INCARNATION (48 page)

‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ he said.

‘This is school,’ she murmured sleepily. ‘You know?’

‘What? School o’ Life an’ that?’

She nodded complacently.

‘School o’ Hard Knocks?’

‘That’s right.’

‘That’s nothin’ but shite,’ he said. He got Maddie to her feet and helped her to the door. While she waited on the landing, he collected his own bags, everything he’d brought from Pakistan. With her help, he got them downstairs.

When everything was stowed safely in the camper, he got Maddie inside. They were parked in the alleyway behind the flat, where no one was too likely to notice them. Maddie was still groggy from the combination of drugs she’d been given. He got out four more diazepam and, in spite of her protests, forced them down her throat. He was frightened of her OD’ing, but equally frightened that she might wake en route.

Once she was quiet, he took most of the cushions and things out of the space beneath one of the beds. Maddie fitted inside perfectly. He put a blanket over her, wedged her with cushions and bedclothes so she wouldn’t be thrown about too much, and closed the upper half on top of her.

When that was done, he walked up to the street and put his envelope, now sporting a first-class stamp, into a pillar box on the corner. He sniffed the air. Petrol fumes and the smell of rotten eggs from catalytic converters. Where he was heading, there’d be nothing but pure air. He smiled to himself contentedly and walked back to the camper.

H
e closed his eyes tightly. Behind him, Mehmet’s screaming continued for about a minute. It was followed by an abhorrent choking sound, then brutal silence.

When he opened his eyes again, he was all alone in the most unforgiving of landscapes. He was still sinking helplessly into the quagmire, his body creeping downwards millimetre by millimetre. He didn’t try to call out. What would have been the point? Even if Nabila had heard Mehmet’s frantic cries and set off immediately, there was every chance she’d lose her way, or the very real likelihood - no, the certainty - that she’d arrive much too late.

He realized that he still had one flag in his left hand and the bundle of a dozen or more in his left. Holding on to them seemed pointless. He was about to let them drop out of sight for ever, when he froze. There was a slim chance that the flags could save his life.

He tightened his grip and slowly brought his left hand up out of the goo. Taking care not to disturb his precarious balance, he brought his right arm round and returned the single flag to the bundle.

Although any individual stick could be snapped in half with ease, the bundle had real strength in it. David flailed backwards, struggling to stay upright while lunging with the flags to strike dry land. Leaning with all his weight on the bundle, he tried to use it as a pivot to provide the leverage he needed to start his body turning. If he could only get his top half on to firm sand, there was a chance he could pull himself out.

The problem was that the bundle could not gain a proper purchase in the soft sand. It kept slipping out of place, forcing him to repeat the motion every few minutes. He’d managed to get himself a little round, but it was much harder than he’d thought at first. The quicksand was thick and gelatinous, and it resisted every effort David made to turn himself through ninety degrees. His shoulder was already starting to hurt badly. Before long it would become excruciating, and then he’d have to stop. One of the flags slipped and snapped, then another. He felt himself being pulled down further, and realized that he would soon be unable to keep his hold on dry land.

But still he did not let go. It was strange, he thought, that the human tendency was to hang on, however hopeless things looked. He concentrated his thoughts on good things, on Sam and Maddie, wishing one alive and the other In safer hands than Elizabeth’s. And he thought of Nabila, left to a certain and painful death in the desert.

‘David … Don’t make any sudden movements.’

It seemed the most wonderful hallucination. At least he’d die content, he thought.

‘I’m going to put a rope over your head and underneath your armpits. The other end is tied to one of the camels. Once you’re secure, I’ll pull you out. Is that all clear?’

He closed his eyes again, enjoying the illusion. Perhaps he was already dead and removed to paradise. The Muslims believed that the dead consorted with houris. Perhaps he’d been sent one with Nabila’s voice.

He was brought out of his reverie by a rope slipping over his head and shoulders.

‘Lift your arms. That’s it. Just a little more. That’s fine.’

He felt the rope tighten under his armpits, then pull him backwards and a little out of the gunge.

‘Nabila? Is that really you?’

‘Just how many strange women do you expect to meet out here?’

‘Quite a few.’

He felt her arms grip him under his armpits.

‘That hurts.’

‘Don’t worry. Once you’re far enough up, I’ll grab hold of something else.’

Squatting on the ground behind him, she went on pulling, then returned to the camel to tighten the rope a little. A few more pulls and he was out, covered in quicksand, but physically unhurt.

‘Thank God for that,’ he said. ‘How did you … ?’

He broke off. Next to him, Nabila was in floods of tears. Her carefully maintained facade of imperturbability had collapsed once she’d pulled him to safety. There’d been so little time to spare, and she’d almost lost him.

‘I didn’t … really know … how much you meant to me … until now,’ she said, and her words hung in the air about him like tiny, whirling sparrows. He was half delirious, half assailed by a desperate need for sleep. She clung to him, still gently weeping, afraid he might stop breathing at any moment.

‘How did you know?’ he asked.

‘I was watching from that dune,’ she said, ‘the tall one, the one you climbed. I could see you and Mehmet heading for one another. Then something happened to Mehmet. He seemed hurt, but you weren’t running straight for him. You started moving very slowly. That’s when it dawned on me what it was. I was off that dune and running before I had time to think. And here I am.’

She’d settled now, secure of him again. And he was starting to come out of the fluctuation of mood that had gripped him since being rescued.

‘You’re going to have to take those clothes off,’ she said.

He looked down at himself. From his feet almost to his neck, he was covered in a viscous coat of wet sand.

They’ll dry out,’ he said. ‘I’d give them half an hour in this heat. But I wouldn’t mind taking them off. Why don’t you do the same?’

She looked down at the pool. Mehmet was in there somewhere, sinking ever more deeply into his horrid grave. Nabila shook her head.

‘Not now, love. It’s just your hormones. You’ve been very agitated. And not here. Come on, we’ve got to get the camels joined up again, then we’ve got to get back en route.’

Before they set off, David got out the old map again, and spread it on the ground.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘We’ve been heading almost due east until now. But what if we do this instead?’

He swept his finger along a diagonal line that would take them towards the city called Chie Kiang.

‘It takes us further north than we want to go, but it puts us in line with likely water sources. Even a single well of clean water would be a tremendous help.’

‘You realize we’ll be heading straight for some of the highest dunes in the Taklamakan? There are whole ranges like that down there, David. There are dunes a thousand feet and more high.’

David was nonplussed. Surviving a sandstorm and a pool of quicksand one after the other had buoyed him up. He felt capable of tackling the highest dunes and the hardest treks. His good luck had produced a sense of self-confidence in him, a feeling of strength that was bordering on foolhardiness. He had started to forget that the desert offers no margins for error. He was like a cat with nine lives who can’t count.

‘We’ll find a way round them, don’t you worry,’ he said.

‘How do you plan to find these mysterious cities anyway? This map’s not to scale. We could end up miles out, walking past them and not even aware of the fact.’

He unfolded one of the Tactical Pilotage Charts, which showed the precise locations for the buried cities of the southern rim.

‘We can take precise coordinates for Dandan-Uilik and Endere from here. Every night from now on, I’ll take satellite bearings for our own position. Zhang’s map isn’t to scale, but if you take some measurements you’ll see that it’s more or less in proportion. If I make adjustments, it should be possible to work out some rough coordinates for the northern cities.’

‘It’s a huge gamble, David.'

‘Maybe. But look at this.’

He pointed at a dark line between Pan T’ang and Chie Kiang.

‘I’ve been thinking a lot about that line,’ he said. ‘It joins two of the cities, but not the third. On the western side of it stands Ts’ang Mi. To the east the lines of triangles, which I think are wells. I think the dark line’s a wall, built to connect Pan T’ang and Chie Kiang, and to keep the people of Ts’ang Mi from gaining access to their water. If I’m right, we’ll hit the wall somewhere. After that, it has to be plain sailing.’

‘I think it’s time we were on our way,’ she said. The lead camel lifted its head and wrinkled rubbery lips at her.

She bent over and whispered in its ear. David watched in wonderment as the animal struggled to its feet like a capsized boat trying to right itself.

He folded his maps and chivvied the other camels to their feet. As they started moving, he looked up. The sky was clear blue, and still full of heat. Almost out of sight, a tiny dot moved westwards. An aeroplane, very high up. An aeroplane leaving no contrail and making no noise. He watched it out of sight, then followed Nabila to the first dune.

Part VI

Kashgar, 

Afternoon

O
utside the Idgah Mosque stood women in long brown veils like figures who had just stepped out of a Symbolist painting. In their hands they held bowls of green grapes, proffering them to worshippers as they came out. The latter, pausing briefly, bent to spit on the grapes and murmur a quick blessing as they passed. That night, the grapes would be taken round the beds of the sick and the benches of the infirm in the hope that the baraka they had just accumulated would alleviate their suffering.

The men circulated in the square outside. Ordinarily, they might have passed on to the bazaars, or headed to a cafe with some friends, to smoke, drink tea, and chat. Not now, though. For one thing, people had started coming to the mosque outside the times of the five compulsory prayers. Some hardly left the building, a few holy men had taken to staying up all night reciting Naqshbandi prayers for the relief of the city and its people, and students from Kashgar’s main religious seminary had set up a rota for the constant recitation of the Koran.

Eshak, the blind beggar, leaned against the second alcove to the right of the main door, his face skywards, his hand outstretched for alms. Alms were in short supply these days. Everyone was hoarding, and no amount of pleading could extract more than a few pennies. People, some intent on prayer, others too anxious to think straight, passed him by as though they, not he, were blind.

As a matter of fact, he reflected, that was closer to the truth than anyone knew. He was blind in only one eye, but for years now he’d earned his crust by pretending to be completely sightless. His right eye was fine, better, if anything, than it had been on the day its companion on the left had gone out of business.

He leaned back, gazing fixedly at the sky. No clouds, no trace at all of the storm that had rampaged through the city all these days. It would take weeks to clear the sand from buildings and streets and vehicles. He scratched his shin and stared at the perfect blue above him.

A little speck appeared in the corner of his vision. A black dot, moving slowly across the sky. It couldn’t be a bird, he thought - it was moving in much too straight a line, and it seemed much higher up, though that was hard to judge.

Someone pressed a coin into his open hand. He bent his head and mumbled an Arabic blessing he’d learned from his father many years earlier:
baraka ‘llah fik
.

His donor passed on, and Eshak let his gaze wander back to the swept and glimmering sky. The plane was passing straight overhead now, right over the centre of Kashgar. He thought it funny that he could not hear it.

In a little upper room at the back of the mosque, Yusup Beg was bending over a low table groaning with books. In the centre, its pages untouched by any of its companions, lay a large Koran from the mosque library, a waqf copy penned in elegant Arabic letters. Around it were dispersed tafsirs, concordances, dictionaries, manuals of holy law, and a complete set of the traditions of al-Bukhari. He checked the wording of the Throne Verse against its citation in the commentary of al-Baidawi. Wrinkling his nose, he frowned, made a note on the pad on his lap, and leaned back on his haunches, yawning.

That was when he felt it begin. It was extremely muted at first, no more than a shiver in his spine and a faint tingling in his feet. Then it grew in strength. He thought it was an earthquake, he was sure it was an earthquake. The books on the table in front of him started to quiver. Volume 30 of Tabari’s Jami’ al-Bayan slithered its way to the edge and toppled to the floor. It was followed by several more.

Yusup leaped to his feet, anxious to retrieve the Koran before it suffered either indignity or damage. As he stood, he looked through the window. He blinked his eyes, then rubbed them. For as far as he could see, snow was falling on the city. He crossed to the window and looked out. The sky overhead was as blue as ever, yet snow was falling over everything, white and cold and perfect.

Asiyeh watched as the snow fell into the courtyard, white and cold and ominous. She’d known something bad was coming, known it from the moment she woke that morning. There’d been the aubergines, for one thing. There she’d been in the kitchen, slicing them up for the noonday meal, when she’d noticed that several of them had dark streaks through the white flesh, streaks that looked suspiciously like writing to her untutored eye. She’d remarked on it to Narges, who’d nodded and said, "If we could read these, we’d know a thing or two about the Torment and when it’s going to end".