Cause Celeb (35 page)

“I have news,” he said, dramatically.

“Gauuuurgh! What is it now?” said Vernon, angry at his little tableau being interrupted.

“If you do not wish to hear the news there is no necessity for it,” said Muhammad, petulantly.

“Oh, come on, Muhammad,” said Henry.

“Spit it out, lad,” said Vernon.

“It seems that your problems may be over and ours just beginning. I have had word that the refugees from Kefti have been gathering within the Dowit mountains.”

Dowit was about ten miles from the border with Kefti. The mountains there were the same red sculpted shapes that jutted out of the desert at Sidra and on the road to El Daman, but at Dowit, rock walls formed a ring round a sheltered area in the center. It was used sometimes by the nomadic tribes during sandstorms.

“Why there?” said O'Rourke.

“It was agreed. It is a landmark. It is safe from the air raids, it is hidden, and there are springs in the mountains. They are in a very severe state having walked for many days and nights with no food. They are assembling at Dowit hoping to receive help there but they have nothing. Their condition is very bad.”

My first reaction was rage at the UN. What had they been doing when we were away? We had warned them. They had seen the photographs. Why hadn't they been monitoring the border? Supplies in Nambula were low but plainly not finished. There was no excuse for people being ten miles inside the country with no food.

“So,” Muhammad continued matter-of-factly, “it seems that you will have your starving babies, after all.” He was very controlled. I knew what he must be feeling. After all this, after all we had tried to do, the worst had happened anyway.

“Thank God for that,” said Vernon excitedly, looking at his watch. “How long's it take to get there?”

“Two hours,” said Muhammad.

“And they're really starving like in Ethiopia? Fanbloodytastic. Well done, lad. Right, let's get this banner rolled up and we'll set up the shot in Dowit. Can't you just see it? With the food being doled out in the background. Get those cables packed up and that dish on its way. All hands to the pump. Change of plan. Fanbloodytastic.”

I was suddenly terrified. This program was our only chance now. It was already eleven-fifteen. How could they get all the equipment moved to Dowit and working before four o'clock? It had taken them two days to set it all up.

“Are you sure we have time to do this?” I said. “Won't you have to reset the satellite if you move it?”

“Eh, eh. Don't start. You'll get a slap in a minute, my girl,” said Vernon.

At this O'Rourke suddenly turned and strode off furiously towards the hospital.

“We'll set off straight away. Get this banner rolled up. Get the girls ready in their safari suits and those food lorries. We can have Kate Fortune at the head of the convoy, breaking through with the first food for the starving.”

O'Rourke reappeared now carrying three bottles of American beer.

“I think this calls for a celebration, don't you?” he said.

“Where did you get that?” I said.

“Never you mind,” he said, smiling at me strangely. “Why don't you go up to the compound and tell everyone what's happened?”

“What . . . ?”

“Just go,” he hissed.

I did as he said, leaving him, Henry, Muhammad and Vernon behind. It worried me. Something was up. But I trusted O'Rourke. At least, I thought I trusted him.

I drove up the hill to the compound, trying to imagine what we were going to find at Dowit. The thought of Vernon getting his hands on real hunger and despair had a unique horror of its own. The first person I saw at the compound was Oliver. Oliver had always seemed like two people but out here it was more pronounced than ever. He wandered around looking pale and shrunken with no
presence whatsoever, and then suddenly he would click back into his old authoritative, charming professional self. He took the news about Dowit in his authoritative persona.

“Do you think we'll be able to get all the equipment working in time if we go?” I said.

“Possibly, sweetheart. I'll check it out with the crew. Don't worry about it. Get everyone into the cabana as quickly as you can.”

At half past eleven we were trying to get everyone assembled around the table. I went off to look for Kate.

I found her lying face down on the bed in her hut, sobbing.

“It's all right,” I said, sitting down on the bed beside her. “It might not be as bad as we all think in the end. It's all right.” I had lived in Africa for four years, and seen starvation many times before and still I was scared. How must she feel?

“It is
not
all right,” she said, sitting up, staring at me furiously. “It is not all right,” she repeated, pulling at her hair, fluffing it out then pulling at it again. “Look at it! How can I go on screen like this? It's not all right at all. It's ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly,” and she flung herself back on the bed and sobbed.

I got up and walked to the door without a word.

“Rosie,” she wailed. I turned. “Could I borrow that hat you're wearing? Just to see if it looks—”

I opened the door, walked out, and stood breathing deeply for a few moments. Then I came back in. It wasn't as simple as vanity. Her whole sense of herself had been whisked away by the hotel hairdresser.

I took off the hat and gave it to her, watching as she tried it on. “It looks great,” I said. “Really good.”

“Does it?” she said. “Does it really? Do you have a full-length mirror anywhere?”

As I walked back to the cabana Henry and O'Rourke were unloading a sack of grain from the back of the truck. When I looked more closely I realized that it wasn't a sack of grain. It was Vernon.

“What happened?” I said, hurrying towards them. They were unsteady under his weight. O'Rourke was holding him by the shoulders, Henry had a chubby leg under each arm.

“I think it must have been the beer,” O'Rourke said shiftily.

“Doesn't seem to be able to take his liquor,” said Henry, grinning delightedly.

“What did you put in it?” I said, feeling rapidly growing elation. “Come on, what have you done?”

“I don't think he'll give you any trouble for twelve hours or so,” said O'Rourke sheepishly.

It was now eleven forty-five. We had just over four hours to go before transmission and we were still sitting in the cabana, deciding, now Vernon was knocked out, whether we should go or stay.

“So, as long as nothing breaks or comes unstuck, you don't have to reset anything, you just park up and turn it on?” said Oliver. He was perched on the edge of the table looking cool and in control. The sight of Vernon knocked out and snoring with his mouth open had done wonders for Oliver's confidence.

“That is correct,” said the chief satellite engineer, Clive, who always talked as if he was on the radio, and not allowed to say yes or no.

“But if something breaks on the way, we're fucked?” said Oliver.

“If there was a malfunctioning or, indeed, an actual breakage of one of the components of the earth station during transformation, then it would be technically impossible to regain satellite contact.”

“And is that likely to happen?”

“Well, as I said previously, given the erratic nature of the terrain—”

“Come on, Clive,” Oliver interrupted impatiently. “You drove over here. What're the odds? Shall we risk it or shall we stay here?”

There was an expectant pause with all eyes on the beard and wire glasses of Clive. Only Clive could point us to a decision. Clive made no move to speak.

“Did anything break when you drove up from Nairobi?” I asked.

“There were no breakages or severe malfunctionings as such on the journey in question,” said Clive.

“Don't you think we should just stay here?” the cameraman said. “If the satellite won't work after we've moved, we can't transmit anything. And if we get to Dowit and find there's nothing there
then we've nothing to transmit. We've got to broadcast something this afternoon or the whole thing will be wasted. Why can't we just stay here and let the refugees say what's happening at Dowit?”

“Look,” said O'Rourke, “we are now four hours and ten minutes away from transmission. We must make a decision.”

“I've just got a feeling that we should go,” said Oliver. “I know it's living dangerously, but I say we risk it.”

The technical crew were organizing the satellite dish. We decided to take two food lorries with us, and another loaded with water and medical supplies. O'Rourke, Henry and Debbie were going to come with us. Betty was supposed to stay behind and look after the hospital with Sian and Linda, but this was not a plan that pleased her.

“Oliver, dear, I know you're in charge and what you say goes,” she flapped at him, “but I do think I should be there too. If this is a serious medical emergency, then we really do need all the doctors we have, don't you think? Besides, you know, although it's only silly old me, I have worked in Africa for many, many years, and you just might find you need that seasoned old voice of experience somewhere along the line.”

“I think she's right,” said Roy the soundman. Everyone looked at him in surprise. He was a funny, helpful little man, who had never been heard to express an opinion before. “Betty knows what she's talking about better than all these kids put together. She should be in the program.”

“Ooof, no, it's only silly old me,” said Betty, rolling her eyes.

“It is now twelve fifty-five,” said Oliver. “I don't give a flying fuck who comes, but will everyone who is coming just get in the vehicles and on the road.”

I
t was cloudy again, and out in the open desert the wind was getting up, carrying a lot of dust with it. Kate and Corinna were side by side in the front of the Land Cruiser. O'Rourke was driving. I was in the back with Oliver. The rest of the convoy were behind.

“Shit,” said O'Rourke, braking. A small goat trotted away ahead of us. “Where did that come from?” It was getting increasingly difficult to see anything—it was like looking through a yellow fog.

“This weather isn't doing us any favors, is it?” said Oliver.

“That depends. Sometimes it looks rather striking when the sun shines through this stuff,” said O'Rourke. He and Oliver seemed to get on quite well at times. Maybe it was sleeping together that did it. “I'm not happy about rolling up straight away with these food lorries,” he went on.

“Neither am I,” I said.

“Why not?” said Corinna. “What's the matter with you now? You can't turn up to a famine without bringing something to eat.”

“Frightfully bad form” murmured O'Rourke.

“It depends how many Keftians there are,” I said. “We don't want to start a settlement there.”

“Isn't that better than them coming to Safila?” said Oliver.

O'Rourke let out a tsking noise.

“No,” I said. “The water supply's not up to it, and it's too close to the border.”

“But you can give them some food to keep them going?” said Oliver.

“Yeah, but we have to do it right. We don't want a riot,” said O'Rourke.

“Anyway, let's wait and see what we find,” I said. “There might only be a couple of dozen. It might be a false alarm.”

“Jesus, it had better not be,” said Oliver.

“What's that?” said O'Rourke, starting to slow down.

“Oh, my God,” said Kate Fortune, straightening up and looking ahead. “Oh, my God.”

What she was looking at was a group of corpses, lying at the side of the track.

There wasn't anything we could do except cover them up. They were young men who had starved to death, which suggested that they might have been sent ahead to warn us that the refugees were coming. The place was about a quarter of an hour's drive from Dowit. We left the two food trucks there. We knew now we were going to find a very bad situation and we needed to assess it first, and make a plan for the food. As we drove away, I glanced back and winced at the sight of trucks of food from England parked beside the people who had already died of hunger.

The red shapes of the Dowit mountains loomed ahead. I wondered whether, if I had just been driving past them as usual, I would have been able to tell that something terrible was happening there, or if they only seemed so forbidding now because of what I knew. The dust was growing heavier in the air, as if there would be a sandstorm soon. The sun was trying to break through, but it was with a weak, watery light.

A track led off the road to the left towards the mountains, and passed by means of a short corridor through the rock into the plain in the center. The convoy stopped where the track met the road. The sound of a drum was coming from the mountains. It was a slow, single, hollow beat.

Clive said that he thought they should keep the satellite dish and equipment here as they would not be able to get a signal inside the mountains. Then I saw figures appearing through the dust. They
looked as though they were moving in slow motion because they were trying to run towards us but their legs, which were as thin as the bones beneath the skin, were not strong enough to carry the weight of their bodies.

Muhammad was already hurrying towards them. The skin on their faces was pulled back tight as though they were grinning, but they were not grinning. O'Rourke and I started walking towards them too. The expression in their eyes was terrible, because it was so human, in bodies made unhuman by starvation.

A boy who looked about seventeen had reached Muhammad now and was talking to him. The boy was talking slowly, trying to concentrate, as if he was dizzy. His teeth looked very big in his mouth and the top of his head was unnaturally large because there was no hair on his scalp, and no fat or muscle on his face, only skin. He had a piece of brown cloth like sacking wrapped around him and you could see the sockets of his shoulder above it.

“He is coming from my region,” said Muhammad. “He is saying that there are many thousand refugee inside the mountain.”

The boy started to speak again, touching slowly between his eyes with his thumb and first two fingers as if he was trying to clear his head.

“He is saying they have no food now for many day. He ask if we are having food for him.”

Muhammad was not speaking in perfect English as he usually did. O'Rourke and I looked at each other, registering the line of decisions which lay ahead.

“We go and look, and then go back for the trucks?” O'Rourke said.

“Yes. I think so, yes.”

We gave the people who had come out to meet us some high-energy biscuits which we had put in the back of the Land Cruiser.

Oliver was speaking to the crew of the satellite dish, and he told us they were going to park between the road and the mountains and try to set up the link.

As we drove along the track which led into the mountains, we passed more and more people but we kept driving now. Some of
them turned round and followed the truck when they saw that we would not stop. Others stood still, looking bewildered.

Kate Fortune had started hyperventilating and making noises. She put her hand on O'Rourke's arm as he was driving, and told him that she felt ill, and he said, “Look, shut up.”

As we drove into the narrow opening in the mountains it was very eerie because the dust was swirling around the rocks and the people were still coming towards us, jabbing at their mouths with their fingers. We drove through a very short corridor, like a fissure, with the rock rising sheer on either side, then the track turned a corner and opened onto the plain in the center of the mountains. It was about three-quarters of a mile across and not flat, but dipping down and uneven and surrounded by the high walls of the mountains. Smoke was hanging above the ground from all the fires, and below it the whole of the plain was covered in people, sitting on the ground, thousands and thousands and thousands of people. There was very little movement but the sound was immense: it was the sound of a great number of people crying. I remember looking out of the window of the jeep and seeing the face of a young girl. I remember being shocked that her tears were so full and wet because the rest of her body looked so withered, dried up and finished that you could not imagine where the moisture had come from for the tears.

Everyone started to climb out of the vehicles. Muhammad was talking to a group of men who had come forward to meet him. They looked as though they were village headmen although they might have been RESOK. I was looking over to my left where the sound of the drum was coming from, and I started walking very slowly through the people towards it.

In a clear area to the left, which rose in a slope towards the base of the mountains, they were laying out the dead. There was a line of about twenty or thirty bodies, with people mourning all around them and, behind, a group of men were using a pole to dig a grave. And people were coming from different directions, carrying bodies in their arms. When I got to where the corpses lay a man was placing the body of a child in the line. The child was in a sack and the
body was so frail that the man seemed only to be laying down the weight of a rolled-up towel. Some of the bodies were on stretchers and they were all covered with something. One was wrapped in paper sacks, on which was printed, “A Gift from the People of Minnesota.” Further down was a blue blanket with a woman's feet sticking out of the bottom and between them two tiny feet.

At the end of the row a woman was squatting next to the body of her son. She had taken the cover from him and she was clapping her hands above his head as if she were trying to wake him. She looked as though she was trying to do everything she could think of to stop her pain. She was shaking her hands as if she was trying to get water off them, then covering her eyes, then holding the sides of her head, then holding her son's head and talking to him, then trying to bring him to life again by clapping above his head, but nothing could alter anything. When I looked at the body of the boy lying in front of her, useless and dead, I can remember thinking that it was stupid that he had died of starvation. It seemed stupid that all that grief had happened, not because of some sudden accident or unavoidable illness but because the boy had no food, when there was so much food, in the world.

Most of the people were just sitting or lying on the ground in groups. They were so weak and dazed that they were not responding to our presence or to anything. I had never seen people so malnourished and still alive. I made my way back slowly through them to where Muhammad was still talking to the headmen. I realized that I was crying and made myself stop.

As I walked past the Land Cruiser I paused because Corinna was leaning against the back of it. Both her fists were clenched very tightly and her shoulders were hunched. She was crying in a way that forced her face into dreadful shapes beneath her sunglasses and wrenched her body. I saw her crying and did not try to comfort her. I watched her groaning and racked and I was glad, because she was not made of concrete, or Lycra, or Perspex as I had thought.

She saw me looking and pressed her forehead against the back window of the Land Cruiser. Then she said, “Could I have a cigarette?”

I gave her a cigarette and lit it. Kate was sitting in the Land Cruiser with her head in her hands. Julian and Oliver were both standing alone looking dazed. I could not see Henry or Betty or Debbie. O'Rourke was crouched over a child. He was not making any sound, and looked exactly the same as he always did when he was treating the children except that there were tears streaming down his face.

I did not know what to do. I stood dazed like the others and stared at it all. It was such a monumental horror that it felt as though nothing should be the same anymore, and nothing should continue: none of us should speak or do anything, the sun should not be moving across the sky, and the wind should not blow. It did not seem possible that such a thing as this could be taking place without the world having to shudder to a halt and think again.