Little Family

by Ishmael Beah

  * * *

  —

  Elimane hurried past the ferry landing, which was still in a state of commotion. It crossed his mind to swipe a phone from someone, but William Handkerchief would surely notice that the phone wasn’t brand-new, and Elimane would risk jeopardizing the possibility of future dealings with him. If he bought the cheapest phone, on the other hand, cheaper than William Handkerchief expected, it was possible that the man would give it to Elimane eventually, if he kept him on, in order to be able to reach him. William Handkerchief seemed like the type who would have other phones at home and wouldn’t want to carry around a cheap product that might tarnish his image. Elimane decided to avoid overthinking things, lest the iron grow cold and he could no longer bend it to his liking.

  At the far end of the market, past the last row of food stalls that had dry ingredients such as salt and pepper, beans, rice, and oil, a set of polished wooden kiosks displayed all manner of electronic devices and appliances on tables and shelves—phones, microwaves, irons, walkie-talkies, computers—along with scattered spare parts for such devices. Some of the traders sat inside the stalls repairing broken items, and others stood by, smoking cigarettes or drinking tea and bantering with one another as they attended to their customers. Elimane’s gaze alighted on the shop that appeared least busy, attended to by a scraggly fellow who looked as lost in his thoughts as his body was in his oversize clothes.

  Just as Elimane headed for the shop, he noticed Namsa approaching him. She seemed to be absorbed in her own world, jumping and hopping in an invisible game of hopscotch. He was in the midst of debating with himself whether to tell her to focus or to ignore her—sooner or later she would have to figure out how to use her wits on her own, after all—when Namsa gave a big leap and landed right in his path, knocking into him and clumsily falling to the ground. She looked up at him, startled. “Sorry!” she exclaimed, then gathered herself and picked up a small pouch that had fallen from her pocket to the ground. But instead of putting it back in her own pocket, she offered it to Elimane. “Sorry, sir,” she said again. Elimane took it, picking up on the cue, though he wasn’t sure what Namsa was up to. “Play your games at home,” he said sternly, then pocketed the pouch and moved past her, intent on his business.

  In a corner of the market, he opened the pouch. It contained a new phone in its box, very much the sort Elimane had been thinking of buying. How had Namsa known what Elimane was going to buy? And when and where had she been able to get her hands on something like this?

  Now all he needed was a SIM card and a charged battery. Some stalls would charge your battery for you, for a small fee, but you had to be sure they didn’t swindle you by trying to fob off an old battery on you upon your return, or a cheap Chinese-made version that would break if you spoke into your phone at high volume—and high volume was almost always necessary, as the phone network was so patchy and unreliable.

  Elimane used the permanent marker he carried in his pocket to write King’s Property on the battery, in his most elaborately distinctive script. That would make it hard for them to deceive him.

  “Hello, a SIM card and a charged Nokia battery, please.” He handed over the battery and the exact amount needed to a young boy at a neighboring stall. Elimane had taught the little family to make a point of memorizing the current prices of all sort of commonly needed goods and services; asking the price was essentially announcing your lack of street smarts and pleading to be overcharged.

  The boy pointed to Elimane’s writing. “This is a used battery, so when you come back, don’t expect a new one.” Elimane noticed that the boy had a face at odds with his body—a face with the demeanor of an adult. It occurred to him that this was because the boy looked all day into the faces of people who were older than him, and his own face retained the impression of what he gazed on.

  Elimane held his ground. “It is a new one. I wrote on it to make sure that you do not give me back an old one.” The boss man, who had been hovering in the background, frowned at Elimane but nodded to the boy, indicating that he should bring the conversation to an end and get on with the transaction, before other customers got the same idea. Elimane laughed to himself at having evaded their clutches, for today at least. They would have to content themselves with an honest fee.

  Elimane waited for the battery alongside a long line of others who had no electricity to charge their phones for whatever their daily hustle was. He reflected on the undeniable benefits of these devices—the incredible speed with which they transmitted information—but also on their drawbacks. Conversation among the poor was neither free nor as pleasurable as it once was. When someone called you, they spoke fast and so did you, preoccupied as you were with the life of your battery and the unreliability and cost of service. People no longer stopped to ask, “How are you and your family? Are the children well?” or, if they did, waited to attend to the responses.

  The boy called to him and handed him the newly charged battery. Elimane inserted it in the phone and waited for it to come alive. The screen lit up and the phone chimed, announcing its enormous importance these days.

  Hurrying back toward the ferry landing, Elimane was interrupted by the sudden arrival of a group of a dozen or so men wearing green trench coats and polished boots. Their appearance brought an immediate and unnatural silence to the clamor of people touting their services. The riotous motion of arms and hands ceased as well, and they hung loosely at people’s sides. The sea of bodies had parted to make way for the group and remained parted in its wake. Who were these men, so few in number compared with the crowd, yet somehow able to put its very existence on hold?

  The men began to unbutton their coats with a deliberate and synchronized slowness, displaying just enough of the metal sticks of death hanging at their sides to give a hint of what havoc they were capable of wreaking. Swamped by the coats, their shadows had no heads or feet. They removed their red berets from their pockets and set them on their heads. The leader of the contingent walked straight to the khaki-clad policemen who were monitoring the unloading.

  “You. Stand up.”

  The officer rose, peanut shells falling from his khaki pants. He hurried to retrieve the boots that were standing nearby, their laces loosened to allow the warmth of the sun to penetrate them. But before he could lay hands on them, one of the red caps kicked the boots into the water. A few in the crowd laughed, but others hushed them, fearful of drawing the red caps’ attention. Silence returned, as the crowd, captive spectators to this show of power, waited to see what would happen next.

  “You don’t need them. Jump in the water and wash that laziness off,” the commander ordered the officer. “Now!” The officer hesitated, trying to empty his pockets of crumpled bills and an assortment of cell phones. But before he could finish, he was shoved into the ocean and, right behind him, so was another officer, who had made a move for the abandoned cash and electronics. The crowd murmured in surprise, and some stood on their toes to see if they could spot the policemen in the water.

  The commander adjusted his beret so that the wind could not snatch it away, then sat down at the edge of the jetty and laughed at the two men struggling in the water.

  “Help us, sir! We’ll work hard!” The two men cried out in unison, as though they had rehearsed the words.

  “Ah, I get it,” said the commander. “The prospect of death brings you together.” He laughed with exaggerated loudness. “Look, your boots can swim better than you. You should have kept them on. You are no longer useful.” He turned away from the sight of them, and the crowd reluctantly shuffled away from the landing and the gaze of the men with the red caps.

  The commander pulled out his mobile phone and dialed, then put the phone to his ear and shouted: “Hello, sir. Yes, I get you loud and clear, sir.”

  He listened.

  “I have control of the situation, sir, and will continue with the search. Thank you, sir.” He closed
the phone and stood with his legs wide, and his men drew close so that they could receive their directives without anyone hearing. A murmur rose from the crowd as they looked on. At their various points along its fringes, Namsa, Kpindi, Ndevui, and Khoudi sensed that this incident had put an end to the possibility of their making anything of the day here. Such men always invented excuses to disturb the lives of people like them, the ones society had no use for. Today was just another exercise in dehumanization.

  Now the red caps scanned the crowd for whoever might be eyeing them displeasingly. And yet if you turned away, this might also be interpreted as a sign of disrespect. It was hard to know how, or where, to look. No one with eyes, in other words, was safe.

  When this scrutiny had had the desired intimidating effect, the commander spoke again in his coarse voice, demanding that the crowd line up to be searched. Why was it that those who were about to shatter your lives always demanded order from you, when such directives were invariably a prelude to chaos?

  “Why don’t you tell us what you are looking for?” came a lone brave voice from the crowd. “Or maybe your bosses didn’t tell you? Maybe we can help the government the way it helps us.” There was a burst of laughter from the crowd before the red caps pounced in the area from which the comment had come. They dragged one unlucky fellow to the front. The crowd gasped at the bone-cracking kicks and blows that descended on him from the red caps. Who knew if it was really he who had spoken, or if he had even been one of those who had laughed? All the red caps had really wanted was someone to make an example of.

  Khoudi sensed that this was the moment to depart, while the red caps were busy and before she was swept up in the chaos that would inevitably follow. She knew that the boys could handle themselves; like her, they had survived such situations countless times. But Namsa was another matter.

  Khoudi found her standing next to a wall, near where she had seen her last. She brushed hard against the girl to draw her attention, then began to run, relieved to hear the girl’s flip-flops smacking close behind her. Soon enough followed the crackle of gunfire, as she’d expected, and the screaming and thudding as heavy blows met flesh, and the smell of tear gas, and the sound of many others running too. The chaos of violence had begun.

  Around a bend, Khoudi jumped over a low wall and sat against it with her nose turned away from the wind. Namsa fell over her as she came over the wall, and Khoudi immediately positioned her face the same way. They rested for a minute, giggling a little at their expertise in knowing what to do in such situations, but then the smell of tear gas grew stronger, so they again ran away from it, toward a section of the beach where Khoudi often went alone.

  * * *

  —

  Elimane had not waited long to leave the landing. As soon as the crowd grew quiet, he had worked his way behind it until he reached the edge of the landing. Then he slid his body down to the water’s edge and crouched along the shoreline until he was far enough away not to be seen. He climbed onto the main pathway and returned to where he had left William Handkerchief.

  He found the man dressed in his soaked clothes, pacing up and down under a small tree, his bag slung around his neck, muttering to himself. Before Elimane had finished removing the phone from his pocket, William Handkerchief plucked it from his hand without so much as a word. Hastily, he dialed some numbers and put the phone to his ear. He didn’t say hello, just, “At the egress.” Then he hung up, peeled the sticker printed with the mobile number from the side of the device, and threw the phone back to Elimane.

  “Now I can reach the fellow who saved me on my phone that is now his.”

  “I couldn’t find the plastic you asked for, because the red caps are at the landing making the day hell,” Elimane said, returning the phone to his pocket.

  “What are they up to?” William Handkerchief asked.

  Elimane repeated what the commander had said. “The same excuse they always use,” he added, noting that it was no coincidence that the red caps always came to terrorize people when the ferry brought goods.

  Suddenly William Handkerchief stopped pacing and stared into the distance. Then, without saying a word, he sprinted into the nearby bushes. Elimane could hear the twigs breaking as he forced his way through. He too started running, in another direction, back to the main road. From Elimane’s experience, he knew you don’t ask questions when someone near you suddenly runs away: You just run as well. As he sprinted, some of the men in the red caps passed him, and he wondered if they were going after William Handkerchief. When he looked toward the ferry landing, he saw that everyone there had scattered, except for some unlucky captives who were shouting their innocence as they were dragged into the back of military vehicles. No doubt the red caps would exact whatever ransom they could from these unfortunates and their families before they set them free.

  The little family had a meeting place for when such things happened. Elimane planned to make his way there once he was certain no one was following him. And the way to be sure of that was to pretend that he was part of a group the red caps wouldn’t want to follow. He had noticed that those in charge of order had a strong allergic reaction to proselytizers. Perhaps they suspected that if such a place as heaven existed, they had already been denied entry. Soon Elimane spotted a dozen such people standing by the side of the road, with pamphlets showing pictures of sun rays descending on places where flowers grew and animals roamed among people, unafraid. There was no one in this rendition of heaven who resembled those passing out the pamphlets, he noted.

  Without saying a word, Elimane picked up a few of the pamphlets and started handing them to whoever was passing by. When the red caps came by, he held some out to them, but they avoided him with the urgency he’d predicted.

  “God bless you, go with God,” he called, which sent them running from him. He waited just long enough to be sure they were gone before he took his leave; he didn’t want the proselytizers to believe he was truly one of them.

  * * *

  —

  There was a spot on the beach, crowded with restaurants and bars, that was Khoudi’s favorite place to be alone. She loved to go there and watch people, imagining what her life as a young woman could be like. She would envision herself as a university student, painting, writing short stories and poems, going to readings and museums, and afterward stopping at these bars to have a drink, read, and meet up with friends. A life in which nothing constrained her from doing and being what she wanted.

  But Namsa was with her now, coughing and spitting to get the last of the tear gas out of her lungs, and tugging at Khoudi. “We have to go to Encounter One,” she was saying. “The others will be waiting.” Encounter One was their rendezvous point for times when chaos or violence separated them before the day was over. There was also Encounter Two, which was to be used as a staging ground to fight back if their home was ever taken over by others. They had not needed it yet.

  But now that they were away from the melee, Khoudi was in no hurry. She reassured Namsa that the others knew how to handle themselves and would be fine. They had likely stopped somewhere along the way themselves. She steered them toward the ocean so that they could wash the toxic smoke from their feet, faces, and arms. Salt water was good for that.

  When they had cleaned themselves, Khoudi told Namsa, “Come. Let’s go sit there at my spot.” She pointed to a log. Namsa took a seat next to her, somewhat reluctantly, but she said no more about the others. Khoudi pointed to a boat in the distance and, with her protruding finger, pretended to draw it against the sky. Relaxing, Namsa followed suit, giving the boat an engine and a sail. Then they lapsed into silence, looking around to observe what they were not.

  A group of girls Khoudiemata’s age strolled by. They had glossy lips and so much confidence in their bodies. There was an ease to their speech and laughter, and they seemed in no rush to get the waiter’s attention. Some carried books, and others magazines. They s
at together, some chatting about things that didn’t chase the joy from their faces, others reading, their eyes drifting from time to time to the sea and then along the hills of Freedom Town, where colorful buildings contrasted with the red soil, as if in an oil painting.

  Khoudi imagined herself among them. She was wearing a yellow dress with a simple floral pattern and flat, open-toed shoes with elegant black straps. Her toenails were painted with red polish that matched her fingernails. She was carrying a gold clutch, a newspaper, and perhaps a portable easel to paint on, and her hair was long, neatly braided in two plaits, between which her face shone brightly. She walked majestically, with a natural elegance, a memory of her mother’s gait . . .

  Namsa nudged her. “Are you there?”

  “Yes, barely,” Khoudi mumbled, her gaze on the girls, with the image of herself among them. She closed her eyes and lifted her head toward the rays of the sun, now lowering in the sky. She willed Namsa to be quiet until she had finished her imaginings. But to her annoyance, she could feel the girl’s eyes burning into her face, and she had to remind herself how young Namsa was, and that she had no idea yet of the things Khoudi was thinking about. Reluctantly she took leave of her fantasy, and the feelings for which she did not yet have words; she could only feel them blossoming inside her. She opened her eyes.

  “Look!” exclaimed Namsa. “It is Shadrach the Messiah!”

  She was pointing at a man who wore a long robe made of patches of every bright color that could be imagined. He had a wooden staff tucked under his arm, and he held a stack of leaflets that he pressed into the hands of everyone who walked by.