INCARNATION (41 page)

They hobbled the animal with cord that had slipped loose from the baggage. It complained, but made no attempt to struggle or to bite.

They made their way back along the narrow defile between the dunes. It was bitterly cold now, and a small breeze had somehow managed to sneak through the gaps in order to torment them.

‘How’s Mehmet?’ David asked.

‘Not too good, I’m afraid. I’ve treated people with camel bites before, but nothing like this. He needs to be in a modern hospital, not stuck out here in the wilderness.’

‘Is there nothing you can do for him?’

‘A certain amount, but not very much. At the moment, I’ve got the hand anaesthetized using acupuncture, but the effect won’t last for very long unless something else is done. At least two of the fingers require amputation.’

‘Can’t you do that?’

‘I’m not a surgeon, David. I know the principles, but that’s all. I’ve never actually cut anyone open or amputated a limb. If I had an operating theatre and proper equipment

They walked the rest of the way in silence. When they got to the camp they found Mehmet propped up against one of the saddles taken from the remaining animals. David greeted him. He seemed restful, but his face betrayed the apprehension he felt underneath. His hand rested on his lap.

Nabila knelt down beside him and shone the torch on it. It looked hideous. Bone had been exposed across four fingers, and on the end two the skin had been racked back away from the palm. Apart from that, everything from just below the knuckles to the fingertips had been badly crushed. In several places, the bone had splintered, and bits poked out jaggedly, defying easy treatment.

Nabila turned to David, speaking in English.

‘I don’t think I have any choice. I have to amputate. The end fingers are too badly damaged to even dream of repairing them.’

‘Can’t you stitch it all up until he gets to a hospital?’

‘The simple answer is no. I’ve gone over this every way I can, and I come back to amputation each time. He won’t see the inside of a hospital for God knows how long. I may not be a surgeon, but I have treated plenty of surgical cases. Limited amputation offers him the best chance, believe me.’

Mehmet broke in.

‘I’m sorry, Doctor, but I don’t understand Chinese. Are you saying that you want to cut my hand off?’

She shook her head and tried to smile.

‘I hope not, Mehmet. But I think we may have to amputate those two fingers. I’m sorry, there’s not much choice.’

He nodded heavily. Nabila knew that the loss of two fingers could prove a serious blow to someone like Mehmet, who earned his living by hard labour. He’d adjust in time, but at first it would be difficult for him. The chances of anyone providing him with a prosthesis or anything else to compensate for the fingers were zero.

‘We’ve got a couple of additional problems,’ Nabila said. ‘One is the other six camels. Only two have been unloaded, and they’re getting restless. We need a fire if possible. It’s going to get extremely cold here without one. I thought I saw some tamarisks on the way in.’

‘Yes, I noticed them too. Let’s get the camels unloaded, then we can get enough wood for a fire.’

It seemed to take for ever, working in the dark, but by and by they got through their tasks and got a small fire burning next to Mehmet.

Nabila set up one of the water drums to form a low table, and covered it with a cloth, almost like a small altar. She opened a small leather bag and took a number of instruments from it, which she laid on the makeshift table. Picking one up, she showed it to David.

‘Take a look at this,’ she said. ‘Do you know what this is? It’s an instrument for working on camels’ feet. I can’t even tell you its proper name. The whole set came from a vet who works in our hospital. They’re all I have. Now, you tell me how I’m supposed to cut through human bone without crushing it, splintering it, or snapping it. I need a saw, David, a proper surgical saw. I need proper equipment. Otherwise this is just going to be so much butchery.’

She was close to tears. It seemed that, no matter what she did, she would cause Mehmet more pain and lasting disfigurement. David took the implements one by one and examined them. Nabila was right. None of them was designed for surgical work.

‘Is this all he gave you?’ he asked. ‘Does he never have to carry out amputations on animals?’

‘I expect he does, I don’t know. But this is all he gave me.’

‘You’re sure you can’t just stitch him up, bandage the whole thing together till we reach somewhere he can have proper help?’

She shook her head.

‘Those fingers are too badly damaged. If I don’t amputate, they could end up gangrenous or worse, and that could start spreading.’

‘That leaves us no choice.’ He nodded towards Mehmet. ‘Get him ready as best you can. There’s a bottle of brandy in that bag. I’d recommend about as much as the poor bastard can swallow.’

‘What are you planning to do?’

'I’ll show you in a minute.’

He went off into the darkness and sat down by the flank of one of the camels. Nabila could hear him working while she prepared Mehmet. A steady scraping sound came from the darkness: David was sharpening something.

‘He’s ready,’ Nabila called at last. She’d forced Mehmet to drink a foul-tasting tea of concentrated herbs, and by careful placing of acupuncture needles, she’d made his damaged hand and wrist go numb again.

David arrived. He was carrying a large hunting knife. Nabila looked at him in horror.

‘David, you can’t ...'

‘It’s a good quality knife. The blade isn’t going to break on us, and it isn’t going to slip. It’s the best we’ve got.’ He looked at Mehmet, then back at Nabila. ‘We have to tie his hand down.’

‘David ...'

‘The knife is very sharp indeed. It’s an Ek survival knife, and it can do a lot of damage if it isn’t handled carefully. I don’t want Mehmet pulling out when he sees me start to cut.’

‘He won’t pull out. Trust me.’

‘I have to trust Mehmet.’

‘Then ask him directly.’

David hesitated, then turned to Mehmet. He spoke to him briefly in Uighur.

‘I will not move. God has willed that I should lose some fingers. Moving will change nothing. Wherever my hand goes, there will be God.’

‘Very well,’ said David. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

They helped Mehmet arrange himself so that his hand lay firmly on the narrow operating table. Nabila spoke to him gently, and David could see how he relaxed, as though bewitched by her voice.

He brought the sharpened knife to the table and laid it across the back of Mehmet’s hand. Nabila held the torch steady over it.

‘Show me where to cut,’ David said.

She guided the blade to the right place and indicated the correct angle at which to cut.

David took a deep breath. Beside him, Mehmet had closed his eyes and was murmuring a prayer, rapidly. David held the knife ready. Nabila nodded. He cut down, and there was a cry so piercing it ripped the black tent of the night from pole to pole, and then silence fell, and there was blood pouring out on everything.

A
round midnight, Mehmet fell into a very deep sleep. Nabila had done what she could with the hand, stitching flesh together where possible, packing and bandaging it where not. His three remaining fingers were badly crushed, and the bones broken. About an hour after the amputation, he’d been wracked by sudden spasms of shivering. In part they were a delayed after-effect of the double shock he’d sustained, in part the result of having to sit in the freezing cold after losing so much blood. Nabila gave him her sleeping bag and made him drink something foul-tasting that finally made him sleep.

She lay back against a heap of camel-bags and closed her eyes. There was no wind, no sound except for the grunting of the camels and Mehmet’s fractured snoring. She opened her eyes and saw a black sky so filled with stars no one but God could ever possibly count them. A shooting star dashed suddenly across her view, incandescent for a moment, then gone for ever. It had, for that moment, been the brightest thing in its universe.

She shuddered. David had gone away on his own to check on the camel that had bolted. He’d had no hopes of finding the others, but they both knew they’d have to look for them at first light. If they remained lost, that meant they were down nearly five hundred litres of water at a single stroke. Even if they found water under ground in the morning, it would be brackish, fit only for the camels. Without the barrels, they would have no means of storing any.

The desert was a truly awful place, she thought. It had always been on the edge of her consciousness as a girl and a young woman, a place of stories and legends, a stony wilderness where the jinn walked, and ghouls, and the ghosts of children who’d lived in the ancient silk cities, now lost and buried under the sand. Later, she’d ridden or driven along the desert’s edge and gazed out over it warily, thinking of what might be hidden out there. Or not hidden.

Now, shivering in a hollow defile between towers of white sand, watching the stars revolve indifferently, she felt the full horror of the emptiness she was in creep upon her and bury her, like sand burying a fortress or a long caravan whose bells are at first dimmed, then silenced for all time.

What was the horror exactly? Was it the sense of so much empty space, or the almost total absence of life, or the feeling that, whichever way she went, she would still be lost? Or was it the silence, or the sound of sand moving against sand, or a ghostly memory of sounds that had once been here and were gone for ever?

She decided it was none of these things. There was something else, a more powerful feeling than all the others, a sense that, far from being dead, the desert was intensely alive. Death was only an appearance. Reality was a form of life in which the desert - watchful, listening, alert - preyed on all other forms of life that came within it. She could think of no other place on earth that had made such a success of death. Every step she took, she could feel the desert couching, very like a beast of prey.

She fetched the torch and headed on down to where David was watching the camel. He’d taken some blankets and a little food, and when she found him, he was propped up against the animal’s side. He’d lit a small fire, and when she came up he was trying to read something in its light. It looked like a map, very torn and tattered, with inscriptions in Chinese. When he noticed her standing by the fire, he folded the sheet up and shoved it inside his coat.

She slipped down beside him, saying nothing, pausing only to whisper something in the camel’s ear.

‘What have you been saying to Bobtail?’ he asked.

‘None of your business.’

‘I don’t want any agitation in this caravan. I won’t stand for that. You’re not one of those foreign agitators, are you?’

She put her arm round him, and they sat together in silence while Bobtail digested the food David had brought her.

‘Why’d you come down here on your own?’ she asked.

‘I’m not sure. I just wanted to listen to my own thoughts, I suppose. I’m sorry. I’ve neglected you.’

‘No, I’ve been busy. Mehmet’s asleep. He should stay that way until dawn. I don’t want to give him too many herbs: they can be toxic in too large a quantity. The acupuncture may help for a while tomorrow, but it won’t stand much of a chance when he’s moving.’

‘It’s between him and God now, Nabila. There’s nothing more you can do.’

‘Haven’t you eaten? It doesn’t look as though you’ve touched anything.’

‘No, I’m not really very hungry.’

‘Nevertheless, you have to eat.’

‘Who says?’ He was snappish, almost aggressive.

‘I say. I’m a doctor, you have to listen to me.’

‘I’d like to know the hell why.’

‘I already told you, because I’m a doctor.’ 

‘You’re not my bloody doctor.’

She took her arm away gently, retreating from whatever was burning him up.

‘No? And just who else is your doctor out here? Bobtail? Mehmet maybe? Listen, David. It’s time you wised up. You’re the expedition leader, and I’m sticking my neck on the line to follow you and do whatever you say I should do, even when I think you don’t have a clue what you’re doing. But when it comes to what concerns the health and well-being of this little party, I have the final say. If I tell you to eat, you will eat; if I tell you not to eat, you will not let a morsel pass your lips until further word. The reason is quite simple. If you play the little boy and get petulant and push your dinner to the other side of the table, you will get weak and dehydrated tomorrow. If that makes you ill so you can’t eat tomorrow, we’re heading for trouble. Mehmet isn’t out of danger yet. He’ll need careful watching for a few days. If I could make a phone call and have him lifted out of here by air, I’d do it this minute.’

She stopped suddenly. The truth was, she wished she could have them all lifted out. They’d been fools to get themselves this far inside the desert in the first place.

‘Very well, I’ll eat if it makes you happy.’

‘No, you’ll eat because it helps keep us alive. Thank you for what you did back there.’

‘Mehmet? I hated doing that. I’ve seen men lose limbs before, but only in combat. This was a bit too personal.’

She put her arm round him again, and this time he settled against her beatifically, and reached up and held her hand.

‘Is that what you were thinking about when you came out here?’ she asked.

‘A little, yes. But mostly Sam. I can’t get him out of my mind these past few days. It’s being out here in the bloody sand, with nothing else to do but think. Don’t you find that?’

‘Yes, I know what you mean. I find myself thinking about my sister Rabbia a lot.’ She paused and squeezed his hand. ‘And about us. Do you think ... Do you think we’ll come out of this alive?’

‘I honestly don’t know. I wouldn’t think it very likely.’

‘Do you think, if we did survive ... Would you just go back to England?’

‘Oh, God, Nabila, I don’t know. I couldn’t stay here, you know that. I wouldn’t last a day. And I couldn’t bear to leave you behind.’

‘But I have my work here.’