by Ishmael Beah
But the hand of the city is unpredictable, the hand of the country is even more capricious. Often shadows gather around the giving hand and break its fingers, spoiling the gifts.
Tonight, Kula and Bockarie giggled as they entered into their small room and slept in the clothes they had been wearing all day.
16
BOCKARIE WAS DISHEARTENED on his first day of work after he fully understood what his job entailed. Mr. Kaifala’s operation, as he called it, was really a place that, in collaboration with some college professors, wrote thesis papers for students who could afford to pay for them. Of course, not everyone used this route to get an education, but the whole thing didn’t sit well with Bockarie. He remembered the conversation he had had with Albert, the Fourah Bay College student who wore his ID card around his neck during holidays.
How can the country go forward with such practices? he asked himself. They were writing theses for people who couldn’t even speak English well but would now have degrees ranging from bachelor to master’s to PhD. The operation even had staff who would go to defend the thesis of their clients under false names and of course with support from the professors they had in their pockets. No one was getting any salaries at the college, so they were open to other options.
“Welcome, my good man. You are on trial for one month to see if you will keep our secret and also if you are able to write excellent papers for us! For now we will only give you money for transportation and for three meals a day. I am sure you learned the saying in school that ‘an empty bag cannot stand upright.’” Mr. Kaifala showed Bockarie to his desk, where work was already waiting in a pile with research notes ready and bound for him to read. He wanted to ask if anyone in his office was really who they said they were. Mr. Kaifala didn’t look like a Kaifala. In fact that morning while he waited in the reception area, two people had referred to Mr. Kaifala as Mr. Cole and Mr. Conteh. He had answered to both names with ease. Bockarie shook these thoughts out of his mind. He had to take care of his family and even the money that he would now get for transportation and meals could help him a lot by getting on the zero-zero-one meal plan and walking home after work. Food would be at home at the end of the day, so he would be able to save all that money for his family. He pulled out a thesis topic for a master’s degree in international relations.
This person will probably never leave this country to do anything international, he told himself to justify his action. He started reading the research notes and even wrote an opening paragraph. It was not all that bad because he liked using his brain even though this was for the wrong reasons.
At lunchtime, when he stepped outside to get some air, he saw cars with government license plates and young Lebanese getting out of fancy vehicles to pick up parcels from the operation office. There were also regular-looking people like himself who came in for their parcels with sweaty clothes and dusty shoes, a clear sign that they had walked a long way and spent their last cents to get the semblance of an education. Maybe they were intelligent enough for what they were receiving. Who knows what the story was that had brought them to make such a decision. He couldn’t enjoy the breeze with these sights and thoughts, so he returned inside.
At home that evening, he didn’t say anything even to his wife about the reality of his job. He pretended to be happy and gave the money to her for safekeeping and to take care of the family. His children would start classes soon. Bockarie had decided to work for his current employer for only a month, and during that time he would look for something else. What he didn’t know was that the work was so demanding that he wouldn’t have any time to thoroughly search for something else. And in a city where the hand of opportunity did not come by easily, he would need to carefully and cautiously jump from one canoe to another before sounding the doorbell of his values.
* * *
The sky was at its bluest, and if you looked closely for a while you could see whatever your imagination thought dwelled beyond the body of the sky. Since the daily activities necessary to survive in the city were stressful enough, people looked at the sky only briefly and mostly set their eyes about themselves and on the earth to gain a strong footing so that the wind of despair didn’t claim them quickly. Kula had looked up every so often to guess the time from the movement of the sun. It was her first day of work, from 3:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. She prepared food for the family and allocated chores to her children before getting ready. She would not see her husband until late and that made her slightly sad, but she distracted herself by spending some time with the twins, who were busy crayoning in their coloring books. She and her husband had bought an extra mobile phone that was to be at home for emergencies. She handed it to Miata.
“Is it all right, Mother, for Isatu to come and study with me?” Miata asked.
“Yes, as long as you do not invite boys.” She had a way of sounding funny while being serious. Miata didn’t respond, but Kula knew her words had found a resting place in her daughter’s mind. She hoped.
As soon as Kula left home and got into the transportation vehicle, it started raining heavily. No one was prepared because the words of the sky had said otherwise. Water gushed into the van, thoroughly soaking everyone. The driver handed out small plastic bags so that passengers could at least wrap their mobile phones, money, and other things of value that were enemies of water.
“Water nor to fire me people dem so wunna nor vex,” the driver joked, telling his passengers that water is not fire, my people, so do not get angry. As suddenly as the rain had come, it stopped and the sun brightly lit the soaked earth and beings. There was flooding on the streets on a bright sunny day. After disembarking, Kula called the emergency mobile phone and asked Miata to bring her some dry clothes and shoes that she would need after work because she wasn’t allowed to take her work uniform home. She needed the shoes immediately because the ones she wore were now filled with water and making squishy sounds as she walked up the hill to the hotel.
“Get your brothers to look after the house and come before nighttime. I don’t want you on the street when it is dark,” she instructed her daughter.
“Yes, Mother.” She hung up the phone. She wouldn’t need me to bring her shoes if we were back in Imperi. She would have just walked home barefoot, Maita thought and shouted the names of her brothers, who were playing football nearby. They were unhappy about stopping their games and grumbled, but their sister paid them no mind. Isatu decided to accompany Miata.
“But I didn’t tell Mother that you will be coming along,” Miata reasoned with her friend.
“Don’t worry. She will think it is a good idea that I came with you, especially if it gets dark before you return home.” She waved her hand for Miata to hurry up.
Meanwhile, in the staff room, Kula squeezed the excess water out of her wet clothes to be able to use them to somewhat dry her hair. Quickly changing into her uniform, she put on her wet shoes that had refused to release their water. Standing up straight with determination, she went to the front desk to start work. Pascal gave her a quick tour and some instructions. Then he handed her over to another woman whose job was to teach her throughout the eight-hour shift. Her expression wasn’t cordial and she ignored Kula the entire time. Pascal had gone home for the day, so she had no one to turn to. However, she decided to just observe and learn on her own.
A few quiet hours into the shift, a guest came from his room. He was clearly from the country but had been away for a while—or was, as the local parlance referred to him, a “JC” (Jus cam), just returned. Kula’s colleague was on the phone, so he came to her and started shouting.
“I don’t understand how anything works in my room. Everything is in Chinese. This is an English-speaking country, you know. Look at this.” He showed Kula the air-conditioning remote that was all in Chinese. He went on, “I also ordered some cassava leaves and they told me they don’t have any local dishes. But they have some general’s chicken and other Chinese dishes. I would like to speak with the manager.”
“I am the manager and how can I help you, sir?” He edged Kula aside, and it was at that instant that the other receptionist intervened to handle the situation. But the man refused to speak to her, insisting that he must speak to this manager standing in front of him.
“I want some cassava leaves, you know, food from this country.”
“We don’t have a chef for that. So no cassava leaves, okay,” the manager said.
“You mean to tell me in this entire country you cannot find someone who can cook cassava leaves? It is bullshit and you know it.”
“Mister, no bad words here. Please.”
“And get some remote controls that are in English.” He threw the remote on the desk and stalked away. The rest of the evening was quiet. People mostly came to ask for their room keys and dropped them off on their way out. Miata arrived just when her mother was beginning to worry about her.
“I didn’t know you were coming with Isatu,” she said, taking the bag from her, then greeting Miata’s friend.
“I knew it would take a while because of the rain and wanted someone with me in case it got darker, as it is now.” Miata avoided her mother’s eyes.
“It turns out that I am getting off earlier, so please have a seat there in the lounge and we will return home together.” Miata agreed, hiding the disappointment in her face from her mother. She and Isatu had planned on having a little excursion by the beach before returning to the eastern part of the city. Kula observed her daughter and Isatu from behind the reception desk while they drank the Coca-Cola she had bought them. They went on about something that made them laugh, almost choking on their drinks. She turned her eyes to her feet, which were now relieved from the cold shoes, though the stained wetness made her toes itch.
Within twenty minutes, the lounge was filled with many young girls whom Kula recognized as prostitutes. Older white men took some of the girls with them, but more kept coming. At one point, an old English fellow started chatting up Miata and Isatu. He invited them to his room. Kula wanted to jump from behind the desk and deal with the man, but she calmed herself and walked around the barrier to where her daughter and friend sat.
“Sir, you should be ashamed of yourself. These are young girls and this one is my daughter. I am sure you have a daughter their age where you are from. How would you feel if someone as old as you solicited her for sex?” she said, fiercely but quietly, so that her boss wouldn’t hear her supposedly tormenting the customer. The man hurriedly left, heading back to where the rooms were. Behind him trailed some girls offering themselves for his pleasure. He put his arms around them and walked on. Kula made the girls move where she could see them directly from the reception counter.
Kula’s shift went on for another long hour, and she hated everything she saw with the young women and girls and the older white men. She eyed Miata and Isatu hard each time she caught them looking at these interactions. As soon as her shift was over, she quickly went in the back to change. When she returned, there were some girls physically attacking Miata and Isatu, shouting at them to find their own location and that this was their territory. Kula grabbed one girl by the hair and the other by her arm and took them outside. She slapped them harder than they expected.
“These are my children and you think any other woman sitting in the lounge of a hotel is like you.” She moved in for a second set of slapping. The girls took their high heels off and ran away, cursing at her as they went down the hill.
“This country is really not what it used to be. Not a word about this to your father.” She pointed her finger at Miata.
While Kula was looking inside her handbag to make sure that her work ID hadn’t fallen out as she was dragging those girls outside, a brand-new BMW sports vehicle pulled up next to them. The driver ran to the back door and opened it. A young man, no more than twenty-five years old, was sitting in the middle of the backseat like a king. He stepped out, a mobile phone at his ear, speaking and laughing to someone, a white towel around his neck and carrying a tall bottle of water. He saw that Kula, Miata, and Isatu were looking at him. He handed the bottle of water to the driver, reached in his pocket, pulled out some notes, and handed them to Isatu and Miata. He walked into the hotel holding his jeans, which kept falling off his buttocks. The girls giggled and jumped until Kula turned to them.
“Do you need a ride to town? I just returned to pick up some papers from the office,” Pascal called out from the nearby parking lot. Kula nodded and introduced her daughter and friend. The girls sat in the back of Pascal’s Toyota and Kula in the front seat.
“I see in your face that you have questions about the young fellow who just gave them money.” Pascal smiled.
“Has everything gone wrong in this country?” Kula asked.
“Well, that is a big question. In short, a lot of things have been rotting away for a while, but let me explain to you what you just saw.” His face got serious as he tried to start his car, whose engine took a while to respond.
“Here we are. The engine of a hardworking man always refuses to start at first!” He put the car in motion. The girls looked at their brand-new notes and whispered to each other, ignoring the adults. Pascal explained to Kula that she had just met a JC who had perfected “false life.”
“I used to be impressed by these young men and wanted to be like them, wanted to go where they lived and actually stopped looking for any possibility of succeeding here in my own country. Until one of my cousins who lives abroad came home and told me the truth. He knew some of these guys. Mind you, not every one of our people are like these, but there are many with these false lives who send the wrong messages to our young people.” He honked for the gate to be lifted. He went on after driving through the iron post:
“There are lots of people, mostly young men, who live in the United States or Europe. They had immigrated to various countries hoping to make good of their lives. However, when they got there, they saw that the realities weren’t as golden as they had envisioned. So instead of coming back home, because of shame and worry about being called failures by their peers whom they had bragged to before leaving, they stayed wherever they were, struggling.
“But they came home to visit, after saving up for a year doing odd jobs, just to show that they were doing really well wherever they were. Some of them even shipped vehicles like the one you saw at the hotel for the two- or three-week visit. They would end up selling those vehicles to pay their way back. Most of them would have no more than three to five thousand dollars, a lot of money to blow off here. So you would see them all over town, at the beaches and hotels, and they managed to impress girls, boys, men, and women, who then started dreaming that they, too, would do well only if they went abroad, not knowing the reality behind it all.
“Now, there are those among this population who are serious and go to school, get an education, and work hard for their money. When they come home they do so quietly, without any of this false life. But they are few in number.” The car slowed to allow the herd of motorcycles to go by.
Kula had been listening intently. “So they paint a deceiving picture of what their lives really are,” she said.
“Exactly, my sister, but it is an enticing picture. And they do it year after year. They even ruin young girls to whom they promise things when visiting.”
“So it is like a ritual of broken dreams that gets performed over and over.” Kula’s response deeply affected Pascal, and he could not speak for minutes, repeating her sentence in his mind again and again.
“I had never found the right words for it. It is exactly what you said. I am amazed.” He drove quietly into the city cloaked with such darkness that its beauty had disappeared from the eyes. The moon and the stars had gone elsewhere tonight.
* * *
Bockarie an
d Kula had done all they could to take care of their family, but things were getting harder. The prices of goods kept going up, and two weeks into work they were running out of money to feed their children. They wanted Manawah and Miata to continue their summer classes, but they couldn’t afford it anymore. They barely saw each other with energy in their bones for something other than sleep. Kula had also started working on weekends. They hadn’t even had time to write home and, as the elders had warned, sleep started visiting them less and less because they were afflicted with worries of what tomorrow would bring. They did manage to keep their children in line, but they knew if their life didn’t improve, they would lose them, especially Miata, to the enticements of the city.
Things became especially difficult during the last two weeks of the month before Bockarie and Kula expected to be paid. The family could afford only a few meals each week. A new kind of shame, pain, and discomfort found a home on their faces—the faces of parents who watched their children go to bed hungry night after night or dissatisfied with the little food they had eaten. Sleep also didn’t like visiting children or human beings with empty bellies. Many nights, Kula and Bockarie would sit on the veranda whispering to each other about whether they had made the wrong decision to come to the city. In the countryside you could at least count on someone sharing food with you, or you could grow something in the earth in anticipation of when you had no money. They hadn’t seen Mr. Saquee for a while because he was hiding from them, as he knew they were struggling and didn’t want them to feel that he needed the rent that they were supposed to start paying after a month. Laughter, too, was limited, something that had never before happened in their family.
Finally the day came for Bockarie to be paid and he allowed himself a smile at the prospect of beginning to weed out the thorns of suffering that had blanketed his countenance. He arrived at the operation center early and went to work. At midday, he heard a loud pounding at the entrance to the office. It was unusual; people were usually somewhat discreet when they came to collect their papers. When Mr. Kaifala opened the door, he was thrown to the ground by a number of police officers and handcuffed. The police asked everyone to stand against the wall and put their hands up. They searched the area and took bags of cash with them, along with Mr. Kaifala. Even after the police had gone, Bockarie remained with his hands up against the wall, frozen with the pain that ran through his heart. He knew he wasn’t going to get paid that day and didn’t know when. The police hadn’t come to raid the operation but to arrest Mr. Kaifala, who was suspected of being involved in smuggling cocaine into the country. Bockarie learned from his coworkers that a plane filled with cocaine had landed at the airport and was captured by the authorities. The investigation was unfolding, and many big men in politics and business had been arrested, while others had fled the country. The enigmatic fellow who had first met Bockarie on behalf of Mr. Kaifala told everyone that they must go home and they would be called when operations resumed.