Harmattan

by Weston, Gavin

  The following morning I opened my eyes to find a young woman standing over me. I sat up with a jolt, unsure of where I was at first.

  ‘Excuse me, Mademoiselle,’ I said.

  ‘You are Haoua Boureima,’ the woman said. It was not a question.

  ‘Yes, Mademoiselle.’

  ‘ Je m’appelle Yola,’ she said. ‘And it is Madame; I am Moussa’s wife.’ She spoke French in a strange, thick accent, quite different to any that I had heard before. The light filtering in from the doorway behind her seemed to glow around her darkened form, and although I could not yet clearly see her face, I was certain that it was handsome.

  ‘I’m sorry, Madame,’ I said. ‘I did not know.’ I stood up and brushed myself down. My clothing was caked with dust and I felt filthy.

  Yola looked me up and down. ‘You are to wash and then come into the house.’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’ I followed her out into the compound, squinting as the sunlight hit my face and suddenly aware of the noise of heavy traffic and the thick scent of unfamiliar blooms in the air. I stopped and Yola turned to address me.

  ‘Why are you standing there, girl?’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Madame,’ I said, realising that it hurt my throat to speak. ‘I am so very dirty. Where is the river, please?’

  Madame Yola laughed loudly and jabbed her thumb behind her shoulder. ‘The river is two miles in that direction,’ she said, ‘but you can wash yourself here.’ She led me across the compound to the gable end of the main building. A thin pipe emerged from the ground and was fastened to the wall with metal clips. At the top of the pipe a small, round wheel was attached. ‘Here,’ she said, tapping the wheel.

  I looked at her, but said nothing. Unfamiliar sounds and smells came at me from all directions.

  ‘You haven’t seen a faucet before?’

  ‘Madame?’

  She stepped forward and turned the wheel. A bright cascade of clear water gushed from the pipe.

  It was my turn to laugh now. At school, Monsieur Boubacar had told us about such things but I had never seen anything so wonderful. I bent down and gulped the water greedily, while Madame Yola fetched a plastic pail. When I had drunk my fill, Yola allowed the pail to half fill before turning the wheel in a clock-wise direction.

  ‘If you want to use the latrine, it is over there,’ she said. ‘Wash yourself and then come inside.’ With that she disappeared into the house.

  Alone, I stood gawping down at the water, shards of morning sunshine reflected on its slowly settling surface, my head dizzy with thoughts and tiredness, until a movement to the right caught my eye. A plastic-green chameleon moved, lazily, a short distance along a low wall at the back of the compound, before stopping as if to observe me. I scooped water up in my hands and scrubbed my face and neck vigorously, then removed my head wrap and rinsed it well, before reaching underneath my pagne to daub at the sweat on my body as best I could. When I had finished washing, I approached the entrance of the house and lingered for a moment, trying to decide whether I should call out or knock, and listening to the sounds of utensils banging. The smell of cooking wafted around me and suddenly I realised that I was hungry.

  ‘Madame?’ I called.

  ‘Come in, girl.’

  I pushed the half open door and entered the house. Yola was bent over a stove, ladling out portions of boule from a large pot. A metal chimney fixed to the wall disappeared upwards through the ceiling and drew wood smoke away from the room.

  Yola pointed to a long, narrow wooden table at the other side of the room, around which stood four plastic chairs. A copy of Le Sahel lay spread open on the table, the headline TEACHERS CALL THREE-DAY STRIKE in large, black letters across two pages.

  I sat down and fidgeted nervously, and was wondering if I ought to offer to help when I heard the sound of muffled laughter coming from beyond another doorway opposite the entrance. Yola turned and looked at me without speaking, agitation clearly visible on her face. For a moment I thought that I had offended her in some way, but then she moved a few paces towards the door. ‘Madame!

  Monsieur!’ she called out abruptly.

  ‘What is it?’ Moussa’s voice answered gruffly.

  ‘The food is ready.’

  More commotion from what I guessed was a bedroom. Although Yola had her back to me, I could tell that her irritation was growing. She continued to clatter her utensils and I sat quietly, nervously, taking in the room. It was an airy room with two other wooden doors leading off it in addition to that of the entrance. Despite the fact that it was somewhat untidy, I decided that I liked this room. The walls had been painted bright blue and although patches of the paint were peeling badly, it was still a cheery space I thought. Beside an array of pots, buckets and cardboard boxes, a battered metal sign with the word Dunlop leaned against the wall. A shaft of morning sunshine cut through a small, square window, framing my dusty feet and plastic sandals in golden light. Behind me and to my right, their backs facing outwards like a little herd of petrified moutons, a further assortment of plastic chairs had been pushed, haphazardly, into the corner. To the left of the chimney hung a portrait of President Mainassara, smaller than the one in my father’s house, but presented in a smart black frame. Below it, hanging from a nail, was a small Agadez Cross similar to the one which Abdelkrim had presented to my mother.

  I was just about to try to strike up some kind of conversation with Madame Yola, when cousin Moussa entered the room, an unlit cigarette protruding from behind his ear. He looked first at his wife and then at me, sucked his teeth and sat down without a word.

  ‘Monsieur,’ I said.

  He yawned and murmured something under his breath, then began to pick at his teeth.

  Yola set food on the table and disappeared out of the room.

  ‘You ought to have helped Madame Yola, girl,’ Moussa said.

  I was about to answer that I would have been glad to do so, when an older woman entered the room and sat down beside Moussa. ‘So, this is cousin Haoua,’ she said. No introduction was offered, but I knew that this was Doodi, Moussa’s first Wife; my mother had talked about her often and, although she was not one to speak ill of others, she had not done so with any affection.

  I stood up and thanked Madame Doodi for her generous hospitality and asked God to bless her for her kindness towards me.

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ she said, waving me down with a bony hand and shooting her husband a cold look, ‘I didn’t even know you were coming.’

  ‘I’ll take her to Abdelkrim once I’ve opened the shop,’ Moussa said. ‘I told you.’ Madame Doodi did not respond. Instead, she looked me up and down and began eating.

  It was customary in our village that men and women did not eat together, and although there were times when communal meals could not be avoided, I still felt unsettled by the lack of formality.

  ‘Eat,’ Moussa said, pushing a plastic plate towards me.

  ‘Thank you, Monsieur. Should I take my food outside?’

  He dismissed my question with a gesture and continued eating, scooping up a handful of millet paste and pushing it into his mouth. ‘You like my house?’ he said, spitting morsels of food in my direction.

  ‘It is a very fine house, Monsieur,’ I said. ‘You must be very rich.’

  Moussa laughed. ‘My bicycle shop is quite famous in Niamey. My family has full bellies. But children are what makes a man wealthy!’

  I thought that it was an odd thing for him to say; he did not seem particularly fond of children.

  Madame Doodi scowled, and muttered ‘Walayi!’ under her breath.

  There were no signs of children in the household, but the thought that there might be somehow comforted me. ‘You have children, Madame?’ I said.

  Moussa sucked his teeth. ‘This one is barren!’ he said, poking Doodi in the belly, ‘But my Yola will bear me many children.’

  As if beckoned, Yola came through the doorway, her eyes meeting mine briefly as she made to cross the room.
Moussa reached out and grabbed at her buttocks, then laughed heartily and slapped the tabletop with both hands as Yola shrieked and scurried outside.

  I fixed my gaze on the painted concrete floor, uncomfortable, anxious, awkward in this unfamiliar world and with these unfamiliar people. Across the scarred and scrubbed wooden table I sensed Doodi’s displeasure and allowed myself a glimpse upwards.

  The older woman’s face had barely altered, but there was no mistaking the fury in her eyes.

  34

  I was very glad to leave cousin Moussa’s house that morning. I had helped Yola to wash the dishes and was crossing the compound, to change my pagne and retrieve my belongings from the store where I had slept, when I heard my name called out. Next to a fenced off enclosure, where a few goats and moutons huddled together in a vain attempt to find shade from the strengthening sun, Moussa was wrestling with a jumbled assortment of bicycles.

  ‘Come and help me here, child!’ he said.

  I hurried across the compound and took hold of the handlebars of a large, slightly scruffy, black specimen, while Moussa attempted to disengage a mess of pedals, cogs and chains.

  ‘You can ride one of these?’ he said, his voice tinged with irritation.

  I shook my head. ‘I am sorry, Monsieur.’ The closest I had ever come to owning a bicycle was when my brother Abdelkrim had made me a little coat hanger toy. Moussa sucked his teeth and carelessly took his hands off a second vehicle, causing it to crash back down on to the pile from which it had just been retrieved.

  ‘Walayi!’ he hissed, pushing a pair of heavy-framed sunglasses back up his nose.

  ‘You’ll just have to ride with me then.’ He took the black bicycle from me and wheeled it across the compound, leaning it up against the wall beside the gate.

  Despite its rough treatment and obvious neglect, it was a handsome thing, with dirtied white tyres and chipped gold lettering on its crossbar, spelling out the words Tianjin Flying Pigeon.

  ‘Monsieur,’ I said. ‘Are we going to see my mother?’

  Moussa fiddled impatiently at the breast pocket of his clean beige shirt. ‘I have spoken to your brother. He will meet us at the Grand Marché later this morning.’ He clamped a chew stick between his teeth, adjusted his glasses again and then threw his leg expertly over the bicycle frame. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I have to open up my shop.’ I was overjoyed to hear the news about my brother, but before I could give it a second thought, Moussa reached out, wrapped his arm around my waist and lifted me awkwardly onto the bicycle’s crossbar so that my legs dangled, like those of a slaughtered animal, above his left foot. Frightened by the unfamiliar movement, I grabbed at the handlebars to steady myself. Moussa leaned forward, an arm each side of me, and pushed down on the pedals and before long we were on the hard, smooth surface of the Boulevard de l’Independence, winding our way through a terrifying, deafening confusion of bush taxis and camions, motorcycles, bicycles, camels, donkeys and carts. Ahead of us, nestling behind the Palais des Congres and the Hotel Gaweye and stretched across the river and its gentler traffic like some gigantic beast, I caught sight of the magnificent Pont Kennedy for the first time. Pedestrians streamed across the huge bridge, their heads laden with wares and possessions.

  Traffic herded towards Gaweye and Niamey Haut, this great stampede of tyres and feet and hooves churning up a blanket of fine dust which seemed to cling to the bases of the strange, yellowy-grey buildings all around us. High above us, huge black and white signs – their meanings unknown to me; Sonara, El Nasr, Citibank – crowned massive box-like structures, reaching up through Niamey’s hazy skies and beckoning its multitudes like so many otherworldly mosques. After a few minutes I began to relax a little, despite the discomfort in my rump and Moussa’s stale breath against my ear, and as the hot, tarred road shot by below us and the cool air caressed my face, I allowed myself to lean back into Moussa’s chest and tried to imagine my mother’s look of joy at our reunion.

  We turned off Avenue de l’Uranium at Place Kennedy and headed north along Avenue Ouezzin-Coulibaly, stopping while a convoy of military trucks thundered by.

  I craned my neck in the vain hope that I might see my brother among the huddles of soldiers.

  We passed row after row of smiths and artisans working by the roadside.

  Moussa pointed his now ragged and soggy chew stick to his left and said, proudly,

  ‘The National Museum,’ and through a thinly scattered group of market stalls, a flash of reflected sunlight drew my eye to some large, metallic panels erected near the building. I was about to ask him about the structures, but was distracted suddenly by smells so foul that I let go of one of the handlebar grips to pinch my nose tightly.‘It stinks of animals here, Monsieur,’ I said, craning my neck around so that he could see my face.

  ‘The zoo,’ he said, panting. As he pedalled, a bead of sweat wobbled on the tip of his nose.

  We passed more buildings – Air Niger, U.T.A., Nigeria Airways, Air Afrique – some of which seemed, impossibly, to be made only of glass. I wondered if this might be the place that Abdelkrim had told me about – where the boys with polio did their dance. I stared in amazement under and over Moussa’s arm as we glided by one strange sight after another. Here, among the traditionally dressed citizens and raggedy beggars, men and women in formal western clothing bustled in and out of vast doorways. Further along, the overwhelming stench of animal faeces was replaced by the cutting odour of human urine, mingled with Moussa’s own now-familiar scent. A huddle of tin shacks seemed to prop each other up at the foot of yet another mountainous concrete building. Neatly tended strips of grass and bitumen cut through forecourts of rubbish-strewn orange dust.

  As we turned onto Avenue Nasser, just before the Hotel Rivoli, a scratchy, dry voice called out to Moussa. ‘Patron!’

  I looked across the road and was shocked by the appearance of the man who had hailed my cousin. He did not, somehow, seem like an aged man, yet he was stooped forward, leaning heavily on a long pole. He wore a thin jellaba which was torn badly and had obviously not been scrubbed for a very long time. He called out again, a short greeting in Hausa, from ruined lips.

  Moussa returned the man’s greeting, swooping past his outstretched hand without slowing.

  ‘Who is that, Monsieur?’ I said, without taking my eyes off the fellow.

  ‘He’s called Gado,’ Moussa said. ‘He hangs around the Rivoli begging scraps from the prostitutes and pimps and plaguing the anasaras for cadeaux, but he’s harmless really.’

  I peered back over my shoulder as we lurched along Avenue Nasser. I had seen the yellowed hair of the malnourished before – in my own village – but never before had I stared into the hollow eyes of a face like this one – nose-less, half eaten away by disease.

  As he disappeared from view, I thought that I had never seen such a lonely figure. I wondered if he had ever known the love of a family.

  The sign above Moussa’s shop was quite unlike those I had seen near Pont Kennedy. We had turned off Avenue Nasser into a small side street, where Moussa pulled his bicycle up in front of a tired-looking, single storey, green-painted block.

  ‘This is it,’ he said.

  I slid off the bicycle quickly, my buttocks and thighs throbbing as my body pumped blood back into them.

  Nailed to the crumbling wall of Moussa’s shop, high above a corrugated tin door, a badly drawn bicycle and the words a vendre had been daubed, poorly, onto a square of white-painted wood. Below the bicycle, in smaller letters and also painted in black, I read the name Boureima. It was strange to see my family name up there on a shop front in a great city like Niamey.

  Moussa had been fumbling with a large metal lock on a bar which slid across the door, but stopped now. Suddenly I realised that he had been talking to me. ‘What are you gawping at, girl?’ he said.

  ‘I was looking at your sign,’ I said.

  ‘Do you like my sign?’

  I shrugged.

  Moussa nodded in the di
rection of the shop next to his, which was already open for business: suitcases and satchels, kettles, flasks and buckets, oil lamps and footballs all displayed neatly around the doorway and stacked on rattan mats. It was, I felt, the kind of display that our own Monsieur Letouye would have appreciated.

  ‘My friend Monsieur Emmanuel Kountche did it for me,’ Moussa said. ‘He can read and write – like you.’ As he spoke, a huge, bespectacled man in a vivid blue jellaba and white skull cap emerged from the adjacent shop, an enormous suitcase in each hand and a smaller one tucked under each arm.

  I averted my eyes, certain that Moussa had not intended his comment as a compliment to either Monsieur Kountche or myself. It struck me that Monsieur Kountche had taken a good deal more care with his own sign: it too was decorated with a picture of his wares, but the letters which spelled out his name were straight and bold, whereas the paint on cousin Moussa’s had dribbled and run and the last two letters of the name Boureima had been squashed into the corner.

  ‘Hey! Emmanuel!’ Moussa shouted, as Monsieur Kountche stretched across his shop front to arrange his goods to his satisfaction.

  When the suitcases were in place, Monsieur Kountche stood up and straightened his spectacles, but did not so much as look in our direction. A taxi driver sounded his horn, trundling past in a cloud of dust, and Monsieur Kountche waved in recognition before disappearing back inside his shop.

  For a moment I considered the possibility that Monsieur Kountche had not heard Moussa, but when my cousin shook his head and sucked air in through his teeth I found myself wondering how he had offended Monsieur Kountche. Somehow it never crossed my mind that it might be Moussa who had been offended.