yellow dust kicked up by the wheels enveloped them, and they disappeared from sight as we sped away. Mubarak kept the accelerator to the floor until the camp had melted into the horizon behind us. Then, suddenly, he stopped the truck, got out, and went around to the back again.

I knew what he meant to do.

“This may not be a good idea,” I told him, but already he had the tailgate down and was pulling a jackknife from the breast pocket of his khaki vest.

“Shut up,” he said. He raised his eyes to mine; gone, suddenly, was the benevolence he had shown us, replaced by something base and sinister, something frightening even to my predator's heart. “If you lied to me…”

The Creator's hand, pale palm up, hung from the opening of the bag, and Mubarak seized it by the thumb and cut away a bloodless chunk of flesh with the knife. He hesitated, pausing just before the meat touched his lips. I saw that his fingers were trembling. Then he bit down hard, as if eating something that might bite back. Eyes closed, he chewed quickly and had to throw his head back to swallow.

When he opened his eyes again he gazed about like someone emerging into light, expectant and wondering, but soon realized that nothing had changed in either him or the way he perceived his surroundings. Disappointment crossed his face, then anger. He slammed the tailgate shut and climbed back into the driver's seat.

“You made a cannibal of me, for nothing,” he said.

“Professor,” I said, “we told you that the change would take time.” I considered pointing out that I had advised against his eating the Creator, but thought better of it.

In any event, he had stopped listening. He turned the truck around and headed north again, making an off-road detour around the refugee camp. We drove in silence until night fell, when Mubarak pulled off, reclined the seat, and fell asleep with his arms folded across his chest.

Q?

Quite simply, in the morning he was changed, just as we had been. Mubarak didn't speak of it—not one word—but it was obvious. Whatever he gained (and this I never determined, as our time together was drawing to a close and I would not see him alive again), he seemed mostly to be hobbled by the transformation in strange and inexplicable ways. For one thing, he had difficulty driving: grinding gears, pressing the gas when brakes were indicated and vice versa, and failing to notice turns in the road. More than once he got stuck on the soft shoulder and had to use a hand winch to free the truck. When he spoke, which was not often, he peppered his sentences with words that did not belong and which he did not seem to notice coming out of his mouth. For example, at one point he said, “I must call Ibrahim and make plans pedagogical to move the body to London.”

“What?” I said. “Professor, are you all right?”

“Shut up. I wasn't talking to you. I'm just thinking thimbleful out loud.”

And so on. Needless to say, it was an odd and somewhat frightening ride back to Khartoum, because not only was Mubarak acting strangely, but it was becoming clear that though we'd trusted him, allowed ourselves to be locked up in steel cages, he had no intention of helping us join human society.

Q?

He did nothing to us, strictly speaking. When we arrived in Khartoum he simply put me in the spare room with the others. The next day he left for London, taking the Creator's body with him and leaving us behind, still in the cages. The others had had no food or water for six days. Their ribs showed through their fur, and the skin of their noses was dried and cracked. They pressed into the corners of the cages, trying vainly to distance themselves from their own feces.

Q?

I can only assume he meant for us to die there in his apartment. At the time it saddened me to reach this conclusion. This is, again, one of the great moral chasms between your kind and mine. Among dogs, one does not use affection to deceive, as Mubarak did. It simply doesn't happen. So when I realized he'd departed without giving a thought to us, I was confused. I wondered what we had done wrong; surely the blame rested with us, somehow. Even now, though I'm much wiser, it still hurts to think that he left us there to starve.