Harmattan

by Weston, Gavin

  ‘Of course, he’s no doctor either!’ the older man said, chuckling again. ‘But I shouldn’t think this one will have long,’ he added, lifting one end of the board as his colleague did the other and lugging the unfortunate village boy up the hospital steps, past the queuing people and through the gaping doors. It was only then that I noticed the heavy staining on both men’s uniforms.

  ‘Can’t they be more gentle with him, Abdel?’ I said, as we watched them disappear.

  Abdelkrim put his arm around my shoulder. ‘Let’s find Mother,’ he said.

  37

  During the months that my mother had been in hospital, my brother had visited her as often as his job allowed. Before we climbed the steps to the hospital’s main entrance he drew me close to him, took my hands in his and went to considerable lengths to ensure that I understood just how ill she really was. His words had frightened me but, now, as I followed him through the stark, empty corridors and up several flights of stairs, the click of his leather boots and the slap of my plastic sandals echoing through the eerie gloom, I had no doubt that I was only moments away from being reunited with my poor, sweet mother.

  The sight of the malarial boy outside had disturbed me greatly, yet already I was focussed on the gravity of my own family’s situation and I took comfort from the fact that soon I would be able to hold my mother’s hand – however weak it might be.

  At the top of the stairs, we passed a sign with large, neatly painted blue letters and an arrow directing us to Salle Trois. My brother led me through another set of double doors that opened into a hellish, crowded room full of metal-framed cots and beds packed together so tightly that in places there was barely room to squeeze between them. The smell, which I had first noticed beyond the steps of the hospital, had not seemed as offensive on the stairwell, but now it hit me again with an intensity that surprised me.

  Worse still was the noise: a disturbing babble of flemmy coughing and wailing babies.

  Abdelkrim stopped in the doorway, turned to look at me and put his hand to his nose and mouth; I did the same.

  Our passage through Salle Trois to the foyer of Salle Quatre seemed to take forever. I inched my way through the long, stinking, white-washed room as if in a dream, filled with shame at being fit enough to do so. No bed or cot was occupied by less than two women and several also supported two, or sometimes three, young children. Drip stands and tubes, like the one I’d seen Mother hooked up to in Sushie’s dispensaire, stood at the end of several beds. The women’s faces were wan, their eyes empty. Their tight, hardened mouths looked like they might never again be capable of conversation or pleasantries, or a gentle mother’s smile or kiss. Many of the babies lay staring listlessly at the flaking ceiling, while their mothers fanned them with their hands or tattered copies of Le Sahel. A tiny tot, naked from the waist down, stretched out his hands towards me as we passed the end of his shared cot; his face contorted with misery, layers of tears encrusted on his thin, dusty cheeks, his cracked lips pale and grey. I paused for a moment and looked up at Abdelkrim. He nodded and then took me gently by the elbow, just as the child gulped a deep, raspy breath and issued a piercing shriek of desperate protest.

  The relentless crying and hacking coughs heralded us into Salle Quatre like a nightmarish fanfare. The stench of diarrhoea and vomit again hit me as we entered this ward, similar to the last, but more crowded still. The left hand side of the ward was crammed as before with white painted, metal-framed cots and beds, but the right hand side was laid out only with thin mattresses, placed directly onto the hard, tiled floor. For months, my brother had been bringing food to the hospital for my Mother – it was a requirement that families made such provisions for their kin – and now, as he pushed purposefully and quickly towards the far end of the room, I felt a strange sensation: anticipation, excitement, dread – all combining, so that suddenly I broke into a cold sweat.

  ‘Oh, Almighty Father,’ I prayed, my eyes closed tightly as I trudged behind Abdelkrim. ‘Deliver our mother from this place!’

  When I opened them again, my brother had stopped before one of the cots. An empty drip stand stood at its end, like a little toppled silver question mark. I followed Abdelkrim’s puzzled gaze and was confused to find that an old woman and two tiny babies occupied the bed. I peered deep into the woman’s hollow, vacant eyes, momentarily wondering if this might indeed be my mother. She looked through, rather than at me.

  ‘Where is Azara Boureima, Madame?’ Abdelkrim said to the old woman.

  She did not raise her eyes to meet his.

  At the next bed, two healthcare personnel were discussing another patient.

  Beside them, a woman sat rocking backwards and forwards and muttering to herself.

  Abdelkrim reached across the bed and touched the young nurse’s arm. ‘Where is my mother?’ he said, and now I thought I could hear fear in his voice.

  The nurse fidgeted with her clipboard and shrugged apologetically before turning to look at her superior, an older, burly woman, heavily adorned in jewellery and trinkets and dressed in a white coat and the most beautiful blue and green pagne and matching head wrap I had ever seen.

  ‘Young man,’ the older woman said, abruptly, (she spoke French in an accent which by now I had realised was particular to Niamey), ‘I’m Doctor Aissata Palcy. If you and this girl will be so kind as to wait in my office, I will speak to you presently.’ She pointed her stethoscope towards a booth at the far side of the room, took her other hand out of the pocket of her unbuttoned coat to prod a listless form on the bed and then turned to address the nurse again. ‘What do we have here?’ she said.

  The nurse gave a little apologetic smile in our direction before responding to Doctor Palcy’s question. ‘This bush woman arrived earlier with her two children,’ she said, pulling back a blanket. ‘This one has just died.’

  ‘And what about the other one?’ the doctor said, untying the rocking woman’s pagne and extracting a tiny baby from a bundle. She fingered the few tufts of orangey hair still left on the baby’s head. ‘Have you given this child some water?’ she said, addressing the mother.

  The rocking woman steadied herself, then shook her head. ‘No, Madame,’ she said, shrugging and spilling one hand out towards the doctor. ‘She has diarrhoea. I thought it best not to.’ She dropped her head and began to rock again.

  Doctor Palcy tutted impatiently, as if she had heard such a response many times before. She pinched the skin around the now squealing infant’s belly button. ‘On the contrary, my dear! You must give such cases liquids!’ She turned to the nurse again.

  ‘Rehydrate her and give her the malnutrition treatment to begin with,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope that she doesn’t end up like her brother.’

  She turned briskly then, but the rocking woman caught her coattail. ‘I sold all my clothes to pay the marabout!’ she wailed. ‘I sold all my trinkets to pay the healer! He told me that my son was possessed by the spirit of his dead twin Dominick! He told me that Yanou would live!’ She released her grip on the doctor’s coat and buried her face in her hands.

  Doctor Palcy smoothed down her coat and shook her head. ‘That has nothing to do with your children’s illness,’ she said, moving on to her next patient.

  Doctor Palcy’s office is a place that I will remember, vividly, for the rest of my life.

  Separated from Salle Quatre only by a thin partition with a glass door, Abdelkrim and I were in no way protected from the sights, sounds and smells of the hell outside. The familiarity of the room surprised me: it was quite different to Sushie’s treatment room in Wadata, but many of the objects with which it was furnished were similar to hers.

  Abdelkrim had remained standing in the same spot, staring vacantly at the bed previously occupied by our mother for quite some time after Doctor Palcy had addressed him. The elderly woman on the bed had not acknowledged us. As I stood waiting for my brother to do something, I found myself wondering if she were the grandmother of the tiny, wailing babies w
ho also occupied the bed and wished that – even if she were not – she, or someone, would comfort them. Briefly, I considered doing so myself, but I was frightened by my brother’s expression and, though pleased that God had heard my prayers and ensured that my poor mother recover in a more suitable place, I was also frustrated that I could not yet see and touch her.

  Eventually, I had taken Abdelkrim by the hand and led him across the ward to Doctor Palcy’s office.

  This is how things looked just before my life changed forever: the scene that I relive, like a dream, every day of my life.

  Abdelkrim was sitting on a tubular metal chair in front of Doctor Palcy’s desk.

  I was standing near the door, leaning on a rickety table and playing with a set of chipped white-enamelled scales. The shutters were open and a buckled ceiling fan lurched above us, but still the air was thick and heavy and tainted with other people’s grief. I looked about the room; at the files and healthcare posters, the examination bed, the half full waste paper bin, the blank forms on Doctor Palcy’s desk, the striped cup full of pens and pencils, the rubber stamps, the little dish of paper clips, and I wondered if, some day, I could be a doctor and spend the greater part of my life working in a desperate place like this. For quite some time I had pictured myself as a teacher, helping other people through education, but I thought that to help people by saving lives would surely be a great thing.

  On one wall, displayed high above an array of framed certificates, my eyes lingered on a portrait of our president. It was a much more grand image than those I was used to seeing in my home and school and Mademoiselle Sushie’s dispensaire.

  And larger too. Against a golden background, he was standing proudly before my country’s beautiful flag, the folds of which caused the orange, sun-like disc in its centre to look more like a bruised and battered guava. He wore a fine, embroidered, ivory-coloured tunic with a matching skullcap and the presidential sash of green and yellow. His right hand rested on a leather bound copy of the sacred Koran. On his left hand he wore a large, jewelled ring. The text below this impressive image read: S.E. Le Général de Brigade, IBRAHIM Mainassara Bare, Président de la république du NIGER, Chef de l’ État.

  I remember that I had been staring at the face of our president, thinking that – somehow – he looked surprised to find himself there, posing for this photograph; just as I now felt somehow surprised to be waiting in this doctor’s office when all I wanted to do was embrace my sweet mother.

  Dr Palcy had entered the room and my brother and I both turned to face her.

  Abdelkrim stood up and crossed the room to stand beside me with his hand on my shoulder. He took a deep breath as Doctor Palcy picked up a document from her desk and fixed it to a clipboard.

  ‘Where is our mother, Doctor?’ he had said, his voice wavering.

  Doctor Palcy had shaken her head. ‘Monsieur Boureima,’ she said, a blank expression on her broad face, ‘you know that your mother was a very ill woman. I’m sorry to say that she passed away early this morning. You will need to sign this and take your copy to the morgue for the body to be released.’

  She had held the clipboard out towards my brother, but I did not see him take it or sign the document.

  As my head began to spin and my knees buckled beneath me, the last thing I remember is Abdelkrim’s hands clutching at me and his voice calling my name,

  ‘Haoua! Haoua!’ over and over again.

  38

  When I opened my eyes I found that my face was pressed hard against my brother’s tunic and that the insignia on his shoulder was digging into my cheek. My body had been propped up against Abdelkrim’s, and now, when I cautiously sat upright, I saw that we were seated outside on the steps of the hospital veranda, flanked by other despairing or bewildered people.

  Abdelkrim was slumped forwards, eyes closed, his fingers interlinked behind his head, elbows resting on his knee.

  I rubbed my eyes and sniffed, aware that my face was tight, tear-stained and dirty, yet without any memory of having actually wept. The knowledge that I would never again be warmed by my mother’s smile, or hear her gentle, patient voice, or feel her arms around me, had already set – like sun-baked clay – deep within me. I was thankful that I barely recalled the initial shock.

  I leaned back into my brother’s shoulder and tried to speak his name. Only a faint, unfamiliar crackle crossed my lips, and I realised that my throat was dry and raw.

  He sat up and put his arm around me. He gave me a little squeeze and said,

  ‘She is gone, Haoua. A ban.’

  Immediately, the awfulness of the situation hit me again. I clutched at my brother and wailed; a desperate, lonely screech tinged with fury.

  And Abdelkrim wept too. ‘I hoped that you would see her before the end, Little One. She talked about you and Adamou and Fatima every day. She loved you all very much.’ He gripped me tight, patting my shoulders in his strong hands and rocking me gently.

  In time, my desperate, heaving panic became quiet sobbing.

  Abdelkrim took me by the elbows and gently pushed me upright. ‘We have to retrieve her body,’ he said.

  I nodded. The dreadful truth. ‘She must be buried within twenty four hours.’

  For a moment I thought that he might pour scorn on our traditional ways. Indeed, I was alarmed to realise that my own heart was full of anger and doubt towards our God. I pushed these thoughts to the back of my mind, deciding that such matters would have to be addressed another time. ‘And it must be in our village, Abdel,’ I added. ‘She must be taken home to be with Bunchie.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, pinching his nose. ‘In our village.’

  I felt a new kind of dread grip me. ‘How can we do that?’

  He stood up and dusted down his uniform with his palms. Then he stepped off the veranda and walked towards Sergeant Bouleb’s motorcycle. ‘Come on,’ he said.

  ‘There’s no time to lose!’

  I pushed myself up, dizzy, weak, and followed him. By the time I reached the motorcycle, he already had the engine running. ‘Where are we going, Abdel?’ I said, over the revving engine. ‘Shouldn’t we try to let Father know before we do anything else?’ ‘You’re right.’ He put his hand to his face, then shook his head vigorously.

  ‘Got to think straight!’ He cut the engine and swung his leg over the saddle, then heaved the machine back on to its stand. He fumbled in a pouch on his belt and extracted a cell phone, similar to the one I had seen Moussa carry. ‘Aiee! Walayi!’ he said, as he stared at the phone’s screen.‘What is it?’

  He held it out towards me. ‘I have very little time left.’

  There was that expression again. ‘ Time?’ I said.

  ‘Time, credit – money to make the call.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘My regiment clubbed together to buy this phone. But it doesn’t work well, and who has money to buy credit now?’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I’ll try anyway. I have a number for your anasara friends. If it doesn’t work I’ll just have to go to the cabine téléphonique,’ he said, and moved off into the shade.

  I clambered onto the seat of the motorcycle and waited. At the edge of this new nothingness. I wondered if my mother had been reunited with Bunchie. Somehow it still did not seem possible that she was dead. We had not seen a body. I stared at the hospital entrance and watched the constant flow and hobble of the sick and the despairing. Many of the women who came and went during those few slow moments were just like my mother in so many ways; in age, in stature, in the way they dressed.

  It was as if all I had to do was choose one of them to be her. A woman in a blue and red pagne and head wrap crossed the veranda and came towards me. I half closed my eyes and tried to fashion my mother’s warm face from the woman’s harsher features.

  As she neared the motorcycle, she noticed me staring at her and her face softened to a gentle smile. ‘ Ira ma wiciri bani,’ she said.

  ‘ Foyaney. Good morning to you too, Mother,’ I said.

&nbs
p; The sound of bickering distracted me. Nearby, two small boys were attempting to transport a large block of ice on a flat cart; one pulling, the other walking alongside and steadying the load with a rusty metal hook. The scorching sun and soft sand were not making their progress easy.

  When I looked around again there was no sign of the woman in the blue and red pagne.

  Abdelkrim appeared at my side again.

  ‘Did it work, Abdel?’ I said.

  He sighed. ‘I spoke to Richard, very briefly. Then we got cut off.’

  ‘But you told him?’

  ‘Yes. At least they will know now. And Father can organise the funeral.’

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We have to find my friend Archie.’

  ‘Archie?’

  ‘Archie Cargo. He has a car.’ I was about to ask more questions but Abdelkrim was already clutching at the bike’s handlebars. ‘Shift back,’ he said, squeezing onto the saddle and kicking the machine into life.

  39

  I did not look back at the hospital as we sped away. I hoped that I would never again look upon the place where my mother’s life ended. Nor was I interested any longer in absorbing the detail of this bustling city. For as long as I could remember I had dreamt of drinking in the wonders of such a place, of even becoming a part of it.

  Now, as I pressed my cheek against Abdelkrim’s back and closed my eyes, I had no idea of or concern for our location or direction. If I opened my eyes, all that I saw was the khaki expanse of my brother’s tunic, a small, damp patch of sweat between his shoulders and a blur of buildings and open spaces as the motorcycle sped along. I wished that I were at home, in Wadata. Then I wondered if Wadata, or anywhere for that matter, could ever really be home without my mother.

  When we came to a halt again, I discovered that we were in the shaded parking bay area of L’Université Abdou Moumouni de Niamey. Abdelkrim tapped my thigh and I slid back a little to allow him to dismount.