INCARNATION (22 page)

Sheikh Azad was a man of about seventy, dressed, like his followers, in simple black garments. His wrinkled skin hung to his face like a mask that has been worn too long. But the eyes that looked back from it were black and shining, and danced like a twelve-year-old’s. Except that the brain behind them was that of a man, not a child. ‘You do me honour,’ said David, ‘asking me here.’ 

‘On the contrary, you honour me by your visit.’ 

‘And you honoured me by sending such a fine pony to carry me here.’

Sheikh Azad smiled.

‘I’m pleased to see you know the difference between a pony and a donkey,’ he said. ‘Now, tell me if you know the difference between a man and an ape.’ The conversation moved circuitously through a maze of subjects, and however David tried to introduce his own topics, his host made sure he was always the one to initiate or close. They talked of God and His prophets, of Alma-Ata and Kazakhstan, of medicine and the curing of souls. Politics was not mentioned once. Nor the Chinese. Only David and Sheikh Azad spoke. Nabila remained standing by the door, listening.

Over an hour later, the sheikh grew silent. He nodded his head several times, muttered "good" to himself once or twice, and turned abruptly to the men on either side of him, telling them to leave. No one acted surprised. David made to go with them, half-rising from the kang, but the old man grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him down.

‘Not you,’ he whispered, ‘not you.’

When the other men had gone, David noticed that Nabila still remained in her position by the doorway. She smiled at him, and her father gestured to her to join them. She sat on his other side, away from David.

‘I would like you to join us at our meal this evening, Dr Osmanop,’ Sheikh Azad said. ‘I hope that is no inconvenience.’

David shook his head. Even if it had been, he’d hardly have turned down the invitation.

‘Excellent. There will be poshkal and jarkop. Made in the Kashgar way. Perhaps it won’t be to your taste.’

'I think it will suit me very well.’

‘Good. Now, I wish you to tell me something. My daughter here is a very great doctor. Perhaps that is just the opinion of her father. But I hear she does good.’ He paused. Between his fingers, the amber beads of his tasbih glided like thoughts. ‘She tells me you may know how to stop the deaths.’

David found it hard to answer.

‘I ... don’t know. That’s not what I said to her. I said I might be able to help. I can have her data analysed at an important laboratory. If their findings allow us to take action, perhaps we can stop the deaths.’

The old man looked at him. The merriment had gone from his eyes. Now, there was only sadness. A great burden was weighing him down.

‘Dr Osmanop,’ he said, 'I have watched you tonight and listened to you. I have no wish to pry. But I do know that you are not from Alma-Ata. I do know that only half of you is Uighur. I do know that there were ten more deaths today, in Karghalik. And I know that earlier today the Chinese authorities increased the number of closed zones in this region from five to seventeen. Now, perhaps you can tell me - what is causing these deaths?’

David did not hesitate. He knew that, before all this was over, he would need the old man’s help. Azad Muhammadju would not betray him.

‘A weapon,’ David said.

‘A nuclear weapon?’

David shook his head.

‘Perhaps. But not a conventional one. At this stage it seems to be poisoning the atmosphere. If it were possible to perform autopsies ...'

Nabila shook her head.

‘The hospitals have strict instructions. All the bodies are shipped to Urumchi, then returned for burial in sealed coffins. The burials take place under police guard.’

They talked for a little longer, then it was time for dinner. Sheikh Azad led the way to the family quarters, where a large cloth had been laid on the floor of the main room. The house was not large or grand in any way, just adequate for the needs of Sheikh Azad’s household and his wider family of followers when they came to seek his blessing or ask his opinion. Nabila’s brothers, Omar and Osman, were there. David regaled them with stories of Alma-Ata and a trip he’d made to Moscow. Everyone was happy. Nabila’s mother did not appear. It was after midnight when he left. 

‘Stay at the Chini Bagh tonight,’ said Nabila. ‘Tomorrow we’ll find you somewhere more congenial, with a friend.’

She walked with him as far as the courtyard. A light had come on to take the place of the vanished moon. Its weak light softened and remoulded everything, giving the courtyard a sense of diminished scale, of peace and intimacy. David heard footsteps behind them. A guard, his face hidden by shadow, handed his gun back to David, and apologized for its confiscation. No one asked why a doctor should want to go about armed.

He stepped down to the level of the pond. Someone had scattered water about, and it was very cool. She stepped down beside him, almost close enough to touch.

‘I liked your father very much,’ he said. ‘He’s down to earth. I imagine he’s extremely popular.’

‘Be careful of him, David,’ Nabila cautioned. ‘Trust him only as long as you do nothing to offend or hinder him. He’s completely devoted to one thing: Islam. That’s why he wants Sinkiang to be free, so he and his followers can set up an Islamic Republic’

‘And what about you? Is that what you want?’ His eyes were growing accustomed to the light; he could make out her face.

‘I don’t know.’ She paused. ‘I’d like my father to be happy, I’d like my people to have the final say in their own lives. If that means having an Islamic Republic, I’ll go along with it. Anything would be better than Communist rule. But ... Islamic rule will mean restrictions. Women like myself won’t be able to have careers, maybe not even lives apart from being daughters, wives, and mothers. I don’t want that.’

‘What did your husband want?’

‘Da’ud?’ She hesitated, and he thought she might close the subject again. They were standing close together at the edge of the pool. A fish darted silently between water-lily pads.

‘Da’ud is a martyr,’ she said. ‘He was killed three years ago, during a raid on a government arms store. He was my father’s right-hand man. The possibility of an Islamic state meant everything to him. I don’t have such aspirations. I’d live in Peking if it meant I could have him back again.’

‘Did you have children?’

She shook her head. A soft desert wind fanned the leaves high above them.

‘What about you?’ she asked.

He was about to tell her about Elizabeth when a window opened on the second floor.

‘Miss Nabila! Miss Nabila, it’s getting late. Your mother is asking for you.’

‘I have to go. Mehmed will take you back to the Chini Bagh. I’ll call for you first thing in the morning.’

‘Nabila Khenim!’

‘I’m coming!’ She accompanied him to the door.

‘Until tomorrow, then,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Take care.’

A small red flower grew in a pot at his feet. He bent down and plucked it, then held it out to her.

‘It’s not much,’ he said.

She took it from him, and as she did so their fingers grazed, and she looked into his eyes.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, before turning and running back to the house.

He went outside into the alley. Mehmed, the man who had come for him at the Chini Bagh, was waiting a few yards away.

Peking Airport

‘P
assenger announcement.’

The little bell that followed struck everyone into immobility and silence.

‘Will Dr Az Kung, travelling to London on flight AC 105, please make himself known at one of the Air China desks?’

The announcement faded and everyone relaxed. The departure lounge was filled with an extraordinary mixture of humanity. Professor Kirim Ishmail had never been abroad in his life before, had never seen so many people on the move. He was growing excited. Take-off was half an hour away. Every time he glanced up at the clock, the hand was a little closer to its destination. He’d be on the plane by then, of course. The bell rang again.

‘Will Dr Azez Haun, passenger for London, please make himself known to Air China in the departure lounge?’

They’d been making the announcement for something like ten minutes, always varying the name, until now he realized he was the object of their search. He felt his heart go cold. Why had he been singled out?

He considered sitting tight and brazening it out, to see if he could still make it on to the plane. Surely, once they’d taken off …

On reflection, he could hardly avoid detection. They’d want to check his papers before letting him on the plane. With a sigh he got up and went to a small desk at the far end of the room.

‘I’m Dr Khan,’ he said, speaking English. The girl behind the desk didn’t speak the language much better.

‘Ah, Dr Huan. You were a member of International Conference on Traditional and Scientific Medicine, yes?’

He acknowledged that he was. She smiled and asked him for his boarding pass.

‘All members of International Conference are to be upgraded to first class. This is your new boarding pass. When you board, you will be directed upstairs to first class. I hope you enjoy your flight.’

Bewildered, his heart still fluttering, he returned to his seat. A few minutes later, an announcement came, asking standard-class passengers to make their way to gate number seven. Slowly, the departure lounge emptied. Finally, half a dozen first-class passengers were left, including himself.

‘Will passengers Zhang, Evans, and Genscher please proceed to gate seven.’

The first three picked up their jackets and bags and headed for the plane with the weariness of long-experienced travellers. Kirim did not know how to judge them. This would be only his second time on a plane. It seemed a comfortable enough way to travel. He’d heard that you could even sleep well in first class.

‘Passengers Macey and Lu to board now, please.’

He watched them go, then glanced round and discovered that he was all alone. The fear returned then, and with it the knowledge. They’d found out about him late, and somebody high up had vetoed an open arrest that might cause embarrassment, maybe even get into foreign newspapers. So this elaborate game with a first-class transfer had been arranged.

For a moment, he thought of walking down towards the gate, trusting to the proximity of the other passengers. Maybe he could get on board that way, maybe they’d be forced to let him go.

He looked back at the lounge entrance. The first PSB man had arrived. And down at the doors leading out to the gate, an airport security guard carrying a submachine-gun.

He sat tight and waited for someone more senior to arrive. And he wondered who had tipped them off.

S
he arrived at the Chini Bagh at half-past eight, dressed in a white medical coat and flowered headscarf.

‘I’ve got to be at the hospital in a few minutes. Would you like to come?’

‘I don’t have a white coat.’

‘I’ll get you one. What colour would you like?’

‘What colour?’

‘Of white coat.’

‘What have you got?’

‘Anything you like. We generally take a white coat, smear it with a herbal concoction, and leave it to dry. They usually come out in shades of brown, but I once had a fetching purple.’ He laughed and said he’d take white.

The hospital was less than a thousand yards from the hotel, a small, unimposing building. A large red cross above the door proclaimed its identity, otherwise it might have been anything from a school to a silk factory.

Inside, Nabila led him on a rambling journey along green-painted corridors in which trolleys and drip-stands and dirty laundry jostled for space with staff and patients. Several white-coated figures passed, greeting Nabila warmly. No one seemed in a hurry. A middle-aged man stopped to chat with her briefly. He showed absolutely no interest in David. Further along the corridor, several patients lay on narrow beds.

‘We’re running out of space. The People’s Hospital over the river has started sending us their overflow. We have to take them if someone over there prescribes Uighur medicine. You’d be surprised how many of their patients have started suffering from conditions that will only respond to traditional remedies.’

David glanced at the inert forms on the beds.

‘The only thing this lot would respond to would be a shot of electricity.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

Round the next turning, they came to a scuffed dark brown door that bore Nabila’s name. It had been painted carefully on a rectangular plaque of lighter wood. She took a long key from her pocket and opened the door with what looked to David suspiciously like a flourish, as if to say, ‘This is my territory’.

One of the walls was covered in posters showing the various acupuncture points and meridians, the major therapeutic flowers and herbs, and optical charts.

The other walls held glass-fronted wooden cabinets of a type David remembered from his schooldays. They’d pursued him from one lab or classroom to another, tall and ugly, crammed full of dark jars that held unnameable substances. A quick glance showed him that these were little different. He could make out what looked very like a giant centipede in one, staring out at him with frightened disdain.

'Plop yourself down,’ said Nabila, pointing to a typing chair.

‘I’m quite comfortable standing, if you ...'

‘I said, sit down.’ Her voice had turned peremptory. He sat down. As he did so, he noticed with interest a desk and some filing cabinets hard against the back wall. He wondered if they contained Nabila’s records of the mysterious outbreaks of illness.

‘Is that where you keep ...?’

‘Roll up your sleeve,’ she ordered, cutting him off.

Bemused, he did as he was told. She came and stood beside him and began to feel his pulses, all six of them. It took several minutes, during which time she said absolutely nothing. When she was done, she wrote down her findings on a sheet of white paper.

‘Very good,’ she said. ‘You’re alive. Now, tongue, please.’

‘What’s all this in aid of?’