Harmattan

by Weston, Gavin

  Archie finished his job and then inspected Abdelkrim’s work. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I had planned to glue that first.’

  Abdelkrim slid a dirty fingernail into the joint and made a half-hearted attempt at prising it open. ‘It will be fine. We’d best get going.’

  Archie chewed at his lip, then nodded. ‘I’ll just lock these tools away again.’

  I walked over to the coffin and ran my hand along its lid. I did not speak.

  Somehow I felt part of some great betrayal of my mother.

  Abdelkrim came and put his hand on my shoulder and I turned and buried my face in his tunic, concentrating on the sounds of cupboard doors opening and locks turning and trying to hold back my tears.

  ‘You have a lot of fine machinery here,’ I heard my brother say.

  Archie’s voice moved towards us. ‘Yes. Pity most of it doesn’t work. They sent us thousands of dollars worth of equipment and we don’t have the correct wiring facilities installed. It’s a scandal!’

  ‘Toh.’ Abdelkrim patted my back and I moved towards the door while the men lifted the casket off the bench.

  ‘You can get the doors for us, Haoua,’ Archie said, lifting a bundle of cords from one of the tables.

  We must have looked a curious sight: a white man, a black man, a twelve-year-old girl and a coffin, tied upright in the open trunk of a battered Mercedes Benz car, moving slowly across the city through the heat and haze of that awful afternoon.

  The city mortuary was situated not far from the main hospital block, a single storey concrete building with a corrugated tin roof in its own little discreet compound on a rise overlooking the river. A pair of metal gates opened into a dusty forecourt and a strip of asphalt allowed vehicles to back right up close to a set of double doors. A small sign inside the hospital’s grounds had led us to this place but the shuttered windows along the façade gave no indication of the building’s purpose: a storage place for the dead. I had never before considered the possibility of there being such a place.

  As I sat in that vehicle, looking out over the majestic river below, I was seized by cold fear once again. The sun, still fierce and pulsating, descended steadily through the haze. Marking time. Reminding me of the task ahead. Of the need to be strong. To carry the burden. Help my brothers, my sister, my father. Wadata seemed very far away. My head reeled; a great drop seemed to open before me, a chasm stripped back by these tempestuous, violent events over which I had no control. What would happen to my family? Who would now bind us together? How would we survive?

  Try as I might, I could see no way forward. We had lived without my mother for several weeks now but only the hope that things would return to the way they had been before had driven us. We had tended crops and animals, fetched water, cooked, cleaned, washed clothes and bedding, mended fences, woven mats, traded goods in the market, forfeited school and much contact with friends, all the while fending off unkind remarks and cruel looks from the likes of Souley and her gang, and with barely a word of praise from our father. The idea that we should henceforth embrace that existence as our normal way of life – possibly even with Aunt Alassane in the place of our poor mother – was unbearable.

  Archie Cargo turned the engine off. He looked across at my brother and the two men nodded silently at one another.

  ‘You stay in the car,’ Abdelkrim said, twisting around in his seat to address me. I looked out of the side window, avoiding his eyes. ‘You are going to put her in the box now?’

  He nodded, his lips a tight line of sadness.

  ‘Shouldn’t I help you?’

  Abdelkrim sighed, and Archie Cargo sat rigid with his arms folded.

  ‘No, Little One. You must remember her as she was. Happy. Warm. Kind.

  Good-hearted. Loving. Not like this.’ He turned to his friend. ‘ Ça va?’

  In the blink of an eye, Archie was out of the car. Abdelkrim reached out and brushed my cheek with the back of his hand. Then he too was gone. I leaned back into my seat and squeezed my eyes shut. I shuffled my feet, worried at my fingers with my teeth. Tried to ignore the banging and rattling and slapping of cords coming from the open trunk.

  At last there was stillness: quiet but for the occasional cheep of the cut-throat finches in the trees above and fragments of the pirogue boatmen’s voices rising up from the great muddy slide of the river below; the torpor of a breathless and terrifying afternoon. I leaned against the car door, trying to drink in this moment of calm. My heart pounded like a pestle. I considered praying again. A bead of sweat snaked its way down my spine. I put my head out through the window and peered up at the now pale, empty sky and wondered if my gentle mother’s spirit was looking down on me; but there were no signs. Nothing. Emptiness.

  I looked over my shoulder at the scuffed doors of the mortuary. Inside, my brother and a man I had only just met were taking hold of my mother’s body and laying it in a casket. I would never see my mother’s face again. Panic gripped me. What if I could not remember what she looked like in the weeks, months, years that stretched before me?

  I do not remember getting out of the car or pushing my way through the mortuary doors. I was standing in a narrow vestibule, next to a desk on which lay some papers with my mother’s name at the top. On one of them, my brother had printed his name and scrawled his spidery signature at the bottom. A battered metal trolley stood next to a tower of little open-ended compartments, most of which were stuffed with papers similar to the one on the desk. Ahead of me, another set of doors attempted, unsuccessfully, to contain the stench within. I was familiar enough with the smell of death. Animal, human, it was all the same. They could try to lace it with detergents and disinfectants but nothing could truly mask its unsettling, sickly sweet and somehow familiar scent.

  I stumbled forwards. Voices beyond the doors. My brother’s, Archie Cargo’s and another man’s. Suddenly I found myself inside the main chamber – cool, dank, dark and putrid.

  Hell itself.

  ‘What are you doing in here, child?’

  Abdelkrim and Archie were crouched over my mother’s casket, fixing the lid in place. Another man, large, fat, stinking of sweat and alcohol, loomed over me, a white surgical mask covering his mouth and nose. ‘What are you doing in here?’ he repeated.

  ‘Haoua!’ I heard my brother call out, just as the fat man took hold of my forearm and spun me towards the vestibule.

  In the corner of my eye I caught sight of more trolleys and shelves laid out with cadavers, some draped with grubby sheets, others waiting, exposed, drained of life and dignity.

  ‘I want to see my mother again!’ I said, wrenching away from the fat man.

  Close to my brother, the grey, tortured face of what looked like a drowned man grimaced pitifully through a rent in the fabric of his shroud. A mother and child, laid out on the same board, had been abandoned carelessly in a rigid knot of diseased limbs.

  Rack after rack of the empty husks of humanity lined the dingy room.

  ‘Get out of here! Now!’ my brother shouted.

  The fat man had my arm again and, before I had time to protest further, I found myself standing, blinking in the hazy sunlight next to Archie Cargo’s car, hot tears coursing down my cheeks.

  ‘It does no good to go in there unless you have to, young mademoiselle,’ the fat man said.

  I turned angrily to face him, prepared to hurl a torrent of abuse his way. But something stopped me. I looked up and found that he had removed his mask and that he was smiling at me. His unshaven face was gentler than I had expected.

  ‘Believe me,’ he continued, ‘I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to!’ He dug his hands into the pocket of his grubby white coat and shrugged. An embroidered label next to a pocket bulging with biro pens, read: Doctor Mackenzie, Guy’s Hospital.

  ‘You’re a doctor?’ I sniffed.

  He laughed and shook his head. ‘No, no! This is nothing but an anasara’s cast-off.’

  He flicked at the label disdainfully. ‘ Doctor Death – tha
t’s me. Now you just wait there.

  These fellows will be right out with…’ Then he turned and disappeared inside.

  I leaned against the car and sobbed quietly, my shoulders heaving until there was nothing left and I stood, numb, empty, without even the will to swat away a fly that had landed on my tear-streaked cheek.

  My mother’s coffin scuffed against the mortuary doors as Abdelkrim and Archie wrestled it into the open, the thud jolting me to my senses. While the box was being slid onto the roof of the car, I crossed the compound and, sinking to the sand, sat cross-legged against the wall with my head down and my fingers locked behind my neck.

  ‘We need a blanket or something, to stop it slipping around,’ I heard my brother say.

  ‘There are some old sheets in the trunk,’ Archie said. ‘I’ll get the ropes too.’

  I looked up in time to see the fat mortuary attendant disappearing into his horrific workplace once again.

  Abdelkrim was passing a rope to Archie through the rear of the cab.

  ‘Let’s make sure that the doors will close over before we make it fast,’ Archie said. ‘This is quite sturdy rope.’

  I watched them make a loop over the coffin and the roof of the car.

  ‘I’ll keep some tension on it, Abdel,’ Archie said. ‘You try closing the door.’

  Abdelkrim put his hand flat on the panel and tried slamming it over. The door juddered violently and then bounced back towards him. ‘Walayi!’

  ‘Merde!’ Archie came around to Abdel’s side. ‘You know what we’re going to have to do?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We’re going to have to leave the windows open enough for the rope to pass through with the doors closed.’

  ‘That means the doors will be tied closed.’

  Archie opened his palms and tilted his head. ‘What choice do we have? What we really need is a roof rack.’

  Abdelkrim gave a great puff and scratched his head. ‘So we’d have to get in and out through the windows?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  There was a brief silence. The two men looked over at me. Archie Cargo gave a little wave and I waved back.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Abdelkrim said, unravelling the rope.

  43

  A chill, not normally noticeable until much later in the evening at this time of year, enveloped us, and I wished that I had retrieved my unwashed pagne from Moussa’s house. A strange calm had befallen the city just before we had set off, followed soon after by a light breeze that whipped up the orange dust along the roadside and made me think of harmattan season and the storms at home. Never again would I hide away with my mother and brother and sister safe from the fury outside.

  ‘Do you think we made it tight enough?’ Archie asked, as he negotiated the evening traffic exiting Niamey.

  We were heading northwest, along Route Nationale Deux, in the direction of Tera, the car now also laden with the corpse of my mother. Like Monsieur Nourradin’s tea, traffic and pedestrians seemed to pour from every side road and junction. Car horns and camion klaxons blared constantly. At the roadside, beggars and small children implored passing commuters for ‘cadeaux’ and hawkers bombarded our vehicle at every halt along the way. From the roof of a new building a group of Touareg builders lowered a bucket on a rope down to one of the hawkers and then hoisted a selection of soft drinks back up. We passed the tannery, the camel market and the race track in a blur. On either side of us, the shanties seemed to stretch forever, the combined stench of human and animal urine filling the air.

  Abdelkrim put his hand up to the taut rope that ran across the car’s interior, just above his and Archie’s foreheads. He gave it a gentle tug. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘We’ll stop in an hour or so and check the box again.’ He shuffled around in his seat to speak to me. ‘Check that one too please, Haoua.’

  Another rope ran directly above my head, from rear window to rear window. I raised both my hands and pulled myself upright on the rope, like a monkey on a branch.

  ‘It seems all right.’

  I caught Archie’s eyes in the rear view mirror. ‘Don’t swing on it too much, Mademoiselle. I don’t have all that much faith in my knots!’

  ‘Toh,’ I said, sulking a little. I ducked out of sight behind his seat and put my hand through the gap between the top of the window glass and the doorframe. The cooled air stroked my fingers and I hummed a little melody quietly to myself.

  Abdelkrim looked over his shoulder at me again. ‘ Ça va?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘You may help yourself to some water if you want it, you know?’

  ‘Merci.’

  He turned to face the windshield again and twanged at the rope where it disappeared out through his own side window. ‘I guess that means we can forget the luxury of your air conditioning when we need it, Archie?’

  Archie laughed. ‘The air conditioning hasn’t worked in this old heap for a long time, my friend!’

  A few kilometres beyond the city boundary, we came across a military checkpoint. We were filled immediately with a sense of panic; there had been no time for Abdelkrim to gather together civilian clothes and the validity of his compassionate leave seemed unclear.

  ‘Just let me do the talking,’ my brother said, his voice faltering a little as we glided to a halt near an army Land Rover.

  Further down the road, an identical vehicle lay in wait, flanked by several armed soldiers. From out of nowhere a stooped man appeared, plastic bottles full of gasoline strung around his neck and shoulders. He waved and began limping towards us until his path was blocked and he was chased away by a heavy-set fellow in a torn tunic.

  A young, slightly scruffy soldier stepped towards the car and leaned in to scrutinise us, the butt of his rifle clanking against the car door. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead and beneath his right armpit a dark, damp patch of fabric was clearly visible.

  Even from the rear of the car I could smell him.

  ‘Monsieur. Your papers, please.’

  Archie Cargo groped in the little compartment beneath the dashboard and handed some documents to the soldier. ‘Trouble?’ he said.

  The soldier took the papers but did not reply. Already he had eyed my brother’s now disarrayed uniform. He flicked through the papers and handed them back to Archie. ‘You are off duty, brother?’ he said, addressing Abdelkrim.

  Abdelkrim put his arm out through his window and tapped the box on the roof.

  ‘Compassionate leave,’ he said. ‘Our mother.’ He turned to draw attention to me.

  ‘We’re on our way to Tera.’

  ‘Toh.’ The soldier stepped back from the car and looked it over, warily. Then he moved towards us again and leaned across the roof, the cords twanging above our heads like a biram as he plucked at them.

  Across the road another soldier, older than the first and wearing dark glasses, grinned at me as if I had just told him a great joke.

  The sweaty soldier leaned back in towards Archie and looked my brother in the eye. ‘And your papers are also in order, of course?’

  ‘Of course, brother.’

  ‘Only there have been mutinies in Tahoua, and other places as well.’ He leaned back and tapped the roof of the car. ‘Who knows what you could be carrying up here.’ ‘Oh great!’ Archie whispered. ‘They’re going to fuck us about!’

  Abdelkrim waved his hand discreetly towards Archie. ‘As God is my witness…’ he said, ‘it’s my poor mother.’

  The soldier held his gaze again for a moment and then withdrew from the car. He spat, and then crossed the road, deserted but for the army vehicles, and spoke to his comrade with the dark glasses. After conversing for a few moments the older soldier approached my brother’s side of the car.

  ‘ Ça va, mon frere?’ he said. ‘ Ça marche?’

  ‘ Ça va bien.’

  ‘ Non, ça va pas! My brother says that you have your poor mother up here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The soldier move
d closer. ‘ Walayi! I know you, don’t I?’ The broad smile had returned to his face. He pushed his sunglasses down his nose to reveal his eyes. ‘It’s Boureima, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. And you are… Kassato?’

  ‘Kassato, yes. Third Company. You’re with old Bouleb’s squad, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Abdelkrim put his hand out towards him. ‘Look. Can we get under way, brother? My family is expecting us in Wadata by morning.’

  ‘ D’accord, d’accord,’ Kassato said. He looked over the roof of the car at the first soldier, who had taken up his position by Archie’s window again. ‘Let them through, Julius.’ Then he ducked back down to address Abdelkrim. ‘God go with you, brother.’ He waved us on, nodding at me as Archie accelerated and we pulled away in a cloud of dust.

  ‘Whew!’ Archie said. ‘I didn’t enjoy that! Your comrades scare the shit out of me, Abdel! Every time I take to these roads I wonder if I’ll ever reach my proposed destination.’ He gave a little snort. ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever got through one of your checkpoints without having to pay tax! ’

  ‘It’s all right, though, isn’t it, Abdel?’ I said. ‘I mean, you’re not going to get into trouble, are you?’

  Abdelkrim did not answer. He reached across and switched on the radio, then put his cheek against his fist and leaned out of the window.

  It was not long before we had to turn off from La Route Nationale Deux and the road became rougher, the asphalt worried away by countless trucks, buses, camions and bush taxis. Either side of us, vast plains stretched away towards the wavering horizon, the sameness of the landscape interrupted only by an occasional baobab tree, a rocky outcrop, clumps of parched brushwood or the skeletal remains of a car wreck.