I stopped in front of a fire pit where a boy plucked pieces of sizzling meat off the grill and wrapped them in a cone of newspaper. I dropped seventy CFA into his palm. CFA, the currency of West Africa, was backed by the Bank of France. The paper bills were multicolored with pictures of West African heads of state. The coins were small, light, and the color of gold. Five hundred CFA equaled one U.S. dollar.
A few steps beyond the fire pit, a big man, sleeves rolled to his elbows, pulled loaves of bread from inside the oven. I picked three hot baguettes from a basket and handed the man thirty CFA. Dinner for three came to about one-fifth of a U.S. dollar.
Inside the bar, a bare electric bulb hung from the ceiling. Looking like a shorter version of John Wayne, Don leaned against the cement counter at the far wall, buying liter bottles of Sovobra. I followed him through a side door into an open courtyard where the hum of an electric generator competed with loud conversation. Metal tables and chairs rested on legs pushed unevenly into the sand. A string of lightbulbs crossed from one end of the patio to the other just above eye level. Luanne waved to us from a table in the corner.
At three other tables, about twenty
Voltaique
soldiers sat drinking and eating. They slowed their conversation to watch us pass. It was strange, being one of two women in a bar crowded with men. This far north, African women did not go to bars as they did in the cities of the south. Because Luanne and I were foreigners we were tolerated. But I missed being able to walk into a bar where both women and men socialized, and a woman could sit and have a beer without feeling like a saloon girl. I sat next to Luanne.
The Fulani staff never accompanied us to the Militaire Bar. Being Muslims, they did not drink alcohol; “O ye true believers, come not to prayer when ye are drunken.” Aid workers and soldiers from the non-Muslim south were the only patrons.
Luanne passed around the glasses, Don poured the beer, and I opened the newspaper cone of meat, unfolding it in the center of the table.
I rubbed my hands together. “I could eat a horse!”
The beer was cold and washed all the day’s dust from my throat. The bread tasted heavenly and the roasted goat was spicy and hot. Don and Luanne devoured their food with the same gusto, and I sighed inwardly at our compatible silence. It had been a good day.
“Hey! What’s today?” I said.
“The fourteenth.”
“People! It’s my birthday!”
“Well, happy birthday!” Don said. “Being a gentleman, I won’t ask how old you are.”
“Good, because I can’t remember.”
“Ha!” Luanne barked, and we clinked our glasses and drank.
She looked past me toward the entrance. “Oh, oh, here comes the epitome of Western Man to spoil the party.”
A tall Brit had entered the courtyard and was walking over to our table. His name was Philip and he worked for the British Save the Children in Gorom Gorom, a speck of a town farther north.
“I resent that,” Don said, but he was smiling.
“You’re a rare exception.” Luanne made a face as Philip reached our table.
I had met Philip in the Ouaga office when I first arrived. He was tall and dark-haired. We’d drunk our fair share of beer together.
“Well, who have we here?” Philip gave us his patronizing smile. “Some exiled Yanks, mind if I join you?” he said, sitting down. He raised a finger to a young man who worked in the bar and mouthed, “Sovobra.”
Philip turned to me. “You spent some time in Liberia, right?”
I nodded, preparing myself for some kind of veiled insult.
“Well, you’ll be interested to know they’ve just had a coup, a bloody one.”
The meat I was chewing lodged in my throat.
“They’ve shot President what’s-his-name, Tolbert is it?” he continued. “Taken all the cabinet ministers, tied them to stakes on the beach, and shot them. Some Sergeant Doe has taken over.”
I managed to swallow, but couldn’t fill my lungs with enough air. Francis, James, the mothers and their babies, all the students I had taught: all peaceful people.
“When?”
“The army stormed the president’s mansion the middle of last night.”
Whenever there had been a strike in Monrovia, the people had rioted and looted the stores. But there had never been an armed uprising against the government.
“Liberia?” Luanne said.
“You know, south of Sierra Leone, the place you Yanks exiled a bunch of your slaves about a hundred years ago.” Philip said as if speaking to a child.
“I
know
where Liberia is,” Luanne retorted. “It must have been the CIA, it always is.” She frowned. “But why would they bother with Liberia? No diamonds, no oil.”
Several soldiers quieted and looked our way. Very few
Voltaiques
spoke English, but CIA were three letters familiar to many people regardless of what language they spoke. Luanne shrugged.
“It was internal,” Philip said. “Tribal members of the military against the ruling elite.” He looked in the direction of the waiter with an annoyed expression.
I shook my head, still unable to believe it. “Why the CIA?”
“Why not? Iran, Chilé, Zaire.” Luanne grimaced. “They’re always overthrowing people who get in the way of American companies.”
The noise level at the other tables increased as more soldiers entered the bar. One of the lightbulbs flickered and went out.
“There are four hundred Peace Corps volunteers there.” My stomach twisted again.
“With that many volunteers, who needs the CIA?” Philip sneered.
“Shut up, Philip.” I was on the verge of tears. I wasn’t about to tell him how a village in northern Liberia had accused several volunteers of being CIA and put them on trial. “Volunteers get enough crap thanks to the CIA, I don’t need to take it from you.”
Don patted me on the back. “Leave her alone, Philip. Your Majesty’s Secret Service has the same mottled history as the CIA.”
The bartender arrived with Philip’s beer and set it in front of him. The bottle had been opened and I noticed the bottle cap had not been left on, as was the custom. I kept quiet, watching Philip pour the beer into his glass. Maybe somebody put in just enough poison to make him writhe around on the floor for a few minutes.
“Well, at least we meddle in other people’s affairs with more style.” Philip picked up his beer and took a long swig.
“There are six things a Fulani doesn’t trust: a river, a prince, a string, a knife, darkness, and a woman.”
They all turned to me with blank faces.
Philip barked a laugh. “Well, I can certainly understand the woman part.”
“Guns, machetes, and bloody coups.”
“Get this woman another beer,” Philip said. “Her brain is dehydrated.”
And darkness
, I thought, the dark of the rain forest, the violence.
There will be darkness in Liberia.
The table was silent for a moment, surrounded by a sea of soldiers.
Philip made some joke and everybody laughed but me. I was too hollow to laugh.
Philip nudged me. “Come on, don’t be so bloody serious.”
“Don’t be such an ass, Philip,” I said. “I have friends in Liberia.” I had to get out of there. I stood to leave.
“Want me to take you home?” Don asked.
“No, thanks.” A hundred eyes burned the back of my neck as I left.
I threaded my way through the maze of sand streets; a right past the big neem tree, a left in the direction of the North Star. As the engine noise of the bar’s generator muted, thoughts of Liberia replaced it. Farther from the electric lights, kerosene lamps, and open fires, darkness overcame the thinning glow. A high ceiling of haze blotted out the stars. Visions took form on the black screen of sky: slumped bodies tied to stakes, blood running into the sand. Death and darkness.
What would happen to the mothers and babies, my students in Foequellie? How long before there was civil war? If such violence could surface so unexpectedly in Liberia, how could I trust it wouldn’t happen in Upper Volta? This was what my father feared. His fear curled into the pit of my stomach.
I had always been comfortable in the dark. Suddenly, the empty streets and shadowed corners were not so friendly. At the crossroad where I turned toward my own neighborhood, a man slept beneath a tree, wrapped in a blanket. I hurried on until I reached my gate. Issa had long ago folded up his kiosk and gone to bed. I entered my courtyard and sat on the edge of my patio.
Today had been my birthday. I was twenty-seven years old. My friends in Liberia were dying. My courtyard was empty and my house was dark.
Chapter 5
Dissension
September/Dhu-al-Qudah
The soft chirp of a cricket. Cool predawn air. I lay under my sheet not opening my eyes. Birds rustled the limbs of the neem tree. Voices passed by the gate, murmuring in the quiet sweetness of morning.
A motorcycle engine backfired in the street and my heart skipped into a gallop. There had been no gunshots in Dori, but I knew what they sounded like. During my last month in Liberia, I had lived in the capital city of Monrovia. The government had raised the price of rice, and the people had rioted, breaking store windows and looting food. Soldiers with rifles had patrolled the streets, shooting at anyone out past the 10 pm curfew. I would awaken in the dead of night to the sound of gunfire. Even then, the violence had been one-sided. The Liberian people stole food but they did not shoot back.
But things had changed in Liberia. Now, lots of people were shooting back. I had no way of knowing what was happening to my friends there.
A pencil ray of sun turned the inside of my eyelid red. 5:30 am. A
cock-a-doodle-doo
from Issa’s courtyard announced the rising sun and was answered in sequence by three other roosters across town. A donkey brayed, a guinea-hen screeched. My heart settled back into a steady pace at the familiar sounds of a new day. Dori was a long way from Liberia.
I opened an eye. Unhindered by houses or trees, I had a straight view from my bed under the tin roof of my patio, over the top of my courtyard wall, to the horizon. Sunlight spilled over the land. I pulled aside the mosquito net and swung my legs over the side.
At my feet,
Anna Karenina
lay dog-eared next to the kerosene lamp. I had stayed up past midnight until the final page. On the edge of the Sahara, a place without movies or TV, the expats passed books around like little boxes of gold coin. Western man had long ago lost the art of preserving stories by memorizing and telling. For us, it was the written word. But Africans still carried their literature in their heads and passed its flame through the art of storytelling.
In the beginning, Zambe, son of the supreme God, created a chimpanzee, a gorilla, an elephant, and two men—A European and an African. To these creatures, Zambe gave the tools of survival—fire, water, food, weapons, and a book.
Zambe
came back later to see who was using which tools. The chimpanzee and the gorilla had discarded everything but the fruit; the elephant, to my disappointment, couldn’t remember what she’d done with her possessions.
The European kept the book but discarded the fire, while the African discarded the book but kept the fire
.
Time would tell which was the wisest choice. They both seemed like a good idea to me. So, when someone like Old Issa or Hamidou told a story, I listened, and perusing Don’s books, I had found Tolstoy and taken him home.
I gathered the mosquito net into a twist, flipping the lower half upward to rest on its canopy-like top. The
slap slap
of my flip-flops accompanied me into the bathing room where I splashed cold water on my face. Anna Karenina, despairing over her lover, Prince Vronsky, had committed suicide by throwing herself in front of a train. Seemed that uppity women who had the gall to follow their hearts and seek their freedom came to very bad ends. No doubt both Europeans
and
Africans had plenty of stories about that.
After 239 chapters, I had taken Tolstoy to heart and become somewhat of a social recluse. Or, had I used him as an excuse to become one? Either way, since the news of Liberia’s coup two months before, except for working in the villages and going to the office, I hadn’t ventured very far from the security of my courtyard. I had boxed myself up with my friends: J. S. Bach, Joni Mitchell, and Leo Tolstoy. Joni sang about me—a lonely painter, living in a box of paints.
Don was keeping an eye on me but not asking any questions. Philip had stopped by once and knocked at my gate. I had hidden in my outhouse until he left.
In the out-kitchen, I lit the single-plate kerosene stove with a wooden match, filled the teakettle from the water filter and placed it on the blue flame. Reaching for the tin of Nescafé, I struck up a conversation with several inanimate objects. Something I was doing more and more.
“You miss Rob,” a spoon said to me. “Just admit it.” My promise to myself to forget Rob was proving difficult.
I shook my head. “No, I don’t. The guy was a jerk and I was too stupid to see it.” Just as Anna had been with Vronsky. If only I could stop dreaming about him.
I opened the refrigerator and stood staring at the tub of margarine. A sane person NEVER stood with the frigo door open in the Sahel, letting all that kerosene-cooled air escape, especially during September, the month between rainy season and cold season when the heat returned with a vengeance.
I had tried to follow Lily’s advice, imagining Rob in a hot air balloon, drifting away from memory, out of sight and mind. I tried it again. Just as he rose nearly out of sight, I hefted a shotgun out of nowhere and shot the balloon. My preoccupation with guns and violence was getting to me.
“I just miss being loved,” I said to the loaf of bread.
Some breakages cannot be replaced like a pot.
The teakettle whistled. I added it to the tray of Nescafé, a tin of sweetened condensed milk, bread, and jam, and walked the path to the table next to the hammock. The sky was porcelain blue and, for these few minutes, the temperature was tolerable.