The Abrupt Physics of Dying (12 page)

Clay shouldered his pack, clicked off photographs of the cistern and the boy’s house and the escarpment, and set off through the trees towards the smoke. A wail cut the air. It sounded like a pack of dogs howling. He walked on. The noise grew louder. He passed through a series of small fields shaded by palms and crossed a low earthen dyke to descend into a dark hollow. The place was strewn with rubbish, the air electric with the buzz of insects. The odour of decay was overpowering. Clay retched and jammed the tail of his
keffiyeh
over his nose and mouth. A pack of rib-cage dogs snarled and ripped at a heap of tiny glutinous carcasses, the eyes opaque and filmed over.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he choked through his scarf, still moving through the trees towards the smoke. Twenty minutes later he emerged into a rocky clearing at the base of a dolomite cliff. A small crescent of mud huts was built into the slope. A group of women stood in a loose semi-circle, covered head to foot in black, facing a pillar of fire. The flames danced up through the stacked wood, caressing a clutch of doll-sized bundles nestled atop the pyre. Oily smoke poured into the flawless sky. Embers leapt and spun into the void to be extinguished in mid-flight. The women wailed and moaned, hiding their faces in their hands, rocking their heads forward and back in a rhythm of grief. One of the women glanced up at him through a veil of tears. Their eyes met across the smoke. It was the girl he had seen washing
clothes at the upper pool that day, no more than a week ago. There was no mistaking those eyes, even now. He took a step forward, raised his hand, but she looked away. There was no pity here for any of them, pinned to the stony ground beneath scorched walls of rock.

One Man Is Nothing

He set off from the village, still in shock, Mohamed’s mother in the back seat, her son in her arms. Seared fields of stone ripped past the open window, superheated air buffeting the side of his face, tearing at his hair. She was rocking the boy, whispering to him, stroking his matted head, the boy’s face pale beneath her long brown fingers, her thick cracked nails. Mohamed’s head hung limp, jerking with each bump in the road, his mouth open so that Clay could see the top row of little white teeth shivering in the rear-view mirror. Jesus, was he dead? Clay pushed down on the accelerator, urging the speedometer on. The Land Cruiser rattled along the washboard, the diesel whining at full power, road dust billowing through the windows. Clay reached into his pack and pulled out his
keffiyeh
and passed it back to the woman. ‘For the dust,’ he yelled, turning his hand around his head. She took it and laid it over Mohamed’s face. It looked like a shroud.

An hour later he strode into the main entrance of the public hospital in Al Mukalla, Mohamed covered in road dust, limp and unconscious in his arms, his frail chest rising and falling. The boy’s mother followed close behind, face covered, the tourniquets of her fingers coiling about themselves, releasing, cinching. He doubted she had ever seen a hospital, let alone been inside one. A soldier in a camouflaged jacket lay slumped in a chair just inside the door, a huge wad of
qat
pushing out his cheek. He looked up at them with lost, bloodshot eyes and waved them in. Half a dozen people sat stern-faced on a bench set against one wall. At the far end of the
room, a male attendant in a green smock sat behind what appeared to be an admitting counter.

Clay made for the counter and stood looking down at the top of the attendant’s head. A newspaper was spread on the desk. ‘
Salam
,’ said Clay. The attendant did not look up. Clay tried again, more formally. ‘
Salam aleikum.’

‘
Aleikum salam,
’ muttered the attendant, still not looking up.

Clay used his best Arabic. ‘This boy needs a doctor.’

The attendant reached under the desk and produced a green form and placed it on the desk, still not looking up. It was in Arabic, the script dense, impenetrable. Cradling Mohamed in one arm he pushed the papers over to the woman, took a pen from his shirt pocket and held it out for her. She looked at the pen and up at him. Tears flooded her eyes. He motioned to the paper with his head, pushed the pen towards her again.

‘
La
,’ she cried. No. She trailed off into a back-of-the mosque lament that he could not follow.

Clay turned back to the attendant, understanding. ‘
Lau samaht,’
he said. ‘Please. She cannot read or write.’

The attendant looked up from his newspaper. He was a youngish man, gaunt-faced, his skin pockmarked and oily. He glanced at the woman and then at the boy, and pointed to the form, speaking in rapid Arabic. Clay understood enough to get the message. The form was mandatory. He picked up the sheets and stared at the blank spaces, the tick boxes. He could feel the frustration taking bites out of whatever patience still lived within him. With Abdulkader here this would have been easy, but, now, it was impossible. He slammed the form down onto the desk. The attendant jumped back, looked up, wide-eyed.

‘Doctor,’ said Clay, tuning his voice for loud and authoritative. ‘Now.’ He jammed his index finger onto the desktop. Universal language.

‘No doctor,’ said the attendant, pushing his chair back from the desk.

‘Doctor,’ said Clay, more emphatic now. Behind him, he could hear the scrape of a chair. The soldier had awoken from his stupor and was watching them. Clay smiled at him and turned back to the attendant, sliding a fifty-dollar bill onto the counter top. The attendant looked at the bill, hesitated a moment, and snatched it up. Then he stood, took the form and a pen and asked the woman a question. She answered and he began to fill in the first boxes. Clay stood and watched the play of question-and-answer unfold, the woman becoming visibly more disturbed as they crept down the form, right to left. After a quarter of an hour the woman was in tears, the form only half complete.

‘
Mushkilla
?’ asked Clay. What is the problem?

‘No papers,’ said the attendant.

Of course they had nothing. No address, no identity cards. They didn’t even exist as far as the government was concerned. The woman was sobbing now, trying to pull her son from Clay’s arms. She wanted to leave. Clay tried to calm her but every time he spoke, she only shrieked louder. Mohamed was awake now, just, moaning softly for his mother. Everyone was watching. The soldier was standing, moving towards them. Clay could feel the situation unravelling. He hefted the boy up onto his hip and slammed his right fist down hard on the desk. The attendant backed away, glanced past Clay at the approaching soldier, then put the pen on the desk, pushed the papers aside, flopped back into his chair and crossed his arms. The oily face creased open to reveal a mouthful of straight yellow teeth. The bastard was smiling.

Something deep inside Clay ruptured. He could feel it go, like a ligament tearing from bone. Clay hoisted the boy over his shoulder, grabbed the woman by the forearm and before she or the attendant could react he wheeled left and strode past the desk and led her through the double doors and into the bowels of the hospital.

The hallway was long and poorly lit, every third overhead light tube dead, half of the rest flickering and buzzing, the tile floor wet in places, as if it had just been randomly mopped. An orderly in
a sick-green smock looked up as they passed, a burning cigarette dangling from his mouth. They were halfway down the main corridor, past a couple of sidelined gantries, when he heard the shouting. He glanced back over his shoulder. The attendant was standing at the end of the corridor, one hand bracing open the door, pointing. The orderly paid no attention, kept smoking. A moment later the soldier appeared and the pair started down the hallway. Clay quickened his pace, dragging the woman behind. The attendant and the soldier were running now, their footfall echoing along the tile, gaining ground, pushing past green-clad staff emerged from doorways, peering left and right.

Up ahead another set of double doors and on the right an alcove, a sign, someone’s name. Clay turned into the alcove and flung open the door. It was a consultation room. Small. A window onto the courtyard. An elderly patient in a greying hospital gown was sitting on the edge of an examination table, bony legs and darkly tanned feet dangling free, a man in a white lab coat pushing a tongue depressor into his mouth. Both men looked up as Clay burst in, frozen in the act, open-mouthed.

Clay pulled the woman into the office, closed and locked the door, laid Mohamed on the examination table next to the old man. Mohamed’s mother went immediately to her son’s side and bent over him, wiping his brow, whispering to him. Neither man said a word, just stood there gaping at him as if he’d just shown up in the Masjid Al-Haram battle bloody and carrying an R4.

‘Are you a doctor?’ Clay asked the man in the white coat.

‘I am,’ replied the man in English, glancing at the boy. ‘And this is my office. You have intruded on a private examination. You must leave immediately. Make an appointment at admissions.’ He spoke fluently, with an accent that sounded Lebanese, Egyptian perhaps.

Clay knew he didn’t have long. ‘I’m sorry, doctor, but this is an emergency. This boy is very sick. These people are poor, they have no identification, no way of completing the paperwork. Please, have a look at him. I can …’

A sharp rap on the door cut him short, voices from the other side throwing agitated Arabic. The doctor looked at Clay through narrowed eyes. He had a dark moustache and brown heavily lidded eyes underscored by dark circles. He looked weary. ‘There are many poor here, many who do not have papers. There are procedures. You must leave.’

Clay looked over at Mohamed, his mother weeping silently. The banging on the door was louder now, insistent flat-palmed hammering. He took a deep breath, then took the doctor by the elbow, guided him to the far side of the room, hemmed him into the corner. Clay leaned in close, towering over the man, and still holding his elbow, said into his ear: ‘Look, any minute the Army is going to come in here and take me away. Please, I’m begging you, examine the boy.’

Clay reached into his trouser pocket and pressed three hundred-dollar bills into the man’s hand, two week’s wages, more. The doctor opened his hand, looked down at the money, up at Clay, blinked twice, then nodded.

‘Thank you,’ Clay said, releasing the doctor’s elbow and backing away. ‘His name is Mohamed, from Al Urush. Please make sure they get home safely afterwards.’ Then he turned and walked to the door and unlocked the bolt and pulled it open. The attendant and two soldiers almost fell in on top of him. ‘Hello gents,’ he said.

Two hours later he reached Idim and the pass up to the plateau. Still buzzing from the encounter at the hospital, he drove almost without thinking, without registering the road, the miles slipping away unnoticed, as if they had never existed. All it had taken was money. After a few tense minutes, marched out to the back of the hospital to stand under the sun in the dirt, squadrons of flies swarming around overflowing bins of medical waste, the attendant and the two soldiers had accepted a fifty each.

The events of the past days played like a dream before his eyes, a waking nightmare where nothing is resolved, where every fragment of clarity loops back on itself and is lost. It took him most of the rest of the day to reach the turnoff from the trunk road, and another hour to find the track that led off towards the hidden wadi. He stopped the car, turned off the engine, and stepped down onto the pulverised gravel. The engine tapped in the heat. Far to the west, a tendril of purple dust rose oblique into the sky, a vehicle tracking towards Marib. Otherwise the horizon was an empty, shimmering mirage. He waited, scanning the plateau for any sign he was being followed, the flat stone strewn uplands, the hogback mesas, the thermal blur of the edge of the world, but there was nothing, no one.

He climbed back into the Land Cruiser, kept to the trunk road, watching the odometer click over. Ten kilometres on, he pulled over, climbed up onto the roof rack and scanned the horizon through binoculars. Stone, heat, sand. He jumped down to the ground, turned the vehicle around and sped back towards the track.

By the time he came to the maw of the canyon, the cliff tops were glowing with the last of the day’s light. He left the Land Cruiser and made his way through the narrowing defile, everything darkening quickly now, familiar. Adrenaline surged into his system. Every sense tingled. He was walking point again. At any moment he would hear the sonic tear of bullets, the crash of gunfire. He found the opening in the rockslide and started to thread his way through the labyrinth, moving by feel and memory in the gloom. Twice he dead-ended and had to backtrack, slithering along the rough sandstone surfaces, twisting around corners, finding the route again.

When he finally emerged, the first stars were shining in a moonless sky. He stood in the wadi floor, just below the ledge where he and Abdulkader had spent the night, where he had last seen him, and listened to the silence of the whispering cliffs. He was about to move down-wadi when a sound broke the quiet, a tap, a scratch. He froze, listened. There it was again, more like crunching, footfall,
perhaps. He swivelled his head, tried to triangulate. Again, tap. It was coming from the ledge. Someone was up there.

Clay moved across the sand of the wadi floor towards the canyon wall, heel to toe, as quietly as he could. The noise had stopped. He waited for a long time at the base of the ledge, straining to hear over the surging blood in his veins. Nothing. Then he crept up to the ledge and peered over the lip.

The fire ring was gone, the ashes swept away. A desert pigeon pecked at the rock. He could just make out the noise it made, the little taps of its beak against the sandstone. Clay looked up at the concave overhang, the inside of a curling wave. Any sound made here on the ledge was gathered and projected back down into the wadi below. Al Shams had heard every word he and Abdulkader had exchanged that night. He had heard them plotting escape, heard Clay’s accusations, his blaspheming. Clay shivered, so close to oblivion again.