The Gurugu Pledge

by Juan Tomas Avila Laurel

  The flicker in your head grows, because you see another brother making his way towards Shania in the dark, and you think you’re the only one who sees it, this time you even cough so that there might be other witnesses or so that the husband might wake, but the intruder gets what he wants, he knows what he’s come for. And then a light goes on in your head and you feel as though you’re the one who’s being cheated, even though you’re not the husband or even a distant cousin of his, he who sleeps so deeply. And you curse your lot, and you even start to wonder whether it would be too much to ask for her to attend to her own group first, before some intruder with a fully charged mobile phone has a go. And you feel utterly despondent the next morning when no one mentions it, as if it never happened. Those whose turn it is to get water set off, those whose turn it is to gather firewood get down to it, and those whose turn it is to go begging head for the villages. All as if nothing happened!

  First you get a sinking feeling, then pity kicks in and you wonder what lurks behind this nocturnal business. This noxious business. The days pass and you realise that what you’d thought was a one-off happens every night, but still you don’t know what to say. Is he her husband or not? You have many questions, and you wonder if there are some things men can’t stop themselves from doing.

  Hours pass and the tension mounts and most people don’t know what’s going on, who’s sick, why are they sick, what’s troubling everyone, why has the tournament been suspended. And you start speculating and you wonder how many people on the mountain have a fully functioning mobile phone, given that there’s no electricity for miles around, and the nearest city with electricity doesn’t count, because you cannot enter it. The hours pass and the truth starts to come out. A name emerges: Aliko; that rich guy. So rich, in fact, that he’d be one of very few people likely to have a mobile phone. Someone else might have one, but never get it out, for opportunities to connect to an electricity source were few and the chances of getting hold of a phone card for the country that owned the mountain were practically non-existent. So who was Aliko? Just an unaccompanied man who’d been appointed a team captain. A man who exemplified what it meant to be rich nowadays: when nobody has anything, someone has everything. So who was the man behind the celebrated name? He didn’t say much, or if he did he spoke only to those of equal standing. He was bilingual, and he had power and influence and enough resources to charge a mobile phone when there was no electricity on the mountain, meaning he regularly went into the nearby villages, or had someone go for him, and he had the means to get what he wanted down there.

  Tempers were fraying and the mountain was on the verge of being set on fire. The camp veterans decided to meet. They did so discreetly, choosing the most inaccessible part of the mountain. The man who took charge adopted a very African attitude to dealing with serious problems: he sought the most rugged crag, somewhere it would be easy to lose your footing, and he summoned the two men who’d been singled out by the other inhabitants, or by a significant number of them at least. Two men whose lives were understood to be in danger. By summoning them to somewhere you could easily lose your footing, the implication was that if they were found guilty, they’d have to fight for their lives, they weren’t going to be handed over to the Moroccan forestry police. Everything would be resolved there and then, in a place where it was very easy to slip. The whole community would soon learn who the fake Aliko really was and what role he’d played in that unseemly saga, a saga in which he’d had a dangerous man for an accomplice and for which they’d be judged together.

  Why was a married woman woken in the middle of the night and led out into the forest to attend to some unsavoury business? That was the first question that needed answering. Only then could the husband regain his honour, or be condemned with the other two. Next came the question of what the woman had done to warrant such treatment, a young woman who’d left her village and home to join the adventure.

  Well, the fake Aliko was nobody, he had no illustrious past or origins, he just worked hard to get people’s attention. One of his schemes came good, or rather he struck a lucky blow on a desert crossing, earning him a sort of respect. He rescued a number of people from danger. Or maybe he put their lives at risk, he never let it be known and so we must rely on what others have said. He took part in long walks in search of lost dignity, setting off without a compass or a map, but with the conviction that doors would open on the other side, whatever doors they might be, and if they didn’t open, that they could be broken down. Only the strongest survive such journeys, the better equipped, those with the most resources. Those like Aliko, who had the advantage of travelling alone, unlike Shania’s husband, who hadn’t been able to persuade his wife to stay at home and wait for him to return. They’d sacrificed their past for a future, and a present in a cave with night-time visits the husband felt obliged to ignore. What kind of pact had he made whereby men could drag his wife out of bed in the night and expose her to the cold mountain air? Were such murky goings-on merely the price you paid for giving it all up, for leaving nothing behind? Otherwise, he would have surely turned back and made for home the first time a man came along and told him to look the other way. Made for home hurting and with his head bowed.

  Shania’s story went like this: a group of several men and a few women travelled north until they came to a door that was very hard to get through. The door was one of hundreds of frontier checkpoints set up by bandits along African paths, bandits dressed in official uniform, but accountable to nobody. Sorry, but you’re not going through, said the supervisor. Then: Where are your papers? He asked just for the fun of it, just to hassle, to intimidate, to frighten. Documents were duly produced, and then the supervisor noticed there was a woman among the travelling men, and he suddenly became exercised and upset. He was upset by one of the papers, a document that he himself, or one of his colleagues, had forged previously, for that’s how they earned their corn. So he took Shania into a squalid room full of nauseating smells and he shut the door behind her. Stains on the wall and scars on the door spoke of past horrors endured by earlier prisoners, while horrifying insects wallowed in the filth and stench. The rest of the group didn’t know what to do. But then one of them, as if the whole business of leaving the country barely concerned him, approached the bandits and addressed them in their own language. He was a young man and he knew many vernaculars. Come on, guys, don’t fuck me around, you planning on having the girl for tea or what? Speak in as many tongues as you like, we’ve got a job to do and this isn’t the first time you’ve tried to pull a fast one on us. Say now, I didn’t want to call it a bribe, so as not to upset you, but how much is it going to cost to resolve this little problem? Ask the boss. Who’s that? Him over there. Really, because I thought the minister had final say on these things, so why don’t we give him a call? The minister’s busy with more important matters, so don’t try to be clever. I see. Yes, he must be very busy.

  Shania’s husband didn’t know what to do and they could all see the guards sharpening their tools ready for the feast that would commence as soon as there was a lull in the traffic and trafficking. So the young man got serious and he went over to the boss and he took him to one side, as if he wanted to talk to him about genealogy and the history of black people, from General Hanno to Shaka Zulu. They talked for a while, the husband didn’t know what to do, the young man returned to the group, and still nothing happened, and then the young man took the boss into his cabin of an office. He didn’t want to waste any more time, but he didn’t want to call the man’s bluff and risk upsetting him either. They came out of the office and the boss opened the door to the putrid cell. There they found Shania, tears streaming down her cheeks, her whole being enveloped in a thousand disgusting smells. She’d soiled herself. That’s right, she’d been so afraid of being left alone with those people, for they had a very bad reputation, that she’d defecated in her pants. She’d have been imprisoned there and only let out when they caught another woman, someone fresher and in be
tter condition. But the door had opened and now she was free. She said not a word to anyone about having sullied her pants and they set off walking. She let the others get a little way ahead, or she said she was hanging back to relieve herself, and then she took off her trousers and removed the knickers that contained the product of her terror. She put her trousers back on and left the knickers by the path. The next expedition of black men heading north would find them and someone would wonder what had happened for someone to have left them there. What could have happened for a woman to lose, so far away from any town or village, her most intimate garment?

  They went on walking, Shania and her husband and the rest of their companions, and at some point chance brought the young man alongside her, the young man who’d negotiated her freedom. He consoled her and he said not to worry, that in the first village they came to he’d find a shop and buy her a new pair of knickers. He wouldn’t forget, he said, it was a promise.

  They walked and walked until they were beyond exhaustion, and they covered many miles and many things happened, things none of them can remember, but which remain buried at the bottom of their hearts. Through much sweat and suffering, they reached the mountain, whereupon they were sent to a cave known as the residence. Shania’s saviour joined others elsewhere in the camp, his speaking several languages deemed to be an important advantage. But he hadn’t forgotten the promise he’d made during the crossing. There was no shop on the mountain, so he kept hold of the promise, and then he started taking advantage of it. This was allowed to happen because the black men who’d renounced their African lives were not made of stone; they were beings, with beating hearts, and needs. They were men. They’d been through so much and they knew more was to come. They sensed something, something important and painful, something they couldn’t fight, for they sensed that the further north they got, the lesser were their chances of feeling like a man again. They would be forever on their feet, part of a collective mass. This they sensed, or concluded from the stories they’d heard.

  There was no shop on the mountain and the only form of commerce was a barter economy, I’ll give you this for that, deals done amongst friends, a trade in survival items. And so the promise became a threat. Her husband felt weak, he had no resources, he was indebted to his wife’s saviour and couldn’t counter his threat, so he succumbed to the other man’s will in the hope that normality would thus be restored. Nobody could testify to the deal, but some saw it acted upon. In the first village we come to, I’ll buy you new knickers. What kind of person buys knickers for a woman he’s not related to? And so he started calling in the debt instead. Go up there, ask for Shania’s cave, tell her I sent you.

  ‘Why are you doing this, brother?’

  ‘Bah, she owes me, I did her a big favour. If it weren’t for me …’

  ‘But get her husband to pay you back.’

  ‘Say now, if it weren’t for me, she’d have been left to a bunch of racist, rapist soldiers. They’d have had their way with her for hours on end, until they were sapped of all energy, and then they’d have tossed her out like a used rag. Do you know how many infected women pass through here?’

  Tell her I sent you. No, it’s not a problem. Just make sure it’s her and not the other one. Yeah. Tell her I sent you, it’ll be no problem. Yeah. Tell her, tell her I sent you. Yeah, thanks. Just tell her I sent you, Aliko, yeah, got it?

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Don’t fuck me around.’

  ‘I’m not, I just don’t know how much it is, alright.’

  ‘Bah, how much have you got?’

  Okay, give it here. Tell her I sent you. You use the light of the phone, you step between the bodies sprawled on the ground, lying on cardboard boxes, covered in MSF blankets, and you find her and you make her get up from where she’s got warm and you take her out into the cold and you do the deed.

  Remember, I’ll buy you a new pair of knickers in the first village we come to, only then will you be able to forget the ones you threw away loaded with your own shit. That’s how Aliko called in the debt, how he made the girl pay him back for rescuing her from the checkpoint guards as they crossed the desert. And when the Gurugu inhabitants risked everything to get to the truth and punish those who were to blame, people said the husband who never spoke up and played dumb was guilty too. How could he not have tried to do something to pay his wife, lover, girlfriend or bride-to-be’s debt? They asked whether he was even really her husband and not perhaps a brother exploiting his own sister, or else a boyfriend collaborating with others, soliciting his girlfriend’s services? They said this because they couldn’t believe that any man born in the Africa they knew could be so spiritless and spineless. Yes, spiritless and spineless were the words they used.

  ‘The way I see it, if that man’s wife, poor sister, had incurred a debt, then he should have paid it.’

  ‘But how, eh?’

  ‘Ah, he could have promised to pay him back, or paid him back by working for him. Or just given him some kind of assurance the debt would be paid.’

  ‘Do you know something I don’t know, brother? Because I can’t see how a man can pay another man back when he hasn’t any money or anything to barter with.’

  ‘You didn’t understand what I said, eh?’

  ‘Explain what you meant and I’ll tell you if I understood.’

  ‘You want me to spell it out, eh? Look, there are around five hundred people in this forest, only around twenty of whom are women. Want to do the maths of how many to each one? Do the sums, then add on everyone we haven’t counted, because this is a big mountain, and then think about it …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Draw your own conclusions. I haven’t even mentioned that some women might already be attached or sick.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by this. We haven’t come here to marry the womenfolk! I think maybe your head is full of white people’s ideas, because our ancestral African culture is very clear about what’s normal.’

  ‘I’m not sure what African culture even is, dear brother.’

  ‘Fine, just don’t get any funny ideas, and especially not with me. Just because we’re somewhere where there aren’t many women doesn’t mean anything goes. We haven’t even reached Europe yet and your head’s already corrupted.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry if I offended you. Just don’t be surprised by what you might see.’

  That conversation was like a warning shot, for the two men discussing African culture and what was normal very nearly came to blows. No doubt they would have done if it hadn’t been for an even more explosive discussion developing further down the hill. A group of young men were arguing vociferously about the best way to deal with a situation that now had names and surnames attached to it. Some thought that what Aliko Dangote and Omar Salanga had done deserved the utmost punishment. Besides, the one who called himself Aliko was masquerading as someone else, a man who’d got where he had through hard work. They also spoke of the women, the two women who’d been carried down the hill in search of help.

  ‌

  ‌VII

  The sick women didn’t make it to anywhere that could have helped them, not even an MSF first-aid unit that might have enquired as to what was wrong. The mobile first-aid unit wasn’t anywhere to be seen and the expedition was cut short by a group of Moroccan police officers. Two men fled and the other two were left for dead with the women. It was the middle of the night and the forest was pitch black, although there were lights aplenty in the town ahead. With tremendous difficulty, the two men who’d been left behind managed to carry the women back into the forest and a little way up the hill. When they reached a dry gorge where a stream had once flowed, they lowered the women to the ground and collapsed. The women couldn’t walk, the men barely could, and they were in a remote part of the forest, a place not usually frequented by those in the Gurugu camp; it was unlikely anyone would come to their aid. Stunned by the turn of events and the truncheon blows, the men had likely become disorientated and
lost their way. They had come to rest in a place they’d never been to before, and there they would stay, panting and whimpering, the two women in terrible pain, the two men with their battered bodies.

  The next morning, they heard war cries coming from further up the mountain. The argument the young men were having in the middle part of the camp had become so animated that its echoes reached them, a rumble brought in on the wind beneath the rustle of the leaves. The two women and the two men knew something serious was happening, and they later learned it was an attempt to teach Omar Salanga an everlasting lesson. They didn’t know that then, but they were nevertheless alarmed, because whatever it was could be heard at the bottom of the hill and that jeopardised the lives of everyone. The fate of the entire camp ultimately lay in the hands of the Moroccan forestry police, for they were the nearest legal authority, and if some outrage occurred, even to the camp’s most notorious inhabitant, the police would see it as an invitation to invade. A group within the Gurugu camp was trying to right a serious wrong, but its actions risked making the situation far worse, because the police would have liked nothing better than to raze the camp and clear the mountain of black people, and if the black people themselves gave them the excuse to do so, all the better. The camp’s very existence therefore hung in the balance as the young men argued over the lesser of two evils: they either spared Omar the punishment he so richly deserved or they punished him and suffered the consequences, consequences that came in the form of the Moroccan forestry police. On the rugged crag, those who knew the finer points of the case ruled that Omar deserved the severest of penalties.