Water is not empty. It is full of us.
In a blistered corner of war-torn Africa, Dr. Eve MacDonald tries to mend what the world has broken, one shattered body at a time. But when a mysterious hydrologist named Juan Ponce de León arrives in her remote Sudanese clinic with a theory so radical it borders on heresy that water remembers that it holds the grief and love and violence of human history. Eve is drawn into a current far stronger than she imagined.
What begins as a humanitarian mission becomes a descent into something far more elemental. As Eve and Juan traverse desert ruins, rebel camps, and ancient riverbeds, the boundary between science and myth dissolves. Haunted by her past and seduced by a vision of salvation that defies logic, Eve must decide whether she will remain a healer or become a vessel for something older, wilder, and dangerously divine.
The History of Water is a genre-defying literary odyssey part spiritual thriller, part love story, part philosophical excavation. With echoes of Ondaatje and Bolaño, it asks: what if memory could never be lost? What if every drop of water still carried the sorrow of those who wept into it?
Water is not empty. It is full of us.
In a blistered corner of war-torn Africa, Dr. Eve MacDonald tries to mend what the world has broken, one shattered body at a time. But when a mysterious hydrologist named Juan Ponce de León arrives in her remote Sudanese clinic with a theory so radical it borders on heresy that water remembers that it holds the grief and love and violence of human history. Eve is drawn into a current far stronger than she imagined.
What begins as a humanitarian mission becomes a descent into something far more elemental. As Eve and Juan traverse desert ruins, rebel camps, and ancient riverbeds, the boundary between science and myth dissolves. Haunted by her past and seduced by a vision of salvation that defies logic, Eve must decide whether she will remain a healer or become a vessel for something older, wilder, and dangerously divine.
The History of Water is a genre-defying literary odyssey part spiritual thriller, part love story, part philosophical excavation. With echoes of Ondaatje and Bolaño, it asks: what if memory could never be lost? What if every drop of water still carried the sorrow of those who wept into it?
The History Of Water
By
Scott Dodgson
Chapter One
They came over the hardpan of the Nubian desert like mirages wavering, shimmering while dust devils leapt like ballet dancers, mocking their misery with a sorrowful roar. Most were women carrying babies wrapped in cloth around their bodies, freeing their hands to check the balance of their belongings resting on their heads. The children that could walk were emaciated, walking skeletons. They cleaved to the skirts of their mothers if they were lucky. Many times, the children hung on to the skirt of a stranger as the civil war took families in a wholesale slaughter. Some children had to be carried, their mouths open and blistered from the desert sun, black flies feasting on the tender skin of their inner lips. This desperate march for life was to reach the safety of Tuna Dbayeh refugee camp and water. Reach the water or die in the desert of dehydration. Water’s importance was amplified beyond normal.
Black flies circled over Doctor Eve MacDonald’s cot, eager for flesh. Parched from breathing in the desert night air, Eve’s body ached. Her eyes were crusty with dried tears. The desert’s fine sand infiltrated every crevice and fold of her body, adding immensely to her discomfort. She ran her fine fingers through her short black hair and exhaled. Before coming to Sudan, she wore her hair in a sophisticated looking French twist. It was her sole homage to her femininity. A week ‘in country’ she violently cut her hair in an act of impulsive frustration, driven by the immense discomfort of the heat, grime, sand, and insects. It was an act of relief without success. Life was a battle, and she was determined to stand on the front line, especially given the scope of despair among the Sudanese women. A French twist seemed like a silly thing.
Eve pushed herself to rise after another restless sleep. Her body throbbed with discomfort, and death lingered just beyond the tent. Even her faith in her surgical skills had begun to flicker. She rose. Three straight days in the operating theater, without pause, went well beyond the natural boost of adrenaline. Deep fatigue combined with the pressure to save a life, and the constant desire for more endurance caused mind numbing exhaustion. Every minute was a grind, and she was a willing grist. Her rest was over, and the thousands of desperate people who kept coming across the desert would eventually visit her. Eve would be their rescuer, and she promised not to let them down.
Eve grabbed a stick from under her cot and waved it around her blood splattered boots, tapping on the toes with a quiet thud. One rather indignant scorpion crawled out and trudged to the edge of the tent, waving its lethal tail in protest. She pulled a cooler out from under her cot. The emergency ice packs were sagging. A bottle of lukewarm water would have to do and from her top breast pocket, she withdrew a plain unmarked medicine bottle and poured two Xanax into her palm. She called them her levelers. She chewed the water, shifting it from side to side in her mouth. It was quicker to hydrate this way through the oral tissue and to wash the cottonmouth away before taking the pills. Eve finished the last swallows of water and tossed the empty water bottle into the corner of her tent after the indignant scorpion. The pills were still stuck in her throat, so she pulled a bottle of bourbon from the cooler. She checked the level and took a swig. She put it back into the cooler and slid the cooler under her cot, kicking it for good measure.
She started the morning with a staccato of thoughts. She wasn’t sure of the day. Was it Saturday or Thursday? Eve took another Xanax for good measure. She would be upset and more than a little desperate if the supply trucks didn’t arrive before the Xanax bottle was empty. The water truck would bring the supplies. She longed for a shower.
Eve tore open a gauze pad from its sealed package, doused it with alcohol, and wiped under her armpits. Tears poured out of her eyes. The alcohol stung her heat rash and sores. Long hours of standing in the operating theater dressed in a surgical gown caused her to sweat until there was no more sweat to be made. The black flies dove at her face. She flailed at them. Eve wiped her eyes and heaved herself upward with a great grunt as she stood. “Four hours of sleep in three days.” She mumbled to herself. “Don’t feel sorry for yourself. You made the choice to be here.”
Her tent mate, Doctor Javier Torres, was still working. He must be dead on his feet by now, she thought. Earlier he chased her out of the operating room when she fell asleep sitting on a stool holding a scalpel poised to impale herself.
The canvas tent heaved and flapped like a giant luffing sail, sending a cloud of dust into the rank air. She cursed the cloud of dust while tying a black and white scarf around her neck. Once again, she cursed. She cursed as if there were a second narrative, maybe a third narrative running through her mind. Each curse punctuated an unseen grievance. Among the men of the camp, Dinka Titweng, the cattle guard, enforced the Muslim head covering edict by snapping a long switch at any uncovered woman. Even here, where the men had utterly failed in their ability to keep their families fed and safe, they ironically enforced a rule that seemed frivolous to Eve like a French twist. She didn’t want a conflict with these men. She thanked the Xanax just as one might thank God for letting her be calm. Eve unhooked the flap and pushed it aside and lurched into the sunshine. She put on her aviator sunglasses, pausing for a moment to adjust her eyes to the intense sunlight. Dragging her scarf over her head, she greeted an old leathery man wearing Khakis and holding a Saur shotgun circa 1930s who had been guarding her tent. Eve bowed and mumbled good morning. The old man left without acknowledging her. “Lovely, and good morning to you, sir.” She mocked him. Here, women had less value than a goat and certainly less than the skinny desert cows.
Eve padded toward the medical tent; the tongues of her boots were lazily agape. A line had formed of women and children along the shady side of the medical tent. Eve read each person like a triage report: Malnutrition, open wounds, hypothermia, burns, gastrointestinal illnesses, cardiovascular events, pregnancy and delivery and related complications, diabetes, and hypertension. The dark aviator glasses hid her eyes. To make eye contact with any of these desperate people was to invite them to ask for her help. She couldn’t serve all these people if she was emotionally invested in each one and she realized that her empathy for pain and suffering in others had reached its zenith on the first day of her arrival. Her shield to handle this level of despair was indifference. The third Xanax was kicking in when she stepped past a teenage boy holding an unloaded M,16 guarding the operating theater.
The Tunay Dbayeh refugee camp was under constant attack by small groups from all sides of the Sudan conflict. One day, the Dinka attack, then the Nuer attacked, between the attacks, refugees were massacred. The refugees who survived kept coming day after day. Armed members from both tribes arrived in Land Cruisers, motorcycles, camels, and horses and in just two days, they slaughtered forty-four camp residents, including women and children, and eighty-eight people were injured by gunshot and machete. The mass hysteria sent fifteen thousand residents (A United Nations designated term.) running to the southern side of the camp. Eve and Doctor Torres were treating as many people as possible in their mobile operating tent, not realizing they were left exposed and cut off from much of the camp. They focused their efforts on saving the wounded on the operating tables in front of them.
Two men carried a stretcher with a wounded woman out of the operating theater past Eve, who glanced dispassionately at them as they passed. Doctor Torres emerged from the theater; his gown was spotted with blood. He half smiled at Eve. He stumbled a little, catching his balance on the same stool Eve had fallen asleep.
“That should be it.” He rubbed his neck.
“Go get some sleep. I’ll take care of the line,” she said, rubbing his shoulders.
“Don’t. I will fall asleep right here. The supply truck and the water truck are supposed to be coming today, maybe an anesthesiologist, as well. That would be a treat.”
“Do you think they will get through?”
“If they don’t, we won’t have any medical supplies or water to treat patients,” he said sighing. He heaved his big frame off the stool. Javier kissed Eve on the forehead. He was much taller than her. “If that happens, we go home.”
“And all these people?” she asked, knowing full well their plight.
“Oh, there are supposed to be some international reporters coming by as well. You can handle them. I don’t speak English!” They chuckled. Javier was Spanish. More than once, he feigned not speaking English.
“Thanks,” she said, rolling her eyes. They were lovers once, briefly, too much wine, too much loneliness on the front lines, way too easy to think it was about sex, when it was really about empathy for their own souls. They still touched each other tenderly, as if they were longtime lovers.
“We all love seeing the noble white doctor fighting the good fight. It makes white donors feel good about giving away their money.”
Eve lifted off her sunglasses. “You are an ass.”
“How many Xanax? And bourbon, Eve, you are headed down a hard road.”
“I’ll be fine. I just need a bath and some rest.”
“Sueños dentro de sueños como una cascada,” he sang to Eve.
“What does that mean?”
“Dreams within dreams falling like a waterfall. I don’t know the rest. Don’t wake me unless it is a major emergency, or the trucks arrive.” He spun around and walked out of the tent, leaving Eve alone. He consciously resisted her touch, as he would have certainly laid down next to her.
Aamira entered, carrying a woman under her arms. Her large brown eyes spoke volumes with a single look. Eve instantly assessed the problem. This young woman had been slashed across the back by a machete as she was running and was cut down from behind. Eve slipped on her surgical gown and doused her hands and scrubbed them with alcohol. Aamira was her translator, a Sudanese woman born and educated in England helped the weeping woman onto the operating table and stripped her clothes from the waist up.
Eve slipped on her surgical gloves and examined the single slash running diagonally from the woman’s shoulder blade to her lower spine. Much of the muscle was exposed, including the rib bones and a vertebra. They were in for a long period of suturing. Aamira assured the woman she would be all right while she shot her numb with a syringe. The woman looked up at Eve from the operating table and made eye contact. She pleaded with Eve to save her life. Eve’s knees weakened and her eyes filled with tears. “It’s better if she turns your head the other way,” said Eve. Aamira translated, and the woman turned her head. Aamira looked directly at Eve, understanding her capacity for this kind of human emotion was limited. Aamira knew instinctively that if Eve were pushed further, she would completely break down and be unable to perform her duties. Eve swabbed the wound with iodine. Bourbon and Xanax dulled the edge, letting her hide inside the work. Soon the work took over, and she fell into the safety of concentration. She worked fast, as if she were knitting.
Gunshots popped off in the distance. Eve knew more patients would come. Javier came into the operating theater dressed in his gown and carrying a young fifteen-year-old boy. It was a brief rest. The boy was shot in the stomach, defending the family’s only goat.
“No rest for the wicked,” quipped Eve. “Aamira let’s get this boy ready. Eve, can you prepare him for anesthesiology, at least until he is well under?” asked Javier.
“You are going to be okay,” Javier said to the boy. Aamira translated from the other side of the room. Javier saw that the boy didn’t believe her.
“Sure,” said Eve, ripping open sterile packages of needles and tubes needed for the sedation. Within minutes of the boy arriving at their tables, he was put under, and a bag of blood was feeding the boy. Eve returned to the woman and stitched the last few inches of the wound. They worked as a seamless team, moving about the theater without wasted motion.
They were the only doctors left in this part of the camp. Two doctors sent with them in the rotation and an anesthesiologist were struck with a debilitating stomach virus and were shipped back to the intensive care ward in Kenya. More personnel were promised, but bureaucratic and political delays kept the new doctors stuck in Nairobi. The violence in and around the camp caused the authorities to act under extreme caution. Other NGOs had pulled out and the African security forces were withdrawing, leaving the doctors unaware they were exposed to hostile forces.
It had been a month of nonstop patients, yet Javier and Eve kept providing care as long as their supplies lasted. Occasionally, a tractor trailer would arrive with enough supplies for months. They were down to their last bottles of plasma, medicines, and sterile surgical tools. They had been washing their last scalpels and soaking them in alcohol. The scope of the problem was enormous. Treating a community of thousands for normal medical procedures required a full-time hospital, but compounding the normal with diseases, malnutrition, and combat trauma, they needed several large hospitals staffed by doctors and nurses. In what was now an outpost in a medical desert, two of the best surgeons in the world just worked all that harder.
Before going to medical school in Madrid, Javier had dreamed of becoming a composer for opera. He chose medical school after pressure from his family. When the chaos started, his mind went to composition. He sutured several small blood vessels. Javier imagined Eve as his lead, a diva of sorts, even though she was a poor singer. Something about her gravelly voice and American attitude that connected with him. The hum of the generator provided a constant note. A-sharp or B-flat, depending on the electrical load. He worked on the ‘middle eight.’ He laughed at Eve as she administered anesthesia, checking the boy’s vitals with her stethoscope. She was satisfied he was stable and moved back to the woman, who stoically waited, staring at the drab white tent walls.
Aamira assured the woman that her scar would be beautiful, as Doctor MacDonald was a skilled surgeon.
“Next,” said Eve.
Javier chuckled to himself. “Come here. Hold the entry open.” Eve turned and opened the entry wound with two surgical clamps.
“Why are you laughing?” Eve said after a moment of him cauterizing blood vessels on the nicked liver.
Javier delicately searched for the bullet. “Found it. It appears his rib deflected the bullet. The kidney was damaged. Lucky boy, another centimeter to the right, and his thoracic artery would have been cut.”
Eve looked up at Aamira and locked eyes. “What causes this madness?”
“Politics. Greed. Grievance. Who is to say?” Aamira said.
“This feels more fundamental,” Eve said, cleaning her table for the next patient.
“Biblical?” queried Aamira.
“Biblical is a philosophy. A way of describing the profundity of human cruelty to one another. No, this behavior is entirely on a different scale.” Eve trailed off with her description, preferring to keep her own council. Faced with the unexplainable, she stopped short of entertaining any theories. Better to keep at the work and do no harm, she thought.
Aamira dressed the woman’s back with bandages. “She showed great strength. I don’t think I would have laid here awake.” Aamira smiled at Eve as if to say, ‘we do what we have to do.’ Eve understood.
“What is so funny?” Eve asked Javier. She turned around to face him. He didn’t answer.
Two stretcher bearers came into the operating tent and slipped the woman onto it, and Aamira walked out with them.
Javier, working fast, stopped the bleeding. He heard Eve’s question but chose not to answer to torment her. It was a game they played while working long hours.
“Okay. Don’t answer.”
“This boy is going to need more than we can give him here. He should be stable. Let’s close.”
“Great job.”
Shots were fired. Eve and Javier looked at each other. Is it time to panic? The shots were near. Eve spun around and headed to the door. “I’ll be right back.”
The outer tent was empty. Normally, there would be patients being triaged by the nurses. She rushed outside into the blazing sun. Refugees were running away to the south. The teenage soldiers were gone. Eve shaded her eyes when she realized she was operating with her aviator sunglasses on the top of her head. “That’s what was so funny,” she said to herself, scanning the camp and the concertina wire normally manned by the Africa military task force, but they had pulled back earlier in the day.
Shots reported, causing her to duck. She looked for Aamira in the recovery tent. The patients who could move had left. Others, unable to move, shook with fear and the girl with the slash on her back stared down at the floor. She turned her head away from Eve when she saw who it was. Eve kept moving. There were screams and more gunfire. As Eve ran back against the flow of frightened people to the operating theater, a young soldier ran into Eve.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
The frightened boy shoved his rifle into her hands and ran. Eve held the rifle, not knowing what to do with it. She walked into the operating room where Javier was putting the final sutures into the stomach of the young man.
“I would get rid of that rifle,” he said.
Eve dropped the rifle on the floor. She walked over to the gas tanks and turned off the gas.
Javier and Eve stood over the boy, putting gauze on the sutures. Javier looked at Eve and stiffened. “Mon Dios!” he groaned.
Eve looked into his eyes. The shock in his eyes rattled her. “Javier!”
A bullet had flown through the tent and into his back and out of his chest, falling harmlessly onto the clean white gauze bandage on the boy’s belly. Blood swelled and bubbled from Javier’s chest.
Eve grabbed him as he collapsed and dragged him over to her operating table. The bullet had severed an artery. She worked fast, cutting his clothes off with a single stroke. Javier grabbed her arms and looked into her eyes. His chest heaved. She compressed the hole in his chest, his eyes wide open in disbelief.
She started an ‘IV’ and grabbed a bottle of ‘A’ positive blood from the cooler. She was inserting needles into his veins when a shadow crossed over Javier. At first, she thought it was death coming to take him, but when she looked up, an angry Dinka fighter hit her in the head with the butt of his AK,47. Her aviator sunglasses flew into the air as she fell. Eve heard the thump of her head bouncing off the blood splattered floor. It echoed for the longest time. The hum of the generator filled the background. Javier’s twitching arm hung off the operating table. She reached for his hand. A blood droplet slid down his arm, over his wrist, to his fingertip. Eve watched the droplet fall into her palm. More falling drops, one after another, until she surrendered to unconsciousness.
The void from nothingness to dreaming to consciousness was a long and confusing one for Eve. Drops of water soothed her chapped and cracked lips, her tongue darting to the inner edge of her lips, searching for more. Eve swam in a river of relief, fully intending to wake up and finding herself on the floor of the operating theater. Instead, Eve floated down the Ganges River in India. She recognized the river and the surroundings from a trip she made with her parents. A journey of self-enlightenment, her father called it. As a ten-year-old child, she had wandered the banks watching the locals, bathing and praying in the river. There was something encompassing in the way the worshipers projected their faith into the great river of life. Her adult mind could see her ten-year-old self innocently walking in the shallows of the river, but she also was aware she was in trouble. She fought to wake up.
Then a very skinny old Indian man sitting on the surface of the river surrounded by flower petals and tiny paper boats hosting small candles glowing with their humble reach caught her eye and the urgency to return to reality seemed less important.
The man, a guru of some sort, looked at Eve, who now floated among the water lilies in the gentle current. He smiled, waving to her to follow him. Eve’s legs were caught in the water. Beneath the slow-moving surface, with flowers and candles, lay swirls of colors. It was the colors that seemed to argue with one another for dominance, as if the primary colors were being mixed into infinite varieties of color. They vibrated at different frequencies. The water touching her legs conversed with the river water, where a multitude of conversations took place. A stream of emotions ranging from love to hate, and all the variances of humanity’s essential emotive life danced in another worldly rumba. Eve waved her arms like a bird flying a few meters and landing in the river like a swan. She stood knee deep in the river. Beneath her, the colors evolved from moment to moment. The river bank was full of people praying and bathing. They waved to her and wished her well. The guru pulled on his long chin hairs with great joy. His chakras opened and the inner lights illuminated the way down the river. His third eye looked about flicking back and forth like a child’s eyes in a candy store. The feebleness of his body left him. Doves scattered into the Boa tree, leaning over the river, eager to see what comes down with the current. Eve reached for a low branch and hung on, even though it bent under her weight. She hung on and wished the guru a pleasant afterlife. She felt eternity. Her legs dipped in and out of the water. The colors seemed influenced by her feelings changing from a pinkish tint when her grip tired and panic entered her thoughts. Looking up the river for help, she saw other people floating downstream. Some walked slowly on the surface with the look of amazement on their faces. Some sat cross-legged and prayed. She suspected they might be too afraid to open their eyes to the afterlife.
Eve’s rational mind dipped into Eve’s rational mind, asking, why am I seeing this? She looked up and saw she was staring back at herself, hanging from a branch just above the Ganges River, filled with dazzling colors in mutable motion. In an instant, there were no other words to describe the time when all time was eternity, and it was itself looking down and looking up simultaneously, as was Eve. She sat on the branch just above herself, hanging down with her feet dragging in the river. She was separated from herself. Eve reached down and pulled herself up onto the branch. She became whole. In the Boa tree above her, macaques shrieked and scrambled. A wild chorus greeted her return. Eve crawled down the branch onto the riverbank and stood at the edge of the river, she felt the wet sand between her toes. Remembering her joy on weekends at the beach with her parents when, as a toddler, the feeling of wet sand between her toes vibrated through her body.
To her surprise, time seemed to start again, and the dreams cleared away like clouds after a summer rainstorm. Reality interceded with the rising physical discomfort she had grown used to. Her forehead burned hot, then cool relief as a wet cloth dampened the heat on her forehead. She opened her eyes, expecting to see Aamira and staring down at her, but there were two large dark brown eyes of a man. He wore a turban. The tail of the head piece covered his mouth, so only his eyes had appeared. They were kind eyes. She moved. Pain, like an electric bolt, shot through her body.
“Slowly,” the warm Spanish accented voice said. “You have a head injury.”
Eve swallowed hard. He put a small tin cup filled with brackish water on her lips. She sipped. The water tasted terrible. She coughed. “Don’t spit it out. Swallow. It is good for you.” Eve noticed his hands. They were smooth and delicate. These were not the hands of a bloodthirsty tribesman. Eve sighed and fell off into a sleep marked by nothingness.
Eve lay on the face of a dune. It wasn’t a vast dune with scalloped edges rising and curling as if the wind were an artist, but a small dune where a branch or a body may have collected the sands blowing in the desert wind. After a while, the dune was born, and the sand grew in scope with every daily breeze. The surrounding area was hardpan and scrub trees with the dune offering a precipice to the surrounding area. On the leeward side of the dune, a stranger set up camp. She observed him driving long flat stakes at the edge of the canvas Bedouin tent. He lifted the canvas with two poles, a short pole for the back of the tent, and a long pole for the front and center. Two smaller poles at the edge of the opening made more space. He unpacked carpets from his camel and laid them inside, along with long flat pillows made from old Persian carpet. The stranger lifted Eve in his arms and carried her to the tent and gently laid her close to the mouth of the tent and placed her head on the pillows. He poured water on a piece of fabric and placed it on her forehead. A large lump with the impression of the waffled gun butt had turned black and blue on the left side of her face.
He built a fire in front of the tent. He warmed a small tin pot of soup at the corner of the fire. A copper kettle, well-worn from years of use, boiled water for tea and broth. Occasionally, he would check Eve’s pulse and dampen the cloth on her forehead. Once he was assured that she was stable, he returned to his work.
He pulled two large leather cases off the backs of his camels. Having driven a long flat stake into the hardpan and attached a long rope to their harness, the camels were satisfied to sit until the next day. The green shoots of prickly bushes were within reach. Their contentment followed.
He placed his leather cases inside his tent as if they were filled with treasure. In fact, they were filled with hundreds of test tubes of water, each test tube was labeled and color coded. One case had a cork lined section that held a specially modified field microscope. The other case had a microscope set on it. He pulled his laptop from a side pouch of the case and plugged everything into a small battery pack, took off his turban and ran his fingers through his thick, black hair. Eve had turned her head and watched him get to work, interrupting him with an unforced cough and a wheeze, turning his head and he stared at her for a moment, masculine and mysterious in his serenity.
Her vision was blurry. Straining to focus, she struggled to sit up, but her head was killing her. She reached for her top pocket, but her top pocket wasn’t there. She was wearing a robe. “Where are my clothes?” she asked softly, mumbling. She wasn’t upset about anyone seeing her naked. Eve came from a family of hippies; her father and mother walked around the house naked all the time. Searching for her bottle of Xanax she looked outside of the tent over the fire and into the darkness. A sudden shock of sensuality overcame her. Naked under a light muslin robe fueled a new feeling of freedom she hadn’t felt in ages. Doves fluttered in the brush and there stood the old guru. Standing at the edge of the fire’s dancing light, he had a look of pure joy on his face. He made a long sweeping gesture toward the heavens. The stars blanketed the darkness with continuous twinkling light. Eve marveled at the spectacle. The old guru walked back into the darkness. She turned her head back to the inside of the tent, where a weird panic set off her anxiety. She whispered the words aloud to no one, unsure if they were prayers or delusions. “Did a spirit follow me from a different dimension? What does that kindly old man want with me? Am I crazy? Have I finally lost it?”
The stranger slid over to her in the Bedouin enclosure. The man towered over her like a giant. He pushed a leather covered flask into her hands but stopped short of giving it to her. He took her hand and opened it to see Javier’s dried blood in her palm. “Here, drink,” he said, absorbed in his find. She reached for the flask and tried to pull her hand away, recalling the reason for the blood, and recoiled at the memory. Before she could free her hand from his grip, he had rolled a swab on her palm, taking a piece of Javier. He let go of her hand. The flickering of the flames sent dappled light across his face, where she thought she saw a smile. A child’s smile as if he had found a missing puzzle piece but wasn’t sure if it would fit.
Eve took the flask, thinking the contents might be bourbon. She sipped. Realizing it was water, she half chuckled, then looked up into his eyes. His stare made her feel uncomfortable. She wanted to look away, remembering all the awkwardness she felt with men. He was different. He had saved her life. For the next few moments, they studied each other. Eve broke the spell between them. “Eve,” she murmured.
“Juan Ponce de León at your service.” He tilted his head forward and slightly to the left in that charming aristocratic way.
She passed the flask back to him. The drink of water restored her vision and her spirits. She thought she was gaining strength as one does after a trauma. “The body will heal itself when the spirit is right,” he said. Juan Ponce de León went back to his work, taking with him the swab.
Huddling over his test tubes and microscope, he took the flask and poured a small amount of water into a test tube. From the mouth of the tent where Eve lay, the inner workings of the tent seemed far away but were just a meter or two. She observed light reflecting from the test tube and heard the Acacia wood snapping and crackling in the fire, sending embers into the sky. The camels moaned and spat. Juan Ponce de León pushed the swab into the test tube of water and stirred it until the blood made the water pinkish. Without saying a word, he took an eyedropper of the pink water and carefully placed a perfect drop on the microscope slide. His hands were sure and steady, like hers, she thought. She glanced down at her hands, and they trembled with uncertainty. She turned away to find the old guru. Maybe he was at the edge of the fire’s light. Maybe he was sitting next to her. She turned her head back to Juan, who was smiling at her. He waited for her to speak. Her speech was gone. She moved her mouth, and nothing came out. She was mute.
“You are mute for a moment, but your speech and all your facilities will come back to you in due time. Eat some soup, drink some water, and sleep. I will explain everything tomorrow.”
He slid over next to the fire and poured the stew into a tin cup. “Here. It is goat stew.”
Eve took the cup in her hands. She sipped the stew. It was warm and savory. Questions flooded into her mind and that was as far as they got. The warm stew, clean water, and the exhaustion of months of constant hardship at the camp pressed her deep into slumber.
Juan leaned over and whispered into her ear, “Eve. Eve. We must rise.” Somewhere in the long whorls of dreams, Eve heard his soft accented voice call to her. Her eyes fluttered open. “Juan,” he said. Afraid she might forget him; he offered her assurance she was safe and in capable hands.
Rubbing her eyes, she greeted Juan with a cheerful, “Good Morning.” He poured her a cup of tea. “What happened?”
Juan handed the tea to her and went back to cooking breakfast. Bread baked in a black cast iron skillet pushed deep into the glowing embers of the fire with sizzling eggs and bacon sizzled. Juan was preoccupied with making breakfast when he said, “Camels like those two, who are brother and sister…” Juan poked at the fire. “They can carry up to nine hundred pounds and travel about twenty-five miles. All that I have here is five hundred pounds of equipment. They are quite happy with their task.”
“What happened?” she repeated. “What happened to me?” Eve felt the seed of desperation growing in her gut.
“I was explaining,” said Juan. He smiled at her as one smiles at a child who is impatient, kind with a hint of condescension. “You were kidnapped from what I could surmise. Your captor threw you onto the back of his camel. The camp is twenty miles to the South. Then, I am surmising from the evidence the government attacked them, and your captor dropped you on this dune. These camels can run like a racehorse.”
“What evidence?”
“On the other side of the dune are several dead tribesmen. Maybe one of them was your captor?” Juan slid the eggs and bacon onto a plate and handed it to her. Lifting the hot cast iron lid gingerly, he cut the bread in half and put the slice on her plate. “Eat up. We have a long way to go.”
“Juan. Thank you for saving my life.” Her sincerity moved him.
“It was fate.”
“Whatever it was, thank you.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Yes, of course.” She wanted to add that you’ve seen me naked.
“When your state of unconsciousness and dreaming were overlapping each other, did you see an old friend of mine, a rather ancient Indian man with long white chin hairs?”
“The smiling guru?”
“Yes. That would be him. His name is Ragu. Tell me what you saw. Did he say anything to you?”
“I don’t think so. How did you know he was in my dreams?”
“Please tell me what he did?” Juan leaned forward to listen carefully to Eve, who found the idea that Juan knew what was in her dreams upsetting.
“Are you a mind reader or something? Is this a trick?” she said.
“I will explain everything. Just tell me what Ragu did?” He insisted. The vein on his temple bulged, and he grew darker.
Eve sopped up the grease on the plate with the bread, this was the best meal she had had in months. The camels whined and whinnied their displeasure with each other, taking Eve’s attention away from Juan. Eve deflected, delayed, and sought leverage where she could in normal situations. Having a man inquire about details he should have never known called for more information. A confession would do.
“How do you know about the man?”
“His name is Ragu,” he insisted. “It is important you tell me what you saw, because dreams can quickly fade, and important details can be lost as the conscious mind paves over the gently pressed images of the dreams. It doesn’t mean they disappear.”
“Can the experience be repeated?” she asked, licking the grease from her fingers.
“Yes. Dreams don’t vanish. They seed themselves inside you and grow roots you’ll never see.”
“I have an excellent memory. I remember every detail. In fact, my memory is so good I can’t shake the stuff I don’t want to remember.” Eve felt her competitive nature rise. She wanted to add that she didn’t become a thoracic surgeon because she was a stupid female. She earned her status.
Juan lowered his head and thought. His machinations drove him to one conclusion. He would tell her the entire story in hopes she would take it seriously. His fate and her fate were long destined. The woman he found unconscious in the desert was formidable. The experiment worked, but he may have to compromise the results. There couldn’t be a blind test, no placebo regiment. He would have to get as much information from her as possible. The good thing was she was highly intelligent and dehydrated to such an extreme that the water he gave her would have had its maximum effect.
Juan plotted a course across a war-torn country with the goal of taking samples of water from wells between the Blue Nile and the White Nile rivers. A one-hundred-year drought had reduced the rivers to mere trickles. A Doctor of Hydrology and a Doctor of Chemistry, Dr. Juan Ponce de León found his calling, understanding the dynamics of water on human life both physically and emotionally. Inspired by the research of Japanese businessman, author, and scientist Masaru Emoto, who claimed human consciousness could affect the molecular structure of water. He provided plenty of evidence of the molecular structure changing in relationship to the stimulus presented. This discovery moved Juan. He discovered a fact about the power of water that, taken into consideration, created a new narrative of history. It would, he believed, change the understanding of behavior and the concept of freewill. He postulated he may have found God’s mechanism for controlling good and evil. He believed and humbly so he may have answered the question of God’s existence.
Juan was careful not to publicize his preliminary findings or his theory, therefore practicing strict scientific methods and rigorous control. He shared the roots of his hydrology with several peers, but nothing more until he could claim solid evidence. The woman sitting in front of him stared back at him with an incredulous look that had the potential of being his toughest critic and the keystone to his life’s dream.
“Emoto believed we shape water with our thoughts. But what if it’s the opposite?” Juan asked, eyes glittering. “What if water holds the memory of what it’s seen, and it shapes us in return?”
Eve blinked. He went on
“I’m mapping emotional frequencies, tragedy, kindness, rage, in water samples. Some react like they’re alive. Some are pure red. Others blue, or black. Color, coded by their moral weight.”
They walked through the brush like an endless prickly labyrinth.
Eve squinted at him. “You think water thinks?”
Juan smiled. “No. I think it listens.”
“And talks back?”
“Not in words. In vibrations.”
Eve took another bite of bread. “I preferred bourbon.”
Eve ducked under a branch.
“I altered his route when I saw a fighter plane fly low and fast over the bush. The government jet turned and targeted someone on the dune. I am repulsed by the fate of those men and beasts. The jet was gone in seconds, but the death and destruction it left would last forever.”
Eve sat on the camel, listening to him talk.
“The blood and sweat of those beings would seep into the aquifer or evaporate into the atmosphere to be reconstituted as a drop of water. How the drop of water affects the next person it touches is the theme of my hypothesis. I am sure it would elicit some disturbing effects on an innocent person.” Eve was nodding in agreement. She simply found him charming and a little eccentric.
“I climbed to the top of the dune, where I found the Dinka tribesmen and their camels butchered by the modern instruments of war. The camels didn’t like it one bit. When I came to the top, I saw you laying on the dune. I thought you were dead.”
Eve thought she wanted the Xanax more out of routine than need. She felt sublimely calm and Zen. She kept seeing the Ragu in her peripheral vision. He was dancing in front of the camels. Not the kind of dance that was elegant on the beat, but awkward out of rhythm, pushing and pulling your feet up and down like you might imagine someone crushing grapes or walking in thick mud. He laughed at her and waved his arms in the air.
Juan interrupted her vision of the ridiculous dancing Ragu. “Let me tell you what I am doing. It is complicated.” Juan told her the story of his discovery and details about his journey. The words flowed past her ears like the desert wind. When the wind stopped, she looked at his anxious face, waiting for approval.
“So, I am an experiment,” she demurred. Ragu sidled up next to the unknowing Juan and whispered. “It worked.”
“He says. It worked.”
“Is he here?”
“Yes. Right next to you. Can you communicate with him?”
“No. I don’t think so. He is doing his thing.” Ragu went dancing into the scrub brush.
Juan dropped to his knees. “Mon Dios!” he cried.
For a moment, she thought she understood the edges of things in her mind, but for only a moment.
Scott Dodgson's The History of Water is a captivating, though uneven, literary journey that blends several genres into a compelling, if sometimes convoluted, story. The premise that water holds the memory of human history is both intriguing and ambitious. It offers a strong basis for exploring themes of trauma, healing, and our shared humanity.
The strength of the novel lies in its vivid prose and richly imagined setting. Dodgson creates a striking picture of war-torn Africa, contrasting the harsh realities of a Sudanese clinic with the mystical pull of ancient riverbeds and desert ruins. The descriptions are powerful and immersive, pulling the reader into Eve MacDonald's world and allowing them to feel the weight of her experiences. The relationship between Eve and Juan, though occasionally underdeveloped, provides a compelling emotional core. It raises interesting questions about faith, science, and belief.
However, the novel's ambition sometimes works against it. The changing narrative perspective, while aiming for a broad view, can feel disorienting. The constant shift between scientific ideas, mystical beliefs, and political issues can be overwhelming. This makes it hard for the reader to connect with any single element. The pacing suffers at times, too. Certain plot points feel rushed while others drag on longer than necessary.
The comparison to Ondaatje and Bolaño fits due to the novel's lyrical style and its exploration of complex themes, but Dodgson's voice remains distinct. While the novel aims for a grand scope, it would benefit from a more focused approach. The idea of "water memory" remains intriguing, but its implications are not always fully developed, leaving some threads feeling unresolved.
Overall, The History of Water is a bold and ambitious attempt at a genre-blending novel. While it may not completely succeed in its lofty goals, its rich language, engaging characters, and thought-provoking ideas make it a worthwhile read for those seeking a literary adventure that addresses significant questions about history, memory, and the power of nature. The novel's shortcomings are largely overshadowed by its ambition and its strong exploration of human resilience in the face of great suffering.