Harmattan

by Weston, Gavin

  Adamou insisted that our grandmother Bunchie had been right and that our family were cursed because her mother had picked the flowers from a baobab tree when she was a young girl.

  Fatima became withdrawn and argumentative.

  Whenever I raised the subject of the marriage my father simply dismissed my concerns. ‘Be still, child,’ he would say. ‘Do not question my judgement. Already I see these young boys looking at you. I will not have you falling into… adventures and gaining a reputation. If that happens, no one will want you and I will have failed to fulfil my duties as a father! Cousin Moussa is a fine man with a good business. You will join his household and be a credit to our family. You will want for nothing and, in so doing, you will be helping us also. And you will obey him as your husband, just as you obey God!’ He refused to discuss the matter further.

  I went to Miriam’s house and begged Madame Kantao to help me, but there was nothing she could do. She told me that she had talked to Monsieur Kantao and that he was not against the idea. I said nothing at the time, but I thought that the news did not bode well for Miriam and little Narcisse. The crops had been poor and there was less food in everyone’s bellies.

  I pleaded with Sushie to speak to my father and she did so, willingly, passionately, but he would not be swayed.

  On the one occasion that I defied my father, I paid for my actions dearly. One evening, at dusk, I slipped away into the bush and hid beyond the pastures. Alone in the cold and the dark with the smell of fresh dung wafting around me and a chorus of cicadas ringing in my ears, I huddled on the dust, waiting for the warmth and light of the new day, when I planned to start walking towards the camion post. In truth I had no clear plan, but the thought had occurred to me that if I could find my way back to the capital, track down Archie Cargo and persuade him to take me to Efrance’s house in the shanties, she might let me live with her: where I could help her with her baby daughter, work alongside her and, one day, perhaps, take Fatima out of harm’s way too. Anything was better than the thought of being Moussa’s wife. I could not even bring myself to think about what that might mean. I knew that I would miss Fatima and Adamou desperately, but I also knew that if my father got his wish, I would lose them anyway.

  As Fate would have it, it was not to be. Despite the cold, I fell asleep. Two of the elders found me. They bound my wrists and dragged me back to my father.

  ‘You have let me down, Haoua,’ he said. His eyes were cold, as if the Shadow People had taken his soul away.

  ‘You must beat her, Salim!’ Alassane said. By now she spent most nights sleeping in my mother’s bed, and my brother and sister and I had to endure the sounds of she and my father rutting like goats in the darkness.

  My father did not beat me. Instead he confined me in the bedroom for three days. I knew better than to protest, or to venture outside. I was left with a pot to piss in and given a small dish of boule and some water once a day. My radio was confiscated. I never saw it again. I think my father had begun to feel threatened by it.

  I spent my time thinking about my mother, worrying about my brother and sister and imagining how our lives might have been, living together in the capital with Abdelkrim as our guardian. I read and re-read the letters in my bundle and wished that I could hear from Katie and Hope again. When I heard any sound outside, I hid them quickly, for fear that my father might remove these from me too. No one was allowed to visit or talk to me, but on the afternoon of the third day, while my father and Adamou and Fatima were elsewhere, Alassane entered the room, holding something behind her back.

  ‘If you tell your father that I’ve been here I swear I’ll kill you!’ she hissed.

  She thrashed me so hard with a stick that I could not lie on my back for days afterwards. I taught myself to sob without a sound.

  49

  Boyd

  Member No. 515820

  Ballygowrie

  Co. Down

  BT22 1AW

  27th September, 1999

  Haoua Boureima

  Child Ref. NER2726651832

  Vision Corps International

  Tera Area Development Programme

  C/O BP 11504

  Niamey

  Republic of Niger

  West Africa

  Dear Haoua,

  Please accept my apologies for not being in contact with you for so long. I have been thinking about you and talking to my children, Katie and Hope, about you. I am sorry, also, that we have been misspelling your name in some previous letters: that was really the fault of Vision Corps International! Anyway, I’m sure you didn’t really mind too much.

  Katie and Hope have just had their thirteenth birthdays! It seems like such a short while ago that they were babies, and that their mother and I had to bath, feed and change them! Now they are taller than their mother and continuing to grow fast.

  How are you getting on at school? It would be great to hear a little about what you are learning and what you like to do best. I think I told you that I am a teacher, so it would really interest me to know more about your school. Perhaps you would like to make a little drawing of the school for us? We still have the little map of Niger that you drew, and your fingerprint and all of your letters.

  We also still have your photograph on display in our house, so you are part of our family!

  I hope that your parents and your brothers and sister are well . I hope your father’s crops have been good and that your mother is fully recovered and happy in her work once again. Is she still house keeping? That’s hard work too, I know: as well as my job, I am kept busy – washing, cleaning, cooking and looking after Katie and Hope.

  Unfortunately their mother and I no longer live together, which has been sad for all of us, but we are trying to stay happy anyway! The children live with me for half of the week and with their mother the rest of the week. I suppose you will think that very strange, and indeed it has been strange for us too. But we are beginning to get used to it now.

  I seem to remember that your father keeps some chickens, Haoua? We also have a few, which we keep as pets, and for eggs. I have a problem with one of our chickens at present: a young cockerel has declared himself ‘king’ and has bullied our older cockerel away from the hens! He hurt the older bird badly. The old cockerel has recovered, (Katie and Hope call him Cassidy), but he cannot live with the other hens now. One minute everything was peaceful in our garden and the next, poor Cassidy was almost dead! Maybe we’ll just have to make him into soup!!! Or perhaps the younger bird should be made into soup and Cassidy returned as king: I think, however, we are all too frightened of the younger bird to try to touch him! We had some ducks too, but last year, when the snow was lying thick on the ground and food was hard to come by for many wild animals, a fox killed all of them!

  Well , Haoua, I will close now. It is very early in the morning here. Outside, the birds are singing, but it is still dark! It is very cold here at present. Winter has come early. We have water piped right into our house, but when I went to get some, earlier, it was frozen solid! I have to go and do some work now, but I will try to write more often.

  Katie and Hope will be home later today and perhaps they will also write to you again. Meanwhile, you take care. Best wishes to you, your family and your beautiful country.

  Yours affectionately,

  Noel Boyd

  P.S. Enclosed please find some sweets, a packet of sunflower seeds and, since you liked the first one so much, another little solar-powered calculator – which needs no batteries! Perhaps you will want to give this one to a friend?

  ***

  Numbness enveloped me on my wedding day. I was left alone in my father’s house and covered with a large, scratchy blanket that I had never seen before. Outside, in our compound, I could hear the village griot loudly reciting an ancient story about marriage.

  Our neighbours celebrated wildly and I felt the stomp of their feet on the ground, as they leapt and shook and twirled in the excitement and excess of the day. The day. My
day.

  Their day. They howled and shrieked and trilled into Monsieur Letouye’s microphone and, like the mating call of some deranged bird, the microphone squealed back at them.

  Then the pace changed. The ground ceased to vibrate. Accompanied by much laughter, Alassane’s tuneless voice led a chorus of women in the Camel Song.

  Someone struck up the rhythm on a tendi and then a water drum, a tassinack flute and an imzhad joined in. My mother used to sing the same song to us when we were little.

  Her voice was so much sweeter.

  The door of the house lay open. Light filtered into the room through the dividing curtain leading into our living area. I sat forward on my little stool and, lifting my veil, tried to peer through the curtain to the frenzy outside. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of a whirling figure, a splash of indigo and blue, a blur of teal and gold. A bead of sweat trickled from my brow, down my cheek and across the corner of my mouth. I caught it with my tongue, tasted its saltiness. The room was muggy, the air stale, yet, despite the heat, I realised that my stomach was knotted, empty, cold.

  I pulled the blanket close around my shoulders and listened now to the storytellers. I thought about all the weddings that I had attended with my family, in Wadata and the neighbouring villages, and about how little concern I had had for those brides as I had danced and feasted with the rest of the revellers. Bouchra Hassane, Nabila Djambe, Rekia Salamatou: where were they now? What had become of them? I shivered again.

  Late in the afternoon, when the dancing and singing and storytelling had stopped, I knew that all the men-folk would be sitting outside in our compound, huddled between the clay granaries, preparing to seal my marriage to Moussa Boureima officially. I knew that Moussa himself would not be there. He would be waiting for me in his house in Niamey. I had no idea how I was to join him. I knew that his family – his mother, his brothers, his sister and cousins – were all outside. And that they had brought many gifts: fine leather sandals cured with camel piss, western-style dresses, fabric, succulent fruits, all wrapped in swatches of deep blue cloth. I knew that his family would offer my father a symbolic bride price (a small part of the total sum payable) and that then, the ceremony finally over, both families would exchange candies and kola nuts as a gesture of goodwill.

  And so I became the third wife of Moussa Boureima.

  All of my friends from the village filtered into our little house and sat on the floor of the outer room. From the dim bedroom I could hear and recognise their giggling and whispers. There were people there also whom I did not even like, and the voices of youthful strangers. Hordes of women scurried about busily, to and fro: many of them were unknown to me too. Finally the curtain between our two rooms was drawn back and, through the outer doorway, I could see a hired photographer in an anasara’s stiff suit, weaving his way through the crowd outside. The younger children – including Fatima and little Narcisse Kantao – jostled each other at the entrance to try to catch a glimpse of me, until Madame Kantao or one of the other women shooed them all away, laughing and squealing. I thought to myself, This is what it must be like for the animals at the zoo in Niamey! And yet I was not fearful.

  Not then. Not yet. I had had long enough to contemplate my situation and the true misery of loss. Bunchie had taught us to accept what Fate had decided for us, because nothing we could do could change that path. And now, when I thought about it, I realised that she was right all along and that people like Mademoiselle Sushie, Richard, Monsieur Boubacar and even my poor, dead brother Abdelkrim – for all their care and love and good intentions – could never have helped me. I consoled myself with the fact that at least I would be away from Alassane’s wrath and jealousy.

  Outside, the music and laughter and dancing started up again. Aisha, the old midwife, brought me a cup of water, some manioc and beans and a little pot of dates.

  ‘I pray to God that this marriage will take,’ she said. ‘ Inshallah.’

  From time to time other women would enter the room and shout Barka!

  Congratulations! or offer me some words of advice. Give to your husband, or Your husband is just below God, or God has smiled upon you – the wife of a rich man! But Miriam’s mother just clucked her tongue and pressed my knee.

  Darkness crowded in on us. I was dizzy with tiredness and hunger. Someone – I don’t remember who – took me by the elbow and led me out of the bedroom, through the living room and into the compound. Through my wedding veil I noted the fires dotted about our yard, serving the little knots of women who had gathered to witness and participate in my betrothal. They huddled together in tight little groups while the sparks danced around and above them before fading away in the cool night air. There was not a man or boy to be seen now.

  I was set down on another little stool in the middle of the compound. Aisha squatted in front of me. She took a piece of cloth and dipped it into a gourd, then, lifting the veil away, she began to wipe my face. Some of the other women shuffled forwards and, taking straw sponges and soap, began scrubbing my arms and legs until they stung. They dried me off and painted beautiful henna symbols onto my hands and feet to ward off evil spirits. Then, behind me, someone started to trill again. The throng of women took up the song, chanting and clapping and pushing towards me from all directions until a frenzied circle of leering, screeching faces – eyes stretched wide in the darkness, teeth reflecting the light from the fires – and shuddering limbs and prodding fingers closed around me so tightly that a mantle of body heat overpowered me and left me breathless and panic-stricken. For a brief moment I thought that I might pass out.

  Instead, I closed my eyes and tried to force back my tears. Marriage is a good thing in the eyes of God, I told myself, digging my fingernails into my thighs.

  Looking back, it could not have taken long. But at the time I thought that it might never end. At last, everything went still. Aisha put her leathery hands around mine and raised me off the stool. Then a cluster of the women fussed around me like mother chickens and I was shuffled back into my father’s house.

  My wedding was over.

  Back inside, I sat silently, dazed, with my head stooped and covered, unaware even if I had company in the room. My ears were ringing and my body ached as if I had carried water all day. When all the guests had left and the dust finally settled outside, I was led to the entrance of our compound, where two men I had never seen before were waiting in a white pick-up. Someone opened the cab door and a hand guided me towards it. Suddenly I felt terrified. I looked up and threw back the veil from my face. I peered around, my tear-stung eyes straining through the darkness, searching for Fatima, Adamou, even for my father who had sold me.

  Only Aisha, tired and bent, and Madame Kantao were there with me.

  ‘My sister? My brother?’ I said, my voice like a ghost of itself.

  Madame Kantao’s warm eyes met mine. ‘You will see them soon, child,’ she said, stroking my face gently, as Aisha’s bony hand clutched at my arm and pulled me towards the vehicle.

  Then it was gone. All of it. Everything. The remnants of my family, my friends, my home, my village. All disappearing into the darkness as I peered through the rear window, squeezed between these silent, sweating strangers.

  Ahead of me lay Niamey once again. Behind me, my hacked-off life: fading, fragmenting, like a recent dream.

  EPILOGUE

  Niamey

  January 2000

  The pain in my back and chest eases, or perhaps I grow accustomed to it. Not so the ringing in my ears and the pressure around my forehead and tear-stained temples – now dry and salty and tightened like the skin of a tendi. For a moment I think that I can actually hear the pounding in my head but then I realise that the sound is coming from outside. I wrap the few remaining fragments of my pictures and photographs up in my bundle and tie it back onto my waist. I stand unsteadily, one hand gripping the arm of Moussa’s chair, my legs quivering, my head swimming in the stagnant air.

  I peer directly, defiantly, into th
e warm shaft of sunlight that streams through the small, deep-cut window. The hot, blinding light is almost painful, but I resist the urge to shield my eyes. From the midst of this dazzling core, a lost dragonfly emerges and flits towards me. I blink at last, squeezing tiny droplets from the corners of my eyes. I turn my head towards the door as the insect sails majestically into the dark hall way, its blue metallic flank glinting momentarily in the light. I am reminded of the military helicopters that roared overhead the day Abdelkrim and I went in search of Archie Cargo. The day my world fell apart.

  Abdelkrim. And Mother. Both gone. There is a darkness, a resolve, a hatred even in my soul which both frightens and strengthens me.

  I steady myself, then take a step, pushing off against the chair. I wince, but continue towards the door. I step out of the unfinished room, limp down the hallway, my feet scudding through the dust, past the second bedroom and out into the bright kitchen with its solid, concrete floor. There is no one in the room. Outside, the thud, thud, thud continues. I lift the lid from a large plastic jug on the table and pour myself some water. My hand shakes as I lift the cup to my mouth and the liquid cascades down my chin and leaves a damp patch on my pale green pagne. I had liked this garment. Moussa had handed it to me without a word when I had first arrived at his house and, although I had searched his face for warmth and found none, I had accepted it graciously and worn it gladly. A present from my husband. How could I not accept it? Fate had already decreed it, just as Bunchie had always said. Besides, most of my own clothes had been taken from me – thrown away probably. I was lucky to have been able to hold on to my bundle. Now I look down and notice that there is a large rent down one side where Doodi grabbed at me as I tried to flee her latest punishment. Not the first beating I have endured since coming here three months ago. And certainly not the last.