“Then save Rashid. If I have to take another’s blood in a transfusion, it is Rashid’s I’ll have.”
“Are you of the same blood type?”
“I am.”
Chapter 44
Salim and Jalal’s team of four broke up early in their shift. They’d been carrying bodies out of houses at first, moving them to a shockingly large pile of human remains behind the hospital. They started at one end of town, working their way from house to house. Those who were sick, they helped or carried to the hospital or school.
Most houses had at least one corpse inside, surrounded by wailing family members. At many houses, the residents lied about sick family members. Some resisted physically. But a brandished AK-47 always brought an end to their resistance.
Most of the ailing couldn’t make it to a recently opened space in the hospital or school under their own power and had to be carried. In the humidity, heat, and stench, Salim’s shoulders, back, and arms cramped from the work. Two months’ training in Pakistan had left him in the best shape of his life, but he had found the limits of his physical abilities.
The saddest part of the whole endeavor wasn’t even the work. It was the hopelessness, made visceral by the bodies and the smells. Salim had touched the skin of many of the dead. He’d brought hollow comfort to the dying by holding their hands. He saw mothers weeping for dead husbands, children crying over their mothers, and fathers—men with wiry muscles and calloused hands—wailing over their dead children.
When he and Jalal were switched to the water detail, Salim thanked Allah for the change.
Salim was trying to wash the memories of the dying out of his mind with the sound of the water Jalal was pumping into the pails. He watched two men in yellow Tyvek, armed with AK-47s, standing lazily in the middle of the town’s only intersection, with red dust covering their feet and fading to orange up around their knees. Other freedom fighters were working their way in and out of houses by then. Some were carrying in water. Some were carrying out buckets. Some were taking out bodies. Some stood around in gaps between the houses, talking and gesturing. Their body language showed their suspicions and fears.
Salim looked around to make sure no one but Jalal was close enough to hear what he was about to say. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Jalal pumped the handle to draw more water out of the well. “What doesn’t?”
“None of it.”
Jalal kept pumping. “That’s a broad statement, mate. We’re helping these people. That’s what they said we’d do. They said it was our cover story. It makes sense.” Jalal looked at Salim. “It doesn’t to you?”
“Of course it does. It makes fantastic sense.” Salim rolled his eyes.
“Sarcasm won’t make your point,” said Jalal. “Tell me what doesn’t make sense.”
“Well—” Salim gestured toward the yellow HAZMAT guys.
Jalal shrugged and pumped more water. “What about them?”
“Are you kidding?” Salim asked. “Are they with us? They told us when we got off the truck that they were aid workers. Why do they have guns? Why don’t they aid anyone?”
Jalal looked at the men in yellow standing with their guns and doing nothing but looking bored. “They’re here for security. You know how these kinds of situations get.”
Salim lowered his voice as his impatience rose. “No, Jalal, I don’t know how these situations get.”
“Well it makes sense that we might need security, right?” Jalal asked.
“Yeah, of course.”
“There, then,” Jalal concluded.
“Why the yellow suits? Why don’t we have suits?” Salim asked.
Water sloshed out of the top of one of the water pails as Jalal moved it away from the pump. Jalal pointed to the main hospital building. “That one next.”
Salim looked over at the school. “We did all three buildings there. Are we taking anything to the church?”
Jalal laughed quietly, but harshly. “Christians?”
Salim shrugged, and they walked up the dirt road toward the hospital building.
Jalal said, “It’s typhoid. We don’t need the suits.”
“Then why do they need them?” asked Salim.
Jalal smiled. “Maybe they’re ignorant wankers.”
Salim shook his head and walked a bit. “Why aren’t we boiling the water?”
“Because it would be a lot of trouble.” Jalal stopped in the road. Salim stopped and looked at him. Jalal said, “We’re drawing water from a well in the middle of Africa, mate. It’s probably cleaner than the water we get at home.”
“I think typhoid spreads through the water system.” Salim told him flatly.
“That’s not what I heard,” Jalal countered.
“Heard? Heard from whom?”
“I remember from school,” said Jalal.
“What do you remember?”
Jalal started to walk forward with his bucket. “I don’t know.”
Frustrated, Salim asked, “Then why did you say that?”
“What do you remember about typhoid from school? Did you take a class in diseases or something?” asked Jalal.
“No, I don’t remember where I learned it. I just remember it’s a disease that spreads through water.”
“Fine. Is it a virus or a bacteria?”
Salim was getting frustrated. “Why are you being such an asshole? I’m not trying to argue with you about something you think you know, but don’t. I just want to understand what’s going on.”
“Take it on faith, Salim.”
“What, that you think you know something about typhoid, but don’t?”
Jalal shook his head. “It sounds like you don’t know anything about typhoid, either. You’re stressed and you’re trying to think of reasons why you think they’re going to screw us. But think about it, mate. Why would they screw us? How could they screw us? We’ve already promised our lives to the cause. What more could they get out of us?”
Salim shrugged. “I don’t know. Have you seen anybody taking pictures of us? Weren’t they supposed to be taking pictures of us to post?”
“Just do your work. There are a lot of us here. They’ll get to us.”
“We’ve been here for eight hours, at least,” replied Salim.
Jalal didn’t answer. They climbed the stairs. Salim opened the hospital door and followed Jalal inside.
Jalal took his pail and a metal cup and started on one side of the center aisle. Salim went to work on the other. They stopped by each bed or mat, tried to get the patient to drink, then moved to the next.
By the time Salim had visited ten beds, he’d already come across two patients he was sure were dead. Several were alive but unresponsive. Most of them had blood-red eyes, and some of them had blood on their blankets, clothes, and skin.
About halfway up on his side of the ward, Salim came to a cot that held a young Arab man. He had an IV—the only one Salim had seen. He was clean. He wore blue hospital scrubs—recently washed. His sheets weren’t stained in filth. A man in a plastic yellow suit hovered over the young man and waved Salim past.
The next surprise was a pair of Caucasians—a young man on a cot and a woman with absent eyes on a mat on the floor. Salim shuffled up between them, knelt by the familiar-looking young man, shook him awake, and held the cup of water up near his face.
The young man’s eyes snapped open. At first, he just stared at the ceiling. Salim helped him to sit up a bit and held the cold cup of water to the boy’s lips. But instead of drinking, the boy looked at Salim’s face, studied it, and croaked, “Sam?”