by Chris Cleave
In my dream Lawrence telephoned Sarah to ask when she was coming home. Sarah looked across the veranda at Charlie, playing with his building blocks, and she smiled and she said, What do you mean? We are home.
It was the sound of the surf pounding on the beach that woke me. Crash, like the drawer of a cash register springing open and all the coins inside it smashing against the edge of their compartments. The surf pounded and ebbed, the cash drawer opened and closed.
There is a moment when you wake up from dreaming in the hot sun, a moment outside time when you do not know what you are. At first, because you feel absolutely free, as if you could transform yourself into anything at all, it seems that you must be money. But then you feel the hot breath of something on your face and it seems that no, you are not money, you must be that hot breeze blowing in from the sea. It seems that the heaviness you feel in your limbs is the weight of the salt in the wind, and the sweet sleepiness that bewitches you is simply the weariness that comes from the day-and-night pushing of waves across the ocean. But next you realize that no, you are not the breeze. In fact you can feel sand drifting up against your bare skin. And for an instant you are the sand that the breeze blows up the beach, just one grain of sand among the billions of blown grains. How nice to be inconsequential. How pleasant to know that there is nothing to be done. How sweet simply to go back to sleep, as the sand does, until the wind thinks to awaken it again. But then you understand that no, you are not the sand, because this skin that the sand drifts up against, this skin is your own. Well then, you are a creature with skin—and what of it? It is not as if you are the first creature that fell asleep under the sun, listening to the sound of waves pounding. A billion fishes have slipped away like this, flapping on the blinding white sand, and what difference will one more make? But the moment carries on, and you are not a fish dying—in fact you are not even truly sleeping—and so you open your eyes and look down on yourself and you say Ah, so I am a girl, then, an African girl. This is what I am and this is how I will stay, as the shape-changing magic of dreams whispers back into the roar of the ocean.
I sat up and blinked and looked around. A white woman was sitting next to me on the beach, in the thing called shade, and I remembered that the white woman’s name was Sarah. I saw her face, with her wide eyes staring away down the beach. She looked—I searched for the name of her expression in your language—she looked frightened.
“Oh my god,” Sarah was saying. “I think we need to get away from here.”
I smiled sleepily. Yes yes, I was thinking. We always need to get away from here. Wherever here is, there is always a good reason to get away from it. That is the story of my life. Always running, running, running, without one single moment of peace. Sometimes, when I remember my mother and my father and my big sister Nkiruka, I think I will always be running until the day I am reunited with the dead.
Sarah grabbed my hand and tried to pull me up.
“Get up, Bee,” she said. “There are soldiers coming. Up the beach.”
I breathed in the hot, salty smell of the sand. I sighed. I looked in the direction Sarah was staring. There were six soldiers. They were still a long way away, along the beach. The air above the sand was so hot that it dissolved the men’s legs into a shimmer, a green confusion of colors, so that the soldiers seemed to be floating toward us on a cloud made of some enchanted substance, free as the thoughts of a girl waking up from dreams on a hot beach. I screwed up my eyes against the glare and I saw the light gleaming on the barrels of the soldiers’ rifles. These rifles were more distinct than the men who carried them. They held their firm, straight lines while the men beneath them shimmered. In this way the weapons rode their men like mules, proud and gleaming in the sun, knowing that when a beast beneath them died, they would simply ride another one. This is how the future rode out to meet me in my country. The sun shone on its rifles and it pounded on my bare head too. I could not think. It was too hot and too late in the afternoon.
“Why would they come for us here, Sarah?”
“I’m sorry, Bee. It’s those policemen in Abuja, isn’t it? I thought I’d paid them enough to close their eyes for a few days. But someone must have put the word out. I suppose they must have seen us in Sapele.”
I knew it was true, but I pretended that it was not. That is a good trick. That is called, saving one minute of the quietest part of the late afternoon while the whole of time is ending.
“Maybe the soldiers are just going for a walk by the sea, Sarah. Anyway, this is a long beach. They will not know who we are.”
Sarah put her hand on my cheek and she turned my head until I was looking in her eyes.
“Look at me,” she said. “Look how bloody white I am. Do you see any other women on the beach this color?”
“So?”
“They’ll be looking out for a girl with a white woman and a white boy. Just walk away from us, okay, Bee? Go down to the point down there, where those other women are, and don’t look around till the soldiers have gone. If they take me and Charlie, don’t worry. There’s no way they’ll do anything to us.”
Charlie held on to Sarah’s leg and looked up at her.
“Mummy,” he said, “why is Little Bee got to go?”
“It’s not for long, Batman. Just until the soldiers have gone.”
Charlie put his hands on his hips. “I don’t want Little Bee to go,” he said.
“She has to hide, darling,” said Sarah. “Just for a few minutes.”
“Why?” said Charlie.
Sarah stared out to sea, and the expression on her face was the saddest thing I ever saw. She answered Charlie, but she turned to me when she spoke.
“Because we still haven’t done enough to save her, Charlie. I thought we had, but we need to do more. And we will do more, darling. We will. We won’t ever give up on Little Bee. Because she is part of our family now. And until she is happy and safe, then I don’t think we will be either.”
Charlie held on to my leg.
“I want to go with her,” he said.
Sarah shook her head. “I need you to stay and look after me, Batman.”
Charlie shook his head. He was not happy. I looked away down the beach. The soldiers were half a mile away. They came slowly, looking left and right, checking the faces of the people on the beach. Sometimes they stopped and did not continue on their way until someone showed them papers. I nodded, slowly.
“Thank you, Sarah.”
I walked down the slope of the beach to the hard sand where the waves were breaking. I looked out at the hazy horizon and I followed the deep blue-and-indigo of the ocean from that distant line all the way to the beach where it crashed into waves of white spray and sent its last thin sheets of water foaming and hissing up the sand to sink away to nothing in the place where my feet were standing. I saw how it ended there. The wet sand under my feet made me think of how it was when the men took me and Nkiruka away, and for the first time I began to be fearful. I was fully awake now. I knelt down in the shore break and I splashed the cold salt water over my head and my face until I could think clearly. Then I walked quickly along the beach to the point that Sarah had shown me. The point was two or three minutes away. A tall ridge of dark gray rock came out of the jungle there at the height of the treetops, and it ran across the sand and then out into the sea, getting shorter as it went but still as high as two men at the point of the rock, where it stuck out into the surf. The waves crashed against it and sent explosions of white foam into the silver-blue sky. In the shade of the rock it was suddenly cold, and my skin shivered when it touched the dark stone. There were some local women resting in the shade there, sitting on the hard sand with their backs against the rock while their children played all around them, jumping over their mothers’ legs and running into the shore break, laughing and daring one another to go out into the white roaring foam where the great waves crashed against the point of the rock.
I sat down with the other women and smiled at them. They
smiled back and talked in their language, but I did not understand it. The women smelled of sweat and wood smoke. I looked back along the beach. The soldiers were close now. The women around me, they were watching the soldiers too. When the soldiers were close enough to notice the color of Sarah’s skin, I saw them start to walk faster. They stopped in front of Sarah and Charlie. Sarah stood very straight and she stared at the soldiers with her hands on her hips. The leader of the soldiers stepped forward. He was tall and relaxed, with his rifle riding high on his shoulder and his hand scratching the top of his head. I could see he was smiling. He said something and I watched Sarah shaking her head. The head soldier stopped smiling then. He shouted at Sarah. I heard the shout but I could not hear what he said. Sarah shook her head again, and she pushed Charlie behind her legs. Around me the local women were staring and saying, Weh, but the children were still playing in the shore break and they had not noticed what was occurring farther down the beach.
The leader of the soldiers, he took the gun down from his shoulder and he pointed it at Sarah. The other soldiers gathered in close and they unslung their weapons too. The leader shouted again. Sarah just shook her head. The leader pulled back the barrel of his gun then and I thought he was going to push it into Sarah’s face, but just then Charlie broke away and he started to run down the beach toward the rocky point where we were sitting. He ran with his head down and his Batman cape fluttering behind him, and at first the soldiers just laughed and watched him go. But the leader of the soldiers, he was not laughing. He shouted something at his men, and one of them raised his rifle and swung it round to point at Charlie. The women around me, they gasped. One of them screamed. It was a crazy, shocking sound. At first I thought it was a seabird right beside me and my head snapped around to look, and when I turned back toward where Charlie was running, I saw a jet of sand flying up from the hard beach beside him. At first I did not know what it was, but then I heard the rifle shot that had made it. Then I screamed too. The soldier was swinging the barrel of his rifle, taking aim again. That was when I stood up and I started to run toward Charlie. I ran so hard my breath was burning and I screamed at the soldiers, Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, I AM THE ONE THAT YOU WANT, and I ran with my eyes half closed and one hand spread out in front of my face as if that would protect me from the bullet that would come for me. I ran, cringing like a dog from the whip, but the bullet did not come. The leader of the soldiers, he shouted out an order and his man put down his rifle. All of the soldiers stood there then, with their hands at their sides, watching.
Charlie and me, we came together halfway between the rocky point and the soldiers. I knelt and I held out my arms to him. His face was twisted with terror and I held him while he cried against my chest. I waited for the soldiers to come and get me, but they did not. The leader stood there and he watched, and I saw the way he slung his rifle back on his shoulder and lifted his hand to scratch his head again. I saw Sarah, with her hands behind her head, pulling at her hair and screaming to be let go while one of the soldiers restrained her.
After a long time Charlie stopped sobbing and he turned his face up toward mine. I peeled back his Batman mask a little, so I could see his face, and he smiled at me. I smiled back at him, in that moment that the soldiers’ leader gave me, that one minute of dignity he offered me as one human being to another before he sent his men across the hard sand to fetch me. Here it was then, finally: the quietest part of the late afternoon. I smiled down at Charlie, and I understood that he would be free now even if I would not. In this way the life that was in me would find its home in him now. It was not a sad feeling. I felt my heart take off lightly like a butterfly and I thought, yes, this is it, something has survived in me, something that does not need to run anymore, because it is worth more than all the money in the world and its currency, its true home, is the living. And not just the living in this particular country or in that particular country, but the secret, irresistible heart of the living. I smiled back at Charlie and I knew that the hopes of this whole human world could fit inside one soul. This is a good trick. This is called, globalization.
“Everything will be alright for you, Charlie,” I said.
But Charlie was not listening—already he was giggling and kicking and struggling to be put down. He stared over my shoulder at the local children, still playing in the shore break around the rocky point.
“Let me go! Let me go!”
I shook my head. “No Charlie. It is a very hot day. You cannot run around in your costume like that or you will boil, I am telling you, and then you will be no good to us at all to fight the baddies. Take off your Batman costume, right now, and then you will just be yourself and you can go to cool off in the sea.”
“No!”
“Please Charlie, you must. It is for your health.”
Charlie shook his head. I stood him in the sand and I knelt down beside him and I whispered in his ear.
“Charlie,” I said, “do you remember when I promised you, if you took off your costume, that I would tell you my real name?”
Charlie nodded.
“So do you still want to know my real name?”
Charlie tilted his head to one side so that both of the ears of his mask flopped over. Then he tilted it to the other side. Then finally he looked straight at me.
“What is yours real name?” he whispered.
I smiled. “My name is Udo.”
“Ooh-doh?”
“That is it. Udo means, peace. Do you know what peace is, Charlie?”
Charlie shook his head.
“Peace is a time when people can tell each other their real names.”
Charlie grinned. I looked over his shoulder. The soldiers were walking across the sand toward us now. They were walking slowly, with their rifles in their hands pointing down at the sand, and while the soldiers walked, the waves rolled in to the beach and crashed upon the sand one by one at this final end of their journey. The waves rolled and rolled and there was no end to the power of them, cold enough to wake a young girl from dreams, loud enough to tell and retell the future. I bent my head and I kissed Charlie on the forehead. He stared at me.
“Udo?” he said.
“Yes Charlie?”
“I is going to take off mine Batman costume now.”
The soldiers were almost on us now.
“Hurry then, Charlie,” I whispered.
Charlie pulled off the mask first, and the local children gasped when they saw his blond hair. Their curiosity was greater than their fear of the soldiers and they ran with their skinny legs straining toward the place where we were, and then when Charlie took off the rest of his costume and they saw his skinny white body they said, Weh! because such a child had never before been seen in that place. And then Charlie laughed, and he slipped out from my arms and I stood up and stayed very still. Behind me I felt the soft shocks of the soldiers’ boots in the sand and in front of me all of the local children ran with Charlie down to the crashing water by the rocky point. I felt the hard hand of a soldier on my arm but I did not turn around. I smiled and I watched Charlie running away with the children, with his head down and his happy arms spinning like propellers, and I cried with joy when the children all began to play together in the sparkling foam of the waves that broke between worlds at the point. It was beautiful, and that is a word I would not need to explain to the girls from back home, and I do not need to explain to you, because now we are all speaking the same language. The waves still smashed against the beach, furious and irresistible. But me, I watched all of those children smiling and dancing and splashing one another in salt water and bright sunlight, and I laughed and laughed and laughed until the sound of the sea was drowned.
If your face is swollen from the severe beatings of life, smile and pretend to be a fat man.
—Nigerian proverb
notes
THANK YOU FOR READING this story. The characters in it are imagined, although the action takes place in a reality which is intended to cal
l to mind our own.
The “Black Hill Immigration Removal Centre” in the text does not exist in the real world, although some of its particulars would seem familiar to the thousands of asylum seekers detained in the ten real immigration removal centers
1. which are operational in the United Kingdom at the time of writing, since they are based on the testimony of former interns of these places.
Similarly, the beach on which Sarah and Little Bee first meet in the novel is not intended to correspond to any specific location in Nigeria, although the interethnic and oil-related conflicts from which Little Bee is fleeing are real and ongoing in the Delta region of that country, which at the time of writing is the world’s eighth-biggest petroleum-exporting nation.
2. In the period leading up to the writing of this novel, Nigeria was the second-biggest African exporter of asylum applicants to the United Kingdom.
3.
Jamaica is an order of magnitude less significant as a point of origin of asylum seekers, although during the same period between one hundred and one thousand Jamaicans each year sought asylum in the United Kingdom.
4.
Occasionally in the novel, real-world elements have been introduced into the text which I hereby acknowledge. (If I have unintentionally missed some, I hope I will be forgiven.) The novel begins with a quotation, complete with the original typo, from the UK Home Office publication Life in the United Kingdom (2005), fifth printing. “However long the moon disappears, someday it must shine again” is taken from www.motherlandnigeria.com. The Ave Maria in the Ibo language is taken from the Christus Rex et Redemptor Mundi website at www.christusrex.org. The rather brilliant line “We do not see how anybody can abuse an excess of sanitary towels” is taken verbatim from the transcript of the Bedfordshire County Council special report of July 18, 2002, into the fire at the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Detention Centre on February 14, 2002, where it is attributed to Loraine Bayley of the Campaign to Stop Arbitrary Detention at Yarl’s Wood.