Devil’s Harvest Read online

  ‘What’s this?’ Alek snatched the notes from Gabriel and waved them at Rasta as if he were a disobedient child, lambasting him in their language. The barman refused to look at Gabriel, scratching his foot in the dust. Alek again shouted at Rasta and then marched away.

  ‘Now what?’ Gabriel asked. It was already hot and his mood was deteriorating.

  ‘She wants to know if you think this is still a colony,’ the barman said, grinning sheepishly now. ‘She’s a fierce lady.’

  The next two hours were wasted drinking instant coffee and waiting for something to develop. Gabriel gave Rasta a large amount of money to change into South Sudanese pounds on the black market. He returned with a plastic packet full of grubby notes, folded into bundles and tied with frayed elastic.

  Gabriel had developed diarrhoea during the night and, despite having only bowel-cementing starch for breakfast, he still had to slip away to the communal toilets every twenty minutes. Rasta’s refusal to drive was undoubtedly a setback, but sitting with his stomach heaving on the rim of the bowl, he was grateful not to be stuck in the rocking Land Cruiser. He’d also developed some fungal rash between his toes, and his skin itched maddeningly. Altogether it was an unfortunate start to the journey.

  He returned from one such bout to find Alek sitting alone at the bar drinking cold water.

  ‘No driver?’ he asked, annoyed by her inaction.

  She shrugged, unconcerned.

  ‘If we’re not going today, could you at least have the decency to tell me?’

  ‘He’s coming.’

  ‘The driver?’

  ‘The driver.’

  ‘When?’

  She shrugged again. ‘Nothing happens in a hurry here. Be patient. You must learn to wait.’

  He sat next to her seething, trying to quell his anger with water from the bar fridge. Eventually, after another hour, a surly-looking man with a scrawny chest and neck loped into the bar area. His hair had receded to a line on top of his head, leaving a vast expanse of forehead with an alarming number of trenches and foxholes, like a scarred battlefield.

  ‘Salaam alaikum,’ the man said to Alek, pointedly ignoring Gabriel.

  ‘Aiwa, ana kwais. Shukran jazeelan.’

  A short conversation in Arabic ensued before Alek introduced him as Kamal Maarouf, their new driver. The man seemed to scowl at Gabriel’s outstretched hand, but shook it nonetheless, his offering limp and greasy. He apparently spoke no English and his only interaction with Gabriel thereafter was to rub his fingers together as an indication that he required a part-payment upfront. Gabriel deposited a liberal quantity of Sudanese pounds into the man’s snatching hands, which seemed to placate him temporarily. He then retreated to the shade of a low tree, seemingly still unimpressed, and proceeded to roll a cigarette that smelt like burning cowpat.

  It was left to Gabriel to heave their bags into the back of the Land Cruiser. He was strapping a battered jerrycan to the back of the vehicle when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Where you off to, Birdman?’ The accent flat and nasal. The smell of cigarettes and whisky. Gabriel turned to find himself almost touching the taut, brown face of Jannie. Alek walked past and the South African blew her a mock kiss. ‘Bit of an away game, hey?’ She flinched and pulled away with a scowl. Jannie just laughed, more a twisted sneer than a show of humour. ‘So what’s the destination, boet?’

  ‘I’m doing some research. Up north.’

  ‘Research?’ Jannie said, as if Gabriel’s answer was somehow bizarre or irrational. ‘Up north?’

  Now the South African was gripping his arm and Gabriel felt his fingers start to tingle as the blood flow restricted.

  ‘You be careful now, Birdman,’ he whispered conspiratorially into his ear. ‘Dar al-harb aren’t no place for the likes of you. The only birds up there have already been plucked and braaied.’ He released Gabriel’s arm and gave him a slow wink, like a trapdoor shutting and then being pulled open. ‘Be seeing you, my friend.’

  Alek was standing by the passenger door as the South African passed. ‘Hey sweetheart, you be good now, okay? And maybe eat a bit more, you’re a bit skraal.’

  She spat onto the ground at the man’s feet. For a moment Gabriel thought Jannie would lunge at her, seeing the wiry muscles in the man’s shoulders tense. But he just grinned and walked back across the bridge from the parking area into the compound, whistling something tuneless through his teeth.

  Alek took the front passenger seat and Gabriel climbed into the back. It was a relief to hear the vehicle kick into life with a low rumble. Kamal swung the car around with a vicious burst of power before roaring out of the gates. Gabriel was pleased to see the last of the South African, though he felt a twinge of anxiety as they left the security of the compound.

  ‘Friend of yours?’ Alek asked, her tone neutral.

  ‘Not exactly. The man speaks in riddles. He’s about as opposite to being a friend to me as a person could be.’

  ‘He’s a dangerous man.’

  ‘What’s the place he is talking about? Dar alab?’

  ‘Dar al-harb. It means “the land of war”. It’s what those in Khartoum call anywhere where there are no Arabs living. Dar al-Islam is where the Arabs are, and no war is allowed there.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Don’t worry. That tells you all you need to know about Sudan.’ Alek made a clucking sound, the same click of the tongue he’d heard from Rasta when they first met.

  ‘Don’t click your tongue at me!’ Gabriel couldn’t keep his irritation at bay.

  ‘You’ll have to stop being so sensitive, Mr Gabriel. You won’t last if every word offends you.’ She added something to Kamal, who shook his head in sympathy. She continued: ‘In our country, we click our tongues to agree with you, or to emphasise something we’ve said to you. You don’t need to imagine my disapproval. I’ll tell you.’

  Gabriel sat back, smarting. He stared out of the window as they drove back along the road to the airport, before turning off at a makeshift roundabout – a broken cement pipe upturned to form the island centre – and heading out of Juba.

  The city came to an abrupt end, as if it had suddenly run out of energy and motivation to continue. Broken buildings were replaced in a blink by scrubland, the transformation from bustling community to empty plain almost instantaneous. The grand Chinese-built highway continued for a few miles and then it, too, lost interest and turned its back on the approaching hinterland.

  The raised chassis made the off-roader sway from side to side like a fishing vessel on a rising swell. The padding on the back seat had been flattened over time to a compact strip and his backside was soon tender. The newly laid tar deteriorated into a mess of muddy holes, corrugations and slippery rises. The air conditioner wasn’t functioning, so they drove with the windows open, sticky air wiping their faces. Kamal kept the radio tuned to an Arabic station which seemed to broadcast the same wailing song on a never-ending cycle.

  ‘Should we fill up with petrol before we leave?’ Gabriel asked Alek. She conveyed something to Kamal in Arabic who answered back curtly.

  ‘He says we do not need.’ Alek shrugged her shoulders.

  No sooner had they started than they stopped. Kamal pulled off the road into a small collection of mud-and-latticework huts, stopping the car in a barren patch of dirt where the sun seemed to bake more fiercely than anywhere else. He turned off the engine and disappeared behind a hut without a word. Alek had a brief conversation with an elderly woman who came up to the vehicle and then drifted off again – satisfied or disappointed, Gabriel couldn’t tell. After this, they sat in silence. Gabriel felt taken for granted but refrained from commenting in case he’d failed to understand something obvious and vital. The only benefit was the respite from the wailing Arab singer. After half an hour, Kamal returned, rubbing something onto his gums with his index finger. The journey resumed. No explanation was forthcoming and nothing appeared to have been achieved.

  Ga
briel could no longer ignore the itch across the top of his toes and he took off his shoes and socks. The skin had started to peel back, leaving his toes pink and exposed, like newborn mice. The moment he touched them to scratch, the salty sweat on his fingers burnt the skin. The pharmacist at the Clifton Village Apothecary would have sorted him out swiftly, he thought. Not that his toes would ever deteriorate into such a condition on the placid shores of England.

  After another twenty miles or so, they drove down a lumpy, sandy road into another small settlement and stopped again. A mango tree provided a swathe of shade, but, inexplicably, Kamal parked again in the blazing heat.

  ‘Why are we stopping again?’ This time, Gabriel couldn’t stop himself from asking.

  ‘Kamal says we need petrol.’ Alek’s voice was deadpan.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Gabriel hissed.

  Alek looked at him sharply, turning around in her seat.

  Gabriel dropped his eyes in apology, but when he looked up she was still glaring at him. ‘I just want to get going,’ he said.

  Her eyes narrowed before she turned around. ‘One should be in no hurry to face the Devil. And we need petrol to get there. With or without the help of Jesus.’

  Gabriel was about to ask for clarification about the reference to the Devil when Kamal appeared, heaving a container in one hand and holding a funnel in the other. Alek got out of the vehicle and held the funnel in place while Kamal sloshed the petrol all over her hands and the side of the vehicle. Gabriel sighed and closed his eyes.

  There was a madness in his current circumstances, an out-of-kilter warping of an ordinary life, a fracturing of all that was sane and familiar. Some temporal shift had resulted in him travelling in a foreign African land with two strangers, the one as unendearing as the other. Yet he was still Gabriel Cockburn, associate professor at the University of Bristol, married to Jane, although admittedly cuckolded by an unknown military hero. In truth, he thought, his head resting back on the lumpy seat, Jane was as much a stranger to him as his guide and driver. The revelation that his wife was having a torrid affair – and apparently not her first – was as fracturing as anything that could be thrown at him now. Driving in an ailing Land Cruiser across the Sudd was just as unpredictable as trying to maintain a respectable middle-class life in Clifton Village. And probably more interesting, if he reflected on a life hardly lived. Certainly more interesting.

  He opened his eyes and started when he found the face of a young man, poked halfway through the open window, watching him intently. The man dropped his gaze immediately and muttered something in apology before slipping away. Then the opposite door opened and a large woman clambered in, a bulky parcel clasped to her bosom, nearly obscuring her face. Gabriel nodded a greeting, which was met with something akin to a grunt. The smell of old sweat and ashes filled the cab. Kamal and Alek got back into the vehicle, bringing petrol fumes with them. The combination of smells was as nauseating as the mixing of engine smoke and sea water on a fishing boat. Gabriel turned his face towards the open window, watching the horizon as they started up once more, bouncing over a stretch of rocks before joining the gravel road.

  The new arrival deposited her parcel in the space between them, the wrapping clinging to Gabriel’s arm and immediately drawing sweat from his pores. He glanced down to see the skinned face of an eyeless goat staring blankly up at him through a layer of plastic. The parcel gave off a slightly sweet and barnyard-like odour. Gabriel turned away, repulsed.

  By now, the radio was largely out of range of the transmitter, but Kamal insisted on leaving it on, letting it hiss and wail intermittently. The road was nearly deserted, save for the occasional transport truck, spewing diesel smoke and slewing across the cambered mud while somehow also hurtling forward at speed. The vegetation was largely low scrub with wide patches showing signs of previous burning; the rainy season had recently begun and the green shoots of grasses and annuals were starting to show. The edge of the Nile was evident from the dense tracts of palms, but their route soon turned away from the river and the only large trees were the dark green neems planted at every small collection of huts, interspersed with scraggly acacias. The tiny villages – if that they were – hid themselves from the road, concealed by screens of grass and thorn branches some distance away. But each one announced itself by the rolled mats of woven grass lying on the side of the road, waiting to be collected.

  From time to time, a large sign declared that the road would soon be upgraded by MTR-GOSS, contracted by the Ministry of Internal Works for South Sudan, but there was no sign of any work being done. Gabriel leant his head against the side of the door and tried to drift into indifference, but the jolting of the road and the cloying dead animal next to him prevented his escape.

  Their progress was slow and much of the time seemed to be spent on the wrong side of the road, negotiating massive pools and bogged-down trucks. But it wasn’t the poor driving, or the state of the road, that worried him. It was, he realised, the complete lack of any sign of organised human endeavour. They weren’t drifting from one hedgerowed borough to another. Once they had left Juba, all semblance of governance ceased. There were no signs, no petrol stations or convenience stores; there was barely an identifiable road. His cellphone registered no signal. The radio was now completely dead. A collision or breakdown would not bring an officious traffic officer with blue lights flicking and pen readied to take notes. Nor any paramedic to ease his pain and bandage his wounded forehead. Gabriel’s visions of undeveloped nations had always conjured chaos, not emptiness.

  Then, outside yet another small village, they drifted to a halt at a roadblock. A lone policeman, dressed in navy-and-white camouflage, stepped out from the shade of an acacia and poked the front of the vehicle with lazy suspicion. His machine gun swung from his khaki belt as he bent over to look at the registration plate. He wandered over to Kamal and conducted a short conversation which seemed to end ambivalently. The policeman then made his way – at an agonisingly slow pace – around the front of the car until he was level with Alek. He was more animated in his discussion with her, a half-hearted attempt at frivolity – if not flirtation – in the dementing heat.

  Finally, his gaze turned to Gabriel. He stared at him for an uncomfortable length of time, uncomprehending.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Professor Gabriel Cockburn.’ As if that answered everything.

  The man considered this, processing the information as if he’d been told something of great significance. Then: ‘Where are your papers?’

  Gabriel dug into the side of his camera bag and produced his passport. The policeman didn’t bother to take it. ‘Not your passport. I want your papers. Your papers.’

  Gabriel shook his head.

  ‘Your papers! Who are you? UN, WFP, Médecins Sans Frontières? Are you from the church? Papers!’

  Alek intervened and said something to the man in Arabic. He laughed, and then grinned at Gabriel in a way that made him feel more nervous. Gabriel smiled back. This only made the policeman laugh more, his mouth opening all pink and self-satisfied. The large woman next to Gabriel scowled and pushed the parcel further towards him, the goat’s head now nudging up against his side.

  More animated conversation followed, but the policeman’s attention was clearly now taken up with Alek once more. The others sat immobile in the late-morning heat while the two of them performed their dance about each other, laughing and touching and showing their teeth like two hyenas negotiating their way out of a cul-de-sac. And then it was over. The armed man gave a little mock bow and waved them on, though there was nothing in the road to have stopped their progress in the first place. Nothing but the whizz of a Kalashnikov from behind.

  Gabriel did not ask what had been said, and Alek said nothing, nestling her head down into the crook of her arm and seeming to drift off into sleep. His oversized travelling companion kept trying to make more room for herself, as if she wanted to stretch out prostrate on the back seat and re
sented Gabriel for preventing her from doing so. A fly buzzed against the back window. The heat bore down on him.

  Ten minutes later, the woman said something to Kamal. And then without warning they left the road with such ferocity that Gabriel thought for a moment that they were having an accident. They plunged between the bushes on a barely discernible path, the branches smacking against the bonnet. Gabriel sat upright, gripping the tattered underside of the seat. A branch slapped across the open window, its edges swishing inches past his face. Alek did not stir.

  A small collection of huts came into view, and the Land Cruiser braked hard, coming to a stop in a swirl of dust. To Gabriel’s relief, their passenger heaved herself out, pulling her parcel away from Gabriel as if he had designs on ownership. Money changed hands, scrunched-up dirty rags of paper clasped and gripped and ferreted away. This wasn’t the deal. Gabriel was paying for the vehicle, the driver, the fuel. Kamal didn’t look at him, but instead went to the back of the vehicle and opened the tailgate. A man appeared with a struggling goat, front and back legs tied, its back arching in protest. It was slid unceremoniously along its spine into the back of the vehicle. A second trussed-up quadruped followed, and then the back was closed up. Their hooves knocked loudly on the side panels in the back. More conversations and instructions followed before Kamal climbed back into the driver’s seat.

  ‘We’re not running a taxi, Kamal,’ Gabriel said over the noise of the goats writhing behind him. It sounded thin and ungenerous, here in the barrenness of South Sudan.

  Kamal did not react, save to turn the ignition key and navigate their way back onto the narrow track, and then the road north.

  * * *

  It was past midday when they reached the town of Yirol. By Gabriel’s calculation, they ought to have been there hours earlier, but the progress on the roads had been unrelentingly slow, and Kamal’s frequent, unplanned stops had retarded their headway. Gabriel was grumpy by the time they pulled up alongside a small tea shop in the unremarkable town. The fungal itch had spread to the underside of his toes now. The mosquito bites from sitting outside the night before had rubbed open against the rough seat and were weeping down his forearm. The moment they stopped, the dense heat drew in around him like a blanket.