discernible as if they brimmed with living water.
But around ten o’clock, and within ten seconds, all the sharpness and clarity of earth vanished. A bottomless grey wall rose before them, an apparently static explosion of earth into air. Its top was close and level with the nose of the aircraft. Prim felt very little turbulence. The great globe of dust seemed too concerned with its own inner physics to give the charter plane a shaking. She avoided asking the pilot whether this moiling ball, huge as a moon, could affect the engines. She knew it could penetrate a scarf and fill a mouth. In Khartoum she had sat with all doors and windows shut against the sibilant pinging of the raging grit, and seen the particles intrude beneath an unplugged rim of door.
‘Time we tried it,’ the pilot cried merrily. He eased the controls imperceptibly forward, and the world vanished. A greyness thicker than cloud pressed up against each window. No margin of air existed between it and the windscreen. The interior of the plane became instantly fierce. For a while Prim played with a ventilator beside her, jiggling and twisting, as if coolness could be persuaded to enter. At ground level in Darfur, the famished moved with game dignity to non-existent succour. In the South forces armed with AK-47s moved against each other with Old Testament fervour. Why should she still believe herself the immortal centre of things?
‘Tell me if you see the ground,’ the pilot cried.
At a little over 2000 feet, give or take the margin of error the pilot was willing to ignore, Prim and Stoner simultaneously saw a road and densely packed houses of mud brick. ‘There, there,’ they both cried. But then the sight was swallowed again, and the pilot took the plane up. Prim felt a strong annoyance. She had discovered the ground for him, and he had lost it on her. Somewhere below, shut in, were the secure comfort of her books, her bed in the corner, her prints of Fred Williams’s Australian landscapes affixed to the wall with little gobbets of dry putty.
But the second descent and attempt to find Khartoum was successful. At 1800 feet they saw again streets of dust and shuttered houses, exquisite in the fog of sand. With restored professional certitude, the pilot banked the plane in air which was now blue-grey, the air of a London winter dusk, though it was still mid-morning in Khartoum. Far out, away to their right, Prim saw Khartoum airport, end-on, all its lights glittering, and wind seemed to blow their aircraft into line with this illumined avenue. The touchdown was accomplished with an almost flamboyant delicacy, and they taxied off to the charter company hangar, the hut which served as company office. A number of charter pilots – Egyptians, Frenchmen who had flown aircraft for the Chaddian forces, handsome Somalis – emerged in company uniforms and epaulettes and began shaking the hand of the Egyptian and clapping him on the shoulder, a fraternal exhibition which seemed to confirm that there had been some peril. The terminal itself lay shut tight. No big jet, with its tendency to ingest birds and debris, could do what the Egyptian’s plane had done.
Landed now in the miasma of this storm, they found the air intolerably dense, scalding and yet still. They took a taxi to Stoner’s office at the EC compound which was empty except for the doorman, who reclined on cement in the corridor. He opened up the office where, beneath creaky fans, Stoner and Prim wrote and faxed further reports of the Darfur emergency to their respective headquarters, asking them to be ready to act, and to use their good offices to alert governments and exploit diplomatic channels.
But Stoner had not quite finished asking Prim for favours. He got the doorman to make them tea and as he and Prim sat in air dense as cotton wool, muttered, ‘I know this other bloke.’
‘What other bloke?’ Prim asked.
‘Well, he’s a Sudanese doctor. Got a practice in Khartoum. Does some
But around ten o’clock, and within ten seconds, all the sharpness and clarity of earth vanished. A bottomless grey wall rose before them, an apparently static explosion of earth into air. Its top was close and level with the nose of the aircraft. Prim felt very little turbulence. The great globe of dust seemed too concerned with its own inner physics to give the charter plane a shaking. She avoided asking the pilot whether this moiling ball, huge as a moon, could affect the engines. She knew it could penetrate a scarf and fill a mouth. In Khartoum she had sat with all doors and windows shut against the sibilant pinging of the raging grit, and seen the particles intrude beneath an unplugged rim of door.
‘Time we tried it,’ the pilot cried merrily. He eased the controls imperceptibly forward, and the world vanished. A greyness thicker than cloud pressed up against each window. No margin of air existed between it and the windscreen. The interior of the plane became instantly fierce. For a while Prim played with a ventilator beside her, jiggling and twisting, as if coolness could be persuaded to enter. At ground level in Darfur, the famished moved with game dignity to non-existent succour. In the South forces armed with AK-47s moved against each other with Old Testament fervour. Why should she still believe herself the immortal centre of things?
‘Tell me if you see the ground,’ the pilot cried.
At a little over 2000 feet, give or take the margin of error the pilot was willing to ignore, Prim and Stoner simultaneously saw a road and densely packed houses of mud brick. ‘There, there,’ they both cried. But then the sight was swallowed again, and the pilot took the plane up. Prim felt a strong annoyance. She had discovered the ground for him, and he had lost it on her. Somewhere below, shut in, were the secure comfort of her books, her bed in the corner, her prints of Fred Williams’s Australian landscapes affixed to the wall with little gobbets of dry putty.
But the second descent and attempt to find Khartoum was successful. At 1800 feet they saw again streets of dust and shuttered houses, exquisite in the fog of sand. With restored professional certitude, the pilot banked the plane in air which was now blue-grey, the air of a London winter dusk, though it was still mid-morning in Khartoum. Far out, away to their right, Prim saw Khartoum airport, end-on, all its lights glittering, and wind seemed to blow their aircraft into line with this illumined avenue. The touchdown was accomplished with an almost flamboyant delicacy, and they taxied off to the charter company hangar, the hut which served as company office. A number of charter pilots – Egyptians, Frenchmen who had flown aircraft for the Chaddian forces, handsome Somalis – emerged in company uniforms and epaulettes and began shaking the hand of the Egyptian and clapping him on the shoulder, a fraternal exhibition which seemed to confirm that there had been some peril. The terminal itself lay shut tight. No big jet, with its tendency to ingest birds and debris, could do what the Egyptian’s plane had done.
Landed now in the miasma of this storm, they found the air intolerably dense, scalding and yet still. They took a taxi to Stoner’s office at the EC compound which was empty except for the doorman, who reclined on cement in the corridor. He opened up the office where, beneath creaky fans, Stoner and Prim wrote and faxed further reports of the Darfur emergency to their respective headquarters, asking them to be ready to act, and to use their good offices to alert governments and exploit diplomatic channels.
But Stoner had not quite finished asking Prim for favours. He got the doorman to make them tea and as he and Prim sat in air dense as cotton wool, muttered, ‘I know this other bloke.’
‘What other bloke?’ Prim asked.
‘Well, he’s a Sudanese doctor. Got a practice in Khartoum. Does some
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