Rotten Gods (47 page)

Both Indian and Bangladeshi meteorological offices issued a series of warnings yet most of the population chose to stay and trust the levees that their governments had assured them would stand up to rising sea levels. Those who did attempt to leave overwhelmed the available transport and found themselves trapped.

SKY News has a chopper in the region, showing footage from a dawn flight over Tazumuddin where a ten-metre-high storm surge has filled fifteen thousand square miles of land like a bathtub, apparently within hours. The cameras focus on human bodies washed with other flood debris against the tops of drowned trees. Once the levees were breached there was no going back.

Across the Ganges Delta the result is similar. The UN's Bangladesh agency reports that up to five million villagers may have perished. Eighteen million more are on the march, streaming towards high ground.

India closes its borders, lining the barbed-wire fence with men with machine guns and armoured personnel carriers. Tensions mount. The United States announces Operation Sea Angel II, despatching a full amphibious task force, pledging an initial one hundred million dollars in aid. Other nations follow suit.

The world mourns. Archbishops, cardinals, and ministers pray. Financial markets plumb unexplored depths. Speculators leap from windows. Boards of public corporations meet to discuss ‘strategies' and ‘harm minimisation', in the face of this latest threat to stability and profits.

 

Marika is not sure how long she has been asleep, but remembers at least one refuelling stop, in some Saudi base, where she lifted her head to the sound of men carrying hoses and shouting all those
minor operational commands that ensure protocol is followed even in the most difficult conditions. Hours of silence before they took to the air once more, but she was content to sleep — a state where she no longer needed to think, to feel, to care.

Waking now, she looks at the gas fires far below, burned off from the oil wells. The flames have a beauty that is both temporary and ethereal. Flames that will soon pass from the earth as the brief, dangerous, Age of Oil draws to a close. An age of carbon monoxide, lead, gridlock, and deep-water oil wells pumping poison into a sea already dying a slow death from overfishing, storm water runoff, and neglect.

Something new is coming, something that might be an ending or a beginning for a world predicted to bulge under the strain of population growth that threatens to see the equivalent of two more Chinas walk the planet, two and a half billion more people by 2050.

Marika reaches out to take Sufia's hand. ‘Hello.'

Sufia turns. ‘Good morning.'

‘Do you know where we are?'

‘Yes. We have passed the oasis of Liwa, and are now over the region of Ramlat al-Hamra. Soon we will be there.'

‘Thank you. Have you slept?'

‘Not yet. There will be time for sleep later. Something terrible has happened, the pilot came to tell me. In Bangladesh a cyclone has flooded the Ganges Delta. The sea has risen over the levees. Many millions might have died.'

Marika takes her hand away. A tear drips down her cheek. More lives. More nameless men, women, and children on the march to oblivion, praying and doing their best and trusting that somewhere, someone cares.

‘Madoowbe is dead,' she says, ‘but he is just one of millions.'

In the darkness of that aircraft, Marika confronts a question she has avoided through the past days. Something that goes deep into the dark kitchen dresser shelves of her soul, where memories are stacked like delicate china plates.

Where the hell is God in all this?

God. The Creator. The God of Saint Anne's Catholic Church, Mitchell Street, Bondi. The God of morning tea with trestle tables in the hall laid with scones with jam and cream, and instant coffee in foam cups, and Irina Marquez showing off her three-month-old baby. The God of incense burners, collection plates, paschal candles, and Father Murphy's veined, red face and white hair. The God of sunshine on the sea after Mass and the twinkling multifaceted diamond stabs of light on the eyes accustomed to the darkness inside. The dark side of the church. Sexual abuse. Where is God when a priest rapes a child? Why would He send our species out into the world so perfectly evolved physically, yet so flawed in our minds and emotions?

Where the hell is He now? Is Madoowbe right — are they all rotten?

In Africa, more people will die. Millions more. And if Zhyogal and his cohorts succeed, a hundred million souls will live under the heel of another god sick with arrogance and jealousy.

There, in the rocking aircraft, Marika thinks of Madoowbe. The unusual beauty of his face. With all her heart she wishes she could see him again. Just one more time.

‘Are you thinking about him?' Sufia asks.

‘Yes. He was a special person, but it took a while for me to understand that.'

‘I think so too. I would have liked to get to know him.'

‘You had a hard life,' Marika says. ‘Madoowbe told me all of it — how you fled drought and famine for the coast in trucks sent by Siad Barre.'

To her surprise, Sufia throws back her head and laughs.

Marika lets go her hand and frowns. ‘What's so funny?'

‘You know I told you that my family often mentioned Madoowbe after he left us?'

‘Yes?'

‘He was most remembered for one thing — his stories. Always he made things up to entertain his friends and family. We did not escape famine in trucks — never went near the coast. Our father was a trader in Bacaadweyn. He sold nails and saws. Ali went to live with my uncle in Somaliland when he was eight or nine so he could go to school.'

‘Then Madoowbe was not a herdboy?'

‘Not that I am aware of.'

Marika shakes her head and smiles also. Thinking of him, she watches out the window as desert gives way to coast. The lights of Abu Dhabi loom below, then Jebel Ali, and, as dawn turns the Persian Gulf to glistening silver, Dubai itself.

The first officer calls back more breaking news  — a dozen delegates at Rabi al-Salah have agreed to sign confessions and will be released at noon today, well ahead of the deadline. There is a faint feeling of sickness and pity as Marika turns back to the window, and the impossible shining glory of one of the most extravagant agglomerations of modern architecture on earth.

The city seems false, as if the tactile world is out in the open spaces and desert sands of Africa, and the flooded Ganges Delta. Dubai is not real  — the wealth that created it was an illusion that sucked badly needed resources from the entire region  — brought untold thousands of a mostly male workforce from the subcontinent to labour in the hot sun from dawn to dusk, building, cleaning, even dusting the leaves of outdoor plants in the city's showpiece locations. Indentured labourers treated with
contempt and exploited, trying to scrape together money to send home, yet many not able to afford a return fare, trapped in the workers' slums of Dubai, trapped with the debt they incurred just to get over there.

‘Almost there,' she says to Sufia. She pauses and swallows. ‘Will you do what we discussed now — will you talk to your husband?'

‘Yes, I will talk to him.'

‘He is wrong to do what he plans to do. The others will not let him act with honour. They want martyrdom and death.'

Sufia's eyes lock on hers. They are a perfect brown. No flecks, no variation. ‘Perhaps you are right.'

‘I know I am. Please, don't let Madoowbe suffer in vain. Will you help?'

‘I will talk to my husband, and then I will try to sway him.'

‘Do you mind if I call ahead and tell them that, so they are ready?'

‘No, of course not. Go ahead.'

Not long after she makes the call on the aircraft communications equipment, the first officer warns them, ‘We're going down. Make sure you're strapped in, OK?'

The chopper settles to the earth, rocking like an impatient horse, and Marika grips the seat hard, staring out the window at the Rabi al-Salah Centre below, the helipad's blue tarmac surrounded by lawn and landscaped garden. She has always hated landing in these things — it just seems so bloody unnatural. Besides, every minute, every second, counts now.

The twin skids touch the deck. Rotors slow and doors open. Marika understands just how tired she is as the world swims around her and the early sun blinds her. The men who greet them she recognises as other members of the Rabi al-Salah
security force. They look so damned
clean
, after the people of the desert. They fuss over her and Sufia like roosters over a pair of hens.

Inside the complex, after the degrading searches and scans, Marika feels a sense of unreality as they walk the corridors again  — the last few days seem like a lifetime of experience. The shining glass is no attraction, just a distraction from the real business of life that she found in the drought-and famine-ravaged landscape of East Africa.

Abdullah bin al-Rhoumi meets them in the corridor, looking like he has aged fifteen years. He greets them sagely, and Marika is disappointed at the impersonality of it, considering the rapport she thought she had built up with him.
What did you expect
, she asks herself,
a marching band? A medal?

Marika introduces the tall Somali woman, a touch of hurt pride in her voice.
You might not appreciate what I did, but I went through hell to bring her back.
‘This is Sufia.'

He bows from the shoulders only; a perfunctory gesture. ‘Very pleased to meet you. We have a room set up where you can talk to your husband.'

Marika smiles encouragingly at her.

 

The room they are shown to has a monitor and camera on a tripod. A seat has been placed near the opposite wall. As Sufia enters, a slim technician rises, smiling. This, Marika realises, is his moment in the sun. Perhaps the only time in his life he will be near the centre of world affairs. He wears grey suit trousers and a white pinstriped business shirt. Thin brown arms extend through the rolled cuffs like drinking straws. His moustache is neatly trimmed, his eyes small and brown.

‘You're Sufia? Good, good. Now, what we're going to do is sit you down here and cross you live into the conference room. From there you can deliver your plea to your husband to surrender and let us open the doors. Is that clear?'

Marika watches Sufia. She has a strange tilt to her chin, yet is smiling. ‘I suppose,' she says, ‘the signal will go out live to the news networks?'

‘Of course. What a moment! Your face will be beamed around the world.'

Sufia nods again, but Marika sees that she makes no move to sit down.

The technician hurries around to the back of the chair and holds it ready for her. ‘We have the networks coming on in fifteen seconds, if you would please sit …'

Sufia shakes her head. ‘No.'

Abdullah bin al-Rhoumi steps forwards from the doorway. ‘What do you mean, no?' He points at Marika. ‘That young woman risked her life to bring you in here. You have the chance to save almost a thousand very important people, including your husband.'

Sufia's voice is as lifeless as flint. ‘I will not perform like a monkey. I said I will talk to my husband, but I will do it face to face.'

Abdullah explodes. ‘Face to face? How? In case you haven't noticed, your husband has locked himself in the most secure room in the history of the world.'

‘I have been told that the door will be opened at noon today to let people out. Those who have signed confessions. I will enter the conference room at that point.'

‘A thousand times no. How do we know we're not letting another terrorist in?'

Marika breaks in, ‘She is not a terrorist. I will vouch for her.'

Abdullah's eyes are like brown lasers. ‘Quiet. One unreasonable woman is enough.'

Sufia crosses her arms over her chest. ‘I will talk to him face to face. No other way.'

Abdullah pushes his face close to hers. ‘The militants will blow the room at the time of maghrib — sunset — today. According to the
al-Alam
newspaper, the sun will set at 19:06. That will not give you much time.'

‘I cannot promise that I will sway him, only that I will try.'

‘Then I insist that you wear a wire so that we can follow what is happening. Your life might depend on it.'

‘In what way?'

‘If we know that you are making progress in talking your husband out of carrying out his threats then we won't send troops in to put a bullet in his head.'

‘Is that likely?'

‘We're working on something. Of course we are. Unless you can reason with him then we have nothing to lose by trying.'

‘I have no choice, do I?'

Abdullah shrugs. ‘You can put it that way if you like.'

Day 7, 09:00

Ali Khalid Abukar is tired beyond endurance. Closing his eyes means drifting off into sleep and his legs are leaden weights. Now he is taking Modafinil at ten times the safe dosage. The conversation in the room is a blur of noise. He wants silence — somewhere to sleep. Forever perhaps.

There is blood on the floor from a dozen new executions, all in retaliation for the attempt on the switchboard. The Brazilian
delegation slaughtered, including a twenty-two-year-old aide whose fear manifested itself in a flood of urine down her legs when the first of the men died.

Out on the dais there is a pathetic but growing line of human beings — twenty or more now — each of whom have agreed to read the confession and sign it in front of the cameras. There is no anger in the room for them, only sympathy. The slaughter has been too much for the delegates; the reality of blood and death. Every few minutes a new volunteer slinks down from the rows and joins the line.

I now recognise that I represent a corrupt government, that they have initiated a crusade against the …

‘At noon today, the time of dhuhr, those who have signed will leave this room and go to the arms of their loved ones,' Zhyogal announces. ‘It is that simple. Tell the world of your crimes, admit the bastardry of your governments and your part in the murder of Islamic peoples, and you will be spared the carnage that will descend in this place when the sun sets.'