by Ishmael Beah
She paused behind some bushes, in view of the road, watching as people passed, going about their day with an aura of persistence in the face of defeat. The contradiction was familiar to her, from that other life she had hidden away at 96 Degrees. Then she stepped out onto the road. Soon enough, cars were honking at her. Men older than her grandfathers would be—if they were alive—called from their cars, offering to take her wherever she was going. She was not surprised, having witnessed this entitlement that boys and men had, to feast their eyes on women and intrude on their existence with calls and stares, but the immediate surge of attention was overwhelming, nevertheless.
A cluster of young women and girls standing nearby were watching her as well, swaying their bodies and pouting. “Useless girl,” one of them said, loud enough for her to hear as she passed by. “She doesn’t even know what to do. How is she going to get herself a sugar daddy?” Khoudi eyed them up and down, banging her fist in her palm to signal what she would do to them if she did not have something more important to do.
She knew all about sugar daddies, as it happened. A woman she had stayed with at one point had several of them. One of them had locked Khoudi inside his room when the woman sent her to deliver his food. He had said, “I am going to make a woman out of you.” She had found his words strange: How could a man make a woman out of a girl, even with violence? What he hadn’t expected was the knife Khoudi carried. It had prevented him from doing more than removing her clothes and had done enough damage to send him to the hospital and, she’d hoped, to make it difficult for him to force himself upon another girl or woman again. But the woman, her “auntie,” had not believed her, and had accused her of forcing herself on the sugar daddy instead.
It had been a long time since Khoudi had thought about this incident, and how she had been forced to run away to this distant part of the city where she was certain no one would recognize her. That was the last time she had lived with a family. Until she had joined Elimane and the others.
Another car honked at Khoudiemata, and she had the urge to shout at the man inside it, to make him aware of the pain he and all the others like him revived in her. She knew she wasn’t the only girl for whom this was true.
She stuck out her hand and hailed the first taxi that came by. It was almost full, and most of the passengers were men, but a spot remained in the backseat. She was about to squeeze in when she caught the look on the face of her would-be seatmate, his eyes tearing into her body with a repugnant longing.
She slammed the door and stood back. “I will wait for another taxi.”
The driver shouted at her, “Don’t destroy my door, ah!” and Khoudi sent the vehicle off with a departing kick.
This time, she waited until she saw an empty taxi to stick out her hand.
The driver had a youthful face and an inviting smile, a genuine-looking smile. He waited patiently as Khoudi got into the back. She sat quietly for a moment, thinking—there was something familiar about the man that she could not place. He did not hurry her, and when other passengers approached, he waved them off.
“Is everything all right, little sister?” he asked gently. When she saw his face in the rearview mirror, Khoudi decided that he wasn’t as young as he had first appeared. He put the car in gear and began driving slowly, even though Khoudi hadn’t yet mentioned her destination.
“Don’t worry, wherever you are going, you need a fresh breeze on your face before you get there. So I will take the beach road if you don’t mind.” He glanced back at her in the mirror, trying to catch a response. Then he turned up the music a bit. He drove to the beach, passing other potential passengers along the way, and pulled over next to a bar. He turned off the engine and got out.
“I will be back. I am going to get some water there.” He pointed at the bar. It was early to go to Noire Point anyway, and it was good to be back at the beach, Khoudi thought. She leaned her head out the window, allowing the breeze to soothe her face.
Before long, the wind brought her the roar of a crowd. She knew it must be coming from the red gravel field nearby, where Ndevui was playing football. She pictured him dribbling a ball past one, two, three, four, five! players—counted in elation by the crowd as he took the ball to the goal and scored for a fourth time. She imagined him carried around by his teammates, his face shining with a joy that he never allowed to surface otherwise.
“Barefoot Omam-Biyik, wow!” she heard someone exclaim, and looked up to see a group of youngsters running by, from the direction of the gravel field. I bet they are talking about my brother, Khoudi thought. She wanted to ask them, but of course, how would they know who her brother was?
* * *
—
The taxi man returned just as Khoudi had decided that he wasn’t coming back. He held a bottle of cold water toward her.
“No charge,” he said. “These days everyone expects an ambush for the smallest favor.” Khoudi believed him but refused the bottle, nevertheless.
“Ah, no worries. Men are horrible, generally speaking, and the rest of us take the blame for the majority. And the majority think the rest of us are weak!” He got back in the car. “So now I’ll start your fare. Tell me where you want to go, miss.” He turned in his seat to look at her.
“Noire Point.”
“She speaks! I was beginning to think you never would. But you have a determined face, one that says, ‘I am always going to do what I want.’ I have a younger sister with a face like that.” He turned back to look at the road. “Okay, I am talking way too much. Let’s go to Noire Point.”
Gradually, the taxi made its way away from the beach and up into the hills, on a winding road that took Khoudi higher than she had ever been. The houses up here were different from the neighborhoods she knew too. Down there, they were mostly small and crowded close together, and they often looked wounded or deformed, with parts of their roofs missing, their walls collapsing, septic tanks overflowing. Here, the houses were bigger and more elaborate, with more space in between. Everything about them looked manicured—they were freshly painted, and even the gates looked polished, as if no dust existed in this land of theirs. Every so often, the taxi passed a structure made of scraps of zinc or sticks, with a torn tarp for a roof, like a reminder that those who had nothing continued to exist among those who had it all. The city was like that; even the wealthy had to drive on broken roads through reminders of desperation to arrive at their mansions.
“This is how the others live, eh?” said the driver. “Whenever I come around here, it makes me feel bad. It really shows me how far down on the other end of things I am.” He fell silent again as the engine labored up a hill, as if a poor man’s car was reluctant to enter here.
Until this point, the way had been clear, but now he turned off the winding road, then turned again. Khoudi tried to pay attention to the route, in case she needed her feet to get herself back down later, but she could not resist answering.
“You are right. I wonder, though, how the people who own these houses got this kind of cash. After all, every rich person in a country where the overwhelming majority of people are desperately poor is an automatic suspect. And if they are politicians, they are almost certainly stealing. Even the foreigners who come here do so for money, easy money, and lots of it. Of course, they love to express their love for this ‘beautiful country.’ It is a way to remain connected to the money, this expression of love. I mean, who loves dysfunctionality?”
The taxi man laughed. “Two kinds of people love dysfunctionality. Those who benefit from it and can go elsewhere from time to time to take a break. And those who have gotten used to it, because they know nothing else.” They went over a speed bump, then accelerated again as the road flattened, the tires spinning faster now that they were atop the hill.
“You sure you are just a taxi driver?” Khoudi smiled at him for the first time.
He pulled up before an imposing gate
and stopped.
“We are here. Do you want me to go inside, or shall I drop you out here?” the driver asked, his eyes on the high, glossy dark metal gate with its intricate design of a man and a woman dancing. The gate spanned a driveway wide enough to accommodate four vehicles at once. Khoudiemata’s eyes ran along the concrete wall next to it, which was a sparkling white; it was obviously painted often. The faint sound of music reached them from scenes beyond their view. The driver whistled in awe, bringing Khoudiemata back to his question.
“Out here is fine.” The taxi man rushed around to open the door for her, but she was already out. Khoudi knew she looked the part of someone who was used to being attended to in such a manner, but she felt strange about having that sort of attention. She regretted not having settled on the fare in advance. She had wanted to get off the road so badly that she had forgotten. Now the taxi man had the upper hand.
She offered first, bracing herself for an argument. “I’ll give you fifteen thousand.”
“Twenty thousand, miss. That is the price for coming up here.” The driver looked around, indicating all the wealth.
Khoudi extended a ten thousand note and a five thousand. “So you charge me more because I am coming to a nicer part of town.”
He did not take the proffered bills. “No, I am charging you that way because if my car breaks down here, there is no one to help. Also, I am not going to get a return fare out of here. And standing here reminds me how much more money I have yet to make today.”
Khoudi relaxed, acknowledging the merit of his argument and the appearance of the situation—for once, she did not look like a woman with no money. She reached into her bag and retrieved another five thousand note. The driver laughed and took the cash.
“I will give you my number in case you need me to come pick you up.” He began to recite it to her, but stopped, his face puzzled, when he realized that Khoudi was not pulling out her phone to take note of the number.
“Let me write it down for you.” He got back in his car for a moment and returned with a piece of paper on which he had written three different telephone numbers.
“And you say you are poor,” Khoudiemata joked, taking the paper from him.
“Thanks to the Chinese, I can afford a phone that holds three SIM cards. This way, wherever there is a network, it is bound to be one of my SIM cards. Even a poor man must have a choice somehow.”
Khoudiemata looked at the paper again. Manga Sewa, your humble and reliable taxi man, he had written.
“Manga Sewa, the defiant king of the Northern Province!” Khoudiemata exclaimed, with more excitement than she’d intended. But it was not often that someone said something that triggered a good memory from her past. Her mother used to tell her stories of remarkable people—stories that weren’t necessarily written about in history books. Manga Sewa was one of those who had fought to have a say in how his land was used by the foreigners who came from across the seas.
“Ah, so you know your history!” said this latter-day Manga Sewa. “Well, that will earn you an excellent discount on your next trip!” And with that he got back into the car and drove off, leaving Khoudiemata with a wave and a smile.
* * *
—
The sun was still high above the horizon, and Khoudi knew she had plenty of time before dinner. Besides, she wasn’t quite ready to brave Noire Point yet. But this part of the city was not made for strolling, and she knew that a pedestrian would look suspicious. She needed a destination.
She remembered that not far down the road, the taxi had passed a supermarket. She set out in that direction. The going was awkward, as she was the only one on the road, and the road was narrow. Cars didn’t pass frequently, but when they did, they had tinted windows, so even though they were almost close enough to touch, she could not see who was in them. She encountered only two other walkers, an older woman and man who were plainly returning from the market down below, carrying baskets laden with produce, not packaged supermarket goods. Their demeanor was familiar to Khoudi, and she reciprocated their unspoken acknowledgment in this oasis of wealth. She guessed that they worked in one of the huge mansions nearby.
At the supermarket, Khoudi thought about buying a phone, but up here, the cheapest was more than she could afford. Even if she’d had the money, she couldn’t bring herself to pay for what she knew she could get at half the price, by bargaining the price down—an exchange that took place in a friendly transaction and a cordial parting, no matter how vociferously the parties haggled. In this quiet, sterilized environment, where you had to speak lower than your natural voice, the price was marked on the phones, and she knew there could be no discussion about that.
To avoid looking more suspicious than she already felt, she decided she had to buy something—another unfamiliar custom. Normally, she went to the market to see what was available and to memorize what things cost, so that when she had money, she knew how to bargain. There was no need to buy until you were ready. Here, she tiptoed along the air-conditioned aisles, lined with many foods that she had never laid eyes on and wouldn’t even know what to do with. After a few minutes, she was aware that one of the staff was quietly following her. She looked for the most common foreign foods, a can of Coca-Cola and some chips. They were also the least expensive items, and the ones she was certain her stomach wouldn’t disagree with. At the register, the proprietor, an older Lebanese man, examined her money suspiciously, his glances reminding her that she wasn’t behaving like the store’s normal customer. Why was it necessary that he made her feel out of place?
Outside, she sat on a bench facing the parking lot and ate the chips slowly, her appetite diminished by her treatment inside. She didn’t feel welcome out here either. The stares followed her through the window, insinuating that she was up to nothing good. She had planned to dawdle there awhile, but instead she headed back up the hill, sipping her Coca-Cola. She had stolen a look at the proprietor’s watch, and she knew she had about an hour to kill before her dinner. She decided she would spend it getting a look inside Noire Point, though she planned to stay far from the dining area so that none of the beautiful people would be aware of her early arrival and think her overeager.
Nervously, she waited at the side gate for someone to notice her and grant her entry. Each time a car pulled up, it honked twice and the big metal gate with the dancing woman carved on it swung inward. But the guards on the other side took no notice of her as they ushered the cars inside and the metal gate returned the carved woman to her dancing partner. While Khoudi waited, she occupied herself by imagining what Kpindi might be up to. She decided that he too had joined a party, on a veranda not far from Mama Fofanah’s. His entry ticket was a case of beer he’d corrupted from a few houses away, where a private celebration was unfolding. Like Khoudi on the beach, he had pulled off this feat by pretending to be one of the help. Such is life, Khoudi reflected. It always had sweet words for some, and if you were cunning and kept your wits about you, you could taste some of those sweet words too.
And what might Elimane be up to? Khoudi could not bring as clear a picture of him into focus in her imagination, but she knew it had to do with reading.
She was not wrong. As it happened, Elimane was at that very minute inside an old building in the center of the city. He sat on a rickety wooden chair behind an ancient wooden desk as the sun fell lower in the sky and the light pouring in through the broken rafters diminished. Around him, floor to ceiling, were stacks of newspapers, crumbling with age. They weren’t arranged in any particular order, but Elimane liked to come here and randomly pull them out to read. He’d found some that dated as far back as the 1950s. The place was not guarded like the banks or the statehouse. No one expected anyone to steal knowledge, even though knowledge could sometimes cost you your life, as Elimane well knew from his own past. But once you ceased to exist, he also knew, knowledge could give you life.
Right now, he w
as reading an article headlined “Reversing into the Future.” A vein pulsed in his forehead as he read, concentrating so deeply that his ears were deaf to the sounds of the city surrounding him. He used to sit like this with his father, he remembered, the two of them reading together for hours, smiling at each other from time to time. Only afterward would they discuss what they each had learned.
* * *
—
After standing at the gate of Noire Point for some time, as one car after another pulled through the gates, Khoudiemata screwed up her courage and called out to one of the guards on the other side. He did not seem to see her at first, but out of habit, he pressed a button that commenced the opening of the gate. Then he took in her unusual mode of arrival and halted the opening abruptly. The gate swung back into place, and at first Khoudiemata thought he had closed the door in her face. She began to weigh her next move, but then a smaller gate opened within the frame of the larger one, like an inner pocket.
“Welcome, miss.” The guard’s suspicion showed on his face.
“Thank you.” Khoudiemata nodded. She did not want to say anything that would further reveal her to be an outsider to this place, to this way of living, so near-silence and gestures seemed the safest route. Trying not to make it obvious, her eyes searched for the way inside. She saw a cobbled stone pathway lined with flowerpots that led to a heavy wooden door. It looked like an entrance, she thought, and she made her way to it confidently, passing by rows of gleaming, neatly parked cars.