Chapter 3

Phipps swallowed before he put down the glass; but it wasn’t until he picked up his book that the warm whiskey rasped the back of his throat. He spluttered.

‘Need a bit of ice in that, Doctor,’ a voice from behind him said.

Phipps jumped in the seat and strained his head around; the book fell to the floor.

‘It’s only me,’ the man said.

Phipps had by now recognised the tortured accent of the ship’s skipper—Captain Rashid—and before he’d laid his eyes on the intruder he returned them to the porthole through which he had been looking. The alcohol washed into his veins and kept his heartbeat from rising any further, but he remained uncomfortable. ‘Asshole,’ he murmured under his breath.

Rashid stepped forward and just as he bent to pick up the dropped book, the ship rolled and his only means of support was a quick hand onto Phipps’s knee. ‘Blast,’ he said, twisting at the knobbly bone.

There was nowhere for Phipps to go; he was trapped in the chair with a huge sweaty Indian grabbing at him. He squirmed away, making himself small, and tried to push at the hand.

‘So sorry,’ Rashid said as he pulled his fingers away and straightened himself up.

Phipps went for the glass again and this time drained half of it—without a cough. He didn’t offer any to the captain. With his eyes still in the porthole, he looked obliquely at Rashid, wondering how the captain had found his hiding place and wishing he’d stayed in his cabin. Still there was no point trying to get away now: he was cornered. He reached again for the glass—the whisky seemed to be helping.

‘Sa’ An: a Modern Tragedy,’ Rashid said—he was reading from the cover of the book. ‘A tragedy it certainly is; I can vouch for that.’ He stood back a little, at last giving Phipps some breathing space. ‘Although I might not put it in such a polite word: bloody nightmare is more like it And it’s not that modern.’

Phipps wriggled forward in the chair, releasing some of the veins that had been holding back the flow of blood. He said nothing.

‘I first came here twenty years ago,’ Rashid continued, ‘not in this old tub, mind you, no—those were better days. But they had started fighting even then. Always been fighting come to think of it. Tribal, you know.’ He stopped and tapped the side of his head with the side of an stretched index finger. ‘All clans and tribes,’ he said, slowly, as if that were some kind of aberrant psychological condition.

Phipps barely nodded his head; tell me something I don’t know, he thought. He wished a sea breeze would blow in and waft away the captain’s heavy odour.

‘It’s that bloody Alkabar that makes half the trouble,’ Rashid said. ‘The scoundrel’s from the south, over the mountains—different people. Sometimes calls himself a Caliph, sometimes a bloody king. I can’t remember what he is in this latest war.’

Sultan, Phipps wanted to say, but didn’t.

‘Still, at least in the south they’ve only one tribe. Up here in the north they’ve scores of them.

Twelve, Phipps wanted to correct him, but only two with any real power. He saved his tongue for the whisky and reached for the glass.

‘Every time they kick out Alkabar and his bloody government, they start fighting each other. And every time they do, back comes that bloody scoundrel and his ministers. Love it they do, like a game.’ Rashid backed away some more and came up against another chair; he checked it with a quick glance before dropping himself in. ‘Ahh,’ he sighed. ‘No other people in the world that loves a good fight as they do.’

The book that glistened in Rashid’s sweaty hand didn’t say much about the people of the area but Phipps had paid some attention to the country’s political history—not a lot, but enough to know who was at present killing whom, and he didn’t need Captain Rashid’s flimsy grasp on geopolitics to increase his knowledge base

‘The last time it was for God,’ Rashid said. ‘The priests persuaded the northerners to come together in the name of the Almighty and boot out the king. Remember it well I do. Bloody disaster. After Alkabar was gone, the priests barely waited a week before they were at each other’s throats. Led the whole northern province into a second holy war they did—right after the first. This time it’s something else, I suppose—not religion. Not sure what, though.’

Socialist ideology, Phipps wanted to say. Instead he reached for the bottle and poured another glass. A month ago he’d read about it in a back issue of The Economist; words from the last westerner to visit Sa’ An before this latest round of bloodletting. His employers from the charity tried to put him in touch with the journalist but he had resisted, made several excuses until they stopped badgering him.

‘Something about oil I think,’ Rashid offered.

Phipps rolled his eyes but resisted the temptation to put the captain right. A few years ago, a clansman had resurrected an out-of-date doctrine, not from holy scriptures this time but from other books, hidden away in Sa An’s forgotten library. The words from the books painted The Sultan as a different kind of enemy, in different clothes—but a devil all the same. And this time the fight was for a different kind of freedom.

‘Probably won‘t last much longer, though,’ Rashid said. ‘They can’t hold together an alliance for more than a year or two; then it falls apart; they start killing each other again and it’s all over. Before you know it the bloody king will be back.’

Phipps was barely listening.

‘And if it looks like that scoundrel will be back in town, get the hell out of there. He’ll cut your balls off and crucify you—have you up on a cross for the vultures.’

Phipps looked up.

‘He hates Americans—and anybody who looks like one.’ He stopped and pondered for a moment. ‘Can’t remember why though.’

Because the Americans let him down, you dumb fuck, Phipps wanted to say. The way they let everyone down. And he hates the British and French because they’ve been selling weapons to the rebels. Several of the more eloquent warnings he’d been given against being in town if the Sultan ever made his way back drifted through his mind. He’d even heard stories of Europeans, who’d been imprisoned by the Sultan in the final days of his regime and who’d been taken south over the mountains with the fleeing army. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Phipps had always said, ‘I’ve got long legs.’

A bell sounded from the gangway outside. Rashid heaved himself up. ‘Have to go, I’m afraid.’ He walked towards the door in small steps as the roll of the ship tried to bring him back. ‘I’ll talk to you later, when we get a little closer.’

‘Not if I have anything to do with it,’ Phipps muttered under his breath.