One Secret Summer

by Lesley Lokko

  ‘This is Djibouti, not Saudi Arabia,’ Niela Aden said tartly. ‘And in case you hadn’t noticed, this is a US army base. I don’t see too many locals walking about. I’ve got a dirac with me but I’m not covering my head.’

  Her sharp retort took him by surprise. He was about to say something when she suddenly walked off in the direction of the toilets. ‘Hey!’ he called after her. The rest of the group stood by uncertainly. ‘Hey!’ She ignored him. He turned back to the other three, who were regarding him silently, their faces sallow with fatigue.

  ‘Should we … should I follow her?’ Nancy Shore asked nervously.

  ‘No. Just put your headscarf on.’ He strode off after Miss Niela Aden, his early morning calm rapidly disappearing.

  Inside the building, his eyes dimmed, adjusting to the light. The lounge – if it could be called such – was full of soldiers and construction workers. He looked towards the toilets, momentarily nonplussed. He wasn’t used to being ignored. Where the hell had she gone? Suddenly a female figure emerged from a doorway to his left. He blinked in surprise. Gone were the jeans and thin tank top that made her look as though she were off to Ibiza for the weekend. Instead she was dressed in a full-length pale blue dirac, the loose, diaphanous garment that unmarried women in Djibouti usually wore. She looked indistinguishable from any one of the hundreds of women he’d passed every day – if you didn’t look too closely, that was. Even in her dirac, her delicate beauty was hard to hide. He wasn’t the only one to have noticed either. A group of French soldiers were staring open-mouthed at her. He suppressed a small gesture of annoyance. A beautiful young woman at Camp Lemonier was the last thing he needed. He turned on his heel and walked back out into the sunlight. The others were still waiting uncertainly for him.

  ‘Right. Let’s get a move on. It’s about a half-hour drive to the base. The car’s over there. You’d better sit in front,’ he said to Nancy as they picked up their bags. She was twice the size of anyone else. Within five minutes of driving off, however, he wished he’d stuffed her into the boot instead. She settled herself into the seat like an old hen, clucking in consternation at every goat, shepherd or nomad they passed in a cloud of dust. He was peripherally aware of Niela Aden, who sat directly behind him. She kept her face turned to the landscape but every now and then their eyes met in the rear-view mirror. Hers were black and inscrutable. The rocky desert slid past on either side in uninterrupted swathes of earth and dust. In front of him, the line of mountains dissolved slowly into the sky. Behind and to the right, stretching away towards the horizon, was the sea. Humps of bare-backed brown islands broke through the surface, a sandy blonde fringe here and there … and then everything faded into the hazy silence.

  40

  NIELA

  Djibouti, December 1996

  Through the swollen convex dome of the window, the silky blue fabric of the sea tilted gently from side to side as the little plane touched down. Niela’s face was pressed flat against the glass. She was back in Africa, back home. The dusty brown mountains scored a jagged line across the horizon before disappearing into the haze. There was a brief announcement in Arabic, French and English and then the plane juddered to a halt. The doors were flung open on to an afternoon already filled with heat. Niela unfastened her seat belt and stood up. There were six other people on the flight from Addis – three of them were co-workers, sent from different offices and departments in various capacities to assist on the same project. The others were official-looking men in suits. What, she wondered to herself as she hauled down her backpack, could bring a man in a suit to this part of the world?

  She followed the others off the plane, holding on to the already hot metal handrail for support. It had been a long journey – two and a half hours from London to Rome; a six-hour wait at Fiumicino followed by an eight-hour flight to Addis Ababa and then a changeover into a small plane for the final leg of the journey to Djibouti. Her legs felt wobbly as she stepped once more on to solid ground. They walked across the blistering tarmac towards the collection of small buildings that was the airport, most of them gasping in the heat. ‘Oh, my,’ drawled the tall, overweight blonde who’d introduced herself as Nancy as they drew level with the man who’d clearly been sent to meet them. ‘It’s the Marlboro Man.’

  Niela followed her gaze. Standing in the shadow cast by the remains of a fluttering sunshade was a tall, lean man, dressed in jeans and a faded T-shirt. He was holding a small cup of espresso in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. As they drew near and Nancy pushed her way forwards, he tucked the cigarette carefully behind his ear in a gesture that brought the men at home sharply to mind. In that part of her brain that still noticed such things, she slowly took stock of a dark, wild beauty. He was olive-skinned, with intense eyes that flickered over them all in turn, coming to rest on her with a momentary flicker of impatience. She looked up into his face; in the bright glare of daylight, she noticed that his eyes held hair-thin splinters of hazel sunburst in the iris, like lights left burning in a room. He was full of light; it emanated from beneath the surface of his skin, spilling out of his pores. She looked away, momentarily taken aback. She’d never seen anyone like him. When he spoke, his words were clipped and terse. The impatience she’d read in his face was there in his voice. ‘It’s a Muslim country,’ he said sharply, once the introductions had been made. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed.’ She felt her hackles rise immediately. Did he think her stupid? She turned away from him and marched off, not wanting to cause a scene. When she came back, dressed in her dirac, she saw she’d angered him further. She felt a sneaky pinprick of triumph. It surprised her. She’d barely spoken three words to the man and already there was an undercurrent of animosity between them that she’d never experienced before, with anyone. She climbed into the back of the vehicle, leaving Nancy Shore to sit next to him. She kept her face averted, studying the landscape – every now and then, however, their eyes bumped and met, sending a spark of an unknown, electric emotion flowing through her. By the time they drew up outside the camp, she was thoroughly and completely unsettled.

  The camp itself was sparse – a few whitewashed bungalows overlooking the sea, a slightly larger one-storey building that was the office and a collection of what must once have been servants’ quarters at the back. There was a yard with a drying line strung between two poles and an outside sink. Josh led them to one of the bungalows. ‘You’ll all be in here,’ he said, pushing open the door. A narrow corridor with rooms leading off to one side and a mosquito net door that banged to and fro with the wind. ‘I’ll get that fixed,’ he said, looking up at the hinges. ‘They’re all the same. Pretty much standard camp fare, I’m afraid. Toilets and showers in here.’ He pushed open a door to show them. ‘There’s a small kitchen at the end of the corridor, but most of the cooking’s done in the main building. You’ll find a fridge and maybe a kettle, but not much else. Let me know if there’s anything you desperately need.’

  Niela looked around the room he’d shown her. It was small, with a single bed and a mosquito net tucked up around its frame. There was a rickety desk in one corner with an old chair whose stuffing had spilled out of its seat. She put her rucksack down on the ground and walked over to the window. She could hear Nancy’s complaints through the half-open door. There’s no bedside light? Where can I get a pair of heavier curtains? We have to share the bathroom? No way! She listened for Josh Keeler’s response – there was none. It didn’t surprise her.

  At dinner that evening, Josh was nowhere to be seen. Niela sat with the others, listening with half an ear to their rambling mixture of complaints and anecdotes, and surrendered herself to the sounds of the night. The cicadas were a soft, slow murmur; the occasional high-pitched squeak of a cricket or an owl pierced the blackness; once or twice the harsh, staccato bark of a dog. The night sky was a thick lid, so close to the ground it enveloped them. She pushed up the sleeves of the dirac, enjoying the sensation of heat on bare arms that was particular to tropical Africa
, the seamless merging of the body in space that occurs when internal and external temperatures match; no awareness of the world as separate from her skin. The woman who cooked for them was an Afar, one of the nomads of the region. If she was surprised to see a dark-skinned, Somali-speaking face amongst the foreigners, she didn’t show it. As soon as she was able, Niela excused herself from the group and walked back along the corridor in the semi-darkness. She stripped off her clothes, switched off the light and lay down on the bed. The fan circled lazily above her head, sending an occasional waft of marginally cooler air across her body. Within minutes, despite the unsettled nature of their arrival, she was fast asleep.

  In the morning, a piercing bar of sunlight came to rest across her eyelids, forcing her awake. It was hot in the small room; she was uncomfortably aware of the sheet sticking to her body. She picked up her watch – it was just after 6.30 a.m. She pushed the sheet aside impatiently and got out of bed. She wrapped her kikoi around her, grabbed her washbag and opened the door. The corridor was silent and empty. She padded barefoot along to the bathroom. She showered quickly, dressed and headed back down the corridor towards the dining room.

  Josh Keeler was sitting at one of the tables on the terrace, reading a newspaper, when she walked in. There was no one else about. He looked up briefly as she entered, nodded curtly but said nothing. She poured herself a cup of coffee and slid into a seat at one of the other tables. She looked out across the flat, empty plains towards the sea. From their position halfway up the mountain, everything was laid before them. Presently, one by one, her colleagues began to emerge from their rooms, looking, if anything, worse than they had the night before. ‘The heat,’ Nancy muttered weakly as she collapsed into a chair, mopping ineffectually at her brow. ‘I just didn’t think it would be so damned hot.’ Niela caught Josh’s incredulous expression and quickly glanced away. She didn’t want another reminder of the electricity that flowed over her every time she looked into his face. She made a quick mental note to steer clear of him, at all costs. There was an impatient, flammable anger welling under his skin, like oil beneath the surface of the earth. She sensed it and feared it simultaneously. She wanted nothing to do with it. She would do whatever was necessary to get the job done, nothing more.

  Although she’d irritated him when they first met, by the end of their first couple of days working together, Josh was forced to admit there was more to Niela Aden than met the eye. She was good at her job, for one thing. She had a calm stillness about her that defused tension even before it arose. By the time they’d wound up negotiations for the supply of masons and carpenters for the first phase of the job, she’d won everyone over, even the grumpy tribal elders who’d viewed her with outright suspicion as soon as she approached. A woman? And a young, beautiful one at that? But she knew exactly how to handle them, a curiously deft mixture of deference and – dare he say it? – flirtation. She teased them a little, flattered them when necessary and put her foot down when she felt she had to. He watched her, slightly unnerved. It certainly wasn’t his way – he was used to giving out commands and orders and was baffled by the stubborn resistance he’d encountered amongst these men. They were different. They listened to him with polite disinterest, their eyes anywhere but on him, and as soon as he was out of sight went back to doing things their way, not his. He’d been in Djibouti almost two months and to his immense frustration had achieved little. He couldn’t understand it. He hadn’t even been able to organise the men into work teams. There seemed to be no end to the number of people he had to consult before anything could happen. This one’s uncle, that one’s father-in-law, this one’s cousin … the village chief, the headman, the elders, the clan. Christ, he’d worked in Bosnia with Mafioso of every description – Chechen, Bosnian, Russian, Moldavian … and somehow managed. But here in Djibouti, he was baffled. He was unable to solve even the simplest problems because he just couldn’t anticipate them. Niela Aden’s arrival changed all that. She moved amongst them with ease, as if she’d been there all her life. In a way, she had. As he watched her work, it struck him again and again how arbitrary most of the borders in this part of the world were. French Somaliland had turned into the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas, which in turn had become the Republic of Djibouti. They were the same people, give or take a line in the sand or two. No wonder she looked as though she was at home. She was.

  On the Friday at the end of their first week, just as he was walking back to his room, he came upon her sitting on the low wall of the abandoned bungalow overlooking the sea, where he’d noticed she sometimes went at the end of the day. Without intending to, he found himself walking up to her. The sky was losing its searing whiteness and the rocky desert in front of them was beginning to turn blush-pink. Out in the Gulf of Tadjoura, the waters had stilled. The sea was stretched taut, pegged here and there to the islands. A group of labourers they’d just been working with suddenly unrolled prayer mats and bowed their heads towards Mecca. He stopped for a moment to watch them rising and sinking, the soles of their feet a dusty yellow as their prayers rose up around him, a collective groan of supplication and release, their words carried away on the wind. He moved on, towards her. She turned as he approached, but said nothing. He caught it again – that curious mixture of calm and energy that emanated from her whenever he was near.

  ‘How long have you been doing this job?’ he asked suddenly. He noticed she waited until the men had finished praying before replying.

  ‘Not very long,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘It’s actually my first assignment.’

  ‘You’re very good at it.’ The words were out before he could even think about them. She said nothing, but looked up at him, a quizzical expression in her eyes, as if she didn’t quite believe him. ‘No, really. I mean it. You know how to work with these people. Not many of the interpreters I’ve come across can do that.’

  She shrugged. ‘They’re my people,’ she said simply. ‘We understand each other.’

  ‘Do you still have family down here?’

  ‘No.’ She didn’t elaborate. She turned the length of her profile away from him, looking out to sea. He was aware that there was more to the statement than she was prepared to give away, at least for now, and it came as something of a surprise to him that he was prepared to wait. He said goodbye and walked slowly back to his quarters, his brows knitted together in a frown of concentration. He would have to be careful with her, he realised, although strangely, he wasn’t altogether displeased by the revelation. She touched him but he had no idea why.

  Niela watched Josh walk away and disappear into the building where his room lay. He walked with a slow, graceful swagger, his tall, lean body completely at ease with everything around him, including himself. She was intrigued by him. After a week of working alongside him, she began to sense something else beneath the surface of his impatience. There was an intuitive compassion in him that seemed to be at odds with his brusque nature. It was clear he was good at his job. The men who worked under him respected him; she could see it in the way they looked at him or listened to him. Within a day or two, she saw that he would have eventually managed on his own, even without language … he was acutely aware of the subtle imbalance in power between them and he tried, wherever he could, to redress it. He had a way of asking a question that was really a provocation, which delighted them, especially the older men. After decades of being shouted at or worse, they seemed to appreciate the respect he accorded them and they returned it tenfold. And although she’d yet to see it directed at her, there was an extraordinary charm at work beneath the tight-lipped exterior and the barely controlled rage. She listened to him joke once or twice with someone whose grasp of English or French was sufficient for them to properly communicate – he had a dry, quick sense of humour and when he smiled, his whole face lit up, utterly transformed. A deep coppery glow travelled up from underneath the V of the T-shirts he wore every day, lighting his neck and face. There was a line of paler skin at his biceps where
the sun hadn’t reached, and every now and then she caught a glimpse of his torso as he stretched for something or jumped up on to the scaffolding, the wind tugging at his T-shirt. The almost feminine whiteness of his skin there startled her.

  Now, after the brief exchange, which couldn’t have lasted more than a minute or so, she sensed a shift in him towards her that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She had the sense that getting any closer to Josh Keeler would be like coming close to a flame. There was a warmth in him that she’d only just begun to see, but it was the sort of warmth that would, given the slightest chance, burn. Yes, better to keep a distance. Safer that way.

  41

  She was eating lunch alone the following day on the terrace overlooking the bay. The sun was blinding. The only point of colour in the bleached, arid landscape was the sea. She had just poured herself a second cup of coffee when she saw Josh walk out of his building and make his way across the yard towards her.

  ‘I’m going into town for supplies,’ he announced without preamble. ‘Want to come?’ She looked up at him, hurriedly swallowed a mouthful of coffee, and nodded wordlessly. ‘I’ll leave in about five minutes. Can you be ready?’

  She nodded again. ‘Sure. I’ll just get my bag,’ she said, getting up from her seat. He nodded without saying anything and turned on his heel.

  He hardly talked as he drove away from the camp, but it didn’t bother her. She turned her head to look out of the window. It was the first time she’d left the camp’s confines since she’d arrived. The horizon was still and empty; it was scored across the dashboard like a slash. The hills were dotted with hard-edged boulders, glinting white in the sunlight. They changed slowly in form and aspect as the car advanced, then left them behind. There wasn’t a single car travelling in the opposite direction. Aside from the odd goat-herder who looked up curiously as the car sped past, there was no one else on the road. Niela glanced at Josh’s hands on the wheel. Strong, capable hands, she noticed. She let her eyes wander up the length of his forearm. It was covered in fine, silky brown hair. The sun had ripened his skin like fruit; there was an olive graininess to him that seemed very un-English to her. He wore a ragged woven bracelet on one wrist of the kind that she’d worn for a couple of months as a teenager. The kind you gave to your best friend in high school. The colours were faded. She found herself wondering briefly who’d given it to him. The vehicle gave a sudden soft shudder as they skirted over a pile of loose rocks, reminding them of the inhospitable terrain outside. ‘There’s water on the back seat.’ Josh spoke suddenly. ‘If you’re thirsty.’