Lace II (9 page)

“Cubanos?” Mark asked.

The man hissed his last words. “Si.
Viva … re … revolución.”

Four of the dead men were Cubans. One of the corpses wore a neck medallion with Castro’s head on it. The other two enemy corpses were unmistakable Arabs; one had a prayer written in Arabic script on a scrap of cloth tied around
his right wrist. “He asked the Prophet to guide his hand,” explained the officer, tossing away the rag.

“Mercenaries?” asked Mark.

“Sure,” the young officer answered. “Intelligence warned us that the Fundamentalist guerrillas had Soviet equipment. It’s not surprising that they also brought the men to use them.”

He ordered a soldier to carry the damaged explosives down the hillside; they then threw a grenade into the lethal pile and destroyed it.

The four survivors waited until starlight before approaching the nearest village. They entered the settlement with caution and were similarly greeted, then escorted to the headman’s house. A young boy in white came forward and offered a brass bowl of dates. Wearily, Mark pushed the food away.

“You will eat!” the young officer angrily told him. “While you are with my men, you are my responsibility, so you will eat and drink when I tell you.”

Mark apologized. He never remembered his physical needs while he was working; his goal was first to get his pictures, then to get back alive.

“And now we sleep,” the officer told him. Obediently, Mark stretched out with the three soldiers on the mud floor of the hut.

At dawn, Major Khalid drove into the village and Mark shipped out on a truck that was crammed with wounded men. This was going to be a stinking, uncomfortable ride, Mark thought. Then, to his surprise, two black-veiled peasant women also climbed onto the truck. Between them, they carried a seven-year-old girl, her abdomen greatly swollen above filthy swaddled bandages which bound her legs together like a mummy. The child was running a high fever, her eyes rolling upward and her cheeks dry and flaking, as she lay across the legs of the two peasant women.

When the truck reached the hospital, Mark helped to carry the wounded into the building. Then he heaved his kit bag on to his back and set off for the gate. He was almost out of the hospital grounds, when a male nurse ran up to him. “Come,” said the male nurse, “come—take picture.” Mark followed
the male nurse along the hospital corridor. Outside the casualty room stood a gray-haired, tired, skinny woman, with her hands thrust into the pockets of her white coat. “You are a journalist?” she asked Mark.

“Sure.”

“To whom do you sell your photographs?”

“Time, Newsweek
, all the European magazines; my agency sells worldwide.”

“Then I want you to photograph that girl. It must be done without her mother’s knowledge or she will prevent it.”

Mark followed the white-coated woman to a small beige room where the girl lay on a stretcher, her stomach bloated, as if she were pregnant. A female nurse was gently unwinding the bandages that held the child’s legs together. Mark had asked no questions, because the urgency in the doctor’s voice had told him that whatever he was going to see might be important. In silence, he prepared his cameras, while the nurse rigged a drip into the girl’s thin arm; as she increased the volume of the liquid flowing into her vein, the girl slipped into unconsciousness. The smell of septicemia pervaded the small room.

As the bandages were removed, Mark saw a mass of pus and blood oozing between the little legs; her delicate young genitals were caked in a brown paste of what looked like chewed grass. As the nurse gently sponged water over the stinking mass, another nurse held the small dusty feet together, then eased the girl’s thighs apart, allowing the coltish knees slowly to fall outwards.

The lips of the girl’s vulva were speared by a row of long acacia thorns lashed across with black twine. As the caked paste and scabs of blood were washed away from the cat’s cradle of thorns and string, Mark saw cloudy green pus trickling from a tiny opening at the bottom of the closed slit. Quickly, he photographed, as the nurse snipped the threads, picked each piece off with tweezers, then carefully, so as not to break them, pulled the thorns out, one by one. The last thing Mark saw was the child’s mutilated genitals gaping bloody and rotten as the last thorn came out. Then he fainted.

Mark opened his eyes in an emergency room, reached for a kidney bowl and vomited the remains of the previous night’s
milk and dates into it. The woman doctor heard his retching and came over to him. Mark said, “What had they done to that girl? That’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.”

“They made her into good marriage material.” The doctor was unable to keep the fury out of her voice. “A virgin bride and a docile wife. They do that in most of Africa and also some of the most primitive communities in the Arab states. They circumcised her; they deliberately mutilated her genitals. First, they cut out her clitoris and all of her labia minora; a wife that cannot fully enjoy sex is less likely to stray.”

“But who did it?”

“Probably the village midwife used the razor, while the girl’s mother and her sisters held her down. Of course they have no anesthetics. Then, earth or ashes would have been rubbed on the wound to stop the bleeding. Then they sewed her up, as you saw, with thorns and twine. They leave a miniscule opening for urine and menstrual blood. Then they bind her legs together to immobilize them.”

“Why is her stomach so swollen?”

“It is swollen with blackish, foul-smelling blood.”

“But what happens after she’s married?”

“What do you think? Her husband cuts her open with a dagger, then runs around the village, waving the bloodstained blade so they can all see that the bride has just been deflowered. It goes without saying that mutilated women feel severe pain during intercourse, and sometimes the husband doesn’t cut enough, so when the girl has her first child, she splits open like a melon.”

“Are they all … operated on at such a young age?”

“The earlier a child is mutilated, the greater is the damage, since infantile and adolescent masturbation teaches the orgasm.”

Mark heaved a further mouthful of bile into the bowl. “What do you want me to do with the pictures?”

“Photographs may alert the Western World to what is happening here.” The doctor pulled off her heavy-framed spectacles, and rubbed her tired eyes. “I was one of the doctors who gave evidence to the United Nations Commission that investigated female circumcision in the Gulf States, but their report was ignored. However, as you know, a
picture is worth a thousand words. I see cases like that girl every month, some are even worse.” She sighed. “But the government of Sydon, which pretends that this practice no longer exists, would be unable to ignore a photograph in an American magazine. Western pressure would force the Sydonite government to take action.”

“Do you mean King Abdullah?” asked Mark.

“No, not the King. The Department of Health suppresses all information. I think they keep the facts from the King because many of his Western reforms are unpopular.”

Mark felt a quick sympathy for this doctor. Pity for the wretched peoples of the earth was the driving force in his life; however many corpses he photographed, however many of his friends disappeared in combat zones, Mark’s compassion was as profound as it had been ten years earlier when, an idealistic teen-ager, he had run away to his first war. He said, “Before I leave Sydon, I am to photograph King Abdullah. I will try to show him the pictures.” Behind the doctor’s spectacles, Mark saw gratitude and hope.

*   *   *

From his army helicopter, Mark saw Semira on the skyline. The political capital of Sydon rose in tiers of white fortified walls from the green plain that lay below it, on the bank of the country’s only river. As the helicopter flew over the white-domed rooftops, Mark could see the Royal Standard flying from the castellated towers of the Palace that crowned the ancient town. Even though he was stuck in the desert, Major Khalid had been able to pull the necessary strings to arrange Mark’s audience with King Abdullah because Major Khalid wanted full credit for the discovery of the enemy arms dump, the existence of which had been proved by Mark’s photographs.

Mark was conducted by two ADCs into the King’s presence. The King rose from behind his elaborate antique French desk.

“Salaam Alaikum.”

“Alaikum a Salaam
.” King Abdullah preferred the simple traditional greeting of peace to the elaborate extended courtesies which were his birthright, as the fourteenth hereditary ruler of his country. “Intelligence tells me you have been in the Eastern Hills with Major Khalid, and that you are one of
the survivors of the Major’s assault on the guerrillas in Wadi al Hasa. Let’s look at your pictures.”

Mark knew better than to point out that Major Khalid had nothing to do with the success of the operation, as he opened his folder of photographs and spread the still-damp prints on a mahogany table at the side of the room. Mark handed him a magnifying glass and, carefully, the King bent over the shots. “These are really magnificent pictures of desert warfare.” He peered closer at the prints. “You are obviously a brave man, Mr. Scott.” He looked again at the shots of the Soviet arms cache. “As every discontented man calls himself a communist, we could not be sure of Soviet infiltration; we suspected it, but we had no proof. You have done my country a great service. Thank you.”

Mark saw his moment. “Your Majesty, I have some other pictures I would like you to see.”

“By all means.” Swiftly Mark gathered up the pictures that proved Russian intervention in Sydon and replaced them with pictures of the circumcised child being tended by the nurses.

Abdullah looked in silence at the helpless, feverish face and mutilated young body, then softly he demanded, “Who committed this atrocity? What kinds of soldiers are guilty of this perversion?” Mark could see from the faces of the two ADCs that they knew what they were seeing, but that Abdullah’s mistake was genuine.

“Your Majesty, this is not an atrocity committed by the guerrillas,” Mark explained, “this is the result of an infibulation operation on a young girl. I was asked to take these pictures by a doctor at the Dinada hospital.”

Abdullah’s calm was chilling as he walked slowly back to his polished leather wing chair and asked Mark to sit down and tell him about this barbaric practice. He scribbled the doctor’s name on his note pad and ordered one of the ADCs to summon the Minister of Health immediately. The King then fixed the other young ADC with his black glare. “Did you know of this custom?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the ADC stood stiffly at attention. “But it is only practiced by the most primitive peasant women.…”

“Ninety-five percent of our people are primitive peasants.” King Abdullah’s voice was still quiet but his eyes were
angry. “Why was I never told of this? Is there any reason for it?”

“Nothing beyond superstition, Your Majesty,” the ADC answered, “but the Moslem Fundamentalists approve it. There is no reference in the Holy Koran to such a practice, but some of the great learned men of the past regarded the tradition as commendable.”

“May Allah preserve us from the evil that is done in his name.” Abdullah turned back to Mark. “What will you do with these pictures?”

“Offer them to
Time,”
said Mark at once. “They’ll certainly take the shots of the Russian armaments.”

“But what about these?” Abdullah asked, indicating the pictures of the suffering child.

“I’ll also offer them to
Time
, but they may not take them; they’re too shocking.”

Abdullah nodded, sharing Mark’s opinion. “Do you appreciate my difficulty? I can give the order for this practice to cease immediately, and the women will obey me. Thirty years ago no house in Sydon could be repaired, no man could even leave his village, without permission of the King, and the simple people will still obey royal commands without question. The simple people are not the problem. The problem is that if I make a dictatorial gesture, the fanatics will use it to foment revolt. If I am to succeed in stopping this disgusting custom, it must seem as if I am bowing to the will of the people, not trying to impose my will upon them.”

“So you need the Western press to shift the climate of popular opinion?”

“As well as Western politicians, scientists and diplomats.… Have you ever exhibited your photographs in a gallery, Mr. Scott?”

“Yes, I’m with Anstruther’s in New York.”

“Then please arrange a gallery exhibition of these photographs. We will pay for it, of course. Our Ambassador will see you when you get back to America,”

Quietly, a side door opened six inches. King Abdullah’s head jerked round. Two nervous brown eyes looked round the door, then a twelve-year-old boy entered. He was wearing an elaborate miniature white military uniform. King Abdullah
thought his heir should enter the room like a prince, not peer round the door like a servant.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Uncle. I thought you’d finished.” Prince Hassan had been waiting outside the door for two hours, torn between love and dread of his uncle, his guardian, and the King whose throne he would inherit.