Holy City: Chapter Eight - Part One

A line of trucks moved towards the camp in the morning. They moved like worms on pavement after a night of rain.

There were trucks organized in line ready to move in the opposite direction. All of the military trucks ready to leave. Most of the women and children and men in the camp were asleep during this changeover. The sun had yet to rise, only starting to break the horizon with an orange glow.

After an hour, the sound of mobilization and demobilization had woken everyone. Most of the small children were crying, their cries competing for attention with the noise from the trucks. The old women and the old men in the camp watched the new contractors with unease. The contractors wore uniforms that closely modeled the military’s uniforms. If one squinted and tilted their head slightly they could pretend the military had never left and it was only a different division in charge now.

Everyone was kicked out of the tents. Once the contractors had moved all of their equipment and personnel in everyone was kicked out of the tents and the cots were removed.

“We need to reinforce the structures,” one of the new men announced through a megaphone.

Throughout the day as the contractors worked on the tents, reinforcing them and enlarging them, the women and children and men stood under the sun waiting. By nightfall, the work was done, the tents were reinforced and they were larger as well. More trucks moved towards the camp in the dusky light. A second group of refugees arrived, doubling the number of people in the camp. The scramble for the cots was more intense than the previous night.

Conditions deteriorated. After the second day, the camp was hell. The cots were filled with the sick, turned over on their sides or their stomachs vomiting into the ground. The latrines overflowed so people stopped using the latrines. Excrement, urine and vomit pooled in locations throughout the camp. In the north part of the camp ten feet away from the latrines stood the largest pool, this was unfortunate because the camp sloped southward, the pool flowed down into the tents, creating rivers and tributaries through the sand.

Food was sporadically served. At random intervals a worker would climb on top of the podium in the center of the camp, the one where a soldier had originally tried to divide everyone into groups, and would throw small brown packets and brown packages to the assembled people below. V assumed there was food in those packages, but it could have been medicine to stop the disease from spreading. Either way, there wasn’t enough for everybody.

A large number of people confined in a space together increases the heat. Even in the open air in the desert this is true. For the people in the camp, this was both horrible because it increased the heat to intolerably dangerous levels during the day and necessary because it was the only way to keep warm during the dry cool night when the wind blew strong.

On the third day, the wind did not stop once morning came. Usually, the wind stopped in the morning, but now it increased in velocity. At first, people welcomed this because it lessened the morning heat. But the desert wind didn’t know when to stop and by noon sand was pulled through the air with gusts of wind forming solid sheets that pricked and barbed the skin like a hairshirt.

After an hour, masks were needed to breath. V and the few others who tried to brave the conditions outside the tents used their shirts as masks pulling them up from the bottom to cover their mouths. By two o’clock the wind was too strong and the shirt-masks were no longer enough. The only way to breath was to be in the shelter of the tents. Everyone crowded inside, climbing on top of each other forming human pyramids, crushing bodies underneath. The structures swayed in the strong wind and they swayed from the mass of people inside. Eventually, one of the tents gave way; a crack, a crumble, it was hard to hear what has happening amidst the loud desert gales.

When the tent began to give way, there was a surge of bodies. At first, the corner of the tent opened up because of the scissoring rods briefly creating more room for everybody inside. That space was filled in seconds and then the corner disappeared and long pipes and canvas fell onto dozens of people.

Bodies pushed out of the fallen rubble. Despite the heavy weight of the rods and canvas, it appeared that everyone had survived. There were many injuries, many deep cuts and scrapes which could later become infected and a few broken bones, broken arms and broken legs, but everyone who could walk out of the rubble had walked out of the rubble, some spilling outside into the sand sheets, others pushing against the overwhelming numbers inside the tent.

Then a woman started crying. She was a young woman, more a teenager than a woman, and she let out a scream like the mother who had lost her child a few days before. The crowd pushed against itself, giving her room. Her baby was still underneath one of the pipes. One of the other women, perhaps her mother, had told her the baby was stuck under a pipe and wasn’t breathing.

The contractors were in their trucks or in their enclosed tents outside the camp, so there was no one to fix the collapsed tent until the wind stopped and there was no one to provide medical attention to the injured. The crowd encircled the mother, watching her and feeling sympathy for her or maybe they were feeling relief it wasn’t them or their child.

V didn’t watch the woman like the others. He made his way through the crowd, pushing and dividing it as he moved towards the collapsed corner of the tent. He could see the baby’s hand and part of its head, the tufts of hair amidst the canvas and piping. The hand didn’t move. The head didn’t move. The rest of its body was trapped under a heavy pipe. V crouched down amidst the feet of the crowd, blocking the baby from the others. He pulled the canvas up, giving the two of them privacy like in a medical tent. He put his hands to the baby. His hands enveloped the baby’s head, clasping its cheeks.

The mother was still on the ground surrounded by the crowd, not paying attention to what was happening. V’s head remained over the baby for quite some time. His hands lightly pressing against its chest a few times. It looked like he was whispering to it, but most could not see because the canvas blocked their view.

Most weren’t watching anyway. They were watching the mother, and her mother trying to comfort her. As she grieved the noise would come and go. She would cry loudly and then cry silently, keeping the noise inside, suppressing the pain. But the pain couldn’t be suppressed and she cried again, louder than before. There were cries throughout the corner of the tent, the cries of a mother, the cries of a baby. The high-pitched crying of the baby and the low-pitched wailing of the mother mixed with each other, forming a musical arrangement until the low tones of the mother’s cries went away and the only thing that was left was the falsetto of the baby’s screams.

V turned with the baby in his arms and walked towards the mother who was still lying on the ground, her eyes drying in astonishment. V bent down, taking the mother’s loose robe in his hands and wrapped the baby in the robe and handed it to her.

“She’s fine.” V said.

The mother cried out again, this time in joy, the tears returning to her eyes. She kissed the baby and protected it in her arms, the crowd closed in. V backed away blending into that crowd. Most of them were so focused on the mother and her child that they didn’t notice V as he disappeared. There were a few who did, who kept watch of him as he tried to fade away. V found their stares embarrassing and was soon at the back of the crowd and then he was completely gone, dashing into the wind making his way through the sandstorm to another tent.


Next Chapter: Chapter Eight - Part Two
Previous Chapter: Chapter Seven