The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  The witchdoctor’s dark shadow fell over the Patagonian, who sat cross-legged, rigid with terror, as the Borfima, blade, and Babalawo, approached him. He was too petrified to move, as the Babalawo took his arm and prepared for the operation of drawing blood from it. Just as the blade’s edge was about to press down on Oswaldo’s skin, he leapt up screaming. The doctor fell back, clutching his beloved Borfima to his chest. Max was not sure what to do. He cried apologies to his master who called for us to leave.

  Oswaldo was silent as we stumbled back to Freetown, he was clearly upset and mumbled a prayer in Spanish. Max had left his Babalawo, to accompany us back through the woods. I regretted bringing the Patagonian along. But his outcry had done nothing to curb my interest in ju-ju. Indeed, this interest had only just begun.

  Long before dawn we walked to the bus station. It was deserted. Oswaldo had made it clear that he would not spend another night, in fact another hour, in Freetown. We might have parted company then and there, but I sensed that a journey south — to Liberia — might reveal important new material. In any case, Max was reluctant to help any more, in spite of our long postal friendship. Besides, he said that the spirit of the Babalawo would be searching for us: and if he were to find us, he would certainly feed us all to his adored Borfima.

  One could never be sure when the next vehicle bound for Liberia would leave, but we stood a good chance of getting one as it was still early.

  Oswaldo and I crouched in one corner of the terminal, which resembled some gigantic aircraft hangar. Still there was no light, just the sound of rats as they scuffled about. A very young girl slept against one wall; in her arms was a newborn baby. There was no sign of the mother. The two clung together to keep warm.

  After about an hour, a brand new Land Rover stopped for a moment outside the terminus. Oswaldo went to ask for a ride, at least part of the way to the Liberian capital, Monrovia. We were in luck, for the driver — who was going to Kenema which was on the way — would take us there for free.

  The road was excellent by African standards, and for four hours we bumped along, only stopping from time to time to get out at checkpoints. The jungle was thick and lush on both sides of the road. And, as the warm rays of dawn turned the cobalt sky pink, we could see smoke rising intermittently from a clearing, or a crook-backed woman walking to fetch water.

  The Land Rover dropped us at the vegetable market of Kenema. Oswaldo bought a cucumber, cut it into slices, and squeezed the juice of a lime onto the pieces. It was a refreshing breakfast. The market was still being set up. A selection of unusual roots and berries were displayed in round wicker baskets. Each basket was minded by a woman with a headscarf — who chattered in friendly competition about the day’s business. Oswaldo led me to the bus stand as if he had been there before. He had a very good sense of direction but, when I complimented him, he just laughed his usual three times.

  A yellow Peugeot 504 was filling up with passengers. In fact, it already seemed full. Ten people, a nanny goat, a large quantity of baggage, and a baby girl in the arms of her mother, were already aboard. The driver assured us that his vehicle was bound for Monrovia and there was plenty of room for two more. We clambered onto the back seat. The goat was passed onto Oswaldo’s lap. The baby was handed to me by its mother, who was sitting on my right.

  We set off. The communal taxi stalled four times because it was too heavy to move. The driver pumped the accelerator until the engine sounded like a dragon roaring. Only then did the wheels begin to move. The driver hooted with joy and the 504 slunk its way along the craggy dust track towards Monrovia.

  Oswaldo squeezed hold of the goat as the front right wheel plunged into a deep hole. Screams of panic followed, and the goat, which was bleating in terror, passed water profusely over Oswaldo’s red jeans. The liquid soaked down onto the plastic seat and seeped under my thighs. Looks of silent misery passed between us.

  A dust storm filled the car. Someone made the mistake of opening windows to release the grit. I chewed on the particles. When the animal began to choke violently, Oswaldo handed it firmly to the woman beside me. She was more willing to hold the brown goat than her own tiny infant.

  The baby had begun to sweat tremendously. I pointed this out to the mother but she just shrugged her shoulders. Drawing in a monstrous breath, the infant promptly spewed the contents of its stomach over my chest and lap. It mixed with the piddle and an offensive odour penetrated the innermost reaches of the cabin. The mother caught me in an angry stare and, in the confined space, managed to turn away in disgust. All the other passengers refused to hold the child.

  Four hours passed and all the initial feelings of embarking on an adventure had drained away. Arms and even toes poked about in the cab, hoping for another inch of space. The only breaks in routine were the strip-searches which took place at every checkpoint at least twice an hour. Twisted limbs unfurled themselves on the ground, like butterflies breaking from their cocoons.

  Each passenger was led into a bamboo stall, where they removed their clothes. Anything which the soldiers thought to be contraband was confiscated. In one of the earlier searches I found a Kalashnikov AK-47 pointing at my chest. Its owner was a boy of about sixteen. He calmly removed my watch and put it on his own wrist. It did not seem to be a subversive item to me. So I asked politely for it back. Pushing the barrel of the AK-47 closer to my heart, the boy in fatigues replied:

  “It is my watch now.”

  The saliva in my mouth was thick, like spaghetti. Before even trying to spit, I had to cut what felt like strands of it with the edges of my incisors. Oswaldo’s trilby had gone, through pollution, dust and dirt, from dark brown to a shade of light tan. He looked very miserable. We jolted along on a track whose undulations were surely too extensive to be natural. Oswaldo suddenly gave out an unnatural, throaty laugh. Wriggling my left hand free, I maneuvred it to pat him reassuringly on the shoulder. He was clearly beginning to crack.

  At that moment the Peugeot 504 came to an abrupt stop. A soldier was waving in the road. We all trooped out. The goat and baby were passed from hand to hand and laid down on the grass. A very stern-looking major strutted up and gave orders that all belongings were to be vigorously searched. Parcels were unwrapped for the hundredth time and even shoes were removed. The major pointed to the car, and two young soldiers ripped out the back seats. We heard shouts as one of the lads ran to the officer with something wrapped in a cloth. All the passengers froze. The major ripped the cloth away to reveal a wad of US dollars and a large nugget of gold. The driver was seized and put in a makeshift bamboo cell.

  Another man confessed that the money and gold belonged to him.

  Oswaldo and I sat quietly awaiting the verdict. The officer announced that the smuggler and the driver had been arrested and the vehicle detained. Neither vehicle nor driver could be released as they had been abetting the smuggler. The major began to interrogate the two guilty men. It was then that an albino who spoke excellent English sidled up to us. He was the teacher of the local school.

  Word had spread fast that two foreigners were visiting. We agreed that we were foreigners who were, in a broad manner of speaking, visiting the village. The albino bowed deeply and asked with ornate courtesy if we would come and talk to his pupils. Before I knew it, Oswaldo and I had jumped across a ditch and were in front of a class of maybe twenty young children.

  A mouse was scuttling about in a cage in one corner of the classroom. The teacher introduced us to his students and said that we had come especially from far away to teach them. Oswaldo began a very long and serious lecture about Patagonia, the politics and tribulations of its culture and people. The children stared up blankly in silence. Oswaldo was thrilled at the opportunity of having a captive audience. It was a perfect therapy for him after the horrors of the drive.

  The albino teacher told his pupils to sing the school song. They stood up and a chorus of shrill voices ran around the room.

  “We have a problem here,” began the master a
s the children sang. “You see we can’t get the books and pens that schools in the cities can. At the moment we only have three pens for the whole class. I spend much time getting the children to learn the lessons by heart because they shall not forget them that way.”

  He was a very polite and dedicated man.

  Oswaldo dug deeply into the back pocket of his jeans. He pulled out the piece of white chalk and the ballpoint pen from Blackpool that the English woman had given him. I rummaged in my saddle-bags and found a couple of notepads. Oswaldo handed them to the albino.

  “Dees are for yoo meester,” he said.

  The teacher looked at the ground and said that he could not take them, especially as they had come from so far away. We insisted, and Oswaldo gave him his address in Patagonia. The educator exclaimed that we would always be welcome in his school, and that he would never forget the day we came.

  Oswaldo and I returned to the taxi which still had not moved.

  By a great stroke of luck, it transpired that the major had once been to Banjul, where he had met Haji, the owner of the Hotel Apollo. Pleased that we shared a mutual acquaintance, he agreed to allow the driver to take us to Monrovia. Two soldiers would accompany us and afterwards would make sure that the driver returned to his bamboo cell. One of the soldiers managed to squeeze between the mother and me. The other clambered onto the roof and banged hard when he was secure.

  Just before we set off, the twenty schoolchildren appeared, led by their teacher. The eldest of the pupils tapped on the window against which Oswaldo’s face was lodged. The Patagonian wound down the glass and the boy passed him a brown mouse.

  “We thank you, Sirs, for helping us... have this,” he said. “We will not forget you in our village.”

  The wheels turned again and the students waved as the yellow Peugeot 504 left a cloud of dust in its wake.

  Twenty minutes before it was due to close for the night, we arrived at the Liberian border. Two piles of forms were counted out; one for Oswaldo and one for me. We scribbled answers to what seemed like unending sides of photocopied questions. With only five minutes left, we were less than halfway through: all the gaps had to be filled in full before we could leave Sierra Leone. It was clear that we would have to spend the night. But Oswaldo and I had no more leones left, and it was far too dangerous to risk exchanging foreign currency at the border on the black market. There was no official bureau-de-change.

  A young Liberian man from Monrovia staggered about, clutching a bottle of whisky in one hand, and balancing a battered straw hat on his head. Oswaldo sidled up to him and began a short dissertation of the merits of Patagonian life and cuisine. The Monrovian winced and led us to his rented room which was in no-man’s land.

  A line of kiosks stretched out across the no-man’s land. Liberia was about half a mile away. We were permitted to walk freely about the area, as all the soldiers and bureaucrats had gone to bed.

  The Monrovian stumbled away into the moonless night with his bottle and straw hat, insisting that we take his bed. We explained that we had no leones with which to pay. But he was planning to spend the night drinking at a bar. Taking the lantern, he left us in the darkness.

  Oswaldo always slept with his boots on. The left one was like a scabbard for the stiletto, which he would whip out at the first hint of trouble. We stretched out over the large bed.

  A colony of insects lived in the bed. I could feel what seemed to be beetles crawling over my hands and face, searching for food, I supposed. It was almost comforting not being able to see anything in the blackness: I imagined that I was back with Osman and Prideep strolling up and down Marine Drive in Mumbai. Then Blake’s form appeared and I watched him sipping vodka and feeding chapaties to a line of greedy vultures.

  Oswaldo began to snore.

  Just as I was falling into a deep slumber, a thudding noise hurtled across the corrugated iron roof. Instinctively, Oswaldo and I clutched each other like children terrified of a ghost. When the sound stopped we let go, both trying to conceal our fear.

  Then again came the sound of feet charging at speed across the metal roof. A cat seemed to be screaming — almost a human screech — as if it were being torn limb from limb. Oswaldo and I were paralyzed with consternation. Our imaginations ran wild.

  We huddled together, all the muscles in my back and my limbs were rigid as we waited for the morning to come.

  The young Monrovian was sitting outside our room, eating breakfast. A pineapple and the pelt of some small mammal lay next to where he sat. Oswaldo asked what kind of skin it was. The youth replied:

  “It’s from a cat. A couple of rats killed it last night and ate it. I’m going to make a pouch from the skin.”

  Oswaldo and I decided to risk entering Liberia without exit stamps from Sierra Leone: an offence said to be punishable by imprisonment. The mouse jostled about in Oswaldo’s shirt pocket as we walked to Liberia. A boy on a bicycle pedalled up and said that the border guard wanted us to return to Sierra Leone. We strode on, in defiance of regulations.

  At the Liberian border post we each handed five passport photographs to an officer’s clerk. These were then stapled neatly into a large leather-bound tome. More forms were produced and we were led to a cell with smooth cement walls and floor.

  I began to remove my clothes and empty out the contents of my saddle-bags. My toothpaste was squeezed from its tube. It was inspected for diamonds. The back of my camera was prized off with a coin and the film exposed to light. All potentially subversive pictures were thereby destroyed. Following this encounter I went to ridiculous lengths always to mail my films — and my notebooks — back to England after the last frame had been shot. Oswaldo thought my obsession was insane.

  I stood motionless, no longer caring to what lengths the conscripts went to make me angry. Then one, the youngest, picked up my stick of anti-perspirant. He removed the lid and slowly began to wind up the deodorant. Several hundred American dollars were concealed under the stick of deodorant. The scent of sandalwood wafted about, and sweat began to drip into my eyes. The consequences of having undeclared money were very serious indeed. Unable to resist any longer, I grabbed the stick from the boy and rubbed it under my arms. The room was filled with broad smiles and laughter. Oswaldo and I were allowed to enter the Republic of Liberia.

  Still there was no sign of the yellow Peugeot 504. We had not got round to paying for the ride, which was to be expensive. Oswaldo suggested that we could hitch with one of the trucks going to the capital, thus escaping the misery of the yellow cab. We asked around for a ride. Four lorries were going to Monrovia but still had to clear their paperwork; so we sat about waiting for the first to negotiate the red tape.

  A Chevrolet station-wagon pulled up. Clouds of exhaust fumes surrounded battered bodywork. In most other countries the vehicle would have been scrapped as a moving safety violation. I went up and asked if we could have a lift. A middle-aged man in a moth-eaten orange three piece suit said that it would be a pleasure for him to take us. We were to be his guests. His name was Daniel, but we were to call him “Danny.”

  Oswaldo and I lounged in the back seat. Danny’s ten-year-old son and sister were also in the car. They had just come from Conakry, the capital of Guinea. The exhaust pipe of the vehicle led directly, curiously, into the car. Oswaldo and I covered our eyes and mouths with our shirt sleeves.

  As soon as the windows were opened billows of black dust swept in and mixed with the carbon monoxide. For six miles the crumbling Chevy rumbled on. Then the fan belt broke. An assortment of worn replacements were fetched from the boot. Danny fitted one in the extreme equatorial heat. Oswaldo and I were both parched and reeling.

  Another half hour passed and there was a puncture. The heat was so tremendous that it was unbearable to leave the shade of the cabin to change the wheel. A bald spare was brought out by Danny’s son and we secured it with a single wheel nut. I choked as my lungs filled with dust and exhaust gases. Then we began to move.

  Oswal
do’s once brilliantine-soaked hair was stiff with dust and sweat, standing straight up like a sheet of cardboard. He looked at me and tried to manage a smile. Time and again he and I scrabbled under the bonnet, fumbling with the engine, scraping our knuckles as we struggled to fit yet another fraying fan belt. Neither of us had any knowledge of mechanics, but we were propelled by the desperation of survival.

  Twenty miles from Monrovia, a line of metal spikes on a bar had been dragged into the road. Danny pulled over and we were made to enter an office where a man in civilian dress sat with his feet resting on the desk. He toyed with a handgun, caressing the trigger of what seemed to be a Colt .38.

  Our belongings were brought and dropped on the desk. The figure shouted at me with arrogance.

  “What’s your purpose here?!”

  “Sir, we are tourists in your country, we are traveling to Monrovia.”

  “No tourists ever come here,” he exclaimed. “You are obviously lying!”

  Oswaldo and I drooped silently, too weak to argue. We would have pleaded anything, said anything, just to be allowed to go on our way.

  Oswaldo’s shirt pocket twitched. The man pointed to be shown what was hidden inside. A miniature nose probed for air. The Patagonian reached up and gently removed the brown mouse. The man behind the desk motioned to hold it. Oswaldo stretched out his hand. The official clasped the animal by the tail. Then, in one abrupt motion, he clubbed its head against the desk with the end of his revolver. A little blood spurted from the head, before he flung the body against the far wall, dead. Then he snickered sadistically. Oswaldo was close to tears. The rodent had been a symbol of the kindness of a simple people, amidst the barbarism of a totalitarian regime.

  Just then, during the interrogation, came shouts from one of the soldiers outside. Danny was brought into the office, together with a box of medicines from his car. Oswaldo and I were ordered to leave. In the shade of a cement wall, Danny’s son brought us each a plastic bag of water. The liquid was cool and tasted like nectar.