Harmattan (31 page)

Abdelkrim gave a great puff and scratched his head. ‘So we’d have to get in and out through the windows?’

‘Exactly.’

There was a brief silence. The two men looked over at me. Archie Cargo gave a little wave and I waved back.

‘Let’s do it,’ Abdelkrim said, unravelling the rope.

A chill, not normally noticeable until much later in the evening at this time of year, enveloped us, and I wished that I had retrieved my unwashed
pagne
from Moussa’s house. A strange calm had befallen the city just before we had set off, followed soon after by a light breeze that whipped up the orange dust along the roadside and made me think of harmattan season and the storms at home. Never again would I hide away with my mother and brother and sister safe from the fury outside.

‘Do you think we made it tight enough?’ Archie asked, as he negotiated the evening traffic exiting Niamey.

We were heading northwest, along Route Nationale Deux, in the direction of Tera, the car now also laden with the corpse of my mother. Like Monsieur Nourradin’s tea, traffic and pedestrians seemed to pour from every side road and junction. Car horns and
camion
klaxons blared constantly. At the roadside, beggars and small children implored passing commuters for ‘cadeaux’ and hawkers bombarded our vehicle at every halt along the way. From the roof of a new building a group of Touareg builders lowered a bucket on a rope down to one of the hawkers and then hoisted a selection of soft drinks back up. We passed the tannery, the camel market and the race track in a blur. On either side of us, the shanties seemed to stretch forever, the combined stench of human and animal urine filling the air.

Abdelkrim put his hand up to the taut rope that ran across the car’s interior, just above his and Archie’s foreheads. He gave it a gentle tug. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘We’ll stop in an hour or so and check the box again.’ He shuffled around in his seat to speak to me. ‘Check that one too please, Haoua.’

Another rope ran directly above my head, from rear window to rear window. I raised both my hands and pulled myself upright on the rope, like a monkey on a branch.

‘It seems all right.’

I caught Archie’s eyes in the rear view mirror. ‘Don’t swing on it too much, Mademoiselle. I don’t have all that much faith in my knots!’

‘Toh,’
I said, sulking a little. I ducked out of sight behind his seat and put my hand through the gap between the top of the window glass and the doorframe. The cooled air stroked my fingers and I hummed a little melody quietly to myself.

Abdelkrim looked over his shoulder at me again. ‘
Ça va
?’

I shrugged.

‘You may help yourself to some water if you want it, you know?’

‘Merci.’

He turned to face the windshield again and twanged at the rope where it disappeared out through his own side window. ‘I guess that means we can forget the luxury of your air conditioning when we need it, Archie?’

Archie laughed. ‘The air conditioning hasn’t worked in this old heap for a long time, my friend!’

A few kilometres beyond the city boundary, we came across a military checkpoint. We were filled immediately with a sense of panic; there had been no time for Abdelkrim to gather together civilian clothes and the validity of his compassionate leave seemed unclear.

‘Just let me do the talking,’ my brother said, his voice faltering a little as we glided to a halt near an army Land Rover.

Further down the road, an identical vehicle lay in wait, flanked by several armed soldiers. From out of nowhere a stooped man appeared, plastic bottles full of gasoline strung around his neck and shoulders. He waved and began limping towards us until his path was blocked and he was chased away by a heavy-set fellow in a torn tunic.

A young, slightly scruffy soldier stepped towards the car and leaned in to scrutinise us, the butt of his rifle clanking against the car door. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead and beneath his right armpit a dark, damp patch of fabric was clearly visible.

Even from the rear of the car I could smell him.

‘Monsieur. Your papers, please.’

Archie Cargo groped in the little compartment beneath the dashboard and handed some documents to the soldier. ‘Trouble?’ he said.

The soldier took the papers but did not reply. Already he had eyed my brother’s now disarrayed uniform. He flicked through the papers and handed them back to Archie. ‘You are off duty, brother?’ he said, addressing Abdelkrim.

Abdelkrim put his arm out through his window and tapped the box on the roof.

‘Compassionate leave,’ he said. ‘Our mother.’ He turned to draw attention to me.

‘We’re on our way to Tera.’

‘Toh.’
The soldier stepped back from the car and looked it over, warily. Then he moved towards us again and leaned across the roof, the cords twanging above our heads like a
biram
as he plucked at them.

Across the road another soldier, older than the first and wearing dark glasses, grinned at me as if I had just told him a great joke.

The sweaty soldier leaned back in towards Archie and looked my brother in the eye. ‘And your papers are also in order, of course?’

‘Of course, brother.’

‘Only there have been mutinies in Tahoua, and other places as well.’ He leaned back and tapped the roof of the car. ‘Who knows what you could be carrying up here.’ ‘Oh great!’ Archie whispered. ‘They’re going to fuck us about!’

Abdelkrim waved his hand discreetly towards Archie. ‘As God is my witness…’ he said, ‘it’s my poor mother.’

The soldier held his gaze again for a moment and then withdrew from the car. He spat, and then crossed the road, deserted but for the army vehicles, and spoke to his comrade with the dark glasses. After conversing for a few moments the older soldier approached my brother’s side of the car.

‘
Ça va, mon frere
?’ he said. ‘
Ça marche
?’

‘
Ça va bien
.’

‘
Non, ça va pas
! My brother says that you have your poor mother up here.’

‘Yes.’

The soldier moved closer. ‘
Walayi!
I know you, don’t I?’ The broad smile had returned to his face. He pushed his sunglasses down his nose to reveal his eyes. ‘It’s Boureima, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. And you are… Kassato?’

‘Kassato, yes. Third Company. You’re with old Bouleb’s squad, right?’

‘That’s right.’ Abdelkrim put his hand out towards him. ‘Look. Can we get under way, brother? My family is expecting us in Wadata by morning.’

‘
D’accord, d’accord
,’ Kassato said. He looked over the roof of the car at the first soldier, who had taken up his position by Archie’s window again. ‘Let them through, Julius.’ Then he ducked back down to address Abdelkrim. ‘God go with you, brother.’ He waved us on, nodding at me as Archie accelerated and we pulled away in a cloud of dust.

‘Whew!’ Archie said. ‘I didn’t enjoy that! Your comrades scare the shit out of me, Abdel! Every time I take to these roads I wonder if I’ll ever reach my proposed destination.’ He gave a little snort. ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever got through one of your checkpoints without having to pay
tax!
’

‘It’s all right, though, isn’t it, Abdel?’ I said. ‘I mean, you’re not going to get into trouble, are you?’

Abdelkrim did not answer. He reached across and switched on the radio, then put his cheek against his fist and leaned out of the window.

It was not long before we had to turn off from La Route Nationale Deux and the road became rougher, the asphalt worried away by countless trucks, buses,
camions
and bush taxis. Either side of us, vast plains stretched away towards the wavering horizon, the sameness of the landscape interrupted only by an occasional baobab tree, a rocky outcrop, clumps of parched brushwood or the skeletal remains of a car wreck.

Abdelkrim had folded his jacket into a pillow and was dozing in the front, despite his head being buffeted against the door pillar. Archie reached across and disengaged my brother’s ear from the seat belt, pulling the buckle out and down across his chest and clicking it into place. He looked up and caught my eye in the rear view mirror.

‘I’m sorry there is no seat belt for you back there, Haoua. They were cut away when I bought the vehicle. I don’t know why.’

‘I am fine, thank you,’ I said.

Archie glanced at me, a great grin on his reddened face. ‘Just hold on tight when we hit a pot-hole! I’ll do my best to miss them!’

‘
D’accord
.’

The sun ate its way through the haze and once again left the air inside the car heavy and thick. In time, the road dipped into a scorched valley, cutting through massive, blood-red rocks and re-emerging once again to carve a swathe through vast plains of thorn scrub and savannah. On the eastern horizon, the sky, drained of colour and sapped by searing heat, merged into a pulsating band of nothingness; a shimmering, vibrating ribbon of white hot air which seemed also to consume the land itself, creating the mysterious illusion of floating trees and re-forging boulders and hillocks into curious, hovering, molten forms.

All of the car’s windows were down but the heat was still intense. If I leaned a little to my left, I could feel the afternoon sun baking down on my eyelids. Already, my face was covered in a fine layer of dust and my tongue was sticking to the roof of my mouth.

As if reading my mind, Archie glanced up at his mirror again. ‘Why don’t you open one of those bottles of water for us?’

I stuffed his jacket onto the rear window shelf and began to poke at the tough plastic wrapper that encased the tray of bottles.

‘Here,’ he said, handing me a tiny, squat little knife with a sliding blade.

‘Handy thing, that. I never go anywhere without it.’

I thanked him and began hacking at the packaging until one of the large, heavy bottles could be freed. I grasped its neck and began twisting at the cap, but the sweat on my palms prevented me from getting a proper grip.

‘Here, let me open that for you,’ he said, reaching his hand back between the seats and flexing his fingers impatiently.

I handed him first the little knife and then the bottle.

He dropped the tool into his shirt pocket and then, clamping the bottle between his thighs, cracked the seal open and took a long swig before handing it back to me.

‘Yeuch!’ he said. ‘It’s already warm. But better than nothing, I suppose.’

I tilted the clear, clean liquid into my mouth and drank. It was true that the water was warm, but it was also without the brackish, metallic taste and the cloudiness that I was so used to. I was about to offer it to him again when, far off in the distance, a movement caught my eye. ‘Look, Monsieur!’ I said. ‘Giraffes!’

It was a small herd, five in total. Moving across the mirage band of the horizon, their improbable necks all but disappearing, then re-appearing momentarily, their fine, chiselled heads like wingless birds, dipping above the plain as their spindly legs carried them towards the edge of the earth. Seconds later they were gone.

‘Beautiful!’ Archie Cargo said, stopping the car and peering into the vibrating void. ‘You don’t see that often these days. Not in this country.’ He glanced across at Abdelkrim, who was still sleeping. ‘Pity your brother didn’t get to see them.’

‘Yes.’

Abdelkrim’s face was tilted away from us. A bead of sweat had cut a thin line across the dust on his temple and dribbled into little tributaries over the high ridge of his cheekbone. He shuffled in his seat and then was still again.

For a moment I felt awkward, shy, and wished that he would waken.

Archie Cargo cleared his throat, shook his head and screwed a finger into his ear. ‘This dust gets everywhere, doesn’t it?’ he said, pulling on to the crumbling road again. I considered telling him about the baby giraffe which Miriam and I had found near the river when we were younger; instead I leaned my head back and let it bounce against the seat as we bumped along. I closed my eyes momentarily, but opened them again with a start when I found myself confronted with the image of the drowned man in the mortuary. I thought, too, of my mother; her poor, empty body now concealed within the box above us, and my eyes filled with tears. I blinked hard and sniffed, my heart filling too – but with a seething rage rather than sorrow. Suddenly I pictured Alassane, laughing with my father in our compound in Wadata, and I wanted to scream at her to get out, to go home to her Big House, her sisters and her filthy way of life. I thought too of Souley: of her taunts about my mother and my family. I pictured her face in front of me – close to mine. And although I knew that it was wrong, in my mind’s eye, I brought my hand hard against her cheek.

These were thoughts that shocked me. It was as if some malignant spirit had momentarily possessed me, taken hold of my heart and twisted it. I thought of the healers and the marabout in our village, and the woman in the hospital who had been told that her baby had been possessed by the ghost of his dead twin. Despite the intense heat the sweat on my brow felt suddenly cold again.

I recalled the teachings from the Koran. I knew that I needed to forgive as well as to be forgiven. There was Allah’s forgiveness and human forgiveness. I knew that I needed both, because we do wrong in our relations to Allah as well as in our relations to each other. I thought of Bunchie and the beliefs that she had held on to all her days, that she said had existed long before our people looked to Allah for forgiveness. I knew that I had to be strong.

Confusion mingled with my fear and anger and at last I could hold back no longer. A great spasm seized my chest. My head felt as if it had been gripped by a huge pair of hands and squeezed like a mango. I opened my mouth to gasp for air and from deep within my chest a wretched, guttural croak erupted, along with the bubble of mucus which burst forth from my nose.

Archie Cargo seemed unsurprised by this display of emotion in the rear of his vehicle. ‘Hey there, Haoua,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’ He slowed the car down and offered me a soft, white cloth, which he took from his pocket. ‘It’s okay to cry, you know,’ he said, checking me in the mirror. ‘Your mother was a good, kind woman and she deserved your love.’