sputum ran down his chin. Henry wiped it away with a tissue, which would be incinerated.
Henry inquired about the other soldiers under his command. There were seven females confined in a separate enclosure. None of them reported symptoms. Officer Chahaya said they had been stationed on the outside of the camp perimeter. Several of the men were dead. Some seemed to be surviving the infection. Henry didn’t expect Chahaya would be one of them.
When Henry came out of the infirmary, he found an Indonesian policeman waiting to make a report. Henry had instructed the Indonesian authorities to round up anyone who had had contact with the internees after the outbreak began. A food service had been contracted to deliver meals to the encampment. The drivers and even the kitchen workers had been placed under observation in a local hospital. Minister Annisa wanted to keep the panic down; rumors were already spreading about a gay disease infecting Jakarta. Hospitals were beginning to fill up with the worried well, bringing their imagined complaints to the emergency room or demanding a vaccination for a disease that hadn’t even been described.
“What about the gravedigger?” Henry asked.
“He dead, sir.”
Henry felt a numbing shock go through him. “How long ago?” he asked.
“Five days, sir.”
Dead for five days, ill for possibly ten. Who knew how many people the man had infected during that time? A full-bore infection team would have to get to work immediately, interviewing family members and anyone they or the gravedigger had come into contact with outside the encampment. That might be thousands of people. If an epidemic was already under way in Jakarta, it would soon make itself known.
“And my driver, Mr. Bambang Idris?”
“He gone, sir.”
“Gone where?”
“Mr. Bambang, he go on hajj.”
7
The Pilgrim
Before he left Jakarta, Bambang Idris paid his debts, the first step in making the pilgrimage. That meant settling up with his brother-in-law for the Toyota. Bambang’s wives helped by preparing ihram—the white clothing that pilgrims must wear—and making Ramadan gift baskets. He begged their forgiveness for all the slights he had inflicted on them. He asked his children to pardon his discipline when he was too harsh or uncaring. He gave up smoking the clove cigarettes that he had been addicted to for decades. One must go to God with a clean soul and nothing more than one’s good deeds.
The strangeness of his first trip on an airplane, being lifted into the air, looking down at the Indonesian archipelago—his homeland, splatters of seventeen thousand green islands that so quickly disappeared in the vast gray ocean—added to the sense of holiness that encompassed him. After his airplane meal, Bambang went to the restroom and changed into his pilgrim’s garments, two seamless pieces of white material, made of terry cloth, one draped over his shoulder and the other wrapped around his waist. The garments were meant to resemble a death shroud. He could feel his nakedness underneath. He removed his socks and shoes and put on a pair of simple sandals. In such attire the rich and the poor were indistinguishable, as they should be in the eyes of God. Finally, Bambang reluctantly removed his hat, which he was otherwise never without, exposing his shiny bald head for all to see.
He felt guilty abandoning the little Western doctor, such a courageous man, going into a place of death like that! Bambang was troubled by the sense that he had betrayed a stranger, which was a severe violation of Islam. Was he really worthy of making a pilgrimage? If only he had not been so frightened. If only he had not rushed away in terror. But he was safe, and wasn’t that something to be grateful for? Wouldn’t God be pleased by his devotion?
Bambang had collected prayers from his family and friends for the day when he would climb Mount Arafat, where God was more likely to grant such requests. They were mainly prayers for health and prosperity. He would pray for a husband for his oldest unmarried daughter. He would pray for the release of his nephew from jail. He would pray to be a better man in the brief time he had left on earth.
He had to study up on some of the prayers. One was the prayer for the dead. With the immense crowds of believers on the hajj, so many of them elderly, people were bound to die. It was to be wished for. But there were catastrophes every year. Sudden stampedes caused by some whimsical panic would sweep