The Water Thief Read online

  The coffee had a rough, burned flavor. Eric topped his up with sugar. The governor sipped slowly, the thin china vanishing behind his full bottom lip.

  ‘Did Eric show you our site yet?’

  ‘He did.’ Nick steeled himself. ‘Just to be clear, sir – my plans are for a hospital. But the one you have downstairs looks very . . . complete. Why build another?’

  The governor shook his head and pointed at Eric. ‘You need to do a better job of these briefings. We haven’t time to waste.’

  Eric was unfazed. ‘I’m just the contractor, not the project manager.’

  The governor sat back, the red leather of his chair creased by his weight. ‘Look, young man. Our hospital was not functioning for many years. The building was going to be condemned. Your organisation offered to co-finance its reconstruction. But you took too long. So this year I made a personal donation to bring it back to working order.’

  ‘I see,’ Nick said, ‘but . . .’

  ‘What I need now is a children’s wing. A fully modern wing, to lower our child mortality rate, which is very high.’ The governor put down his coffee cup. ‘Do you understand supply-side economics?’

  Nick’s face flushed. ‘A little.’

  ‘Your Mrs Thatcher does – though your countrymen seem not to appreciate her. There are two different types of society. In one, the people drive. Leaders are always chasing them but they can never do enough. This is a recipe for exhaustion and anger. In other societies, leaders drive. They create the desires of their people by showing them what can be theirs.’

  He leaned forward. ‘We talk of modern societies now in this last decade of the millennium. But you cannot modernise by consensus. Someone always has to lead. This specialised clinic will draw people from the whole region, the whole country. People who now think they can cure their children with witch doctors and potions. We will see an effect that trickles down through our whole society. Is it clear to you now what we are trying to do?’

  His absolute assurance was like a pressure wave, pushing Nick back. ‘It’s clear,’ he said. ‘You have a mission.’

  The governor smiled at that. ‘A mission,’ he repeated. ‘Yes. A voice in the wilderness.’

  The audience was over; he dismissed Nick with a friendly clap on the arm. ‘I hope you have a fruitful time with us. And give my regards to Dr Ahmed.’

  The head of the local construction firm had appeared at the door, a ferrety man holding rolled-up architectural plans. Their site tour began in the existing hospital, white rooms layered with smells of chlorine, faeces and sweat. The hospital administrator hovered anxiously, pointing out the newly installed X-ray machine, electric beds and nursing staff trained in Europe.

  But Nick’s disquiet grew. He noticed that half the ward beds were empty. As they left the building, he looked over to the checkpoint – its long metal bar keeping the world at bay.

  After a brief review of the construction schedule, Nick agreed to start after Friday’s holiday. They said their farewells, returning to Eric’s Jeep. The barrier lifted silently to release them.

  They drove back into the Town’s fringes. Nick wound down the window, closing his eyes against the sun’s glare. Eric was silent. Eventually he cleared his throat.

  ‘So how do you like the professor? Brown University!’ He spat out of the driver-side window into the parched air. The desert was a cloud of dust, white and thick as the little boy’s eyes this morning. Restless eddies rolled back and forth in it. Nick turned to look at Eric. ‘Who exactly uses that hospital? The building’s so far from the centre. There’s no public transport. How could people even get there? And why all those guards and barricades?’

  Eric shrugged. ‘I saw sick people plugged into machines, beep-beeping away. It smelled like shit, but all hospitals smell like shit.’

  ‘Something’s not right.’

  Eric shook his head. ‘Look, Nick. This is why I tell them not to send these fucking volunteers. Like that French bastard J.P. would say, a little je ne sais pas never hurts when you come to a new place. Wouldn’t you say?’

  The horizon loomed, far and featureless, an optical illusion caused by a faint swell in the landscape. It was disorienting; the road pointed straight ahead, but Nick already felt lost.

  But then the village’s familiar outskirts appeared over a rise, the tall mosque beckoning them in. Dr Ahmed’s house materialised around the bend in the road; the sight of it eased Nick’s heart. The yellow flowers spilling over the gate could have been climbing roses; the pale sky was the same colour as a midsummer evening. Even the sense of sorrow inside the house was familiar – the silence of people living together in separate worlds.

  Eric said he’d be back on Saturday. Before leaving, he reached into the glove compartment and brought out a large envelope.

  ‘Twenty thousand dollars,’ he said. ‘For the site manager, the workers and the rest. I’ll bring you all the names and job descriptions later. So over the weekend you can make a nice spreadsheet for J.P.. Here, count it if you like.’

  ‘I don’t need to.’ Nick got out of the car and offered his hand. ‘Thanks for everything today. I’m glad you’re here.’

  Eric laughed. ‘A fucking Viking is always useful, even in the desert.’

  The next morning Nick tried to make the telephone and radio work. A faint hiss over the generator hum suggested the radio was transmitting – but J.P. did not answer. The phone line was an echo chamber filled with shrill cicadas, clicking and whistling.

  Dr Ahmed had been out the previous evening, seeing patients. Nick had eaten alone – a plate of jollof rice left by Margaret on the kitchen table.

  But soon Dr Ahmed came striding into Nick’s office, brimming with good cheer. He apologised for their poor telephone connection. ‘A lack of insulation on the wires,’ he explained, voice mournful. ‘They corrode during the wet season and then crack with the heat. Another casualty of our bad weather, I’m afraid.’

  Nick remembered the water trucks rolling down from the Town. ‘Where do you get your water?’ he asked. ‘Do you ever have shortages?’

  Dr Ahmed adjusted his glasses. ‘Ah, well. You see, we buy our water from the Town. A standing arrangement with the governor. We pay a collective fee every month and the tankers come. But, of course, sometimes the fee is higher than others. The governor sets the price and quantities.’

  ‘I met the governor yesterday,’ Nick said. ‘He told me to give you his best regards.’

  ‘Did he, now?’ Dr Ahmed was no longer smiling. ‘And what did you think of this hospital, if I may ask?’

  ‘I thought it was empty. Do you know why that would be?’

  Dr Ahmed turned towards the radio and started fiddling with the dials. His shoulders sloped thinly in his dark jacket.

  ‘I did want to work at that hospital once,’ he said. ‘But the jobs went elsewhere. My father was active in the opposition party. I stay out of politics, but . . .’ He looked over at Nick and smiled sadly. ‘Memories are long.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Nick thought back to the largely empty wards, the smell of the pristine new floors. ‘It’s really their loss.’

  ‘Well,’ Dr Ahmed straightened up, ‘here I get to help my own community, the people I grew up with. I feel useful, which is no bad thing when you get old. You have a while to go yet, Nicholas. Come!’ He opened the office door. ‘Let’s have some tea.’

  He followed his host into the kitchen, passing the deep walnut of the grandfather clock. Today it was decently closed, ticking sleepily. He stepped over the box of tools spread out on the floor.

  Dr Ahmed busied himself lighting the kitchen stove. Tea came, ferociously dark and sweet. ‘English tea was a revelation to me,’ he explained. ‘When I was a boy, tea was powder in bottles. I brought some English teabags back for my older sisters, but they could not get used to it. Now it’s imported routinely – but I can claim to be one of the first to drink it here.’

  One of Dr Ahmed’s sisters was still living,
it seemed, a widow with a small apartment in the Town. ‘She is much older than me. Yahya calls her “grandmother”. Goggo is how we say it. His real grandmother died when I was Yahya’s age, birthing a girl.’ Nick saw tears behind the thick-framed glasses. Feeling the old man’s embarrassment, he asked, ‘You call your son Yahya, and your wife calls him JoJo?’

  ‘Oh, yes. You see, Yahya means John in Arabic, in the language of the Qur’an. We chose the name because John the Baptist is a prophet for our two great religions – Christian and Muslim. John is the one who leads the way. My wife is a Muslim now, but she was born a Christian. She speaks to our son in the language of her childhood. The language of the heart.’

  ‘Where is JoJo now? I mean, Yahya?’

  Dr Ahmed frowned. ‘In his room. I hope he is thinking. He was disobedient – reckless.’ He put down his cup and folded his hands around it, an oddly protective gesture. ‘Do you want children, Nicholas?’

  The question took Nick aback. He thought of Kate, of the laughing days after their engagement. They’d joked about naming their children after architectural marvels – Sofia, Petra, Ben. ‘I don’t really know. I feel as if my own life has barely started.’

  Dr Ahmed smiled. ‘This is a question no African person of my generation could ask another. For us the entire purpose of life is children. When a man has sons, he stops thinking about adventures and starts thinking about traditions. If I am honest, this is what disturbed me most about life in England. There were many West African communities there I knew – Yoruba, Fulani, Igbo – and others, too, Indians, Arabs, all living well and making good money. I could have been one of them. But many grew up without truly knowing themselves. This is a terrible thing for a child. If you do not know your starting point, how can you chart your course?’

  Nick heard it as a plea, watching Dr Ahmed’s knuckles tense and flex around the cup. He remembered the awkward misery in JoJo’s eyes, the painful barbs of frustration hooking father and son over the dinner table.

  ‘I was an only son, too.’ He tried to make his voice gentle. ‘It’s a lot of pressure.’

  ‘Yahya was not always an only son.’ Dr Ahmed looked upwards. ‘He had a younger brother. Bako. But a fever took him.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Yes, we grieved. Margaret especially.’ Dr Ahmed sat up and shook his shoulders. ‘We loved that boy. Bako was always happy. But Yahya . . .’ Another sad smile touched his face. ‘He takes after my wife. And something beautiful in a woman can be dangerous in a man.’

  A voice screeching from the garden gate made Dr Ahmed look up. ‘Ah, my day begins!’ Nick looked out of the window to see Miss Amina leaning over the gate, her chest heaving with angry exertion.

  ‘An emergency.’ Dr Ahmed’s smile had returned. ‘Margaret once made me some very good sketches as a birthday present – my patients represented as clocks of different kinds. Miss Amina was the alarm clock.’

  Nick laughed. ‘Your wife’s an intelligent woman.’

  ‘Oh, yes, very. She sees us doctors as artists of the body. Science is not the strongest force in our lives. You have to know the spirit before you can cure the flesh.’

  He stood up, and Nick rose with him. ‘So – once more unto the breach,’ the old man said, heading to the door. ‘And may God grant you a good day.’

  Nick found Margaret in the back garden, hanging washing. Her hands were framed with bright beads of water, staccato drops falling to stain the orange ground.

  He watched her, relaxed in the peace of the morning – lifting, shaking, laying over the clothesline and bending back to the basket. Every time she shook the clothes, droplets took to the air in wild clusters of refracted light.

  After a while he walked over, bending to pick up a pair of child’s dark trousers. She stood back as he handed them to her, wary. ‘Thank you.’ Her voice had a quality of reluctance, as if not much used.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ He noticed that her features had the precise grace of technical drawings. He picked up another bunch of wet fabric from the basket. But this time it slipped from his grasp as he struggled to rise, falling into the dust.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ He blushed at his clumsiness, scrambling to retrieve it. Idiot. I’m not helping, I guess.’

  Her eyes met his as he straightened, a cool and intelligent scrutiny. At last she indicated the basket again with a small tilt of her head. ‘But if at first you don’t succeed . . .’

  He smiled, abashed; he realised he’d misjudged her. The next shirt passed carefully from him to her, her fingers deft as they slipped it over the line. Nick searched for some key to conversation. ‘Does Dr Ahmed usually work on a Saturday?’

  ‘He is always working.’

  ‘My father was the same. No rest for the wicked, my mother used to tell him.’

  A small stool had been placed beside one of the flowering cassias. She sat on it, wrapping her long blue dress around her legs. Two tin pots lay at her feet, one filled with bulging root vegetables, another with rough, beige grains. A kitchen knife was balanced between them.

  Behind them under the flickering shade a baby lay on its back, arms splayed in sleep. Sweat dappled its forehead, plastering thick black curls to its skin. The strange little English-style cross cast a spindly shadow over it, sending a shiver of superstitious anxiety through Nick. He thought of asking about the cross, and the child – but then remembered talk of a little sister.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said to Margaret. ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Ten months.’ Margaret took up a stone plate from under one of the pots and laid it on her lap. Pouring the grains onto its surface, she picked up a second, smaller stone shaped like a pestle. Her arms moved back and forth in slow, circular waves, fine powder escaping to the edges with every motion. Her wrists were bare except for one knotted bracelet spaced with blood-red beads.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Nagodeallah.’ A smile came to her lips; it transformed her face, illuminating tides of emotion beneath. ‘It means: thanks be to God. My husband chose it.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘It suits her.’ The baby was round as a fruit, her mouth puckered as she breathed. ‘It’s better than Nicholas, anyway.’

  Margaret shrugged. ‘Nicholas is not so bad.’

  ‘My mother wanted to call me Theodore. Much more romantic.’ Nicholas had been his father’s choice. He’d looked it up with Madi in the Encyclopœdia Britannica once; it meant victory of the people. ‘She was an artist – like you.’

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your husband said you made sketches. He was very proud of them.’

  Margaret fixed her eyes on the grinding stone. But after a moment she said, ‘I liked to draw as a girl. It was a hobby. I made storybooks for my sister.’

  ‘Like cartoons?’

  ‘No.’ She looked over at him with that amused smile. ‘Like once upon a time.’

  ‘Oh.’ He felt heavy beside the light flash of her mind. ‘So . . . do you still have them? I’d love to see them.’

  ‘Somewhere,’ she replied. ‘I used to read them to JoJo. Now he thinks he’s too big for stories.’

  Something dark brushed her face. She bent her head over the grinding stone, her arms picking up an angry pace.

  What did I say? He cleared his throat, casting around for a fresh start. ‘People here must be grateful to have a qualified doctor so close by.’

  Her forehead creased. ‘Few men would do so much for them.’

  Nick remembered Mr Kamil, with his small hands and smooth words of persuasion. ‘Were those your husband’s friends at dinner the other night?’

  ‘They are from the village council. My husband grew up with them.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  ‘No.’ She lifted the grinding stone and swept the flour back into the centre of the plate. ‘I grew up in the capital.’

  Nick was surprised – but then remembered Dr Ahmed’s words: she w
as born a Christian. He wanted to ask more, but didn’t know how. So he picked up one of the ugly root vegetables. Margaret looked at him with a quizzical expression.

  ‘I’m pretty good at this at home,’ he said. ‘May I?’ She nodded. He started to attack the skin with the flensing knife. It was harder than it looked, the brown hide clinging to white flesh underneath. The knife scraped across one knuckle, leaving a pink smear.

  He put the bloody finger in his mouth so he wouldn’t have to see it, swallowing his revulsion at the bitter iron tang. Margaret put down the stone plate and walked into the house, returning with a wet piece of cotton and a bright strip of cloth. He took them sheepishly. You drop her washing, you bleed on her food. What must she think of you? He dabbed the stinging liquid onto the cut and tied the cloth around it, a bow at the top, trying not to interpret her slight smile as scorn.

  ‘Very stylish, right?’ He waggled his decorated thumb at her. ‘Hmm,’ she replied, a teasing note that stirred Nagodeallah into urgent, sleepy squeaks. Her mother turned to lift her; she tucked the child under her long throat, dark skin against gold.

  Nick reached over and stroked the baby’s cheek. Liquid eyes. He’d read it somewhere – perhaps under the bedcovers in one of the magazines they’d stolen from the newsagent’s top rack. But it was perfect for the little girl, blinking back tears of awakening.

  Margaret watched him in silence. Then she said, ‘Here.’ Handing him the baby, she ran quickly into the kitchen. The child was a warm weight, smelling of sourdough. Margaret emerged a minute later with an apricot headscarf, carrying a loaf of bread and a Pepsi bottle filled with white liquid – yoghurt from yesterday’s meal, thick and viscous beneath the plastic.

  ‘I’m afraid I must go out,’ she said. ‘You can give me Nagode.’

  ‘May I join you?’ Nick was reluctant to lose her company. ‘I haven’t seen the village properly. I could help carry something.’ He indicated the bread and the bottle with his spare hand.