be the biggest thing he’d ever done.
In the early hours of the morning, Anne woke to find Mujtabaa standing on one leg, his other foot placed against it at right angles just above the knee. He was staring blankly across the room, motionless, frozen in the centre of an alien place.
She asked if he needed anything, but it was as if he didn’t hear her. Not wishing to disturb him, she lay back down on the sofa. Her heart went out to him. This is no place for an Afar warrior, she thought, and momentarily she wished they were both back in Ethiopia.
She remembered what he’d said to her earlier, on the plane. It had been garbled, at times almost incoherent, and her poor knowledge of the Afar language had scarcely helped. He had told her a story – and for a while she wondered if it had been just that, a story – about a creature that had attempted to kill him on his long trek across the Danakil.
Shivering with cold – or fright, she wasn’t clear which – he’d become aware at some point in the journey of a creature with red eyes looming over him in the darkness. This creature was so close to him, he’d been able to smell its breath. Other creatures were there too, equally malignant, but always lurking in the background, their shadowy shapes scarcely visible in the darkness. Mujtabaa told Anne they’d been following him for days, but only appearing after the sun went down, and that the whining, shuffling and predatory postures of the creatures – especially of the leader, the one he called Red Eyes – meant they were about to attack him. He had wanted to tell them not to waste their time: he was no more than skin and bone and as hungry and thin as they were.
Yet there was a part of him that wanted these creatures to attack, for his ordeal to be over. It was like he had neither the strength nor the will to keep them at bay any longer. He either wanted to be taken by He Who Is Always Hungry, or to be left alone to continue his walk in peace. Which of these it was to be, he did not care.
But on this particular night, he could tell Red Eyes was about to attack. The creature was closer than ever before, so close that Mujtabaa felt he could reach out and touch him. He swung his jile wildly through the darkness, and struck the creature just to the left of its eyes, perhaps on its head, perhaps on its shoulder. The bone-splintering blow caused it to retreat with a snarl of pain and anger. Without hesitation, the other creatures then turned on their stricken companion and tore him to pieces just out of sight of Mujtabaa.
The recounting of this story was disjointed, and Anne found herself forever trying to fill in the gaps or join the dots. So she wasn’t surprised when suddenly, without any logic – or none that Anne could understand – he told her how he’d fallen over. (She guessed this was at a different time and in a different place from the Red Eyes attack.) It happened because he was weak – ‘like a woman’ was the phrase the nurse picked up on. He’d wanted to stay on the ground and sleep, but had been unable to stop his thoughts turning to Safia. He said she was walking with him, comforting him, encouraging him to keep going. He’d left her many days earlier in the ari, lying on the skins with their son, and yet it was like she was still with him, at his side. She even lay with him on the sand, her arms around him, so that he could feel her softness and warmth, the dampness of her skin against his. He told the nurse – or perhaps just himself – that he had never before experienced such peace. And, as he drifted in and out of sleep, he accepted that He Who Is Always Hungry was about to claim him.
Instead, it had been the white ghosts who had come for him, and he found himself flying through the sky. The desert was falling down into the sky and he was being lifted up, higher and higher, towards the sun. He peered through the small glasses that lined the side of the machine he found himself in, and saw only clouds. Even more astonishing – and quite beyond his understanding – the clouds were below him, not above him where they should have been. How was it possible to be on top of the clouds?
They were now so high, he knew he must be dead. Even though the white ghosts were still with him, he must now be a spirit. But how could that be? Everyone knew white people didn’t have spirits, so it was impossible they were to spend time with him in the land of the spirits. He wasn’t so wicked that he deserved that.
Adrian looked like he’d been tossed onto the mattress by a giant wave, and discarded there, like an overly large piece of jetsam, half unconscious, face down in retreating white-sheeted foam.
In the street below, a car went past scattering rock music through open windows, then was swallowed by the night. Someone walked along the corridor outside his room. From the sound of soft, intermittent thuds, he supposed they were delivering the morning newspapers. He pulled the covers up higher over his shoulders, against the coolness of the air conditioning, and tried to go back to sleep. It was impossible. His mind, like a dog set loose in a forest of lampposts, ran from one thought to another.
What a coup! What will the other charities say when they realize what I’ve pulled off? It’s the perfect follow-up to Live Aid: a completely different, but just as original, idea – no, a more original idea! No one’s ever done anything like this before, ever. It’s going to reignite the public’s interest in the problems of the Horn of Africa. The other charities will be crazy with envy. And it’s not the kind of exercise you can repeat, so they’ll just have to suffer in silence. I’ve changed fundraising for ever; Adrian Burles is a true pioneer! As for the young Ethiopian, he’ll be all right. We’ll take care of him, wrap him in cotton wool as much as possible. We’re not making him do too much, and we’ll be giving him more food than he usually gets. We’ll have to prove that doctor wrong, and make sure the Ethiopian survives, that he makes it all the way to the Trafalgar Square rally. So many people are depending on that. We also have to make sure he gets back to his own country and takes a ton of cash with him. He’ll be fine; Anne will take care of him. Not sure how to take that one. She’s good, no doubt about it. Very dedicated, efficient, but she’s a bit too closed in for my liking, a bit too private. Seems to lead a hospital-bed-corner kind of life: everything very neat, tucked in and orderly. It’s certainly impossible to know what she’s thinking. She says she’s behind the project, and I tend to believe her, but I’m also sensing that she has some reservations. I’ll have to keep an eye on her. She can’t be allowed to sabotage my plan. If she starts causing any problems, I’ll get rid of her, find a replacement. That shouldn’t be too difficult in London, but it’s not ideal. I’ll certainly be hard pushed to find anyone else with her depth of experience of malnutrition at such short notice. And introducing a stranger into the proceedings at this late stage could be inviting disaster. Best not to worry about it, everything’s going to be fine. A lot of good will come out of this walk. God, it makes me excited just to think about it. No wonder I can’t sleep.
He stared up at the ceiling, going over every aspect of the plan again and again, persuading himself it was going to be a success, trying to block from his mind the ever-intrusive possibility of failure, while the hotel hummed around him, like a huge engine in the night.
He breakfasted alone in the dining room. While enjoying his bowl of muesli and fruit, followed by bacon, eggs, mushrooms and tomatoes, then marmalade and toast, with several cups of coffee, he flicked through the morning newspapers – five of them.
He sat in the hotel’s reception and waited for Dave. A fountain was playing in the centre of the high, predominantly glass area. Palm trees clustered for comfort near the main doors, as if pondering a quick escape from this foreign environment. A forlorn group of Japanese tourists stood awaiting orders from their guide, looks of expectation on their faces, possibly nursing hopes of having now ‘done’ England and trusting that they were about to be given
