further than it could be permitted to stretch. It was not so much an offer of sex she feared. It was that she believed she would find it beyond bearing if she saw in Stoner’s face the same radiant, childlike striving which had characterised Auger in seduction mode.
The next morning an Eyptian pilot from Nile Expeditions Charter turned up by cab and took them out to the edge of the town to a tarred airstrip, a radio beacon above its little white terminal building. As the pilot gathered up their movement permits with their passport-sized photographs attached, and went inside to have a chat about his flight plan, Stoner and Prim sat on chairs by the outer wall, watching as their Cessna was being filled, from a white, cylindrical reservoir of aviation fuel beside the runway, by a chain of young men in galabias and loose white turbans carrying watering cans with the roses taken off. These they handed up to a foreman who stood bare-headed, first on the starboard wing of the Cessna, then on the port. Prim was pleased to see that the Egyptian pilot, when the starboard tanks were full, checked them for water contamination with a gauge he carried.
Beside her on his plastic garden chair, Stoner said, ‘You see that? They don’t have enough foreign exchange to buy a fuel pump for el Fasher. Or they probably have a pump, but, you know, they can’t afford the replacement parts.’ He went on as if this were part of a seamless argument. ‘What do you reckon if I took the liberty of inviting you to dinner at the Rimini?’
The Rimini Hotel in Khartoum was owned by Italians, a family which had been in the city for most of the century. In their dining room white-clad and turbaned Sudanese waiters, resembling to Prim’s semi-informed eye classic Nubians from a film, served tall tumblers of iced lemonade, and plates of robust soup and Nile perch.
He looked at her frankly. ‘Jesus, you’re – you know – such a lovely bird.’
‘Did you run out of courage to say that last night?’
‘Hey, don’t be a hard bitch.’
The idea of his nervousness made her brave.
‘Listen, you’ll get nowhere with the old lines! Besides, I couldn’t go. I’m spending the night with Helene Codderby.’
‘Are you?’ he asked as if he knew it was a lie. He did not seem much disappointed. ‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘But look, one thing I’ve got to tell you for, you know, free. Don’t pursue this slave business.’ She had mentioned to him not only the tale of Abuk Alier the midwife, but the two boys at the governor’s palace. ‘The whole thing’s too arguable,’ he said. ‘Let’s put the question in a, you know, a Western context. Take California say, where you’ll find live-in maids, Mexican, working seven days for $50 a week and board and scared if they make demands they’llbe reported to the immigration people. Say you wanted to make representations about that! Would it be the most fruitful thing to inform press and politicians that this is slavery? People would say, if this is slavery, why are so many men and women crossing the border every night to get in on it?’
Prim said nothing. She felt half-ashamed, like a person being chastised for a pornographic interest.
‘If you so much as shout, “Slave!” no one out there in our world’s going to listen. Whereas they’ll listen to Darfur, see.’
Prim was willing to pretend that he had defused her callow moral imagination. The food crisis was certainly the immediate game. Besides, the pilot, beside whom she sat for the flight, mentioned some chance of a haboob – a sandstorm. For the first hour, however, they traversed the bell of unsullied blue above a sloping plain which ran illimitably down towards the shores of the White Nile. Higher than Jabal Marra, Prim savoured this map of desolation, with every nuance of earth, every wadi, exactly visible. The el Milk, a dry Mississippi, ran hundreds of miles north-south, and a robust play of light defined it, its banks as
The next morning an Eyptian pilot from Nile Expeditions Charter turned up by cab and took them out to the edge of the town to a tarred airstrip, a radio beacon above its little white terminal building. As the pilot gathered up their movement permits with their passport-sized photographs attached, and went inside to have a chat about his flight plan, Stoner and Prim sat on chairs by the outer wall, watching as their Cessna was being filled, from a white, cylindrical reservoir of aviation fuel beside the runway, by a chain of young men in galabias and loose white turbans carrying watering cans with the roses taken off. These they handed up to a foreman who stood bare-headed, first on the starboard wing of the Cessna, then on the port. Prim was pleased to see that the Egyptian pilot, when the starboard tanks were full, checked them for water contamination with a gauge he carried.
Beside her on his plastic garden chair, Stoner said, ‘You see that? They don’t have enough foreign exchange to buy a fuel pump for el Fasher. Or they probably have a pump, but, you know, they can’t afford the replacement parts.’ He went on as if this were part of a seamless argument. ‘What do you reckon if I took the liberty of inviting you to dinner at the Rimini?’
The Rimini Hotel in Khartoum was owned by Italians, a family which had been in the city for most of the century. In their dining room white-clad and turbaned Sudanese waiters, resembling to Prim’s semi-informed eye classic Nubians from a film, served tall tumblers of iced lemonade, and plates of robust soup and Nile perch.
He looked at her frankly. ‘Jesus, you’re – you know – such a lovely bird.’
‘Did you run out of courage to say that last night?’
‘Hey, don’t be a hard bitch.’
The idea of his nervousness made her brave.
‘Listen, you’ll get nowhere with the old lines! Besides, I couldn’t go. I’m spending the night with Helene Codderby.’
‘Are you?’ he asked as if he knew it was a lie. He did not seem much disappointed. ‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘But look, one thing I’ve got to tell you for, you know, free. Don’t pursue this slave business.’ She had mentioned to him not only the tale of Abuk Alier the midwife, but the two boys at the governor’s palace. ‘The whole thing’s too arguable,’ he said. ‘Let’s put the question in a, you know, a Western context. Take California say, where you’ll find live-in maids, Mexican, working seven days for $50 a week and board and scared if they make demands they’llbe reported to the immigration people. Say you wanted to make representations about that! Would it be the most fruitful thing to inform press and politicians that this is slavery? People would say, if this is slavery, why are so many men and women crossing the border every night to get in on it?’
Prim said nothing. She felt half-ashamed, like a person being chastised for a pornographic interest.
‘If you so much as shout, “Slave!” no one out there in our world’s going to listen. Whereas they’ll listen to Darfur, see.’
Prim was willing to pretend that he had defused her callow moral imagination. The food crisis was certainly the immediate game. Besides, the pilot, beside whom she sat for the flight, mentioned some chance of a haboob – a sandstorm. For the first hour, however, they traversed the bell of unsullied blue above a sloping plain which ran illimitably down towards the shores of the White Nile. Higher than Jabal Marra, Prim savoured this map of desolation, with every nuance of earth, every wadi, exactly visible. The el Milk, a dry Mississippi, ran hundreds of miles north-south, and a robust play of light defined it, its banks as
Similar Books
