Читать книгу When The Stars Fall To Earth - Rebecca BSL Tinsley - Страница 12

Sudanese National Security and Intelligence Regional Headquarters, El Geneina, Darfur, later the same day

This is fortuitous,” began the commanding officer, taking a seat opposite Sheikh Muhammad. The man, sporting a bushy mustache beneath a hooked Arabic nose, rested his fingertips on the edge of the wooden table, perching on his chair. He wore his peaked hat at a jaunty angle, and he seemed to be suppressing a laugh. “We were about to come and see you, so you’ve saved us the trouble.”

Sheikh Muhammad narrowed his eyes, waiting for the man to continue. However, the officer grinned and drummed his fingertips lightly on the table. What are we waiting for? the sheikh wondered. Muhammad could sense his son, sitting alongside him, growing ever tenser by the moment.

As the door opened the officer said, “Good,” his eyes following the sergeant who had joined them. The sergeant stood between father and son, just behind them.

“So,” the officer resumed, “you’ve been going around encouraging people to overthrow the government.”

Sheikh Muhammad’s forehead creased, “That’s nonsense.”

“We have witnesses who’ve heard you spreading lies and stirring up the simple people of your village.”

Muhammad leaned forward, fixing his steady gaze on the officer, determined not to be intimidated. “My ‘simple people,’ as you call them, are citizens of this country. Yet, we’re being attacked by Janjaweed, and it’s your responsibility to protect us.”

“You’re spreading sedition and encouraging revolt,” the officer interrupted, “and that’s against the law.”

“Nonsense,” Muhammad frowned, his features grim.

The officer nodded slightly to his sergeant, and a second later a truncheon swung down on Muhammad’s head. As he collapsed, the chair rattled across the cement floor.

His son instinctively reached out to him, and the truncheon sliced through the air, catching his wrists. A jolt of fire-like pain shot up his arms, and he hunched over, almost breathless with surprise. A second blow from the truncheon caught the top of his spine, and he plunged forward onto the floor. The sergeant planted his feet on either side of his prone body, delivering a third blow to the side of his head, after which he lost consciousness.

“Leave my son alone,” Muhammad gasped, pulling himself upright. “It’s me who’s to blame for whatever you think I’ve been saying.”

“So you admit you’re plotting to bring down the government?” the officer commented, clearly amused.

“Why are you doing this to our country?” Muhammad asked, blinking the blood out of his eyes.

The officer smirked, and sat back in his chair. “It’s not your country, and you don’t belong here,” he said, his voice turning into a snarl of contempt. “You slaves have to be cleared out so this land can be for the Arab people. We gave you the chance to live as proper Muslims, but you want to have it your own way.”

“It’s called democracy,” Muhammad retorted wearily, trying to pull himself upright. “And it’s perfectly possible to have democracy and Islam.”

“Not in Sudan, it isn’t,” the officer grinned, watching the older man struggle to his feet.

“You seem so certain that you’re right and everyone else is wrong,” the sheikh continued, trying to stand upright. “But no one gave you the right to kill people in the name of God. You’re more of a slave than I am; you’re dancing to the tune of a gang of corrupt murderers in Khartoum, and you’ll pay the price before God one day. Then maybe you won’t be so sure of yourself.”

The officer’s eyes narrowed as he considered Muhammad’s words. For a moment the sheikh thought he saw the doubt register; the man ground his teeth, preoccupied. Then he nodded to the sergeant, and sat back once more, a look of distaste quickly replacing the uncertainty.

* * *

It was just before dusk that evening when Zara heard the high whine of a vehicle approach. Mother and daughter were squatting, side by side at the fire’s edge, stirring a cauldron of spicy lentil stew, making flat bread on the inner sides of a pot-like earthen oven.

Zara was immediately wary. Cars and trucks were not a daily sight in their village, and the appearance of a military jeep brought everyone from their huts. Zara went to the gate of their compound, her heart in her throat, hardly able to breathe. She could see from the faces of her neighbors that she wasn’t the only one who was petrified. As they stood side by side, the bright fabrics of the women’s robes and headscarves looked like a glowing mosaic of color in the dying rays of the sun. The kaleidoscope of peach, rose, turquoise, emerald, and yellow was in sharp contrast to the crowd’s wary mood.

The jeep stopped at the narrow entrance to the sheikh’s compound, and two soldiers leapt down from the back, machine guns strapped across their chests. They let down the tailgate, struggling with a large sack. Meanwhile the driver and the officer climbed down from their seats.

The villagers took several steps back, silently watching the soldiers lifting their load out of the jeep. There was a gasp as a bare foot flopped out of the sack, and the crowd withdrew further. Zara almost cried out, but she was too frightened to make a sound. A moment later she felt her mother by her side, her breath shallow and rapid on the back of Zara’s neck.

The soldiers dragged the sack behind them, pulling it into the center of the family compound. At the officer’s instructions they upended it, and the broken and lifeless body of Zara’s grandfather slid awkwardly onto the ground. His face was a raw mash of flesh and bone, while his long white robe was torn and smeared with blood.

Zara stared, unblinking, at the sheikh, her soulmate and inspiration, too appalled to even move.

The officer surveyed the crowd of villagers, flashing them a smile. “It seems your sheikh suffered from a weak heart,” he announced.

The villagers gaped at him, hardly daring to breathe.

“He had a heart attack in our offices, and we’ve brought him back to you, with our condolences.”

The crowd reacted with a subdued muttering, too intimidated to challenge the soldiers or to show disrespect. Then Zara heard a wail of grief as Sheikh Muhammad’s youngest wife, the mother of Cloudy, stepped forward, her fists beating her chest.

“My husband!” she shrieked. “Look at what this cowardly dog has done to my brave husband!”

An arm reached out from the crowd, pulling her back, but she shrugged it off and surged forward, screaming abuse at the officer.

“Have you no heart?” she rasped. “First my son, and now my husband? What kind of dogs are you?”

She stepped forward, shaking both fists at the officer, her screams echoing around the compound. The officer scowled, reaching for the pistol on his hip. He pulled it from its holster, leveled it at her, and fired two bullets into her abdomen.

“One less stupid black bitch,” he snarled, replacing his pistol. As she lay moaning, he gazed down at the spreading puddle of blood. “That’s what you get if you attack an officer of the Sudanese security.”

The crowd, frozen with shock, hung back as the dying woman whispered her prayers. Blood seeped through her yellow robe as she curled into a fetal position, her breath coming in panicky gulps. Zara heard her begging for mercy, in the name of God. Then the woman groaned as the officer nudged her head with the toe of his boot. Zara looked away, shaking and weeping, clinging to her mother, and bracing herself for the inevitable kick. When it came, several villagers screamed and two people fainted. Zara heard the officer kick the woman once more, and finally, Sheikh Muhammad’s youngest wife lay still, her agony at an end.

The officer looked around at the stunned crowd. “Please tell your next sheikh that we’ll be delighted to address his concerns if he graces us with his presence at our headquarters.” He climbed in beside the driver and they pulled away, in no particular hurry.

After a moment, Zara found her voice. “Where’s Father?” she asked her mother, her eyes wide with fear.

Her mother held her close, unable to answer. Over the girl’s shoulder she said quietly to her eldest son, Abdelatif, “They need to hear from you.” She nodded toward the crowd. “Tell them what they must do.”

The eighteen-year-old understood his duty, and without missing a beat he headed for the group standing at the gate of their compound. Zara heard him graciously accepting expressions of sympathy from those who could find a voice. He listened as villagers poured out their fears and anger, and then he asked everyone to help him dig graves and perform the burial ceremony immediately.

“Your brother’s a good boy,” her mother murmured, holding onto Zara.

But where’s my father? Zara screamed silently.

* * *

The village’s new sheikh returned the following morning. He limped when he dismounted from his donkey, but soon sank to the ground. Abdelatif helped him to his hut while Zara, her hands trembling, brought him several mugs of water. When her mother had washed his face, he began to talk, through bleeding, cracked lips.

“I kept blacking out, but the one thing they kept saying to Father was that he was trying to overthrow the government of Sudan. They said they knew he was plotting against the regime.”

Sitting beside Abdelatif, too petrified to take a deep breath, too stunned to move, Zara listened to her father’s halting story in silence.

Later, as she and her half-sisters lay in the hut that had belonged to Cloudy’s mother, Zara was bombarded by waves of grief and anger. For hours, sleep eluded her, as she recalled the sight of her grandfather’s broken body and that of his wife at the officer’s feet. It was as if she were being jabbed by a sharp knife again and again; the shock got no better with familiarity.

Then Zara recalled the way that Sheikh Uthman had twisted her grandfather’s words, deliberately making him sound as if he were plotting against the regime in Khartoum. But their visitor was a Fur, like them, and the idea that he would betray his own people to the security was unthinkable. Still, she wondered, was she the only one who had been present who was now reflecting on Uthman’s words? She would choose the right moment to ask her father, she decided.

The next day she felt ashamed for her uncharitable thoughts, when news reached the village that Uthman and his family had their own problems. Uthman’s brother in El Geneina was gravely ill, at death’s door, and the wedding of the sheikh’s gloomy grandson, Rashid, had been cancelled at the last minute. Apparently Uthman’s whole family had left their village at great speed, keen to reach El Geneina as fast as possible.

The following day a neighbor told Abdelatif he had seen their stolen goats being sold by a trader in a livestock market twenty miles away. The trader freely admitted he had bought the animals from a friend in the Janjaweed. Then the rumors about Uthman’s connections to the district authorities started, tentatively at first, and then gathering force, until another trader told Abdelatif that the Janjaweed were boasting that a sheikh had tipped them off. Zara knew better than to pester her father and brother with questions. Uppermost on their minds was when the Janjaweed would return.