Ethiopians had shelled the Egyptians. The vast foreign farms in Sudan, Mozambique, Ethiopia, the Congos
and Algeria had been ransacked again by the starving and the Islamic militia groups. Saudi Arabian grain convoys leaving Sudan had been attacked and looted. Mercenaries had responded. In the
broadcasts a lot of dead people were lying in the various reddish soils of the African continent. A loose and volatile confederacy of rebel leaders had accused South Africa of hoarding food.
But what worried the father more than anything, what actually made him close his eyes, was the news that the sixty million hectares of arable land leased to foreign powers in Africa were now
producing crop yields of grain that were down by sixty per cent.
The number made the father feel sick. Even the abandonment of most foreign-owned livestock and biofuel farming interests, two decades before, in order to grow drought-resistant grains, had come
too late for Africa. The quick and irreversible slide into starvation, collapse and evacuation, across the entire continent and beyond, seemed as contagious as the two new pandemics.
A strain of SARS coronavirus was thriving in teeming Asia. They were calling the new bug SARS CoV11. Broadcasts switched between this and the Gabon River Fever in West, North and Central Africa,
where cameras peeked through the side of shanty houses and viewed what looked like colourful sleeping bundles at rest on the earth. Towns of driftwood and corrugated iron were eerily still. Clumps
of thin people lay against each other at the side of unsurfaced roads, unmoving. Men holding guns had rags tied around their noses and mouths. A child lay still against the depleted breasts of its
mother. Bulldozers made great rents in red soil. Bodies inside plastic sacks were rolled into the pits. Black smoke fumed from pyres that men tended with long sticks like shepherds of old. An
airport in yellow smog in Korea. Armed police and men in white suits gathered around grounded planes. Technicians squeezed liquid into trays from pipettes. Freight trucks idled at roadblocks. More
face masks. China, the Philippines, Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, the east of India: they were all coming down hard and fast with the bug.
In other news, Russia and China expelled more of each other’s diplomats and imposed new sanctions upon one another over Siberia. Not too far away, there had been another coup in Pakistan,
on account of the long-term fresh-water crisis, where men continued to stamp on Indian flags with sandalled feet, strike their heads with their own hands, and kick up the white dust from the ground
of their arid country, while a large group of Indian generals crowded behind a podium to face the press.
Eventually, by the fourth day of his confinement, the father preferred to sit in silence with the media switched off.
ELEVEN
Scarlett Johansson called the father at seven p.m. on the sixth day.
Naked, he was standing at the foot of the bed and slowly raising his left arm away from his body, sideways first, then to the front, as if he was performing some slow semaphore for landing
aircraft. From what he could gather from the myriad online sites that he’d visited, his shoulder was probably not broken but deeply bruised; at worst the bone was chipped. If there was no
fracture his left arm would still need to rediscover mobility before it seized. Around his arm and back, the red and black flower was turning green and yellow. Progress.
‘The man you shot was called Nigel Bannerman. He and Bowles were tight in prison . . .’ Scarlett listed the man’s crimes and the father closed his eyes as they were recited.
‘We reached out to sympathetic individuals in your area to check on developments. There is some good news: the case will remain open, but it will be absorbed into a variety of unsolved
murders going cold.’
‘Thank God.’
‘You better had. The murder squad’s caseload down there is unmanageable, so this will not be
and Algeria had been ransacked again by the starving and the Islamic militia groups. Saudi Arabian grain convoys leaving Sudan had been attacked and looted. Mercenaries had responded. In the
broadcasts a lot of dead people were lying in the various reddish soils of the African continent. A loose and volatile confederacy of rebel leaders had accused South Africa of hoarding food.
But what worried the father more than anything, what actually made him close his eyes, was the news that the sixty million hectares of arable land leased to foreign powers in Africa were now
producing crop yields of grain that were down by sixty per cent.
The number made the father feel sick. Even the abandonment of most foreign-owned livestock and biofuel farming interests, two decades before, in order to grow drought-resistant grains, had come
too late for Africa. The quick and irreversible slide into starvation, collapse and evacuation, across the entire continent and beyond, seemed as contagious as the two new pandemics.
A strain of SARS coronavirus was thriving in teeming Asia. They were calling the new bug SARS CoV11. Broadcasts switched between this and the Gabon River Fever in West, North and Central Africa,
where cameras peeked through the side of shanty houses and viewed what looked like colourful sleeping bundles at rest on the earth. Towns of driftwood and corrugated iron were eerily still. Clumps
of thin people lay against each other at the side of unsurfaced roads, unmoving. Men holding guns had rags tied around their noses and mouths. A child lay still against the depleted breasts of its
mother. Bulldozers made great rents in red soil. Bodies inside plastic sacks were rolled into the pits. Black smoke fumed from pyres that men tended with long sticks like shepherds of old. An
airport in yellow smog in Korea. Armed police and men in white suits gathered around grounded planes. Technicians squeezed liquid into trays from pipettes. Freight trucks idled at roadblocks. More
face masks. China, the Philippines, Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, the east of India: they were all coming down hard and fast with the bug.
In other news, Russia and China expelled more of each other’s diplomats and imposed new sanctions upon one another over Siberia. Not too far away, there had been another coup in Pakistan,
on account of the long-term fresh-water crisis, where men continued to stamp on Indian flags with sandalled feet, strike their heads with their own hands, and kick up the white dust from the ground
of their arid country, while a large group of Indian generals crowded behind a podium to face the press.
Eventually, by the fourth day of his confinement, the father preferred to sit in silence with the media switched off.
ELEVEN
Scarlett Johansson called the father at seven p.m. on the sixth day.
Naked, he was standing at the foot of the bed and slowly raising his left arm away from his body, sideways first, then to the front, as if he was performing some slow semaphore for landing
aircraft. From what he could gather from the myriad online sites that he’d visited, his shoulder was probably not broken but deeply bruised; at worst the bone was chipped. If there was no
fracture his left arm would still need to rediscover mobility before it seized. Around his arm and back, the red and black flower was turning green and yellow. Progress.
‘The man you shot was called Nigel Bannerman. He and Bowles were tight in prison . . .’ Scarlett listed the man’s crimes and the father closed his eyes as they were recited.
‘We reached out to sympathetic individuals in your area to check on developments. There is some good news: the case will remain open, but it will be absorbed into a variety of unsolved
murders going cold.’
‘Thank God.’
‘You better had. The murder squad’s caseload down there is unmanageable, so this will not be
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