INCARNATION (21 page)

The day before, his wife Roshan had got rid of all that for him, giving him dark hair and greenish contact lenses, and shaving his moustache completely off. He kept putting his hand up to stroke it now, only to let it fall back to his lap disappointed. He was nervous, but he knew it was vital to keep control. If anyone asked, he would say he was afraid of flying. It was true enough.

But flying wasn’t his real fear. His real fear was being sent back to a labour camp, and he’d heard rumours that moves were afoot to have him packed off to one in the desert around Lop Nor. He knew he wouldn’t survive even another year in a camp. That was why he was here, clutching his ticket to London via Peking and keeping a close watch on the flight bag that contained his British passport under the name of Dr Aziz Khan. He also carried papers, a badge, and a brightly printed folder from the Conference on Traditional and Scientific Medicine that had just been held in Urumchi. It had all been left at the house of a friend by the real Dr Khan. Assuming there had been a real one.

He knew British intelligence was behind the whole thing. They’d been in touch with him before. After all, no one knew more than he did about the economy of western China. His ideas had formed the basis for more than one Western research paper on the subject, and for dozens of crudely-printed leaflets issued by other dissidents. Despite being a pariah, he had access to classified information, culled from pages left by late-night visitors.

The British had initially made contact with him after his release from his first prison camp. His students had denounced him soon after the Cultural Revolution, he’d been condemned as a rightist, and he’d spent several years in a camp near Korla making amends for his past and learning the humble virtues of ignorance. He’d gone back to the university in Urumchi after its reopening and the rehabilitation of staff, and gone on teaching quite happily for three or four years. And then he’d started arguing for separatism for Sinkiang and Tibet. The authorities hadn’t liked that. Holding rightist views on economics was one thing - combining them with calls for the liberation of vast chunks of the Communist empire was quite another.

So now he sat in a flea-bitten airport lounge, clutching a badly stitched flight bag and wondering when, if ever, he would see his wife again.

A bell chimed softly and a voice announced in Chinese that Flight AC 17 for Peking would be boarding in fifteen minutes. Professor Ishmail looked round again, scanning the faces of his fellow-passengers. They were all strangers. He planned to keep it that way.

Kashgar

T
he warm amber sunlight that had caressed the city all day like a cat’s paw lifted itself up at last and, with a quiet exhalation of breath, vanished behind the mountains hard against the western sky.

David had been in his hotel room ever since his arrival, chafing for Nabila to come. He felt alone and out of sorts. Now, darkness crashed down like a huge stone lid, shutting him in more narrowly than ever. He looked round the shabby, coffee-coloured room. They’d put him in the old building. The new block out front was packed with Gilgiti wheelers and dealers who’d come down along the Karakoram Highway from Pakistan. They’d stay a night or two, sell what they could, buy what they could, and split at first light the next morning.

A snatch of qawwali music wafted down the long corridor outside, losing itself in the high ceiling and intricate, dusty mouldings. The Sabri Brothers praised God and extolled the Prophet, and their audience responded with enthusiastic cries of "Allah" as the music grew in pace and volume.

David put down his pen. He was having trouble with the letter he’d started to write. He wanted Maddie to know he was all right, and he’d got off to a good enough start, giving her a heavily sanitized account of his first few days.

I’m in Sinkiang investigating traditional forms of medicine. Don’t laugh! I just collect data and samples, stuff they can analyse properly back home. Who knows? Maybe I’ll come up with something that could help you, get you off those drugs. I’ll ask Nabila about it - she’s my guide and teacher, a doctor in Uighur medicine. She’s a Muslim, so you can be sure your old Dad’s safe from any risk of hanky panky …

But the more he wrote, the more he wanted to tell her about Sam. He could tolerate the small, necessary lies that covered him and his mission: he’d been telling them most of his life and had learned to live with them. But pretending Sam was still alive was more than he could do, and he knew Maddie would notice if he didn’t mention him.

He sighed and began again, wondering if there was some way round the problem. A tiny breeze touched him from the open window, and he sneezed, then sneezed several more times. In the few hours since his arrival in Kashgar, his hay fever had grown steadily worse. His eyes were permanently red and puffy, his nose streamed. Almost all his antihistamines had gone, not that they seemed to be doing any good.

He looked up at the enormous light fitting above his head, a relic of the old days. It looked as though it hadn’t been dusted since the Communist takeover. He picked up his pen again.

Darling, there’s something I need to tell you ... He crossed it out and started again. Darling, there’s something you ought to know. You must have wondered why Sam didn’t come to visit you at the clinic ... He put down the pen again. His own emotions about Sam were still too raw. And, on reflection, he knew Dr Rose would vet any letters before they got to Maddie. He looked round the room again.

His father had told him about life here in the late thirties. The Chini Bagh had been the old British consulate. Since the imperialists left in 1949, it had decayed slowly to its present state, a dilapidated relic of worse and better times. Birds nested on its flat roof, insects walked with invisible hushed feet along its dark corridors, its walls were crumbled and torn like ancient silk.

Someone knocked on the door. David looked up and shouted ‘Come in.’ No one answered. A second knock followed. He got up and went to the door.

A man was standing patiently in the corridor, a young man dressed in a long black chapan. ‘Ruzi Osmanop?’ David nodded. ‘Come with me, please.’

‘I’m sorry - how can I come with you? I don’t know who you are, or what you want.’

The young man looked at him as if he was mentally retarded.

‘I’ve been sent by Dr Muhammadju. She says you are to come right away.’ 

‘Does she? I have to get my jacket first.’ The young man took a step closer and looked into the room. David almost felt ashamed of it. It had been grand in its day, but now paint and carpet and woodwork looked worn and shabby, as if the life had gone out of them.

‘This is not a good hotel,’ the young man said. ‘If you have anything of value, don’t leave it in your room.’ David had had no intention of doing so. 

‘Wait for me there,’ he said. The stranger nodded, and took a couple of steps back. David closed the door. Unwatched, he hurriedly gathered together anything valuable or potentially incriminating and put it in a small shoulder bag.

A pony cart was waiting outside, not many yards from the Public Security Bureau. Holding the reins was an old man wearing a white dopa, his long beard falling to his chest. He turned as David and his companion approached, and his eyes fixed on David for a moment; but he said nothing. David climbed on to the seat next to the driver. They set off in silence broken only by the clip clop of the pony’s feet and the rhythmic tinkling of the little bells round its thin neck. The driver urged it on with gentle clicks of his tongue. A bicycle with a dim light passed them and vanished behind the old city walls. There were no cars or buses. They turned left into a narrower street that led towards the Idgah Mosque and the Old City. Bit by bit, the modern world let go its grip on things.

As they approached the bazaar, a haze of fluorescent lamps illuminated a scene that had not changed since the middle ages. The stalls and booths that lined the streets were swarming with customers. Barbers worked on the pavement, lathering, scissoring, razoring and pummelling, attacking their victims’ heads with vicious-looking knives and cleavers that seemed to have been dug up from some ancient battlefield. Behind them, stalls offered ripe yellow melons, fat peaches, and swollen grapes. Others displayed tall leather boots or hand-crafted silverware, bolts of silk, or layers of carpet. All lit with a high, naked light.

Among them, small restaurants drew a constant stream of flagging shoppers inside. There was not a Chinese face in sight.

They left the mosque and the bazaar behind. The noise faded, and they came to an alleyway that was too narrow for the cart to pass through. David and the young man got down, and the old man drove off, still saying nothing, and they were left standing in the unlit street while the moon worked its slow way between the roofs above.

‘Down here,’ said the young man, plunging into a lane that snaked its way between high blank walls. The moonlight made a brief appearance as they turned a corner, then disappeared again. Their feet were loud on the broken cobblestones. David fingered the gun in his pocket.

They reached a tall, dark door, and the man in black reached up to pull on a bell-handle set high on the right-hand side. A bell jangled somewhere far within.

A bent creature with slow, blank eyes opened the door and stepped aside to let them in. They waited while he closed the door, then he led the way along a short passageway and into the courtyard.

David halted, struck with amazement. All in front of him, the courtyard sang with light. The moon, trembling high above, seemed as though bought and hung there, to bring light each evening into this little space. Great trees soared to the roof - palms and cedars and poplars, their branches frosted by light. At their feet lay a pool of sparkling water in which the moon floated like a swollen fruit. In the pool, brightly coloured carp and goldfish darted in and out of the silver disc. Everywhere, tall glazed pots stood filled with flowers. He stood entranced, as though he’d been brought to some sort of paradise, a place of rest. He thought of Sam, and he thought of Maddie, and the moonlight seemed to shake, as though on the point of breaking. And on a thin breeze, music wafted across the stars, an old waltz tune from another time and another place.

He looked up. His escort had gone, leaving him standing alone by the pool’s narrow edge. On the other side of the courtyard stood Nabila, watching him, her face half-hidden in a shadow that fell from a wind tower high on the corbelled roof. As she stepped forward, her features formed quickly in the light, and he caught his breath and held it tight inside him for a while.

‘What do you think of the Chini Bagh?’ she asked. She sounded very different here. He guessed it was her father’s house.

‘Not much,' he said.

‘I haven’t been inside,’ she said, ‘but I’ve heard it’s a little grim.’

‘Why’d you send me there, then?’ 

‘History,’ she said. ‘Let’s go inside. My father’s waiting.’

She led him from the courtyard through a low door in a mud-brick wall.

‘Your father?’ he asked.

‘He wants to see you. I explained you’d be working with me at the hospital.’ 

‘But why ...?’

An intricate brass lamp hung from the ceiling overhead. The walls were bare, devoid of any ornament. Nabila stopped and turned to him. ‘My father gives me a great deal of freedom,’ she said. ‘I was allowed to study medicine, to practise in the hospital. I’m even allowed to live in quarters supplied by the authorities for medical staff. To travel alone to Urumchi. But my father is still a sheikh, he still has the right to make demands on me. A strange man is a potential threat to his honour.’

‘It’s not your father I’m falling for.’ The words were out almost before he knew what he was saying. Nabila looked at him, her eyes startled. He could not tell if she was angry or moved or frightened.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘don’t joke about it. My father is a very serious man.’

‘Why did you tell him about me in the first place?’

She looked at him as though he’d asked why the grass was green.

‘Nothing happens in Kashgar that my father doesn’t know about.’

‘I thought he was just a holy man.’

Her eyes grew wide. High on the wall above her head, a light flickered and became still.

‘Much more than that,’ she said. ‘He is the pivot. If he crooked his finger, the people of Kashgar would rise up against the Chinese. And after them all the people of Sinkiang. My father can decide whether there will be war or peace. You should be careful of him.’

A few yards more brought them to a green-painted door. Above it, in Chinese-Arabic lettering, hung an inscription. It was a verse from the Koran: "O you that believe. Fight those who are not believers, dwelling near to you, and let them find you harsh towards them. Know that God is with those who fear Him".

A man approached them out of shadows further down the corridor. He bowed to Nabila, then turned to David, explaining that he had to frisk him.

‘That isn’t necessary,’ Nabila said. ‘Dr Osmanop is a friend of mine.’

‘I’m sorry, Miss Nabila, but your father gave explicit orders. You know I can’t go against his instructions.’

The frisking was fast and thorough, and David realized that Nabila’s father must have surrounded himself with professionals. Both the young man who had picked him up at the Chini Bagh and this one had that unmistakable quality of men trained to kill. He hoped they would not notice the same thing in himself.

'I’ll have to hold on to this,’ said the guard, holding up the pistol he’d found in David’s waistband. ‘You can have it back when you leave.’

‘I heard it can be ... dangerous here in Sinkiang.’ The man did not answer, but put the gun away and opened the door. David stepped inside, followed by Nabila. The door closed behind them.

Sheikh Azad sat on cushions arranged on a high kang projecting from the wall facing the door. The kang was a platform used for sitting, eating, and sleeping: in the winter, a fire would be lit underneath, making it the perfect place to pass the day. Round the walls, several of his followers sat, neither hostile nor friendly, waiting to see what their leader would make of the new arrival. The old man waved David forward, welcoming him. ‘
Al-salam alaykum. Marhaba
!
Marhaba
! ‘Sit down here,’ said the sheikh, motioning David to join him on the kang. Nabila remained standing near the door.