The first stage of spending the donated money was to erect scaffolding so that the building could be made safe around the shell holes. Over the weeks he had been in the village, Bart had watched the erection of the scaffolding but had seen precious little work carried out there, and he'd thought the benefactors had only a damn small return to show for their bucks. The body hung from the scaffolding.
He was a doctor who was familiar with the south-west of England, the Torbay district of the county of Devon, the town of Torquay. Where he came from could be summoned by cream teas, rolling fields grazed by cattle, families holidaying on beaches, retirement homes for men and women in their twilight years… The body of a lynch victim was suspended from the rusted scaffolding poles. The vomit rose in his throat. He understood, knew how far he had fallen.
The legs no longer kicked, but the rope between the poles and the neck twisted in the light wind and the heavy rain; the body spiralled rhythmically. The rain was dragged off the windscreen by the wipers. Bart had a clear view of the victim and of the mob below.
He could not have said whether the knife cuts that loosed the dripping blood had been inflicted before the victim was hanged, or while he was hanging but still alive, or after life had been jerked away. The rain fell hard on the body and the man's T-shirt was soaked against his chest and his back, and the flow of water made the blood run easily. In the dulled light, he saw the brightness of knives and a butcher's cleaver raised above the heads of the chanting crowd. Bart had been driving into the square, had seen the milling mob, had braked. Only when he had stopped had he seen the object of the crowd's fury – the body below the rope and the drip of the blood.
Kids were at his window. They tapped on it. Their faces were alive with excitement. One wore a football shirt from a German team. It was not a game that the kids had watched as spectators, not a goal that had thrilled them: it was a killing by lynching. Their voices jabbered broken English at him, their faces were distorted by the rain running on the driver's window.
He did not need to be told.
'He was an informer… He was a traitor paid by the Israelis. .. He had his reward for taking their money… His information killed a hero of the armed struggle.'
It was necessary for Samuel Bartholomew to play out his part, to stifle the vomit. He took up his medical bag, locked the vehicle and walked forward.
He was a Pied Piper – kids ran and skipped after him. Joseph, in the hut at the checkpoint, had told him, 'We take great care of you. You are a jewel to us, so precious. Have no fear… ' To save him, an informer of lesser importance had been sacrificed. Word would have been passed, a channel of disinformation would have been opened. He had killed an activist, that he could justify. Bart had seen the photographs of the aftermath of the attacks by suicide bombers. He could tell himself that the death of an activist, by his hand, was acceptable – not the death of an informer that he might be protected. The crowd thinned, the knives and the butcher's cleaver were lowered, voices hushed. He walked the middle line: he would not condemn, nor would he condone.
Bart said, a little stammer in his voice, T think it would be better if he were taken down. Could you, please, cut him down?'
A man, his face masked, climbed nimbly up the scaffolding, unfastened the rope and the sodden body fell. It crumpled on to the paving near to Bart's feet. He felt weak. He wondered if his knees would buckle… He saw the woman who huddled, all in black, at the building's doorway. The crowd had thinned, and the kids. The woman watched Bart, her eyes flitting off the body to his.
In a croaking aged voice through the translation of a youth, the woman said to Bart, 7 am his mother. I came. His wife would not come, his children did not come. His wife said he had shamed her family. His children said he, their father, had betrayed them. When he was taken his wife hit him and his children spat on him. Only I came. Who will bury him?'
Bart bent, felt the neck and wrist of the body, and found no pulse.
'What do 1 do? Do I bury him alone?… What he did was for his family.
He took the money from the Israelis, but it was to feed his family who had no food. The Israelis killed him, and I curse them… They will not bury him.
Who will?'
'You have not spoken.' Hosni's voice was coaxing.
'You are like a man who is tortured,' Fahd said.
The Egyptian had dropped back and the Saudi had come forward.
They rode on either side of Caleb. It was the middle of the afternoon, the sun high, and he did not welcome them.
'Did you find your memory?'
'Did you breathe life on it, as Hosni said you should?'
He stared ahead, watched the guide's back as the man rolled with the movement of his camel. Each day they went more slowly, and each hour less ground was covered. He sensed they were either near to their destination, or the march would fail. He had not asked the guide how much further they had to travel, but that morning, and at the midday break, there had been a smaller measure of water in the mug. The snap was long gone from the camels' stride. They went heavily, and the crates had had to be taken off them before they would attempt to climb a slope that a week before they would have managed without having to be unloaded. If they failed they would die in the sand. First to die would be the camels, then Hosni and Fahd, then Caleb. After he had died it would be the turn of Ghaffur, the boy, and last to die would be the boy's father, the guide. Caleb had no fear of death in the desert. The fear was of his recalled, reclaimed memory.
'If you have no memory you are worthless.'
His memory had given him the terrace of red-brick homes, and the front door, with black paint, the number askew because a screw had fallen from the base of the second plastic digit. He had walked through a narrow hall where the wallpaper peeled, where the pattern of the stair carpet was worn away with age. He had gone through a kitchen that stank of old frying fat, and through a yard littered with rubbish. At the back of the yard against the low wall the dumped washing-machine lay on its side. They were back, the images that would have betrayed him to the interrogators. He felt weakened.
'You have to have the past, and live with it. You are not an Arab.
We have an army of Arabs…'
Caleb said, 'Where I come from, no one – not anyone I knew – would have lasted a day in this place. No one would have, not more than a day. I can survive because I have forgotten. The past is nothing to me.'
Would they tell him what was wanted of him? He could not ask.
Fahd dropped back and Hosni kicked his camel's sides and went forward. He realized that Hosni had never looked into his face and he wondered how far the blindness affected the elderly Egyptian…
Then the sand swallowed his thoughts and the pains from the blister sores consumed him.
The caravan moved on.
'This is Oscar Golf… Your last turn to starboard, because of wind direction change to north-north-west, meant we missed out. We didn't get picture on the base of that dune. We lost vision of an area we estimate to be zero point nine miles by zero point three miles.
Could you go back, please? Could you repeat over that ground, please? Oscar Golf, out.'
It was the third time in the five hours First Lady had been up that the voice, always so reasonable, had come seeping into their headphones.