Chapter 31

After an hour or so of increasingly-strained listening the effort became too much, and Fareeha excused herself from a drunken Phipps and slipped out of the tidy office. He seemed to have almost finished recounting his day’s exploits. Not that he was home and dry—far from it; it was just that she doubted he could extricate himself from the tribe of desperate nomads and get himself back to the city in his current state of intoxication. And she was certain that even if he did somehow manage it, she wouldn’t be able to catch a word. Good luck to him, she thought, I’m hungry.

Clump.

She looked along the hallway and, in the flickering candlelight, saw the custodian limping away from the door. ‘Fahid, what on earth . . .’

The crutch came down hard on the stone-tiled floor and the boy bent his head back over his shoulder ‘Mrs. Azziz . . . uh . . . I was just checking the rooms up here,’ he wheezed. ‘Getin’ late ain’t it?’

The words brought Fareeha back to the present. She grabbed at the knot of her headscarf and peered out into the darkness, realising she had no idea what time it was. She looked back at the closed door and tried to imagine how long ago she’d first stepped through it; but it was impossible to tell. ‘Yes . . . yes,’ she replied.

The custodian had halted his feeble retreat and was now, after some serious breathing, hobbling back towards her. ‘It’s dangerous out there.’ He nodded towards the front of the building. ‘I can . . . take you home, Mrs Azziz; I knows how to . . . protect myself . . .’ His words vaporised with the thin air coming out of his lungs.

The candle was still burning at the head of the stairs, casting a flickering light onto Fahid’s twisted face. Grotesque shadows danced over his grey complexion, thrown down by his broken features. Fareeha watched his mouth curl up to gasp in breath; she then looked down at the loose cotton of his ragged trousers hanging over his crippled leg. She wondered how to answer him without hurting his pride.

‘Learnt a lot . . . in the forces, I did.’ He unhooked his right arm from the cushion at the top of his crutch and with a groan he let it drop to his side, where he patted something on his hip, beneath the rags that might have once been a jacket, an army jacket even. His chest heaved.

Phipps’s words suddenly repeated in her mind, slurred words about the boy and a replacement for his lost weapon. ‘For a few dollars.’

‘Come on, we’ll . . . borrow the donkey and cart; he’ll . . . never know.’ Fahid nodded to the doctors office door. ‘He sleeps well . . . when he’s had a drink.’

Fareeha reached up and tightened her headscarf.

*

‘Steady!’ Fahid hissed in a loud whisper, ‘Steady on.’ The donkey had begun to walk backwards and Fahid was trying his best to make the animal see its mistake. He flicked the reins and flourished the cane and soon they were out of the side alley and in one of the four streets that edged the plazza. Gunfire crackled in the distance and Fareeha tightened her grip on the woodwork. At the other side of the square a generator hummed and electric lights shone in one of the buildings, dropping an orange glow onto half of the foreground. But on their side, the street was black and she saw nothing in front of the donkey. She glanced at Fahid, perched like a mannequin on the edge of the cushioned seat next to her; he seemed to know what he was doing and before long had the beast clopping over the cobblestones.

Moments later, the right-side wheel dropped into a large pothole, sending the two of them sprawling across the seat. Fareeha grabbed at some planking and pushed herself upright, venting a nervous laugh as she did so. ‘He goes out to the desert in this?’ she asked.

Fahid had dropped the reins and was fishing around in front of him. ‘’Course he does; it’s not so difficult . . .’ He found the leather straps and pulled them back up. ‘It’s even easier . . . during the day.’

He needs a Jeep, Fareeha though to herself. She pictured Bashar Khan stubbing one of his short fingers into the hot bonnet of his vehicle. But a donkey and cart was in some way romantic and seemed to suit Phipps and his work. She sat back and felt the rickety contraption shake beneath her, allowing her bones to vibrate in sympathy with it, hypnotising her. The darkness closed in and the next moment she was out there with him, riding around the plains on a life-and-death mission. Inspecting the wells; looking for the water table; testing the soils . . .

Phipps raised his weather-beaten face and slurred a word across the desk at her. ‘Seed’s,’ he said with a grin. His bleared, red eyes then staggered over to a locked cupboard. ‘Brought some more back today,’ he said, ‘not the right ones, though . . . not yet.’

A clatter of gunfire brought her back to the cart and she glanced at Fahid out of the corner of her eye. His chest was heaving like a thick ocean and she could hear him tugging at the air. He seemed not to perceive any danger.