Right of Thirst (26 page)

“What is going to happen to it now?”

“We must remove it, of course. It has become a great deal of trouble for us. And none of them will come there anyway now because of this. Artillery always frightens them off. They will stay in their villages as usual, and rebuild them. If they come down out of the mountains, we must provide for them. But up there, it is difficult. We do not have endless resources. We are a poor country, as you know, and we are doing the best that we can.”

“Where are the soldiers now? Is the shelling still going on?”

“We are withdrawing them. Already we have taken down the tents. And so the shelling is over with. It is quiet again, like before.”

I looked down at the floor.

“So,” he said, with a smile. “You did not expect me to be honest with you. I know this. But you see, I am an honest man.”

“Then tell me why you wanted to meet with me,” I said. “So we can be clear.”

He leaned back, and the black leather creaked.

“I would like to ask you not to go to the media when you go home and make negative allegations about us,” he said. “Of course, I do not think the media will be interested. But I cannot be sure. It is a small thing, but it is worth a little of my time. I would like you to understand that you have caused this problem, not us. All of it, I am afraid to say. I know you have meant well, but you have cost lives here. At least eight lives, I believe. Four of our soldiers were killed by the shelling. And the three of theirs we caught in the open. And there is your cook, also, I was told. I am sure that our howitzers got a few more of them as well. I hope you will consider this when you return to your country. I hope you will explain this to the girl.”

He stood then, came around the desk, and shook my hand.

“It was a pleasure, Doctor,” he said, bringing our meeting to an end. “And please apologize to the girl again for me. I hope you have a safe trip home, and that you enjoy the rest of your stay in our country.”

As I looked at him, I was certain that any appeal I made would be lost, that anything would be swept beneath the smile of his contempt. Even then, as he dismissed me, his face was warm and alert and untroubled, as if he enjoyed nothing more than my presence before him, and had all the time in the world. Again I saw his pleasure with the photograph on his desk, so like his pleasure with the tea. But finally I'd had enough, no matter what I'd promised Rai.

“Please,” he said, as he began to ease me out of his office. “We are friends, and if there is anything I can do to assist you, you must let me know.”

“Do you have a card, General?”

“Certainly,” he said, and opened a drawer in his desk. His card was thin, and printed cheaply, his name in black beneath the green crest of the army.

“Thank you,” I said, putting the card in my wallet. “I want to make sure the newspaper identifies you correctly.”

“The newspaper?” he paused.

“Yes. When I tell them how you used a refugee camp as a pretext for military aggression toward your neighbors. Or how you use army helicopters for personal hunting trips instead of flying desperate and starving people out of the mountains. Or how you take attractive young German women sightseeing to beautiful alpine lakes in a time of crisis. I'm sure your superiors would greatly appreciate an article about that. Especially when I send it to them.”

His pleasant look vanished.

“What is this nonsense?” he said.

“It's not nonsense. I'm completely serious, I promise you.”

“So you are coming here and making threats?”

I didn't answer him directly.

“When you visited the camp, one of your soldiers had a hunting rifle. When you were in the tent I asked him what it was for. He pointed to the ridge. Then he pointed to the helicopter. He was very enthusiastic about it.”

Said shook his head, impatient.

“You are imagining things. He was pointing to the enemy.”

“He was pointing to ibex and mountain sheep. The rifle was a 7 millimeter magnum, and no military uses that. It's probably in your gun cabinet right now. Your guard wrote down the exact
time and place we saw the ibex in a notebook. You were on a hunting trip, and if we hadn't been there, you would have shot that buck. I'm sure your superiors know all about your hobby. They've probably even gone with you. But I doubt they want it reported in the Western media. It would reflect badly on them, especially in times like this.”

I paused, but I saw nothing in his face.

“Scott Coles is going to come back here sooner or later,” I continued. “When he does, I want you to actually help him establish other camps. If you do, I'll keep quiet about all of it.”

Said stared at me for a moment.

“Scott Coles is a fool,” he said.

“Starving people don't care who feeds them.”

He laughed, openly contemptuous for the first time.

“Do you think you are a savior also, Doctor?”

“Help Scott Coles. It will make you look good and cost you nothing. How hard is that to understand?”

And so we watched each other—two men, in late middle age, each of us as significant as we were ever going to get, each of us a few short years from being forgotten.

“Tell me,” he asked, after a moment, “have you discussed this with Captain Rai?”

I met his eye, and answered steadily, determined to give nothing away.

“Of course,” I replied. “He said he didn't know what I was talking about. I'm sure he was lying.”

He watched me, and let a few seconds pass.

“Doctor,” he said, “perhaps you think you are worrying me. But I assure you that you are not. You do not know what you are doing, and you are foolish to threaten me in this clumsy way. If you persist there will be consequences. But I will be honest with you again. This unpleasantness is not worth my time.”

“Then give Scott Coles a few camps to keep him busy and your problem is solved.”

He stared at me a while longer, and then he nodded once, as if it were nothing to him, and suddenly I knew that my dart into the void had struck something after all.

He gave me a small cold smile.

“Go home, Doctor,” he said. “I will give Mr. Coles some assistance. I have several reasons for doing this. But you do not belong here, and you should never have come. You have cost lives and resources, and you have given nothing in return. So do not lecture me about people who are starving, or anything else.”

I was tempted to reply in kind. But I knew I'd gotten as much as I could hope for, and so I said nothing. He pressed the button of the intercom on his desk, and spoke into it. Then he looked up, as if I were an afterthought, and extended his hand toward the door.

That evening, the bellman flagged a taxi down for us out in the street and ushered it into the driveway through the gate. It wasn't even a car—it was a motorized rickshaw, a tricycle with a wide blue cab, with a bench seat for two in the back, and a single seat for the driver up front. It looked like a scarab, puttering in front of the hotel, the bellmen smirking to themselves, the driver—a wizened old man—blinking owlishly through the windshield in the floodlights. He seemed stunned to find himself there, peering out from his perch, working the throttle on the handlebars every so often to keep the engine going.

Elise was back in her dress for the occasion, and I was wearing the best clothes I had—a checked blue cotton shirt, my pair of khaki nylon traveling pants. My shoes couldn't be helped; I had nothing but my battered hiking boots. A light rain was falling. It was just dark, and I held a bouquet of flowers in my hand. I'd asked the concierge for them, and I'm certain they were cut from the garden—marigolds, red poppies, wrapped in tinfoil, damp from the vase of tap water.

I showed the bellman Rai's address, on the notebook page he'd given me, and he leaned in and said a few words to the driver, who nodded vigorously, then replied in a high crackle of a voice. The
bellman stepped back, gestured for us to enter, and we clambered in, settling ourselves on the stained bench. I handed a bill to the bellman.

Once inside, I realized that the rickshaw was really a small motorcycle with three wheels and a roof. The driver's horned, gnarled feet, damp in their plastic sandals, rested on pegs, and he straddled a gas tank. There was a lip of bare metal for our feet, but beyond that the cab was open to the street below. There were no doors, and a single long wiper swept slowly across the windshield. He shot a quick, nervous glance over his shoulder at us, and then he twisted his right wrist, the engine rattled and whined, and we were off.

The nighttime streets were nothing like those of the day. The traffic, the hiss of the tires on the wet pavement below, the damp warm air and spray through the open doors, the headlights coming toward us, and the smell of rain, the driver working the handlebars, looking left and right as we swayed and bounced along—it felt suddenly exotic, as if jasmine were in the air, and strange temples were nearby.

The traffic was much lighter at that hour, and the sound of the tiny engine reverberated in the drum of the cab. It was too loud for easy talk. There were hardly any streetlights—simply the stream from our single headlight, which swept across the corners, catching on things—a railing, a cinder-block wall, a bicycle, a walking figure—draining them of color. Soon we were off the main road, into a maze of smaller streets.

The driver seemed to know exactly where he was going. He leaned into the bends like a jockey, even though a running man could have caught us. Elise's long yellow dress fluttered beside me, and for an instant I thought of Ali, wrapped in the tarp and lashed to the skid. But then I was back, in the gently raining night, going to a dinner party.

After some fifteen minutes, on one of the many small streets, he slowed down and began to crane his neck out the window. Then, abruptly, he swung the rickshaw to the curb and stopped.

I had a vague impression of a narrow, single-story house, with an unpainted cinder-block wall, and an iron gate, in a row of similar houses on the irregular narrow street—tan brick and poured concrete, flat roofs. I couldn't see it clearly in the darkness. I never could have found it again, or even recognized it in the day. The rickshaw popped and spat, the rain fell, and the driver peered out for a few seconds, then turned to us, and spoke for the first time.

“Okay,” he said. A few motorcycles passed by, a car, but for the most part the street was empty.

I hesitated. I didn't want him to leave us there, only to find that he was mistaken. We were precisely on time.

But Rai must have been watching for us, because the door of the house opened to a square of yellow light, a figure passed through it, and then it closed again. I heard his voice, calling out to us over the patter of the rain, and then the unmistakable sound of an umbrella being opened.

“Remember,” Elise whispered quickly in my ear. “We must make the arrangements for Homa.”

“I think it's better if I take care of it privately with him,” I said, and before she could reply Rai was there, opening the gate, slipping the driver a few small bills before I could stop him.

“Let me do that,” I said, quickly.

“No, no. You are my guest.” It wasn't much, I knew, and so I let it go, stepped out of the machine with my bouquet of flowers, then turned and took Elise's hand to help her up.

Rai stood awkwardly, holding the umbrella over our heads.

“Thank you,” I said.

For a moment it was a comical scene, with Elise and me shuf
fling beside each other in the dark, as Rai tried both to open the gate and hold the umbrella over our heads at the same time.

“Sanjit,” Elise said. “We do not need this umbrella.”

“Okay,” he said, sheepishly, and closed it. The rain fell softly on us all for a few seconds, but then he ushered us through, telling us to mind the steps, and up to the door. Behind me, I heard the sputter of the departing rickshaw, its beam like candlelight in the street, two tiny sapphire points at the back moving off into the dark.

The door opened to a narrow unlit hall. There were two pairs of plastic sandals on the floor, exactly like those the driver had worn. One pair was large, and the other was small. Rai leaned the umbrella against the wall, and slipped out of his shoes.

We followed his lead—I bent down to unlace my boots, and Elise was barefoot in an instant.

“You do not have to remove your shoes,” Rai said to me, stiffly.

“Of course I do,” I said.

Rai smiled at that, and my comment had its intended effect—it relaxed him a little. From down the hall, I heard childish giggling and whispers.

“There are sandals for you,” he said, pointing to the floor. We put them on, but Rai remained in his stocking feet.

“Please,” he said. “Let me introduce you to my family.”

With that, he ushered us down the hall and into the single full-sized room in the house.

A young, slightly plump woman stood in the center of the room. She wore a burgundy skirt, a white blouse, and a loose dark blue head scarf. She also wore makeup—a modest amount of lipstick and eye shadow. Her eyes were deep brown, a shade or two darker than her skin, and a few black curls escaped from her scarf. Her lips were red and full. She wore elaborate gold ear
rings, also—thin filigreed disks on chains, which had the suggestion of a dowry about them. Despite her finery, she was not beautiful, as I expected her to be. Rai's picture had flattered her. But she had a pleasant, open face, and her cheeks were flushed, and she looked at us and smiled both warmly and shyly as we entered the room.

Standing in front of her, as if at attention, was the source of the giggling and whispering—two little girls. Each had a luxuriant head of black curls, lovely brown eyes, and their father's receding chin. They were dressed alike—blue blouses, looking as if they had been made from the same bolt of cloth as their mother's scarf, identical skirts to their knees, white stockings, and shiny little leather shoes. Each had a red ribbon in her hair. They stood in front of their mother, who rested her hands gently on their heads. The eldest was perhaps seven, the youngest five or six. They started giggling again, as soon as they saw us, and their mother knelt down gently behind them and whispered something.

The three of them stood in the center of a carpet. The carpet was small—perhaps six feet by ten—but it was obviously old, and beautiful, all swirling reds and blues, with hints of yellow, and instantly I knew it was by far the best thing in the room. Behind them, a low couch, modern and shabby, with two wooden chairs beside it. A large photograph of a mountain lake hung from the wall behind the couch. The picture had a gold frame, an airbrushed look, and the colors of the blue water and the red and yellow leaves seemed as if they had been artificially deepened. Across the lake stood a small white house, with an ornate gold roof; a pavilion of some kind, or a gazebo.

To the right, against the curtained windows, stood a narrow table with elaborate place settings—silverware and glass, and a large brass teapot in the center, with a tiny blue flame beneath it,
and wisps of white steam rising from the spout. Around the pot, a half dozen or so small thick glasses sat on a tray. Above the table, clearly in a position of honor, hung the familiar photograph of the prime minister, the chief of the army, in full dress uniform.

In front of the couch, on its own stand, stood a small, though new, television, and beneath it an older-looking VCR. A tangle of wires stretched from them to the wall. The walls themselves were off-white, and the paint was chipped. There was a small bookshelf, and a battered-looking cabinet with a glass case, a few pieces of china within it. From the kitchen, the smell of food—curry, and something else. In the background I could hear the rain, falling more heavily.

“Please,” Rai said to us, stiffly and formally. “This is my wife, Fatima. And these are my daughters, Saniyah and Rana.” As he spoke, I was certain that he had rehearsed the scene in his mind.

At the mention of their names, the girls began giggling again, and their mother shushed them.

I stepped forward, and extended my hand to Rai's wife. She took it, her palm limp and warm, her wrist slack.

“Welcome,” she said, and looked as if she were going to giggle as well.

I handed her the bouquet of flowers.

“Thank you,” she said, and smiled, blushing.

I addressed what I imagined was a grandfatherly smile at the girls, then took a step back, and Elise followed, shaking Fatima's hand as well.

“Welcome,” Fatima said, again.

Elise knelt down on the carpet, and extended her hand to the eldest girl—Saniyah, I think it was. She turned solemn for an instant, and Rai spoke softly from where he stood behind us.

“Saniyah, it is very nice to meet you,” Elise said, smiling as the child gravely shook her hand.

“And it is very nice to meet you also. Is it Rana?”

The younger girl nodded seriously at the sound of her name, glanced anxiously at her sister, and extended her hand as well, which Elise carefully shook.

My heart sank in that moment. I was afraid it was going to be a long evening, full of pauses and formality. They had spared no effort; already that was clear. Rai's wife, in her best clothes, and the girls, as if on their way to a wedding, and the distinct sense of a day spent in elaborate preparation, with Rai no doubt pacing, watching over it all; for an instant I felt like General Said himself, come for an inspection.

I glanced down at the carpet, planning to say something about it. But instead the plastic sandals on my feet caught my eye; the hall had been dark, but now I could see them clearly. They were new, as if they had never been worn. Elise's were the same, and in that moment I was sure that Rai had bought them specifically for us, no doubt estimating the sizes of our feet in his mind. I could picture him, standing above the trays of sandals in the market, a wad of small bills in his hand.

“You have a lovely family, Sanjit,” I said. “Thank you for taking so much trouble for us.”

“It is nothing,” he said. But he loved them; I could see it clearly, in the way he looked at them standing in their best clothes, in the softness of his tone. I felt a pure stab of envy for him at that moment.

“I thought you might live on an army base,” I said.

He shook his head.

“No, no. Officers' housing is not so good. It is better for us. This was my father's house.”

“Did you grow up here?” Elise asked, joining the conversation. Fatima looked on uncomprehendingly, smiling and uncertain, the bouquet of flowers in her hand.

“Yes,” Rai said.

“And your parents, they are both dead?” Elise said.

“Yes,” Rai said, without embellishment.

“It is very nice,” she said, politely, looking around.

Rai smiled again in the same way.

“I know it is very little,” he said. “But it is okay for us.”

He was correct; the house wasn't much. A few small rooms—a kitchen, a bedroom or two—opened off the hall, but Rai did not show them to us. I could see the conflict there very clearly; pride in his family, shame in what he did not have. Once again his ambition was so clear, and so tangible, that it felt like a physical force.

Fatima smiled on.

“She does not speak English,” he said. “She is not an educated woman. But she is a very good mother and a very good wife.”

“Of course she is,” I said. “And I think you're a lucky man.”

He flushed, just a little, under his brown cheeks, and looked down. He looked young again in that moment, and vulnerable.

“Let us have some tea,” he said. “And then we will have dinner.”

We sat down on the scuffed couch. Fatima moved instantly to the pot on the table, and brought us each a glass of black tea, with a single cube of sugar beside it. We thanked her, somewhat too effusively.

“It is best if you drink it like this,” Rai said, popping the sugar cube into his mouth, then sucking the tea through it.

We imitated him, with some difficulty, and the girls watched us with great fascination, alternating between solemnity and fits of laughter.

“What time do they go to bed?” Elise asked. “Is it late for them?”

“Yes, it is a little late for them,” Rai replied. “But if they go to bed they will not sleep. They will escape to spy on us. So it is better they are here where we can see them.”

Fatima sat down in one of the wooden chairs beside the couch. The eldest girl, who had been staring without restraint at Elise, turned to her mother and asked a question.

Her mother shook her head, quickly, glancing somewhat anxiously at Elise. She said something—clearly a reprimand—to the girl.