Divinity Road (4 page)

Now, though, he backtracks, locates the silver case quickly, forces himself to nudge aside the half-clothed limb, brings the case over to his tree and sets to work on the lock with his rock. He feels driven, works to a rhythm, his efforts more efficient. Within ten minutes the lid buckles, the hinges snap open and the top and bottom separate to reveal two boxes of ammunition.

Next he attempts to load one of the magazines. There’s a sense of urgency in his actions, a need to protect his charges against scavengers, but it is this impatience that slows his progress, causes him to fumble with the shells, to misunderstand the system of loading the magazine, to attempt to fix it back-to-front to the underside of the rifle. In the war films it all looks so straightforward, he thinks. The soldier slots home the magazine with an expert fluency, the magazine itself is always fully loaded, seems to have an inexhaustible supply of bullets and rarely needs changing.

He begins to panic and this clouds his judgement, muddles his systematic approach to mastering the weapon. Sweat’s running down his forehead, burning his eyes and turning his grip slippery. Take a deep breath, he tells himself. Calm down.

He works through trial and error, a process of elimination. It takes him over twenty minutes, several false starts, before he gets the magazine loaded and fitted into the underside of the rifle. When he looks up he sees the original vulture he’d spotted has been joined by ten or so others, that more are looming out of the sky, spreading out, working away on several of the furthest corpses. He raises his rifle, aims and pulls the trigger.

Nothing. The trigger is jammed and at first he fears he’s made another mistake with the magazine. He closes his eyes and tries to visualise footage he’s seen of gun fire. He pictures a cocking action, a bolt being slid back, something to direct the first bullet to the chamber. He examines the rifle and sees a likely-looking lever. He twists it upwards, draws it back and forward, returns it to the position. He aims again, his finger finds the trigger and he squeezes.

A second failure. Then a flash of déjà vu, and he remembers about safety catches, turns the gun over in his hands until he locates it and slides it to the off setting. He raises the gun a third time, taking aim again. The trigger feels stiff under his finger and for a second, as he squeezes, he thinks there’s still something wrong.

The blast is deafening in the stillness of his seclusion. The kick of the weapon is shocking, far more vicious than he’d expected. His shoulder feels battered, pummelled, he knows there’ll be bruising, another injury to his poor broken body.

And the blast, too. How can something so sublimely elegant make such a thunderous, hellish noise? His ears are ringing, he’s deafened. He looks down at the rifle and marvels at its potency. A painful experience, yes, but heady, too. The rifle’s strength and the sense of protection it offers are intoxicating.

He looks up and sees that he’s missed the vulture, but that they have all panicked, taken to the air, circling. Even as he takes this in, the first one, emboldened by hunger, swoops back down to resume his feasting. For a few minutes, consumed by a compulsion to shoot that he justifies as a need to test out the firearm, he fires at the birds, reloads the magazine, fires again. His eardrums feel shattered, his shoulder begs for relief. Gradually, the firing mechanism becomes familiar, though his shooting is no more accurate, and for every vulture he hits, five more seem to appear. He realises that he’s fighting a losing battle, that he’s become the sole spectator of a ghastly, gruesome picnic. He cannot see in any detail what the vultures are doing, but pictures the pecking and ripping and tearing. He feels his stomach heave in revulsion.

I can’t stay here. I’ve got to move.

What about your rescue? What about the woman?

He stands up and for the first time looks away from the debris, the sloping plain and up the other way. The kopje stretches ahead, steep and rocky. It’s difficult to gauge how high it is, he can’t see the summit from his position at its foot, but it now feels like a place of safety, a vantage point away from the carnage, the stink, the gory horror that is unfolding.

I can’t do any more for the woman. I’m not even sure she’s still alive. At least in the tent she’s safe from scavengers. Her only hope’s a rescue team. Her fate’s in their hands, not mine. Anyway, I’m not going far, just up the kopje. I can keep an eye on her from there.

He picks up his backpack, adds the box of bullets to a side pocket and hauls it up onto his shoulders. Finally he grasps the rifle in both hands. He takes a few steps up the slope, then changes his mind. There’s something in his canvass holdall, something he had forgotten that he knows he must take, so he puts down the bag and rifle and scrambles back to the fuselage wreckage. He finds his bag, throws out his clothing, shoes, a soapstone statue given to him as a farewell gift less than twenty-four hours ago, extricates the sketch pad at the bottom, returns to his backpack and slides it inside. Now he’s ready.

He pauses only once more before he begins his ascent. There, at the foot of the hill, his eye is caught by a brightly coloured object, a small plastic keg. He picks it up, notes that according to the front label it’s supposed to contain two white handheld flares for night-time distress signalling and two orange smoke signals for day-time emergencies. But the canister feels too light and he sees at once that the top has come loose and the contents have gone astray. He scans the vicinity for the missing flares, reasons that they could be anywhere or nowhere, winces with irritation. He’s aware how crucial the distress signals could be but feels too exhausted to start a new search. He tosses the keg behind him.

Ten minutes of steep climbing brings him to a level section of granite and shrub. The air here is fresher, less polluted. He turns and looks down at the crash site. The first body to be attacked is now enveloped in a churning, squabbling sea of vultures. It is a sickening sight and the urge to press on, to put more distance between himself and the vampire banquet below is irresistible. He thinks again of the Breugel painting.

A further ten minutes and he’s back on a steep stretch, clambering between boulders. He’s weary, his muscles crying out for respite, when he finds himself on a flat bed of rock concealed behind thick bushes. He takes off his pack, about to sink to the ground when he notices that behind him the rock stretches into what looks like the mouth of a cave. Clutching his rifle, he takes a step or two towards it cautiously, automatically equating caves with wild animals, but it is shallow, no more than a couple of metres deep, and empty.

Perfect. This’ll do for the moment. I’m away from the bloodbath, but if anyone does come to the rescue, I’ll be able to spot them easily.

Yeah, and if any animal wants to mess with you, they’ll have to get past my friend here. He grips his rifle with grim determination. He takes the blanket out of his bag and spreads it out in the floor of the cave. He’s about to reward himself with a rest when he’s struck by an idea.

Not thinking of putting your feet up, are you?

Well, actually...

You’ve got work to do. It’ll be dark in an hour or so. How are you going to signal your position if they send a plane over? And what about wild animals? What’s the one thing they’re scared of in the bush?

Fire?

Right. Now get off your backside and fetch some firewood.

OK, OK. Give me a second. I’m feeling pretty ropey, you know
.

He’s collected three or four good dry sticks, a handful of kindling, when he sees it. He’s bent down too quickly, feels a wave of dizzy nausea and lifts his head to let it pass. He glances down the hill to the crash site, then raises his line of vision beyond, to the plain stretching off into the sunset. And there it is, still a mile or two away but approaching fast, the clouds of dust left in its wake. A vehicle, a landcruiser or pickup – it’s still too far away to distinguish clearly – is heading towards the wreckage.

Towards him.

Beginning a journal seems a timely idea now that I have arrived here in the United Kingdom. It is not that I fancy myself as a literary animal or foresee its publication leading to fame and fortune. It is more to do with the family I abandoned, my dear sweet wife and my precious children. Of course I pray that we will be together again one day, and together we can read my words, follow my adventures, laugh and joke and cry together. But if I do not see you again, if God forbid we are never reunited, I know you will have questions. The journal, then, will be the answer to your wheres and hows and whens and whys.

Mind you, if this journal were to be valued by some literary agent as a work of genius, translated into English and French and Russian, published by some esteemed New York firm, I would not complain. I can picture a fabulous screenplay turned into Hollywood blockbuster. Or perhaps Bollywood. Yes, that is more like it, a Bollywood saga complete with dance routines and rousing song. I see myself played by Salman Khan, your role given to Rani Mukerji. It will be an instant success, a tale of good over evil, a passionate testament to the power of love.

There is a second justification for writing this diary: it looks likely that I will have plenty of time to kill while I enjoy Her Majesty’s hospitality and my case is processed. It will be a form of therapy, a way of fleeing the locked doors and barred windows, an escape from a confined present to a freer past. Because, of course, I cannot write about my daily existence without explaining how I came to be here.

Where to begin? Not that fateful Eid evening three years ago. I must dig deeper. Our wedding? No, still further. A hastily sketched background is called for, a swift hop, skip and jump over my infancy, adolescence and bachelorhood, just to provide some context.

Yes, the more I think about it, the more I am aware of how little I have told you about my life before we met. You, my darling, were always the talker, the divulger of your thoughts, your inner life, your past. I have never been much of a communicator, never great at putting feelings into words. So you only know the basics of my past, the superficialities of what makes me tick. I pray I gave enough away to reassure you always of my love for you. But beyond that, I fear I have told you little. Well now is my chance to make amends.

So, a brief perambulation through my early years, a leisurely stroll just like my family’s regular six o’clock passeggiata along Harnet Avenue, central thoroughfare of Asmara, the heat of the day relenting as my father would nod and greet acquaintances, occasionally stopping to shake hands and exchange a word or two with a few of his more favoured friends as they too accompanied their families on this early evening ritual.

Some families would indulge themselves, stopping to buy macchiatos and pastries at one of the numerous cafés, beautiful examples of art deco colonial architecture that I only learned to appreciate after I had left the city. This was needless frivolity in my father’s eyes, particularly when we had such delicious home cooking waiting for us on our return. So we would amble along with the crowds of families, past the Catholic cathedral, turn around at Sematat Avenue, then head back towards Fenkil Street. Once home, my mother would hurry off to the kitchen to supervise the final stages of the evening meal, leaving us children – my elder brother, two younger sisters and myself – to kick off our shoes and settle down in the dust of the back yard to continue our games and jokes and squabbles.

Our mother’s shout, some twenty minutes later, was our signal to call a truce and head for the communal room. We would sit round the table while Fatuma the maid, her face shining from kitchen efforts, passed around a bowl of water and hand towel. Father washed his hands first, then my brother and I. My mother would go last, of course, too anxious to ensure that her family’s needs were met to contemplate her own physical requirements.

And then it would be the usual feast of earthly delights, a scramble to break off the still-warm injera, dip it into the delicious kitcha, perhaps a bowl of steaming zigni spiced with berbere, a fragrant, meaty tsebhi, or an aromatic alicha birsen curry. My father liked it best when my mother joined us for the meal. He would ask her about her day, listen attentively to her funny stories of market shopping or neighbourly gossip, relate the events of his taxi-driving labours, the fares he had taken, conversations he had had.

Sometimes my mother might make an excuse, disappear off into the kitchen – she had very erratic eating habits – and father would turn to his children to question us about our school day. He had a great thirst for education, having been deprived of his own by family obligations – the eldest in his family, he had left school aged ten to add an income to his family’s finances and help support his younger siblings’ schooling – and he would ask us for the smallest minutiae of our day’s learning, listening with absolute absorption.

When we had finished eating, Fatuma had returned with washbowl and father had wiped his bushy moustache with his carefully folded handkerchief, we would go back to our backyard activities. My mother would disappear back into the kitchen, father would head out to the mosque to meet his friends, as much a social ritual as a religious one. My sisters would take their places on rush mats plaiting each other’s hair, while my brother, always the most earnest and self-righteous member of the family, would sit himself down armed with the green, leather-bound family
Qur’an
, his mouth working silently as his fingers ran along the Ayat of each Surah