Devil’s Harvest Read online

  ‘Is that me? An ugly old man trying to charm his way around? I have no desire to lay any hand on you.’

  ‘I told you before, I am no one’s bamba and you cannot charm your way around me. But that’s not what I mean. I mean you have no mirror. It’s a long time since you looked at yourself.’

  * * *

  The night was marked by incessant mosquito attacks and a droning snore from one of his roommates. The man lay on his back in his underpants and with every inhalation a long, deep moaning sound emanated from his throat, like a persistent death rattle. Eventually Gabriel drifted off, but his sleep was plagued by awful images. Just before dawn he dreamt of a field of flowering Arabidopsis, a yellow carpet stretching into the distance like a sunflower farm in Kansas. But Alek was in the field, walking towards him and laughing, the flesh peeling from her face to reveal bone, her teeth chattering loosely in her gums. He woke with a start, for a moment unsure whether he was still asleep as his eyes travelled around the windowless room.

  He started the day with another cold shower. The water flowed over his tired face as he tried to expel the residual images of the night. He consoled himself with the prospect of a quick flight back to Juba from Wau. Now even the accommodation at the White Nile Lodge seemed inviting. He grimaced at the sight of his mangled toes and dried each digit with the ends of the towel.

  His arrival at the Land Cruiser was met with unfriendly silence. Alek had put some scented oil on her body which masked the smell of Kamal for a while. She looked fresh and rested after a night in her own room, but it seemed the driver had elected not to make use of the ablution facilities on offer. The aroma of vanilla and musk was no match for the intensity of Kamal’s body odour and soon the familiar sour stench returned. Gabriel sighed to himself; after the tetchy exchange the night before it was wiser to say nothing about their driver’s abysmal hygiene.

  The road from Rumbek was far better, having benefited from deep drainage ditches dug with Caterpillar diggers along either side. In places, the ditches had overflowed onto the road, but the mud was less treacherous than before. They were still slowed by herdsmen on the road, but they reached the small town of Tonj by midmorning.

  A river – in places more than sixty feet wide – flowed past the town, ferrying long canoes made from single boughs of trees, fishermen steering from behind. A group of men and women, dressed in white robes, stood on the riverbank in prayer, a tall cross held in place by two of them. Gabriel watched as one of them walked into the water, in her robes, and slowly immersed herself. Huge ground hornbills, their feathers scruffy and the wattle beneath their beaks fiery red, stalked about the banks as if part of an invited audience waiting for her to re-emerge.

  Kamal stopped at a tea stall for refreshments, at Gabriel’s expense again. Alek cut two mangoes into squares on a plastic plate and shared the pieces, the juice dripping to the ground at their feet. Despite his tiredness, the easier road and relative coolness of the morning lightened Gabriel’s mood. Alek, too, seemed less surly, almost as if she regretted her previous outburst. She offered him the last piece of mango, which Gabriel gratefully accepted, gripping the slippery flesh with his fingers. There was no smile, but at least a softening of her expression as she watched him battle to bring it to his mouth. Eventually, he had to gulp at it, like a fish.

  Again Kamal pulled out the dirty plastic pot and smeared a finger-full of its content across his gums.

  ‘What is that stuff?’ Gabriel asked Alek.

  Alek addressed Kamal in Arabic and the man handed the pot to Gabriel. It contained some kind of plant material, pulverised to a soupy gel that smelt a little sour but was otherwise inoffensive.

  ‘What’s it for? Did he say?’

  ‘Tooth pain. It’s a common plant; he says he can show you it.’

  Kamal seemed unusually animated and once he’d retrieved his pot of medicine he gestured for Gabriel to follow him. After a brief discussion with the owner of the tea room, he escorted Gabriel around the back of the dwelling. A patch of various plants and root vegetables had been marked out, the plants growing with various degrees of success. Kamal pointed out a plant with a green speared head speckled with yellow flowers. Justicia flava, Gabriel observed.

  ‘Ah, yes, I know the plant,’ he said, pulling the plant head through a gently made fist. ‘In English we call it a “shrimp flower”. Or “yellow justice”.’

  ‘Yellow justice …’ Gabriel hadn’t realised that Alek was standing behind him. ‘That’s a good name for it.’ She translated the name into Arabic for Kamal, who was very excited by the revelation, nodding his head up and down.

  Kamal then took Gabriel by the arm and tugged him further along into the small patches of cultivated fields. A large tree, its branches bushed out in a shaggy array of green-grey leaves like the unkempt hair of an ageing hippie, had pride of place. Furry seeds hung heavy from the ends of its branches. Its flower reminded Gabriel of passion fruit, a star of stamens with a dark-purple centre.

  ‘Desert date tree or Egyptian myrobalan,’ Gabriel said with some pride. Kamal seemed disappointed by this, so Gabriel tried its Latin name. ‘Balanites aegyptiaca.’

  ‘It’s called heglig here,’ Alek translated. ‘Or hidjihi. Kamal says he uses it for blood-sugar problems. My aunt used the bark and fruit to protect again the bilharzia snails in the river. When we were young, we said the fruit pods were actually … you know, the male part of the bull?’ There was an endearing flash of embarrassment. ‘Anyway, there will be a heglig tree in every village in this area.’

  Gabriel picked up a fallen pod and rubbed off the outer layer with his thumb as they walked back to the car. The skin shone smoothly by the time he had climbed back into his seat.

  They continued for another few hours before pulling off at a small village for lunch. The landscape was punctuated by strange round structures, carapaces with stick-like legs, some with cattle inside them, but many empty, the ground around them flattened by animals’ hooves. They looked to Gabriel like giant beetles, giving the environment a slightly futuristic feel.

  ‘Zaraib al-hawa,’ Alek said, unprompted. ‘Arabic for house … made of air. It’s for cattle. We call them turtles because they look like a turtle out of water. These ones have smooth legs, but the real zaraib you’ll see up north are made from the branches of thorn trees. Very good protection for the cattle.’

  They parked under a large neem tree for shade. Kamal went off to talk to the villagers about organising some food and Gabriel walked across the road into the field to look at the zaraib. The workmanship was simple but sturdy, the ‘shell’ packed with grass and mud to make it watertight. The smooth legs were sunk deep into the ground and close together, save for an opening for the cattle to enter, a wire-and-wood door leaning to one side. Beyond the last enclosure Gabriel noted a sorry-looking field of sorghum, the plants wilted and browning. A telltale flush of pink flowers stained the rows.

  An elderly man stood at the edge, leaning heavily on a long stick and picking at the plants disconsolately. His face was deeply wrinkled and his clothes draped on his thin body.

  Gabriel held out his hand in greeting. He had not yet mastered the Arabic exchanges. The man nodded and reciprocated with a soft handshake. Gabriel pointed to the dying field of grain. The man in turn opened his palms to the heavens and shrugged. It was in the hands of the gods.

  ‘You have a parasite,’ Gabriel said, recognising the plant from his third-years’ curriculum. ‘Striga hermonthica. Witch weed.’

  The man smiled back at him, only a few teeth remaining, stained and skew. ‘Dura,’ he said, casting his hand in the direction of his field. Gabriel leant forward to the nearest plant and pulled a parasitic striga plant out of the ground. As it wrenched from the earth, its roots pulled the sorghum out with it. It had intertwined itself with the crop below ground, infiltrating its host’s nutritional system. He showed it to the man, who nodded knowingly. ‘Buda,’ he said.

  Gabriel gestured for the man to wait fo
r him and he trotted back across the road to find Alek. She came, surprisingly willing.

  ‘Tell him the striga plant is burrowing into the root of the sorghum, stunting its growth,’ he said when they reached the field.

  Alek held up her hand for him to stop and translated for the farmer. He seemed not to follow at first.

  ‘Sorry, he is Dinka Gok, so the dialect is different.’

  Alek persevered and the man nodded, looking at the example that Gabriel had pulled up. Gabriel showed him how the roots of the parasite had embedded themselves in the main root of the sorghum plant.

  ‘You must explain to him, once the striga gets to this size, and gets into the root of the sorghum, it’s too late. You see, if you pull it out now it’ll pull the sorghum plant out with it. You must pull them out when they are still small. It’s the only way.’

  A long conversation ensued between Alek and the farmer. It appeared that he was questioning Gabriel’s credentials on the subject. Gabriel heard the word ‘professor’ articulated a few times. The man nodded in acceptance, his eyes flitting across Gabriel’s face.

  ‘Alek, ask him what they do now with the weeds that they pull out.’

  The answer came quickly. ‘They feed it to the cattle. They mix it with the fruit pods from the haraz trees as fodder.’

  ‘Okay, that’s what I thought.’ He’d seen it referred to in the research coming out of Kenya. ‘The problem is that the cattle distribute the seeds in their faeces.’

  Alek frowned at the word.

  ‘Their poo. The seeds go through their system and come out in their poo, and then they grow again. So you spread the problem. You have to pull the plants out – while they’re small – and then burn them. Don’t feed them to the cattle. Tell him.’

  Alek smiled. For the first time since they had left Juba, crinkling the skin at the sides of her eyes and showing the edges of her protruding teeth. She turned to the farmer and explained Gabriel’s advice. The man leant on his stick and listened, looking from Alek to Gabriel and back again. Then he laughed and jabbed a finger at Gabriel.

  ‘He says thank you. He’ll try and see if it makes a difference. He says you must have very big fields of dura in your village. Now we must come and eat with him.’

  They returned to the village, the elderly man leading the way to his homestead. They sat on cut tree stumps outside his simple home while his wife fussed with a pot over the fire. When it was ready the pot was put before them and they helped themselves to fingers of okra.

  ‘Bamia,’ Alek said. ‘Ladies fingers. That’s what we called them when I was little. We used to like the idea that we were eating some fancy ladies’ fingers, one by one. I think it was my mother’s way of getting us to eat it. Mothers are clever in that way.’

  Gabriel thought back to his own mother. He could not think of an example at first, and then he said, ‘Frog’s eggs.’ The words blurted out. ‘My mother used to get us to eat something called tapioca. Little round balls that didn’t really have any taste. But she called it “frog’s eggs” and so immediately I was interested to eat them. You’re right, mothers are clever that way.’

  Alek smiled again – twice in a day, Gabriel noted – and translated the story for the farmer and his wife. They both laughed politely, but Gabriel wondered if they could possibly comprehend the concept of English cuisine and the strange role performed by opaque balls of manufactured starch boiled in milk.

  ‘What about your brothers and sisters? Did they also like these eggs?’ Alek still had the trace of a smile on her face.

  ‘I was an only child.’

  Alek looked puzzled.

  ‘I don’t have brothers or sisters. I was on my own in my family.’

  The smile had faded and Alek looked down. Gabriel noted that she did not translate this piece of information for their hosts. It seemed to sadden her, as if he’d disclosed some terrible suffering. She remained quiet even once the meal was over and they had said their goodbyes.

  They journeyed in silence for a while, Gabriel watching the conicalroofed huts of the Dinka villages and the cattle byres.

  ‘I cannot imagine to be one child in a family,’ Alek said after a while. ‘How is it a family with one child? It’s the beginning of a family, yes perhaps, but it’s not a family yet. We have a saying: “A single bracelet does not jingle.” There is a loneliness in you that I see that comes from being the seed of a family but never growing into the tree.’

  Gabriel did not answer. She had spoken softly and without malice, and yet she had struck deeply. He had never thought of his childhood as lonely, the long periods spent on his own tracking through the forests, identifying mushrooms at the feet of pines and oaks, observing the miniature lives that played out in pools collected in the drying streams. He had been content to play in his isolated imagination, making stick figures and boats to launch across the duck pond. Yet as he grew into adulthood he became aware that he was regarded as a loner, and that he was socially awkward, often expressing himself in phrases that were wrapped up in his mind, not easily unravelled by casual listeners. He couldn’t say if siblings would have resulted in a different outcome – perhaps this was how he was always meant to be – but he knew that many saw him as aloof, mistaking his solitude for judgement or displeasure. A single bracelet does not jingle. Certainly jingling was not something that would come easily to him.

  The town of Wau turned out to be far larger than Gabriel had imagined, a bustling place similar in many ways to Juba, but cleaner and less overwhelmed by Western aid. The road entering the town was wide enough for three lanes of traffic in each direction – not that the road bore any markings – and the sides were taken up by stalls and cattle markets. Boda boda taxis rushed back and forth and donkeys pulled wooden carts resting on old car axles. A vast river stretched out on the right, easily the size of the White Nile, with islands of greenery dotting its course. The far side was blurred by reeds and matted growth, but the bank on the town side was bare, cattle and human traffic denuding it entirely. A communal water pump was chugging away, dripping fuel and dirty water into a channel that ran back into the river. Donkeys queued patiently in the sun, pulling specially designed carts consisting of two oil drums welded together into a tube. The day’s feed – tight bundles of grass – was tied to the axle and several of the donkeys were adorned with tassels and caps.

  ‘The Jur River,’ Alek announced. ‘“Jur” is a Dinka word for a non-Dinka person, an alien.’ Her face was deadpan when she said it. ‘Imagine naming your river after your enemy? You’re right to think this country is crazy. We’re all crazy here.’

  The road wound its way towards the river and Gabriel watched two men throwing finely woven nets in the shallows. Some of the stalls on the side of the road had small piles of silver fish, lying head to tail on top of one another. Behind the stalls, many of the buildings seemed damaged, roofs collapsed inwards and walls pockmarked with holes.

  ‘Last year, the fighting was heavy between the army and the Nuer rebels,’ Alek explained, seeing him staring at a building with fist-sized holes punched through its brickwork. ‘Just because we have seceded together doesn’t mean we can live together.’

  Gabriel tried to imagine the street – now busy and industrious – emptied of everyone but soldiers, the artillery shells screaming through the air. Wau was unlike any of the small towns they had passed. There was a tension, the sense of a town used to a military presence. Many people on the street wore some kind of uniform, and truckloads of soldiers drove by, machine guns strapped to their backs. Gabriel looked at the women pushing wheelbarrows piled with breadfruit, the skin a knobbly green and the cut flesh white and glistening. They would all have been part of the conflict, in one way or another. Tall posters of President Salva Kiir Mayardit had been erected at intersections, his defining brimmed hat in place, each one bearing a different message of hope, or a plea for peace.

  A convoy of three UN-marked Land Cruisers drove past, their towering aerials like deep-s
ea fishing rods connected to the front bumpers, the occupants dressed in military uniform and wearing the distinctive blue helmets.

  ‘They say you can never be at home in Wau,’ Alek continued. ‘It’s because it is the point where so many different peoples meet. It’s a centre where everyone comes to trade and get transport, but it’s not a home for anyone. Even the refugee camp here is only a transit camp.’

  A traffic policeman, dressed in white-and-grey camouflage, stopped them and asked for identification. His neck and cheeks also showed ritual scarification, thin parallel lines of keloid running across his face. The inspection was cursory and he saluted Gabriel as they drove on. Gabriel wondered if he’d been mistaken for some kind of dignitary.

  He asked Kamal to pull up outside a small branch of the Equity Bank. A donkey stood with its load of water dripping outside the entrance, a faded UNHCR cap on its head with holes cut out for its elongated ears. He needed to exchange some more British pounds, but the bank was also his best chance of finding someone who could understand him. The interior was cool and clean, and, as luck would have it, the teller spoke excellent English. After a short enquiry, she was able to give him the information he needed.

  ‘I’d like to treat us to some better accommodation tonight,’ Gabriel said as he climbed back into the Land Cruiser. ‘For our last night.’

  ‘You didn’t like sharing your bedroom with truck drivers then?’ Alek asked lightly.

  She pointed to a large billboard alongside the bank. It appeared to be the plan for a town, the layout of the residences divided into strange blocks. The signboard announced that the ministry of housing, physical planning and environment was proposing to configure the city of Wau in the shape of a giraffe. Alek started to laugh. Gabriel joined in, shaking his head.