Chapter 23

The Department of Water Recourses. Fareeha read the chiselled inscription without difficulty as she pushed through the heavy, unlocked doors. Most of the outside shutters were gone, part of the roof on the north wing had caved in, and the facade facing the street was crumbling—but those letters, proclaiming the building’s former civic duty, still held their lines in the sandstone of the ornate portico. Not a colonial building as such, but it was built in the same style, and at a time when the European influence was still strong and money still flowed from the former masters.

Fareeha pulled at her head covering as she felt the cool draught of the immense doors closing behind her. ‘Doctor Phipps,’ she called out when her eyes had adjusted to the dim interior, ‘are you there?’ The question came back as an echo and then the building was quiet again.

To her left, a staircase spiralled up to the ceiling and beyond; and in front of her, a long corridor swept away into the darkness. She decided not to go up. The first door, on her left, creaked open at a gentle push. ‘Doctor Phipps?’ she called in. The swinging door sent dust billowing into shafts of light that arrowed in through shuttered windows. Fareeha looked across the room and saw glass cases lining the far wall. Stepping closer, she made out a jumble of dull-coloured, cracked pottery: plates, vases, and cups that fought to show themselves off inside their translucent tombs. A moraine of boxes and crates blocked her movement. She stopped, raised a hand to her furrowed brow, then backed out of the room.

The next room was not as dusty but even more cluttered and she hardly managed to get a foot inside. The first thing her eyes fell on was a row of long wooden poles, tipped with sharply pointed bronze. They jabbed up from the surrounding mess, proud and menacing, the sun glinting on their deadly heads. They were held in a rack, against which a huge urn had been pushed. Metal tipped arrows fanned through the neck of the urn in a perfect, circular array. She quietly backed away.

On the door of the opposite room, Fareeha again rapped her knuckles, but this time the doctor’s name stayed in her throat. Nothing answered and she squeezed the handle and pushed at the door. She shuffled forward into the darkened room. She tensed as she perceived, barely, the static outlines of human figures that stood around her; but before she could do anything a cool breeze puffed into her face, freezing her movement. It was as if one of the figures were a corpse of a thousand years that had awoken and was hissing at her for disturbing its sleep. She shivered and blinked and then began to make out on the contents of the room. She stifled a yelp as her pounding heart flooded her body with chemical warnings. Pulling herself back towards the doorway, something clawed at her skirt, and once it had gripped, it wouldn’t let go. She tugged, looked down, and saw the bony fingers of a skeletal hand. Another yank and the whole diabolical figure came crashing down onto her. She continued her retreat and breaking out through the door she heard the crackle of what sounded like brittle bones as they splintered on the stone floor.

She backed swiftly towards the middle of the corridor then jumped again when something pushed into her shoulders. She span around to face this new danger, but saw only the gaunt figure of the Englishman, his two hands raised defensively. ‘Oh, good heavens,’ she gasped with a flood of relief. ‘It’s you, Doctor Phipps.’

Phipps kept his hands up and took a step backwards, without words.

‘It’s me, Doctor, Fareeha, Fareeha Azziz.’ She tried to hold his eyes with her own, but they struggled free and dropped to the ground.

‘Mm,’ Phipps mumbled and stopped backing away. He then began to look up and down the corridor, as if he were expecting others to appear.

‘I wanted to see you, Doctor,’ she said quickly, sensing his unease.

Phipps ceased his surveillance and turned back towards Fareeha. ‘From the museum,’ he said, nodding over her shoulder and into the room behind.

Fareeha rotated and followed his cold blue eyes back into the room. ‘Oh . . . yes, yes, of course,’ she said, suddenly remembering what Muzaffer had told her about the Water Resources building. Outside of school trips, she had never visited the famous museum, which now lay in ruins; but she remembered her father telling her about her going to the British Museum and seeing some of their country’s stolen treasure; she couldn’t, however, recall the actual visit. She turned back but no sooner was she facing Phipps again than he stretched out his arm and lunged towards her. She had no time to move and simply threw back her head and shoulders; but Phipps didn’t make contact and she felt only the wind as his long body brushed past her on its way to the door.

He grabbed the doorframe in each hand and hung his head inside the room. After a minute or so he spoke: ‘Nobody comes to see this stuff anymore.’

‘No,’ Fareeha replied, ‘but they used to—from all over the world! Until . . .’

Phipps released the woodwork and hooked his head over his shoulder. ‘You speak good English,’ he said, ‘Hussein mentioned that you spent time in London?’

‘Yes, I suppose I should confess to you. I was actually born there.’

Phipps showed no surprise, not even a raised eyebrow and he made no comment.

‘But . . .’ Fareeha tried to fill the silence. ‘. . . that was a long time ago when Sa’ An was a rich city—people were able to travel then. My father was in London for a few years. We came back when I was five but he made sure that I never forgot the great English language.’

Phipps let his head swing back to the room; he reached inside for the door handle and pulled the door closed ‘The boy will be angry,’ he said. He then lifted his heavy boots and began to march along the corridor ‘Follow me,’ he called back, but he made little progress before he stopped outside another open door.

Fareeha watched him again grab the doorframe and hang his head inside, losing himself for a minute amongst the remnants of Sa’ An’s rich history. She pulled at the knot of her headscarf, lifted the skirts of her long dress from the dusty floor, and began to make her own way along the hallway, stepping through the past, walking beside ancient civilisations that had risen and fallen on the very soil that she called her home.

Fareeha caught up with Phipps as he was closing the last door, but with neither words nor expression he backed away and disappeared up the spiral staircase. It was as if he had left his mind in one of the rooms, among the artefacts of some forgotten kingdom or empire.

*

At the first landing, Fareeha looked through the broken panel of a fire door and saw Phipps standing a way off down the corridor, inspecting a long key he had just pulled from a trouser pocket. He seemed not to notice her as she pushed through the heavy door; and after picking something from its end, he thrust the piece of iron into the keyhole and sent back the bolt. He stepped inside, disappearing from her view. Fareeha quickened her pace, thinking that he had forgotten her, but when she reached the room she found its door still swinging open.

She raised her hand; but before her knuckles could find the woodwork and announce her arrival, she froze; everything stopped moving—everything except her jaw, which dropped down. ‘My goodness,’ she exclaimed a second later, running her eyes around the pristine interior. ‘It’s so . . . so neat!’

‘Sorry?’ Phipps said.

For a moment she didn’t look at him; she was lost in the symmetrical arrangement of the polished furniture, in the order on the bookshelves, and among the sequenced papers on the huge desk. She then looked down at the tiled floor, which was so shiny she worried for a brief second that she might catch a reflection of herself in it. ‘How ever did you manage . . . ?’

‘The world around us is reflected in our minds,’ Phipps said, matter-of-factly, as if he were reciting some philosophical tenet. ‘I try to keep my mind in order, that’s all.’ He had retreated to a safe position behind his immaculate desk, very close to a second and much smaller door, whose handle he twisted, as if to check that it was still locked. He then picked a large book from the desk and opened it.

‘Yes, I’m sure it does,’ Fareeha replied, still mesmerised by the clarity of the room. Her eyes bounced along the wall, between charts and graphs and photographs—none of which made any sense to her. ‘You must have worked pretty hard to make it so nice.’ She pondered for a moment (Phipps gave her all the time she needed) and then added, ‘but why all the way over here—in the Department of Water Resources?’

Phipps had shrunk behind the book he was holding up, as if it were a shield. At Fareeha’s question, he peered over its top, and with only a hint of incomprehension said, ‘Why, it is the perfect place for my work.’ His eyes flashed along a bookshelf before returning to the tome in his hands.

‘Actually,’ she began slowly, ‘it is in your professional capacity that I would like to see you . . .’ She stopped and looked down at a chair, filled with the urge to sit, get the weight off her feet. But the doctor was still standing, and he had as yet made her no offer of the chair. ‘. . . you see,’ she continued, clutching at the back of the chair, ‘I have been having terrible pains . . .’

Without warning, Phipps let the book drop with a thud onto the desk. He raised his hand.

Fareeha needed nothing more to stop her talking.

‘Mrs. Azziz,’ he said. ‘It seems that you are under the impression that I am a medical doctor. I am sorry to inform you that I am not. I am merely a Doctor of Philosophy.’

Fareeha was dumbfounded and stared stupidly.

Phipps sighed and took a step towards his chair. ‘I am a hydrologist, Mrs. Azziz, a scientist—I study the water in the ground.

‘Oh.’ Fareeha, still uninvited, moved around to the front of the chair and dropped herself into it. Her face was a choppy sea.

Phipps stayed on his feet. ‘It’s that old fool down at the harbour,’ he said. ‘He saw the word on my papers and his been bandying it about the city.’ He squinted down at her. ‘You’re not the first to come looking for me.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she stammered, hoping that the warming of her cheeks would not show.

‘No harm done,’ Phipps replied and then pulled out his own chair and sat. He stood the heavy book up on its end and she read the word ‘drainage’ from its cover before he turned it around. ‘In fact, I do know the rudiments of medicine.’ He was speaking from behind the book. ‘My old man was a doctor—a medical doctor, that is. The old bugger forced me through a couple of years of medical school, until I . . .’ He let go of the book and it cracked down onto the wooden surface, revealing his pallid, expressionless face. ‘So . . . I am a bit of a quack, I suppose.’

‘What did they want?’

‘Sorry?’

‘The other people who came to see you?

‘Oh . . . I don’t know . . . nothing much. The first old man could barely walk yet he managed to get all the way up those steps.’ He nodded towards the door—had a simple infection in one of his gums, so I gave him some of the antibiotics I brought over with me. Should have done the trick. Told him I wasn’t a doctor, but I suppose he could not understand—either that or he was too deaf. Word must be getting around that I’m some kind of healer.’

‘He probably got too excited,’ Fareeha said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Mr. Hussein. You must be the first person he’s had to process in months! And the last ones to come were all doctors . . . he just thought . . .’

‘Never mind, Phipps said, ‘but please try to spread the word that I have not come here to treat medical problems.’

Fareeha shifted her weight forwards. ‘So . . . what have you come here to do?’

Phipps glared at her for an uncomfortable moment and then said, ‘It’s your water table, Mrs Azziz.’

She stared back without understanding his reply.

‘It’s dropping,’ Phipps continued, ‘and your farmers are struggling to grow their crops.’ He flexed his fingers, cracking a few of the knuckles. ‘There are other problems, but that’s the main one.’

A dropping water table? Fareeha’s mind connected the term with the muddy, bitter dregs that she somehow managed to suck out of her well each morning. ‘Oh . . .’ she said, feeling a sudden rush. ‘. . . and . . .’

‘And I’m here to find out what’s going on.’

She moved to the edge of her seat. ‘You can do that all by yourself?’

‘Funny you should say that.’ He looked away at the window, taking a very long pause. ‘I’m supposed to be meeting a couple of assistants here, but I haven’t been able to locate them yet. A professor at the university and a student or two.

Fareeha remembered Phipps’s question about herself when she first met him down at the harbour. ‘The professor is a woman?’

‘No . . . I mean . . . well, the first one they contacted was definitely a man, only he disappeared—shot or something—but then they got hold of another one at the last minute and to be honest I don’t know what to expect; the name they gave me is a little . . . well, unusual. Not that it matters now, I suppose—every time I go over there, the place is deserted.’

‘It would be, Mr. Phipps, the University has been closed for months. The professor probably fled a long time ago, and the students conscripted into the army.’

‘Never mind. I can’t waste all my time trying to track them down; I’ve many things to do. As a matter of fact, I was on my way out to the steppe when I bumped into you.’ He made an attempt to straighten things on his desk, as if the interview was over.

‘The water table?’ She pushed aside the cloudy and bitter dregs from her well and reached for a glass of sparkling, fresh, crystal-clear water.

Phipps mumbled something as he got out of his chair.

Fareeha grabbed the arms of the chair, ready to push herself up. ‘You know, if you give me the name of the professor, I can ask around for you.’

Phipps stopped moving and looked down at her.

‘I . . . I would like to help,’ she stammered.

Without words, he walked over to a filing cabinet and pulled open one of its drawers.

‘I might be away for a while; but before I go, I’m sure I’ll have time to . . .’

Phipps slammed the heavy drawer, cutting off her sentence. He swivelled around quickly. ‘Going away? Did you just say that you are going away somewhere?’

‘Eh . . . yes.’

‘Where?’

She looked into his stark blue eyes and hesitated for moment. ‘A . . . Across the Gulf,’ she said at last.

‘Marvellous,’ Phipps almost cried.

Fareeha watched the beginnings of a smile curl up from the ends of his mouth as his placid face flickered into expression. ‘. . . to one of the free ports,’ she continued.

He strode towards her, a scrap of paper fluttering down to the floor behind him. ‘Which one?’ he said, towering over her.

Fareeha edged back into her chair, raising her eyes from the dropped note. ‘Well . . . I’m not exactly sure yet.’

Phipps seemed to remember himself and shuffled away a little. ‘It’s my soil tester,’ he said, ‘it was damaged on the voyage over here.’ He rolled his eyes and stepped back a little more. ‘—that damned Rashid and the rough hands of his disgusting crew—whole damned thing’s kaput. Can’t fix it either; needs a new mixing unit.’ He was now circling his desk and was almost back at his chair. ‘When will you be leaving? I can send word to London and have one flown out. You wouldn’t mind picking it up for me would you?’

‘Eh no, of course not. But I still don’t know . . .’

‘Wonderful, that’s wonderful.’ He didn’t stop at his chair but passed it by, came out from behind the desk at its other end, and walked to the door. It was still open and as he disappeared through it he called back: ‘And while you are over there, don’t forget to look up a real doctor.’