Right of Thirst (16 page)

Homa sat alone on her cot in the medical tent. She looked up at us. A plastic bag containing what little clothing she had lay beside her on the cot.

“Homa,” Elise said, kneeling beside the girl, turning to Rai as she did so.

“Does she know she is going home?” Elise asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “I have told her. But nothing else, of course.”

Just then, the girl spoke, looking at Rai. Rai grimaced.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She wants to know if she has done something wrong,” he said, looking at me.

“No,” Elise said, turning back to her and stroking her hair. “Tell her.”

Rai spoke a few words.

“Tell her it is a happy day,” Elise said. “That she is almost better and is going back to her family and soon she will have a new leg.”

The girl listened solemnly as Rai translated, and then Elise began to cry a little. Elise composed herself after only a few seconds, but her tears clearly upset the girl, and she spoke again with urgency. Rai answered her gently.

“What did she say?” I asked again.

Rai sighed.

“She does not want to leave,” he said. “She is afraid.”

“What is she afraid of?” Elise asked. It was hard for Elise, I could see it—I knew that she wanted to offer the girl endless assistance, to offer her a new life entirely, had such a promise been hers to offer or to keep—I will save you from your fears. I will take you away from here. But of course it was impossible, and all of us knew it.

“She is afraid that she will not be able to gather wood and collect water from the river.”

“Tell her,” I said, “that soon she will have a new leg and that she will be able to do everything she did before, only a bit slower.”

Rai gave me a questioning look, but then he did as I requested. The girl listened intently, then spoke softly to her brother. Her brother bent down to hear her, then spoke to Captain Rai, his off-colored eyes cool and foreign.

“She wants to know if she will need another operation to put it on again,” Rai said.

I shook my head, and did my best to explain—her new leg would be like a stick, and it would not hurt to put it on again.

“She is afraid her mother won't take her back if she cannot work,” Rai said. It was the sort of thought that came to adults when there was no one in the world to help them. It revealed a great deal about her life in that place, where a field of new barley was a latrine, and apricots drying on rooftops were full of tiny white worms that died off slowly in the sun.

Rai spoke again, firmly. Not without kindness, but leaving no doubt—the tone of authority, the tone of the world as it is. The girl looked down, but she did not, like Elise, shed any tears. She simply went somewhere else, as if dissolving before us, from presence to absence.

“What did you tell her?” I asked, grimly.

“I said that I will make her mother take her back.”

Elise embraced the girl then—she hugged her tight, and stroked her hair again, and kissed her forehead. But the girl did not respond.

“Tell her good-bye,” Elise said, finally, wiping a few tears from her eyes. “Tell her I will visit her.”

Rai did as he was told.

“I do not think I can go with you,” Elise said. “I think maybe it is too much.”

Rai looked relieved.

Later, after Elise had retreated to her own tent, we gathered for the journey back to the village. I'd imagined this for some time, in spite of myself—the triumphant return, the thanks I might receive, the beaming girl released again into the arms of her family. But of course it was nothing like that—it was only Rai, carrying nothing, and Homa, on her brother's back.

I had a bag of dressing supplies in my pack, which I planned to show her mother how to use. I doubted whether she would ever do as I instructed, and in all likelihood the dressing would not be changed unless I returned to do it myself. But the wound was almost completely healed, with only a bit of scab along the suture lines, and was as good as done.

So we started, in silence, and without ceremony, down the path. It was hard to escape the feeling of being watched, of being terribly exposed beneath the heights, little figures that we were, standing so far out in the open. I knew it was unlikely, even if that moving point I'd seen, so small and far away, had been real. As time passed, I was less and less certain of this. But Rai did not allow himself to doubt. He'd changed possibility to certainty, just as I did the opposite. I suspected then that I would never know, that we would never discover where the truth lay,
out there in all that blue sky and clouds and the immensity of the sheer ridges, so full of the inanimate, so full of boulders and patches of snow and silvery threads of water down couloirs never touched by any human thing. But the possibility alone of those dark eyes upon us made me feel uneasy and restless and afraid. It tapped into something, and filled me with a child's urge to hide, to creep out of sight, though there was nowhere to go.

Rai set a rapid pace, giving no thought to Homa's brother or, for that matter, to me. I struggled to keep up with him, and nearly asked him to slow down. Rai wanted it over and done with, that was clear.

Down we went, winding along the river. The river had receded since the snow had melted, but it was loud enough to make conversation difficult. But no one spoke, and Rai plunged ahead. I followed, breathing hard even as the trail descended and the village came into view once again. Homa's brother, however, made no effort to keep up with us, and began to fall behind. Rai realized this after a few minutes, although I said nothing to him, and slowed his pace, no doubt because he did not want to enter the village alone. He would have been required to wait, standing by the houses, the single object of attention. He was uneasy there—in most ways the village was as foreign to him as it was to me. But I could see the effort that slowing down required.

The mile passed quickly, the river went quiet at the wide bend by the village, and the path widened beneath our feet. This time, we arrived unnoticed, and were nearly to the edge of the village before the children saw us.

Rai had none of it. Two or three of them converged around me as before, pulling at my pack, but Rai's shout was like a shot into the air—they instantly went quiet, and fell back to a safe staring distance. By then, they had also seen Homa, and her brother. And so they followed, watching us, calling out, their
thin voices like birdcalls in the air. Figures began appearing in the doorways, and then the men themselves emerged, joining the growing crowd. When we reached Homa's house, perhaps we had an audience of a dozen men and boys, but then, as the news spread, the entire village began to gather around us once again.

One of the children banged excitedly on the door, and I heard a woman's voice answering, but it was several minutes before the door opened and Homa's mother stepped warily into the alley. The cold stream down the center of the street had fallen to little more than a trickle, but still the sound of running water lent the scene an illusion of good cheer.

Homa said something then to her brother, who had stood silently with her on his back. He straightened, allowing her to slide lightly to the ground. Then he took her arm.

Homa, I realized, must have given thought to her return. She hopped toward her mother, doing it as well as she could. The crowd at our backs began to murmur, and her mother watched, making no move toward the girl. For the first time, I saw a resemblance between them—the same lightness of build, the dark eyes, the black hair that appeared in wisps from the edges of her red scarf. For an instant I could imagine the woman as a small girl, looking very much like her daughter. And now Homa hopped across the distance between them, the rough-handed hardship of years, toward her mother's scoured impassive face.

In some ways, I think it was as terrible a scene as I have ever witnessed. The crowd, the sound of her foot on the dirt, the girl's determination, and her mother, standing there, eyes narrowed, watching it all. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was enough, and for the first time I wondered whether I had done the right thing.

The woman took a step forward then, and bent down, and lifted the hem of her daughter's long dress, exposing the stump with its white cap of gauze. There was another murmur in the crowd, and jostling, as they strained to look, and then she turned to Rai and spoke, hoarsely. Homa stood there, enduring her mother's fingers on her dress just as she had endured everything else.

Rai answered her, matching her harshness with his own.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She says so it is true that we have taken her daughter's leg.”

“Does she understand that she would be dead otherwise?”

I heard the anger in my voice.

“That is what I have told her,” he said. “But I do not think she understands.”

“Tell her the foot was no good. That it was not possible to save it. So I saved her daughter instead.”

Rai did as I asked. The woman listened, but then made an unmistakably dismissive gesture and began, suddenly, to shout at Rai. He tolerated it for a few seconds, but then he lifted his hand, and stepped forward, and shouted back a single word. The woman went quiet, and then, to my astonishment, there was a ripple of laughter from the crowd behind me. Rai shook his head in disgust, and turned to me.

“She says that she has lost her husband and now this. She is saying that now her daughter will never marry and is useless to everyone. She is saying that God has punished her.”

“Tell her,” I said, grimly, “that I'll give her some money.”

Rai looked at me with surprise, but then he turned and spoke again.

His words had a dramatic effect. The woman opened her mouth, then paused, as if she did not know what to say, and in an instant her demeanor changed entirely.

“How much will you give?” Rai asked, looking at me, suddenly distant, with a hint of something else—suspicion, or wariness.

“I don't know,” I said. “How much should I give?”

He looked away, thinking.

“Fifty pounds,” he said, after a while. “That is enough.”

“Tell that woman I will give her five hundred pounds,” I said. “But tell her that we'll return in a year and if Homa is not here or if she has not been taken care of I will give her nothing else. But if Homa is in good shape and is well cared for I will give her another five hundred pounds. Tell her that I will do this each year until Homa is twenty-one years old. Tell her also that Homa is to receive a new leg and I will arrange that also. But if at any time Homa is not here or if I feel she is being mistreated she will receive nothing from me ever again.”

As I spoke I realized it was an impossible promise.

Rai shook his head.

“It is too much,” he said.

“It's nothing,” I replied.

He shook his head again, with irritation.

“Maybe it is nothing for a rich man like you. But for her it is too much. She will have more than anyone in this village and much more than she needs. That will cause many problems. You do not understand this place, Doctor.”

I thought.

“All right,” I said, finally. “But it must be enough that the girl is valuable to her. It must be enough that she can't afford to mistreat her or cast her out.”

Rai smiled.

“She cannot cast her out.”

“Maybe. But I don't care. Just tell her. Make it two hundred pounds if you have to.”

“Two hundred pounds is better,” he said, and spoke to the woman again.

The crowd began talking all at once. And then, from the back, a man called out, gesturing, and they fell silent.

“What did he say?”

Rai turned back to me.

“He is saying that his animals are sick and that he needs money for his son and will you give him some also.” Rai shook his head again, then continued. “You see,” he said. “This is why there are problems. This is why you cannot give her too much.”

“Tell him no,” I said. “Tell them that no one will get anything else.”

“Yes,” Rai said, with approval, then turned to the crowd and spoke again. They shifted as he spoke, restless, and I felt a wave of hostility from them.

“You must be strong with these people,” he said, turning his back again. “That is only what they know.”

“Then tell her,” I said, gesturing to the woman, “that God has blessed her and that she should be thankful.”

Rai translated, but the woman did not reply. And then the man who had spoken earlier did so again, loudly, waving his hand in the air for emphasis. He spoke for a good while, and he had the crowd's attention. Rai listened, straining, I think, to understand.

“What is he saying?” I asked.

“I am not sure,” Rai said. “I think he is saying if God is blessing them then why will all these strangers come and take their wood. And why is there fighting now.”

There was a murmur of assent, and then Rai spoke up, loudly, clearly asking a question. The man answered, speaking more slowly, but no less intently.

“He says they will take their animals. He says they should go somewhere else.”

The crowd shifted, and for the first time I was uneasy among them.

Rai spoke again, his voice loud in the air. He went on for a good while, as we stood and listened and tried to make sense of what he was saying.

“We must leave,” Rai said. “They are angry now. They are blaming us for the artillery, I think.”

He turned his attention once more to the girl. He spoke to her mother, curtly. It was my turn then, and I opened my wallet, carefully counting out two hundred pounds of local money. All their eyes were on me, and it was nearly all the cash I had with me. She watched me with the others, and when I handed her the bills, she snatched them from me without meeting my eye. In an instant the money disappeared into her dress.

She spoke, quickly, to her son, and he turned, holding out his arm for his sister. Then, without a glance in our direction, he led her slowly toward the doorway of the dark house. In was only a few feet, but it was the last of her journey, and she followed him, holding his arm with one hand. But just as they entered the threshold, she turned her head. She looked directly at me, expressionless, and I had one last image of her, with her flushed cheeks, her dark eyes and hair, against the weathered gray wood of the open door.