At last Dr Sherif Taha put the phone down.
‘I have your address, do I not? I shall collect you at seven o’clock this evening.’
Prim, delighted, rose when he did, shook his hand hurriedly, and left at once. Beyond the gate, she heard him call another patient and close the front door of his surgery. Walking to the Austfam truck with emphatic steps, she talked almost aloud to herself on an empty pavement.
‘No chance,’ she said. ‘Forget it. No bloody chance …’
Dr Sherif Taha arrived outside the Austfam office–residence at the promised hour. Prim had been looking out for him from the window of her small sitting room above the office. She had dressed for her visit to the presidential aide in the style she had adopted for the visit in el Fasher to Colonel Unsa, although this dress was her normal floral one, which fell below the knee. She wore no make-up, and her hair was brushed back but uncovered. She did not move from her window until Sherif came in through the unlocked gate and knocked on the office door downstairs. Running her hands over her skirt, she descended into the darkened office to meet him. As she neared the front door, she rubbed her cheeks, for she suspected she might have developed a fatuous paleness. When she unlocked it she was pleased to rediscover him in all his long bones and tallness. She felt as surprised as if she had not been expecting him. She saw his smile.
‘Ah, wise Miss Bettany,’ he said, assessing her. ‘I was intending to advise you to dress conservatively, but you are such an old hand that you did.’
He strode ahead of her out through the gate and to his car, opening a rear passenger door for her.
‘Miss Bettany,’ he said, ‘some of these gentlemen bureaucrats are old-fashioned. It might be easier for us if you sit in the back for our grand entry.’
She slid into the back, adopting the pose appropriate to a chauffeured woman. The antique green Mercedes was full of that potent leathery and chemical smell which the sun of equatorial countries calls forth from upholstery. There were no fussy seat belts to worry with. The Sudanese took the view that war, malaria, malnutrition or dysentery were more likely to end a life than vehicular collision.
Sitting in front of her by the big, knobbly steering wheel, Sherif Taha seemed familiar to Prim, as if this were not a first journey with him but one in a series.
He drove at a ceremonial pace, and ceremoniousness seemed the mark of his character. He was steering north, out of the New Extension and along dusty Sharia el Muk Nimir towards the railway.
The triangle of land between the south side of the Blue Nile and the east bank of the White had been the official centre of Khartoum since the Egyptians had taken over Sudan in the 1820s. Their adobe buildings were long gone, however, and the broad, riverbank streets like Sharia el Nil reminded Prim of Australian country towns, often laid out by nineteenth-century British army engineers in avenues wide as a football ground. The British had also left in Khartoum their stone and brick two-or-three-storey, wide-verandahed administrative buildings. After independence, the new government had continued to find them suitable, and a large compound of these buildings, halfway between the Grand Hotel and the University of Khartoum, housed the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Police.
Here Sherif drove up to a gate and, leaning out of his car window, with casual grace talked a khaki-clad guard into admitting them. At the top of a set of steps flanked by a dusty garden, a junior bureaucrat in a western suit was waiting for them and ushered them along white corridors, and after knocking, took them into a three-windowed office. This contained a tall, tranquil man in an immaculate white thobe-like gown who stood waiting by a desk. He seemed slighter than Sherif, but they shared a family resemblance and possessed the same air of composure.
Dr Hamadain lowered to the desktop some papers he had been reading and came forward. The two cousins gave each other salaams and embraced. But Hamadain did not shake Prim’s hand when introduced, keeping a remoter and more professional air. As they sat, hot tea was brought in a large enamel teapot which would have done honour to some dreary office in Whitehall. The old tea man was already pouring white sugar into Prim’s glass, and she held up her hand to restrain him when perhaps three spoonfuls had landed in it. This was considered a restrained use of sugar by any Sudanese, and the old man frowned at the odd ways of foreigners.
As soon as the cousin was behind his desk, and had taken a sip of tea, Sherif began.
Miss Bettany, he explained, while recently visiting a refugee camp for Southerners, had beheld in the general populace signs of distress. ‘I think she is a reliable person, and on that basis, I bring her in contact with you.’
Prim was left to tell her own story, which she did with a dry mouth. She brought out photographs collected that afternoon from Stoner, and Dr Hamadain consulted them. She had a sense that they fortified somewhat her own equivocal, Western voice. ‘As you see, there are women and children on the road with their menfolk. By all accounts that is exceptional.’ She explained how she and her colleagues had decided to investigate northwards towards el Fasher, a region which though less populous had traditionally had a struggle to produce its grain needs. She was careful to use phrases like, ‘so I’ve been told’, after each of her assertions about the nature of the emergency. After all, she was still in her first year in the Sudan.
When she had finished, the president’s aide inhaled, taking his time. ‘We have heard some reports of the failure of rains and a harvest crisis in Darfur. But not on the scale you report. You mention colleagues. Were you travelling with other people?’
‘I was travelling with Fergal Stoner, the EC man.’
A half smile came over Dr Hamadain’s lips. ‘Did he ask you to come here?’
‘No,’ said Prim, and hoped the lie was not too transparent. ‘But I know he has already informed his headquarters about what he saw.’
‘I suppose,’ said Hamadain, ‘you and Mr Stoner would like to see a reconnaissance in force, approved by the government of the Republic, followed by appropriate emergency action?’
‘And not only Stoner and myself, doctor.’ Subject to the approval of the central government, she said, His Excellency the Governor of the province was willing to see an emergency effort. And so she handed over her letter.
As Sherif’s cousin read the letter, Prim looked to Sherif for some Western-style relief, a wink or a nod. She saw his reposed features, and his eyes fixed on some middle point in the triangle created by himself, Prim, and his cousin.
Sherif’s cousin asked, ‘May I take a photocopy?’ and stood, as if he intended to do the photocopying himself. He did not leave at once, however, conversing in Arabic with Sherif, at a speed at which she could not comprehend. Their manner neither included nor excluded her. Their air of remoteness was, she decided, both off-putting and delicious.
‘Excuse me then,’ said the cousin at length, and left the office by a different door from the one they had entered.
‘How do you think we are going?’ she could not avoid asking Sherif.
Sherif produced his temperate smile. ‘Excellent in terms of this problem,’ he said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘My cousin believes that the president will not be able to resist the threat that such a letter presents. It is a straw in the wind, after all. In writing that letter and sending it through you, Colonel Unsa is signalling his willingness to be replaced rather than continue to tolerate this regime. Unsa, you see, retained a Mandarin exterior and pretended reluctance. But you might have been a godsend to him.’
Prim felt, yet again, a novice. ‘So I have been used as a messenger.’
‘Well, there is politics in it. On the other hand, the governor and you are at one in not wanting the people in the province to suffer.’
‘And where does your cousin fit then?’ Prim asked in a whisper, hoping that this office, unlike all such offices in movies, was not bugged or observed or listened in to in some way.
Sherif did not seem fearful, yet answered in the faint
est of voices. ‘My cousin is barely upset to receive you, Miss Bettany. Like all aides to chief executives, he wishes to make the president more responsive. Just on rainfall figures alone, the president should be aware that something like what you have seen is occurring. And the fact that my cousin has risked confronting a failing president could serve him well in the future.’ He laughed without any ill will, seeing her bemusement. ‘These guys confuse me too, Miss Bettany. Perhaps that is why I’m in disfavour. My last application to travel internally, in my own country, was refused.’
Dr Hamadain returned now, gave her formal thanks, handed back her letter, and did not sit. ‘It is charming to have met you,’ he said. ‘I know that you are not English but in a sense post-colonial like us. I believe your experience has been a more constructive one, and though your nation is characterised by huge tracts of desert like ours, you do not have the lines of the starving, no matter how severe the drought. Thank you for coming to see me.’
The cousins embraced and Sherif led Prim out into the night. When the car was clear of the front gate, Sherif stopped, opened her door and invited her to join him in the front seat. As they drove off again, he was taken by a spate of laughter. ‘Well you’ve solved that one,’ he told her.
‘And you think solving this one will make the others harder?’
‘No. You might get a minor repute for being intrusive. By the way, would you consider asking me to tea at your office?’
‘Certainly,’ said Prim at once. His request had been uttered so gently, without any apparent design.
‘I have a bottle of Scotch under the passenger seat. A flogging offence, of course. I quite like its tang in tea.’ He laughed.
‘Oh,’ asked Prim, delighted, ‘you mean this evening?’
‘Unless the confrontation with my cousin exhausted you.’
‘No, I found it stimulating.’
Above the office Prim’s three rooms consisted of a small kitchen, an L-shaped living room facing the street, and beyond it a bedroom. She was still delighted to have such a place to herself. It was here, upstairs, that tea and whisky should be drunk, rather than in the office downstairs.
She led Sherif up the stairs, stamping her feet too energetically, as if to show that she was used to holding utterly business-like conferences in her living quarters. ‘So what will it be? Tea English-style? Tea Sudanese-style? Or whisky to start?’
‘Tea English-style,’ said Sherif in his utterly silken voice behind her. ‘Then, perhaps, whisky.’
She showed him into the living room. ‘There’s a pile of the Guardian Weekly,’ she told him. ‘Excuse me.’ She went into the kitchen to make the tea. There were just two matching cup and saucer sets amongst the chaotic collection of low-grade china Crouch had left her. She stayed restless in the kitchen until the water boiled and was poured, until the tea drew. Then she carried it to him on a tray, along with some Scottish shortbreads her friend Helene Codderby had given her. As an afterthought, she forced some ice cubes out of the little ice tray in the refrigerator, put them in a bowl, and put one clean glass, then two, near the tea cups.
‘Australian then,’ said Sherif as she brought the tray into the living room. ‘My English friends tell me that Australians are outspoken to a fault. But it does not seem correct in your case, this characterisation, Miss Bettany.’
‘Well, I’m not characteristic, I suppose. My sister, Dimp, is a gloriously outspoken woman and chastises me for being reserved. You see, we consider outspokenness a national strength. She wants me to fit the national mould.’
‘Look,’ he said then, ‘I did invite myself to tea for a specific purpose. There are benefits I believe I may be able to bring you, and vice versa. That camp to which you supply personnel, the one out in Darfur – Adi Hamit, is it? And camps like el Sherif west of town here. These camps already abound but will abound more. Are you equipped to do a comprehensive public health survey of them?’
‘No, I’m being kept busy here. Paperwork. But I’m not equipped even if I had the time. Crouch, my predecessor, told me that a team from the Melbourne office was due to visit me, and all the camps we’re involved in. They would survey them all. But I’ve heard nothing.’
Sherif lifted both hands. ‘Your cold sounds better.’
‘I think that facing Dr Hamadain frightened the bugs.’
‘But back to the surveys. I would very much like to be able to make a useful map of refugee populations – the grief, the skills, the resources people have lost and bring with them, their level of hygiene – the whole story! So not only can you discover how best to assist, but they can discover what to call on in each other. I’m in a position where I need the patronage of some NGO under which to work. It’s sad. When I finished in America, I had my chance to apply for all the big jobs – University of Leicester, University of California at San Francisco.’ He adopted the voice of a rapper. ‘They’s got all the gear, but ah’m here!’
Prim heard herself laugh. She was both relieved and depressed that Sherif had had such a practical motive for coming indoors with her.
Putting down his tea cup, he spoke of how he could save Austfam and other NGOs money – they would be able to identify what people most needed, and which people most needed it. Baseline data, he said. To find skills and strengths within the community. To identify IMR and crude birth rate, and improve the chances of children at birth and up to five years.
Prim’s mind scrambled. IMR. Infant Mortality Rate, she remembered. Sherif was still talking with a sort of dolorous intensity. ‘I can set up questionnaires and train a team right here. Now, for example, for survey purposes, you’ve got an Eritrean engineer in the backyard who can speak Tigrean and Arabic.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He used to be a wardsman at the hospital in North Khartoum. Your friend Crouch brought him out of Eritrea and got him a hospital job before taking him back as his driver. But he could be a skilled member of a survey team. Whatever training he doesn’t have, I can give him. We can do it all, out of this office. Design a 40-minute questionnaire we can put to people – the mothers of refugee families say. And the wonderful thing we could do, Miss Bettany – unlike the Ministry of Health – is that we could share the results with the people we survey, so that they too can make their arrangements. Oh, I know, they’re semi-literate, the despised of the earth. But they have a great eye for any chance of leverage. It would cost Austfam a few thousand dollars a survey. I can send your people my CV and references and past surveys I’ve conducted, and I would, of course, offer my services voluntarily.’
The concept of working with Sherif elated Prim. ‘But surely,’ she asked, ‘there are far more esteemed organisations than ours?’
He shook his head but did not answer. ‘Let’s have some whisky. Will you have some?’ She nodded. It was illegal under Sharia, but a less-than-observant child of the Prophet was urging it upon her. She experienced unbidden daydreams about joint work, of glory accrued in Sydney and Canberra.
She allocated ice to the glasses and he poured for both of them – in each case a middling quantity. The drinks stood untouched as he returned to the topic.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’ll probably be no end of epidemiologists and public health experts turning up in the Sudan. What a juicy study it makes, after all! Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Oxford, so on. But I want my little, half-dead institute, which I started on a Ministry of Health contract and a little inherited money from a venerated uncle, to have a place in the record. A Sudanese voice, you see. There will one day be a generation of young Sudanese so strong that they can manage their own future within the world, and I do not want them to say, “Our miseries were counted by the British, by the Americans, by the Italians and the Germans. But where were our own?” I am humiliated by the present situation, which is not of your making, but derives from the dependence, the equivocation of the Ministry of Health. I would, if you would permit it in your reports, like the Sudanese Institute of Epidemiology to be
counted amongst the counters. And I know it will do some good here. The Ministry of Health is surely not interested in the hidden skills within an illiterate refugee community. But I am interested in that because, if the phrase is not too melodramatic, salvation comes from within. Cheers.’ He lifted his whisky, and after sipping, kept it close to his face, savouring its bite, and lazily stirring the ice within it with long fingers.
‘I can train you and Erwit in the evenings on how a survey should be conducted, and the questions asked. You’ll be part of what could be called a Monitoring Committee. So would I. I can also draw in skilled personnel from other locations – from amongst the staff of two Khartoum hospitals, should we need them. And we could use women who are already there, in the camps. In this quack’s humble opinion, local women are good brains for the job of surveys. The women see the young die.’
Prim put her whisky glass down. There had been a great deal happening. The routine of the last few months was to her like a lost garden. Potent intention, not only her own, but Stoner’s and Sherif’s, now ran below the surface of her skin. She had the indecency, even in the light of what she had beheld in Darfur, to be elated by possibilities. She did not dare down her drink. Unlike Dimp, who wanted booze to be part of every moment of exaltation, she was scared her powers of discrimination would be flooded.
She drank some of her tepid tea. ‘Well, I would have to submit these ideas to Austfam. But I can’t see obvious reason why we could not work together.’
‘Well, that’s splendid,’ said Sherif. He sat forward, as if about to leave. ‘No doubt, you wish to call your accomplice, Mr Stoner.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. Her conference with Hamadain had become remote during all this talk of health surveys. ‘He wouldn’t be there, of course. I’ll let him know first thing tomorrow.’