further into it?
‘You are more help,’ she muttered, then smiled tentatively at him. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been more welcoming. But tents?’
Kam returned the smile.
‘Influence in the city—I grew up here, remember.’
He was fascinated by the freckles but knew he shouldn’t stare, so he let his gaze rove casually over her, then smiled once more to cover the fact that his attention had been so easily diverted.
Again!
‘Tents are easy.’
Jen didn’t miss his casual scan of her body, but she refused to blush, although she was only too aware of what a sight she must present, her Western garb of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt covered by a long, all-enveloping grey tunic, red desert sand coating it and probably her face as well, and turning her blonde plait, beneath her headscarf, a dried-out, gingery colour.
But his inspection of her apparel—and his apparent dismissal of it, although she had attempted to adapt her clothing to meet the customs of the land—had annoyed her sufficiently to go on the attack
‘Good, and if you’ve that much influence, I’ll make a list of other things we need.’
He held up his hand.
‘Best if I work it out for myself,’ he said. ‘After all, I know these people and can assess what will suit them, while you might be imposing Western needs on them.’
‘I would think clean water and sanitation would be basic needs for anyone,’ Jen muttered, but she suspected he was right as far as details were concerned.
‘Of course, and these things, too, can be provided,’ he assured her.
‘And perhaps better housing before the worst of winter blows along the valley,’ Jen suggested hopefully.
He looked around and Jenny tried to see the camp through his eyes—the motley collection of patched and tattered tents, the tethered goats, the children running down the alleys between the dwellings, a small flock of ragged-looking sheep grazing on the lower hillside, while two hobbled camels slept nearby.
He shook his head.
‘Housing? I don’t think so. These people are refugees from across the border, this isn’t their country. If we build them houses, aren’t we telling them that they will never return to their own lands? Wouldn’t we be taking away their hope?’
He was extraordinarily good-looking and it was distracting her, and the distraction made her snippy. Although she could see where he was coming from, she wasn’t ready to give in too easily.
‘You don’t want these people who have lost everything to have some comfort and a proper place where they can be treated while they are ill?’ she demanded.
‘I would love them to have comfortable homes and a hospital as well, but back where they belong—back where they grew up and where their families have roamed for generations. Back in the places of their hearts! Here, surely, if we build something resembling a permanent camp, they will feel even more lost, displaced and stateless. It’s like saying to them, “Give up all hope because the war will never end in your country so you’ll just have to sit here on the edge of ours and live on whatever charity can provide.” I doubt there are people anywhere in the world who could accept that, let alone these fiercely proud desert inhabitants.’
‘Well, you obviously know best,’ Jen said, turning away from him towards the big tent and adding under her breath, ‘Or think you do!’
An anger she couldn’t understand was simmering deep inside her, although she didn’t know what had caused it—surely not this man pointing out something she should have known herself? And surely not the passion that had crept into his words as if he truly understood, and possibly felt, these people’s yearnings for their home?
No, passion was to be admired, but there was something about the man himself that stirred her anger, an air of—could it possibly be arrogance?
Kam turned away to speak to a man walking past and Jen took the opportunity to check him out again.
A number of doctors, like a number of professionals in any field, were arrogant, but they usually weren’t dressed in well-worn jeans and tattered T-shirts. They were more the three-piece-suit brigade.
She sighed. She hated generalising and here she was doing it about a stranger—and about other members of her profession.
And why was she thinking of him as a man—noting his looks and manner—when she hadn’t thought that way about a man since the accident—hadn’t ever expected to think about a man that way again?
She reached the opening at the front of the tent, and turned to wait for him to catch up, while once again a sense of danger assailed her.
‘This is where we work and where I live. You can have a look in here then I’ll find someone to show you around the camp so you can get your bearings.’
He looked as if he was about to argue, but in the end did no more than nod and follow her into the tent.
She led the way, still holding Rosana on her hip, trying to see the place that was clinic, hospital and home through his eyes. Various bits of it were partitioned off by bright woven rugs she’d bought from the traders who came regularly to the camp, determined to get whatever money they could from the desperate refugees.
In the clinic corner, the morning ritual of TB testing was going on, men, women and children all coughing obligingly into tiny plastic cups, while one of Jen’s local helpers spread the sputum onto a slide and labelled it with the patient’s name.
‘As you probably know, the refugees are mostly mountain people,’ she explained to her visitor, ‘driven out by the warring tribes across the border, and by starvation because with the war going on they can’t plant their crops or take their livestock to good pastures.’
Her guest—or should she start thinking of him as her colleague?—nodded.
‘I imagine in these overcrowded conditions diseases like TB can spread quickly, and with complications like AIDS in some cases, your first priority must be to complete this eradication programme.’
Maybe she could think of him as a colleague.
It would certainly be easier than thinking of him as a man…
‘Except that things happen, of course, to get us off track,’ she explained. ‘A child gets too close to a fire and is burned, a woman goes into labour—naturally we have to tend them. In these people’s eyes—and in reality, I suppose—we’re a medical team, so they come to us for help.’
And though still wary of him—of the person, not the doctor, she decided—she gave him the welcome she should have offered in the first place.
‘For that reason it’s great to have you on board. You can do the normal medical stuff and we’ll get on with the TB programme.’
‘TB treatment involves a period of nine months.’ He interrupted her so firmly she took a step back. ‘You intend being here that long?’
He
