“Do you think we made the right decision to come here?” he asked her, his head in his hands.
“We have not yet started living here and you are already giving up. Now go out there and see what share we can have of whatever luck is left.” She smiled at him while broadening her eyes for him to move on. He kissed her again and left the house in a more enthusiastic mood than when he’d headed out before. She waved him off with her newspaper. Bockarie started sweating profusely as soon as he set foot on the main road again, but he kept a positive attitude to attract hope and luck his way, determination in his every stride.
There were so many people on the street where the cars were supposed to be that he had to fix himself firmly on the ground so that he was able to walk in his chosen direction. Otherwise the melee would carry him somewhere else. He saw this happen a minute before to a man who lost his son in the crowd. When a car approached the crowded street, the driver honked relentlessly, revving the engine, threatening to run people over. It was only then that the crowd opened up with just enough space for the car to pass, then filled up the open spaces, engulfing the car. Some people grumbled and shouted at the driver, “You want to kill us?”
They banged on the body of the car. “Stop blowing your horn so much.”
When another car came by whose driver didn’t honk or rev its engine, the driver was berated for not alerting the crowd. A brand-new Mercedes-Benz came into view, and as the crowd parted to let it through, some children with dirty palm-oil-laden hands and Coca-Cola bottle tops first wiped their greasy hands on the vehicle and then etched jagged lines on it with the sharp little disks as they jogged alongside. The driver got angry and jumped out, but by then the children were gone, and he was peppered with insults because his opened door impeded the flow of foot traffic.
Were the children deliberately looking to destroy cars? No. They saw them as things to play with, things to lay hands on and mark while they passed by. The motion felt good to them, and they did it to any car except police, military, presidential, and ministerial vehicles. Of course, those vehicles went by so fast they would kill you before you had a chance to lay your hands on them. And even if they slowed down, the children knew enough that they didn’t dare.
After thirty uncomfortable minutes of minding every part of his body in the crowd, Bockarie finally extricated himself from the madness. There were still a lot of people on the road as he left the city center, especially young boys and men hanging about—most of them dressed quite nicely but still just sitting around on the pavement, on packed vehicles, on anything, waiting. He passed an interestingly dressed young man who walked with so much confidence that it seemed he owned the very street he walked on. He had on nicely fitted jeans and a blue long-sleeve shirt, tucked in. On top of the blue shirt, he wore his undershirt, rather than below. This gave him a very sophisticated look, however, and his expression told anyone he passed that he was proud of this new style.
Using what you have to the best of your ability
, Bockarie thought.
The young man also reminded him that he had to change his T-shirt, which he did quickly on the side of the street, wiping his sweat with the shirt he’d been wearing. He walked the next few steps to a restaurant that sold local food, not the one that had white people’s food and was always crowded by foreigners and those who could afford to pay for green things on plates with names and portions that insulted the money in a poor man’s pocket. This was where he was supposed to meet a certain Mr. Kaifala.
* * *
At home Kula had marked enough employment ads in the flimsy newspapers whose pages tore as she turned them. She started calling the numbers to inquire about the jobs and hopefully make an appointment for an interview. Her first choices were nursing jobs at hospitals or clinics. Most of the numbers for these jobs had been disconnected, and the ones she managed to reach hung up on her as soon as she said that she had just arrived in the city from up-country. She wondered if coming from the interior automatically implied inexperience or unworthiness of everything in the city. No matter what the explanation was, she decided that on her next calls she would say nothing about it. Still, no one had any openings for her, or so they said, even though the ads just came out in the papers that morning. Sometimes secretaries would put her on hold and go on about their personal lives for minutes that were costly for her before retrieving the phone only to tell her that the person she needed to speak with wasn’t around.
“But you didn’t even check. I heard you on the phone talking the whole time,” she’d responded to one of them.
“I said no one is here and I know how to do my job.” The person hung up on her. Kula wanted to tell her that if she was going to waste her minutes to at least tell some interesting story about her personal life.
Manawah and Abu had returned from bathing after finishing their chores of fetching enough water for the day. They came inside to change their clothes. Kula left the room and stood by the door outside. She inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to calm her nerves. While she waited for the boys, Miata, Oumu, and Thomas returned from the market and their wanderings. Oumu had again seen Colonel and wanted to speak to him, but he’d made a hand gesture indicating not when Miata and Thomas were around. She wanted to tell her mother but then thought if Colonel wanted her parents to know he was around, he would have made it known.
“Something on your mind, my child?” Kula asked Oumu, studying her little girl’s clearly bothered face.
“No, Mother. Just remembering the things I have seen since we arrived.” Oumu managed a smile, and her mother stroked her cheek tenderly, trying to assure her that she could tell her mother anything.
Kula took the ingredients that Miata had bought. She had to prepare the meal so she could get back to her job search.
The boys asked for permission to investigate their new neighborhood and were off before the answer came out of their mother’s mouth. “Make sure to look after your brother, Manawah.” She sent her voice after them.
Miata looked at her mother with questioning eyes about why she had granted permission to her brothers so easily and hadn’t given them the responsibility of taking their littlest siblings with them.
“You don’t have to take them with you now, either,” Kula said, pointing at Thomas and Oumu. “You can go up to the college and see if you can take some classes this summer, later on. That will be your excursion.” Kula motioned for her daughter to go.
“Ex … cur … sion. What does that mean?” Oumu asked her mother.
“I’ll tell you later.” She didn’t want to deal with Oumu then. Oumu’s questions were unending these days. Once you answered one question, there was another at its heels.
What Kula could not know was that Oumu was looking for any opportunity to go out alone so that she could run into Colonel. So she sat next to her mother as Kula went through what they had brought from the market.
“Your sister forgot to buy the Maggi,” Kula said.
“I can go get it at the shop just over there,” Oumu volunteered.
“Okay, take this and come right back,” Kula said, looking suspiciously at Oumu—the little girl had been too quick to offer to do a chore.
As soon as Oumu left the house, her eyes went in search of Colonel. He was already standing behind her. He joked, “You have to have better eyes to look for me.”
Oumu turned around, smiling.
“Did you follow us to the city?” she asked Colonel. He didn’t answer but just walked with her to buy the maggi.
“You must promise me that you won’t tell anyone that I am here. Not yet. Okay?” He broadened his eyes at her.
“Okay.”
“Your father went to town to look for work, I am guessing.”
“I don’t know. But he did go to town.”
“You have to go back before your mother comes looking, for she will have eyes to find you,” Colonel said.
“You are probably right.”
“But you can always find me there if you need to, okay?” He pointed at the small kiosk that sold cigarettes.
She waved to him as he disappeared among the
pan bodi
houses.
* * *
Bockarie sat near the window where the breeze from the sea visited intermittently. The waitress didn’t pay him much attention and he quite liked that because he wanted to save the little money he had. He observed the young men across the street standing by the entrance of the fancy restaurant. Their eyes resented everything that showed even the slightest comfort that they didn’t have. When someone came out of the restaurant with a bottle of cold water, they sighed with indignation.
The eyes of a struggling person see the smallest comfort, in the way another walks, laughs, sits, and even breathes
, Bockarie said loudly in his mind. He was surprised by his ability to clearly express himself and decided then that he must write down some of his observations. But he had neither a pen nor a sheet of paper.
He did have an inner dialogue, though.
If I buy a mango juice, the waitress will certainly bring me a napkin. I could then ask to borrow a pen and write on that napkin.
“Miss, mango juice, please.” He raised his hand. Twenty minutes later, she still hadn’t brought him the juice. He remembered Mr. Saquee explaining to him that in the city, he had to be forceful and not always polite to be heard, especially when he wanted to be served at shops and restaurants. Otherwise he would wait for hours.
“Hey, you. Mango juice—
now
,” he commanded, raising his voice at the young woman and eyeing her hard. She reacted, though with reluctance in her movements and irritation in her eyes. She brought the juice with a napkin and asked Bockarie to pay before setting the bottle down on the table in front of him.
“Could I borrow your pen?” He took the pen from her fingers before she responded. He paid, she took his money and left him. He quickly removed the napkin wrapped around the cold juice bottle so that it wouldn’t get saturated and started writing his observations.
* * *
The veins on the young man’s forehead and the look in his eyes show that he has lost faith in the possibility of something good today, so he sits on the ground, leans his head on the 4
×
4 car, and allows his heart to breathe, as his spirit has been holding its breath all day.
The young man sits on the ground in a crowded city where he has come to look for hope. So many like him are searching for hope that it has become afraid here and is on the run. Whenever it shows itself—hope, that is—hands from the crowded streets reach for it with such violent urgency because of the fear that they may never see it again. They do so without knowing that their desperation frightens hope away. Hope also doesn’t know that it is its scarcity that causes the crowd to lunge at it, shredding its robe. And as it struggles to escape, the fabric scraps land in the hands of some but last only for hours, a day, days, a week, weeks, depending on how much fabric each hand is able to catch.
* * *
“I need my pen back, sir.” The waitress took the pen out of Bockarie’s grip and placed it in her pocket, returning to stand by the counter and chat with her coworkers. They whispered to one another and laughed at the fact that Bockarie had bought only mango juice since he sat there. He ignored them, folded the napkin, put it inside his front pocket, and turned his attention to the young men outside. Just then a group of foreigners arrived in the area, headed to the mobile phone store down the street. One of the young men went in their direction and greeted them.
“Hello! You do not need to buy a new phone. I can help unlock the ones you have and you only need to buy a SIM card then. You’ll be saving lots of money. So what do you say, my good people?” He spoke quickly, as the distance to the mobile phone store was quite short. The foreigners seemed hesitant, looking at one another.
“Please, give me yours and I will open it for free.” He put out his hand to a young woman the same age as him, nineteen years old. She apprehensively gave him her phone. He first took out the battery and restarted the thing, then quickly typed in a few numbers and letters, pressed Enter and then another set of numbers and letters. The young woman, a bit intrigued, tried to see what he was doing. She moved closer and he turned toward her so that she could see his hands more clearly.
“I will do a test with my SIM card,” he said, turning the phone off again and placing the card in it before turning it back on.
“Awolowo, call me phone, ya,” he called out, setting his voice above traffic, to one of his friends who sat on the pavement of the street while handing the phone back to the young woman. Awolowo pulled out his mobile phone and dialed. The phone rang and the young woman answered. Awolowo said something that made her laugh.
“Man, nor mess wit me business oh,” he warned Awolowo, who hung up and waved to the woman. Bockarie watched in amazement as the young man now unlocked the phones of all the foreigners, sent his friend Awolowo to buy SIM cards for all of them, and made sure everything worked. He charged them, and the foreigners were so impressed that they paid more than he had asked. One of them decided to give him an extra hundred-dollar bill. After the foreigners left, the young man showed the money to his friend Awolowo.
“I hate 1996, man,” he said, handing the bill to Awolowo who looked at the 1996 series of the hundred-dollar bill.
“You won’t get much for this.” Awolowo gave it back to him. Hundred-dollar bills as old as 1996 were rarely accepted here, and when they were, the exchange rate was very low. You needed bills that were more recent than 2000. “You know, I have always wondered who came up with this rule that the 1996 series isn’t good. We do choose some interesting standards, man, for people who have no money.” He laughed. “Isn’t it a law that money is legal tender?”
“Awolowo, you have too much time on your hands today, man. The law is different here on the street. You know that. And for the 1996 bills, the idea came about because people found out they were easiest to fake.”