Harmattan (7 page)

‘A soldier’s life is hard, Mother. Sometimes it just helps me to forget.’

‘It is not our way, Abdel.’

‘I’ve been away from
those
ways for a long time,’ Abdelkrim said, softly.

‘You would do well to remember your upbringing, my son. Do not turn your back on the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
Alsilamo
. A time may come when you will need your faith, and you will have call to reach out to Allah. I pray that He will always be there for you.’

There was a long silence, then Abdelkrim spoke again. ‘Last night… I meant what I said about Father, you know?’

‘I know you did,’ my mother said, wearily. ‘But what can I do? If he has decided it shall be, it shall be. And if God wills it…
Inshallah.’

‘Aiee! Look around you!’ Abdelkrim snapped. ‘He can’t even support the four of you! How will he feed and clothe another wife? This is madness. You must not let him do this!’

‘Abdel,’ my mother said, sadly, ‘do you think that I could stop him?’

‘And how will he pay? He’ll have no more of my money! I won’t send it to you for him to squander!’

My mother did not answer.

‘
God will provide
, I suppose? Yes?
When
will he provide, Mother?’

‘My son, God
will 
provide.’

There was the familiar sound of teeth being sucked, marking the end of their conversation. My mother came back into the house, bundled up a pile of soiled clothing and placed it on her head.

‘Put your papers away now, Haoua, and bring the rest of the clothes down to the river, please.’

I groaned. Washing clothes was a chore that I did not like, and I had made a good start with my colouring pencils and had drawn a fine chicken for Katie and Hope. ‘Just do it, child! You’ve had your rest!’ she said, curtly. ‘And remember, youhad your fun yesterday.’

Abdelkrim wandered into the house after my mother had gone. He was smoking a very bad-smelling cigarette. I screwed my face up and smiled when he threw it outside, onto the dust, with a mutter.

‘So,’ he said, ‘are you going to show me your
treasures
?’

It was the first time that my letters and pictures had been referred to as ‘treasures’, but the word suited perfectly: it was exactly how I had come to think of them. They were, to me, like little doorways to another world. I knew that I would probably never actually go there, but it somehow reassured me to know that this other world existed. I knew that my friends, far away in Ireland, were every bit as real as me and my family. At night, as the cicadas sang their lullaby under a majestic canopy of stars and I waited for sleep to take me, I wondered if Katie and Hope were sleeping under those very same stars too.

‘Mother needs me to help her at the river. But I will show you quickly.’ From beneath my bed roll, I eagerly took the large, tatty envelope that Monsieur Boubacar had given me, and spread its contents on the floor.

Abdelkrim squatted beside me and began sifting through my photographs and postcards. ‘Phwooo!’ he whistled. ‘Quite a collection.’

‘Yes,’ I said, happy to share this secret world with my favourite brother.

‘Everything looks so green!’ He picked up a postcard showing a huge, rocky hill with an imposing stone tower on top. Dotted all around the base of the hill were tiny houses – as white as sun-bleached bone; while in fields plump with grass and divided by hedges as coiffeured as human hair, clusters of fat, strangely patterned cattle grazed themselves fatter still.

‘And blue, too!’ I said, pointing out the image of the sea at Katie and Hope’s village.

‘Beautiful. Reminds me, a little, of Tarqua.’

‘Tarqua? Where is that?’

‘Nigeria – on the coast,’ Abdelkrim replied. ‘We had to go there last year for training exercises.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve seen the sun set over the ocean, my god!’ ‘You like the army, don’t you, Abdel?’ I said.

‘I’ve met some very good people – Bouleb is one of them – and some very,
very
bad people. I’ve seen things, done things, been places I could never have imagined. I’ve shaken Mainassara’s hand! … The
toad. . .’
he laughed. ‘It’s my life now, Little One.’ He shook the postcard wistfully as he spoke.

‘I’m not so little now!’ I protested.

He smiled. ‘No. Not so little. But when I left the village you were not much older than Fatima.’

‘Seven,’ I said. ‘I was seven.’

He nodded. ‘Anyway, yes, I like the army. Don’t tell Mother though – she has enough to worry about – but things have been difficult recently.’

‘How?’

‘Well… you know… some of the barracks have not received their wages for quite some time now. There is a great deal of unrest across the country.

Many people want our president to step down. There has been a lot of trouble – unpaid wages, protests, plots, rumours of another coup, that sort of thing – mostly in the provinces, but there is talk that it may reach us in Niamey too.’

‘It’s not serious though, is it?’ I asked, somewhat alarmed by his tone. We were used to hearing frightening reports from neighbouring countries all the time on Monsieur Letouye’s television or Sushie’s wind-up radio. For the most part I was too busy to pay much attention, but I did not like the sound of Nigeria –
Hausaland
.

Monsieur Boubacar had told my class about a letter he had read in a newspaper when he was visiting relatives in Lagos. It had haunted me. The writer had demanded that the authorities remove a body from the roadside which had been dumped there three weeks previously. I could not imagine a world which treated human life with such disrespect. It was a world apart from the Djerma ways in which I had been brought up. ‘You won’t be in any danger, Abdel?’

My brother shook his head. ‘It’s nothing, Little One. It will pass.’ He set the postcard on the floor and raised his eyebrows quizzically as he leaned across to pick up a photograph of Katie and Hope.

I was keen to change the subject; I did not know or care much about the ways of our capital and government. ‘That’s Katie,’ I said, pointing, ‘and that’s Hope… I think.’

‘They’re twins?’

‘Yes.’

‘They’re very pretty. And they’re from Ireland, you said?’

‘Yes, Ireland. Have you been there?’

He laughed. ‘No! The Nigerien Guard don’t often have much call to be in Nigeria, never mind Ireland!’ He tapped the photograph. ‘And these twins are what age?’ ‘Eleven,’ I said. ‘Like me.’

‘Toh’
For a moment he seemed lost in thought. ‘There are twins in Niamey,’ he said. ‘
Dancing
twins – I see them almost every day at the corner near the barracks. At least I
think
they’re twins. They are very alike.’

I was intrigued. There were no twins in Wadata. Once, Miriam’s grandmother had told me about twins whose heads had been joined together. They had not lived long. Their mother had been cursed by a witch from Tillaberi, she said. In our own village Madame Monnou had given birth to twin girls, five years earlier, but one of them had died while Madame Monnou was in labour. The surviving girl – Amina – was a friend of Fatima’s. I always imagined that Amina felt like half a person. We knew that twins were powerful yet dangerous, lucky, extraordinary. Bunchie told us that we should fear them, because they could kill offenders and see things which normal people could not see. Often she would repeat the story of Adamu and Hawa (after whom my brother and I had been named). They had been blessed with fifty sets of twins, and had hidden the more beautiful twin of each pair away from the Creator in a secret cave. The god saw that they had deceived him and made the hidden twins invisible for ever. Bunchie said that the spirits who plague people were the descendants of the beautiful twins.

‘It is a strange and wonderful thing to watch these lads,’ Abdelkrim continued. ‘They have a big radio which they set on the sidewalk with the volume turned up really loud. They could be ten years old – they are very small, very skinny.

They could be fifteen… I don’t know. Victims of polio, I think. There are a lot of beggars in the city – and thieves… and other bastards! But these boys do not beg. Oh no! Instead, they dance! What a show they put on. Their legs may not work, but you should see them dance on their hands!’

‘They have no legs?’

‘They have legs, but they are wasted, thin, useless. They drape them over their shoulders like rags. Their feet wobble like a galloping
mouton’s
teats as they dance wildly to their music! They are excellent
artistes.
Every once in a while they will catapult themselves onto their feet. Their dead legs can hold them there – for just a second. Then they crumple. But as they do so they somersault themselves back onto their palms. It truly is an amazing sight!’

‘
Walayi!
And people give them money?’

‘People give them money. Lots of money. They stand around and watch these boys perform and they marvel! It is sad that they cannot walk, and yet they do not seem unhappy.’

‘Where do they live?’ I asked. ‘Do they have a family?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Abdelkrim. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. A great many children in Niamey beg all day and receive only crusts from an adult for the privilege. I hope
my
twins get to keep their money.’

‘
Bakarka?
But they are not beggars. They have earned this money. Why should they not keep it?’

He sighed. ‘Because that is the way things are, Little One.’

I was spellbound by his stories.

Abdelkrim placed the photograph of Katie and Hope on the floor again and tapped it with his forefinger. ‘
Toh.
Thank you for showing me.’

Keen to impress, I picked up another photograph and handed it to him. ‘And these are their parents – and their dogs.’ Katie and Hope were also in this picture, kneeling on a grassy surface behind the two dogs with babies’ faces. The girls looked very happy. Katie was hugging one of the dogs, which was sitting upright and looking very proud to be there; as if it thought of itself as a human being, or at least an equal. The other dog was looking away from the camera and had its tongue hanging out. Hope was holding this one on a leash. The adults were also kneeling on the grass, behind their children and the dogs. The father – Noel Boyd – was leaning forward, protectively, towards the camera, a tight smile on his pale face.

His hair was cropped very short and he wore small, round sunglasses which, I thought, were not as nice as my brother’s. The girls’ mother was wearing a cap which cast a heavy shadow over her face. This was the only picture of Katie and Hope’s parents that I had, and it perplexed me a little that I was unable to see the eyes of either of them.

‘Strange dogs,’ Abdelkrim said.

I nodded. ‘Like babies.’

‘Hmm.’

‘You can’t real y see their mother’s face… ’

‘The sun has been high,’ Abdelkrim said, ‘and she is wearing a hat.’

‘Yes.’

‘It looks like they are somewhere very high – a mountain, perhaps?’

‘I don’t know.’ I took the photograph from him and turned it over. ‘
Downhil ,
1997,
it says on the back.’

‘Uhuh. And where is that?’

I shrugged.

We sat in silence for a few moments, just looking over the postcards and photographs before us.

‘It’s nice that you have these friends,’ Abdelkrim said.

‘Yes.’

‘And they write often?’

‘Every few months,’ I said. ‘Sometimes their father writes too.’

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t the mother write?’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps she can’t,’ Abdelkrim said.

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘everyone can read and write there.’

Abdelkrim nodded slowly. ‘They must be very rich. What does the father do?’

‘He’s a teacher. I think their mother is too.’

‘That’s what you should do, Haoua,’ my brother said. ‘You should continue to study hard, get away from here. Travel. You’d make a good teacher. You are a bright girl.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘but Wadata is my home. And what about our mother? How would she cope?’

‘You could come back! Go to the USA. Or France. Learn all you can, then come back – and change things. Niger is a sick country! Make things better!’

‘How, Abdel?’

‘Somehow, Little One. We will find a way. I will help you, if I can.’

I knew that he meant it.

He smiled and put his hand in his pocket. ‘Look… I still have the little radio your friends sent.’

I took the radio and fiddled with its switches and dials and Abdelkrim showed me how to wear the tiny earphones. A barrage of music bombarded my ears until I moved the dial again. Then, voices. News from the capital. Something about the
Paris-Dakar
rally. I took the earphones off and handed the radio to my brother. I was a little envious. ‘I like it.’

‘I will get you one, Haoua,’ he promised. I knew that he meant that too.

I gathered up my belongings and put them back into the envelope, then placed it safely under my bedroll again. ‘Mother will be waiting for the rest of our washing,’ I told Abdelkrim. ‘I’ll finish my drawing later.’

He nodded. ‘Please give Katie and Hope and their family my greetings when you do.’

‘I shall,’ I said.

Abdelkrim stood up and stretched, then crossed the room to where his army issue kitbag was leaning against the wall. As he flipped it open to search for more cigarettes, I noticed the neck of a bottle protruding from one of its pockets.

‘What’s that?’ I asked, as I tied the remaining clothing into a bundle in preparation for the journey to the river.

‘Whiskey,’ he said. ‘Want some?’

‘No!’ I said, appalled.

He laughed and made to go outside.

‘Abdel!’ I called after him.

He stopped, turning to face me – an unlit cigarette in one hand, pink plastic lighter in the other. ‘Hmm?’

‘How long can you stay?’

‘Not long, Little One. A few more days, perhaps…’

‘Oh.’

‘…If I don’t murder Father first!’ he added, with a grin.

I lifted my bundle and walked towards the door. ‘Why do you squabble with Father?’ I asked, pretending that I had not overheard his discussion with our mother. ‘Is it because of the rumour?’