Harmattan (33 page)

‘So why have you brought us this way?’ Archie Cargo said, sounding suddenly alarmed.

‘It’s quicker.’

‘Great.’

We drove on for another few kilometres until we came to a long, straight stretch of the distressed road. To the southwest, a deep red ridge had broken through the crumbling laterite and pointed towards the sun. And, just visible, protruding from behind this protective hulk of rock, we could make out the shining silver surfaces of three enormous circular plates. Signs warning intruders to stay away had been attached to a high security fence that surrounded the strange installation and then disappeared behind the great rock.

There was an intense, eerie stillness about this place. Somehow it looked unreal, like a photograph in one of Monsieur Boubacar’s books or the beautiful American and English magazines that Mademoiselle Sushie passed on to my school when she had finished reading them.

‘What are those things?’ I said.

‘Satellite communications dishes,’ Abdelkrim said. ‘For radio, television, cellphone signals. Keep going, Archie.’

When we did come eventually to a halt, I was so stiff and sore that I found it difficult to clamber out of the rear window of the car. I had watched Abdelkrim scramble out through his window, head first, placing his palms on the scorched surface of the road and then dragging his feet out. I felt sure that I could make lighter work of it, but the hot sheet metal of the vehicle’s roof seared my palms as I struggled and twisted to get my rump onto the lip of the door.

Abdelkrim stepped forward and grasped my forearm to pull me clear, one of my sandals catching on the door and falling back into the rear cockpit.

‘Walayi!’
my brother said, leaning back in through the window to retrieve the sandal. ‘It’s not easy with the doors tied up like this!’

He had barely finished his sentence when we heard a dull thud, as Archie Cargo tumbled from the driver’s window, landing awkwardly on the ground. We hurried around to the other side of the vehicle and found him flat on his back, a cloud of dust wafting around him.

‘Are you all right, Monsieur?’ I said, anxiously.

‘He’s okay,’ Abdelkrim laughed, holding out a hand to help his friend up.

‘Just a bit winded,’ Archie said, dusting down his baggy blue shorts. He stood up straight and swept his hair away from his forehead to reveal a great grin on his dirty, boyish face. ‘No need to call out the ambulance!’ He went to the trunk of the car and took out a small canvas bag. Then, without another word, he turned and started walking towards a little rocky outcrop a few metres away.

‘Where are you going, Monsieur?’ I called after him.

‘Never ask a man in the desert where he’s going with a shovel – as they say in the movies!’ he called back. Then he stopped and turned to face us. ‘By the way, Haoua…’

‘Monsieur?’

‘It’s Archie!’

‘Pardon, Monsieur – I mean, Archie.’

He shook his head and disappeared.

Confused, I looked at Abdelkrim for some kind of explanation. ‘He doesn’t have a shovel!’ I said.

But Abdelkrim was shaking his head now too. He had been checking the ropes which held my mother’s casket in place on the roof of the car. ‘Don’t worry about it, child,’ he said. He crossed the road, unzipping his trousers as he moved, then stopped with his back towards me to piss into the dust.

I walked a few metres in the opposite direction and squatted down, hitching my
pagne
up just enough to ensure privacy. When I had finished, I returned to the vehicle and sat down beside my brother in its partial shade.

Abdelkrim looked at me and crossed his legs. ‘Are you all right, Little One?’

I nodded.

He spat on his palms and rubbed them together vigorously, then took out his cigarettes and lit one.

‘This doesn’t seem real, Abdel,’ I said, looking up at the box on the roof.

‘It’s real,’ he said, sadly.

I picked up a twig and scratched a little drawing of a house in the sand.

‘Shouldn’t we pray?’

Abdelkrim snorted. ‘Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?’ He got to his feet and stretched, then leaned into the car and emerged again with the nearly empty bottle of tea. ‘Want some?’ he said, flicking the butt of his cigarette into the air.

I stood up and took the bottle from him and drained it while he busied himself with a fresh bottle and his teabags.

‘Monsieur Archie showed me the picture of you and Mother with your friends,’ I said. ‘He gave it to me, in fact.’

‘Toh
.’

‘It was while you were sleeping.’

‘Uhuh?’

‘Is that woman your girlfriend?’

Abdelkrim took a long swig from his bottle, the muddy liquid sloshing out of the neck and painting a gash across his dust-encrusted cheek. ‘I suppose she is,’ he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

I shuffled around to see him as he turned away from the car. ‘And is the baby yours also?’

He laughed. ‘Momi? No! – W
alayi
!’ He was shaking his head now and making great puffing sounds. ‘Her father was some kitchen boy from Zinder, I think. No, no.

Nothing to do with me!’

I was impatient. ‘Can’t you just tell me about Mother, Abdelkrim?’

He turned to face me again. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, setting the bottle on to the roof of the car. ‘I met Efrance about two years ago. She was living in the shanties at Pays-Bas. Poor. Doing whatever she had to do to survive. Her baby was very young. I helped her as much as I could. I liked her a lot. When Mother came to Niamey for her tests the doctors said that she would need to continue to attend the hospital regularly.

She couldn’t stay with me at the barracks, of course, and we couldn’t afford to find her lodgings of her own.’

‘What about cousin Moussa?’ I said, lowering myself onto the ground.

‘Couldn’t he have helped?’

‘I never trusted that bastard!’ Abdelkrim hissed through his teeth. ‘Father suggested asking him for help but Mother had no time for Moussa – or that witch Doodi either. So she stayed with Efrance and Momi. She used Efrance’s sewing machine whenever she was strong enough and looked after Momi whenever Efrance was working, to help pay her way. They all got on well. I would visit whenever I could, and Bouleb would lend me his motorcycle to take Mother to the hospital whenever it was necessary. For a little while she seemed to rally.’ He looked at me and shrugged.

‘Then she got sicker.’

I stared at my toes through troughs of tears and tried to imagine my mother living with Efrance and Momi in their little tin and wooden shack. ‘I wish I could have met your friends, Abdel,’ I said.

‘You will one day, Little One,’ he said, ‘you will.’

‘Did Fatima meet them?’

‘No.’

There was a silence. Absolute. The air vibrating over the stark, baked landscape. Abdelkrim had dug the toe of his army boot into the sand and was dragging it from side to side. He stared off into the distance.‘Mother gave me the photograph of you on the ferry, also,’ I said, patting the little bundle on my hip. ‘I keep it here, with my other treasures that I showed you.’

He looked at me and forced his mouth into a kind of sad smile, but I was sure there was anger in his eyes too.

Archie returned with his mysterious canvas bag, whistling as he approached us.

Ça va?
 Ready to go?’

Abdelkrim nodded. ‘Sure. I’ll drive for a while.’ He drank some of the tea, made a quick check of the ropes once again and then wrestled his way, head first, through the driver’s window.

Archie helped me to my feet and then put his arms around my waist, so that he could lift me clear of the door, feeding me, feet first, back into the airless vehicle.

When he too was back inside, he slapped his hand against the passenger door and said, ‘Let’s roll!’

The approach of dusk offered us some relief within the stifling car. The sun dropped low over the parched landscape and now set the sky on fire. A light breeze bowled scraps of dislocated scrub-thorn alongside our rattling vehicle, until they snared each other up, or bounced off in other directions against crusts of rock now casting long, dark shadows across the barren plains.

The road passed through a neat little village where a gang of tiny boys, naked from the waist down, chased along behind us, their little, pointed penises wobbling curiously as they ran. The houses were all made of pinkish bricks, and parked alongside one of them sat an ancient pick-up truck that looked like it might have been constructed from salvaged parts of road wrecks such as those we had seen at Bukwa Fonda. A group of women, drawing water from a well at the centre of the village, waved as we swept by and, one by one, the children who had been following us trailed off to return to their mothers’ sides.

‘Do you know what this place is called, Abdel?’ Archie said. ‘I don’t see any road signs!’

‘I think this is Fura Daya,’ Abdelkrim said. ‘At least that’s what travellers call it – it may have another name. There are very few young men here. Most have left to find work – in Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin or wherever. They are known as the
Kurmizey –
the sons of Djerma farmers who travel to the sea coast each year, returning only for the harvests. Only women, children and old people remain. It’s a favourite stop-off for some of my comrades.’

‘I’ll bet it is!’ Archie laughed.

Just before nightfall, we came across an unlit bush taxi hauled up at the side of the road. Around it stood some twenty-five passengers while another man – the driver, presumably – worked on one of the rear wheels with a large metal foot pump.

‘Should we see if they need help?’ Abdelkrim said.

‘I suppose so,’ Archie said, leaning out of the window as the car drew up alongside the delapidated, windowless vehicle.

Some of the passengers turned to regard us as Abdelkrim pulled on the brake. A number of women, some with infants tied to their backs, milled towards us, elbowing and shoving at each other. ‘Monsieur! Monsieur!’ they called, each appearing to attempt to drown out the sound of the others’ voices.

‘What is the problem here?’ Archie said.

Again the women pushed forward, but now the driver had stood upright and was chastising his passengers, his voice resonating deeply through the high-pitched babble. ‘Get back! Get back! Let me speak to the young gentleman.’ His teeth gleamed in the half-light.

‘Monsieur! Monsieur!’ one of the women cried out, defiantly. ‘Give me and my child a ride, please. We have been travelling all day in this death trap!’

‘I have a child too, Monsieur!’ a woman in a bright
pagne
screeched. ‘Take me, take me!’

The driver grabbed at the second woman’s arm, wrenching her back so that he could address Archie. ‘
Excusez-moi, Monsieur
,’ he said, hitching up his brown striped
jel aba
as he approached the window.

‘Do you need some help, friend?’ Archie said.

‘No. No, thank you. We just have a slow puncture. It is nothing.’

‘Nothing? Nothing?’ the persistent woman screamed. ‘We have to stop every ten minutes for this man to pump up his stupid tyres!’

‘We’ve missed the ferry!’ another woman shouted.

‘Don’t you have a spare wheel?’ Archie said.

The driver tilted his head to one side as if to apologise, while the women jostled him from behind. ‘The soldiers took it, Monsieur.’

My brother leaned across in front of Archie. ‘But you can manage here, brother?’

‘
Oui. D’accord
.’

‘Toh
.’ Archie slapped the side of the car and turned his face towards Abdelkrim. ‘Let’s go then.’

‘Monsieur! Monsieur!’ the woman in the bright
pagne
cried again. ‘Please!

Won’t you take me and my child to Tera?’

‘We are not going to Tera, sister,’ Archie called back, ‘and this vehicle is full!’ He pointed ahead and Abdelkrim accelerated, the wheels of the car spinning, ripping through the cooling dust and throwing it up into the greying light to partially obscure the wretched bush taxi and its forlorn passengers.

I stared out of the back window. ‘Couldn’t we have taken one or two of them?’

‘
Walayi!
Which one or two?’ my brother said, shaking his head.

Archie Cargo was nodding vigorously. ‘They might have torn either the car or us apart!’

Darkness brought more hazards. The Mercedes’ lights were not good and thumping into potholes became a more common occurrence. I would not have said so aloud, but Abdelkrim’s driving skills left a great deal to be desired. By midnight I felt like I had been battered by a troop of monkeys. I tried not to complain. There were too many other things to worry about. Every so often I would be lulled into a trance-like state and my mind would wander fleetingly back to happier days. But it was only a matter of time before my bones were shaken once again, or my head was bashed off the door pillar. Like shattered glass my sweet mother’s face would fragment in my mind’s eye, and each time this occurred it seemed to me more difficult to conjure up her image again. I patted the bundle on my hip and was thankful for the photograph that Archie had given to me.

Eventually I must have dozed off again because, when I woke, the car had stopped and I was alone in the darkness. The air was much cooler now and silence enveloped the vehicle. Someone had thrown a jacket over me. For a moment I did not know where I was and fear seized me. I sat up and rubbed my eyes and peered out of the window at the moon-whitened sands. Abdelkrim and Archie were nowhere to be seen. I twisted around on the seat and stuck my head out of the opposite window. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the moonlight and I could just make out the silhouetted forms of my brother and his friend lying by the side of the road. Grabbing hold of the rope overhead, I struggled, feet first, out of the window. As my left foot touched the sand, my right sandal slapped against the car door and Archie jolted upright.

‘Good God, you scared me!’ he whispered.

I stepped away from the car a little and then flopped down clumsily onto the sand. Immediately the coldness of the hardened ground started to seep through my body. Archie Cargo stood up and moved towards me, dragging the thin blanket in which he had been wrapped behind him. ‘You’re shivering,’ he said, draping the blanket over my shoulders. He sat down beside me.