“I’ve never seen what her hair looks like,” Alex said one day when they were speaking about her.
They didn’t speak about her much, but when they did, it often revolved around what they thought she thought of them.
“I mean it must be weird,” Andrew said. “To have these strangers show up with so much stuff, and a house to themselves, while she lives next door with her extended family in those cramped conditions. And she’s not the least bit resentful about it.”
She wasn’t. In all the months Andrew had come to know her, Isatou had been nothing but warm and friendly towards him. Contrary to his initial suspicions, she didn’t seem to judge or think much about him having a laptop, cellphone, and iPod all out on a table, with two pairs of shoes and a fancy backpack on the floor. In fact, his original view of Africa as a continent deprived of material goods quickly vanished when he saw many people had two cellphones, or at least two SIM cards, and dressed far more dapper than he ever did.
“Just don’t be an asshole,” offered up Alex, trying to assuage any lingering concerns Andrew might’ve still had. “You seem to be doing okay at that.”
Conversations with Isatou were often limited by language barriers, but they were able to exchange pleasantries nonetheless. How’s your family? How is your day so far? Isatou answered mostly the same, they are fine or very good. But on some days she followed with more details.
“Awa is at home now.”
Andrew was never entirely sure how to respond when Awa came up. As Alex forewarned, Isatou had once suggested how Andrew might take Awa back to America with him. So she can have good life.
“But she has a good life here with you,” Andrew responded awkwardly.
On the days Isatou brought Awa with her to help clean, she mostly kept quiet and close to her mother. Both Alex and Andrew tried to engage her in conversation but she proved supremely shy, perhaps embarrassed knowing her mother had offered her, however jokingly, to both of them at various points.
Isatou’s comings and goings were one of the reasons Thomas was at first reluctant to spend much time at Andrew’s.
“We Gambians do not understand much about privacy. It’s in our nature to help ourselves in.”
He was right.
It was a Sunday morning a couple of weeks after he and Thomas first kissed. Andrew had gone to bed late on Saturday, drunk after a night of charades at a friend’s house. He somehow managed to get himself undressed and his mosquito net untied. It was hot when he went to bed and the power was off, so he fell asleep on top of his sheets, naked.
Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem, but he forgot to close his bedroom door.
The compound’s iron gate squeaked open but he was still dozing in and out and the noise didn’t register with him.
“Not the kind of noise to jolt you out of bed, or at least I wasn’t in the state where I was going to be jolted out of bed,” he explained to Thomas.
Isatou let herself in, assuming he and Alex were either up or gone at such a late hour. She soon realized she was mistaken. Between the distance to his bed and the mosquito net veiling him there wasn’t much to see, but it was still enough to send her into a quick freeze before she quickly and quietly fled off. Fortunately, he was lying on his stomach. The front door closed, followed by the squeak of the gate closing shortly after.
“I realized it was her just as she approached the entrance to my room,” he told a giggling Thomas. “But I decided not to move. I thought if I was pretending to still be asleep we could avoid an awkward situation where we both knew she walked in on me like that.”
“You see,” exclaimed Thomas, “this is why I can never sleep over.”
“No, things are fine now. She hasn’t come back on a weekend, even to get mangoes. I guess I scared her,” he said amusedly, wanting to appease his apprehension.
Despite Isatou’s near-guaranteed absence on weekends, Thomas and Andrew still spent most of their time away from his house. Thomas’s home was out of the question. First, even though he had a private entrance, he only had one room in a house of four. It was also in a dense residential neighborhood where there was no chance Andrew’s coming and going could stay secret. So they were left to find their own seclusion. More often than not, they went to that spot on the beach between the Fajara cut off and the Bakau fish market. Away from any road, dotted by large rocks jutting out into the sea, the ground ascended high up behind them, forming a wall from where the land on top came to its end. It was the perfect location and was almost always deserted.
They tried to meet there at least one other night a week in addition to Fridays and Sundays, but sometimes life would get in the way. That, and they didn’t want to press their luck. But each made a concerted effort never to miss a Friday. Andrew would show up at the bar after work and buy a drink. None of the hotel staff ever thought anything of it. He was just another expat coming to spend money on alcohol and they were happy to have his patronage. Shortly before Thomas closed up for the night, usually around nine or ten depending on how busy it was, Andrew would walk down to the beach and walk north, past two adjacent hotels to a small path leading up to the main road. After about fifteen or twenty minutes, Thomas would appear. Covered by the night they would make their way up the beach, brushing against each other, and holding hands if there were no hotels or restaurants in sight. If anyone would pass them, it would only be the odd tourist, already a few drinks in.
These walks sometimes became a bit surreal to Andrew, serving as effective antidotes to the doubts regularly creeping into his mind about what he was embarking on. It’s worth it.
One week after they arrived at their spot, Thomas started opening a backpack he was carrying, pulling out a plastic bag.
“What’s that?” Andrew asked.
“Fish. For dinner.”
“You’ve been carrying fish in your backpack?”
“I got them this morning, before work,” he answered, smiling and holding up the bag, displaying it proudly as if he caught the fish himself. “We never eat together. Isn’t that what normal couples do? You know, have food. Even though it is late.”
It was sweet, Andrew thought. Certainly sweeter and more creative than anything he’d thought of or proposed.
“Come, we must find some small sticks for the fire.”
They set off a bit further north, where the cliffs receded and the shrubs and trees returned to the beach. Thomas gathered small sticks and dead palm leaves and Andrew followed, doing the same. When they got back, Thomas set out the leaves and sticks in a small circle on the sand. They were as far back from the sea as one could be, with the rocks curving out and sheltering them on either side. He took out a lighter from his backpack and put it towards the kindling, lighting a small fire. Dispersed and faint sounds of the crackling wood interrupted the night’s silence.
Thomas, sitting next to the fire, opened up the bag and removed two fish. He sprinkled some seasoning over them, put a stick through each of their mouths, and rested them on leaves at the base of the fire. Andrew stood curiously watching his every move.
“My father,” Thomas said, in response to Andrew’s gaze. “When I was a boy he taught me how to do this. He said I needed to know how just in case I was ever out on the river alone one night and couldn’t make my way back. It was something most fathers taught their sons as they started getting older. Maybe he thought I would always be in the village.
“It’s funny,” he paused. “I only now realized how it’s the first time I’m doing it without him. And I’m by the sea, not the river. And I’m not stranded and alone either,” he said, turning his mouth into a big knowing smile.
“It’s good you remember,” Andrew said as he sat down next to him.
“What skills did your father teach you?” Thomas asked.
It was an interesting question, and not one he’d have thought to ask. Andrew had to think about how he would answer it.
“He taught me how to drive, and how to change a flat tire
.” He paused before grinning. “He used to get so mad at me. I would always hit the brakes too hard at first. He said I was giving him whiplash.”
“And now?”
“I’m much better,” he said, his grin still there.
Thomas looked down. Light hissing sounds emanated from the fish as smoke began rising off their skins. Small embers jumped out from the fire into the night. He picked up the sticks and turned the fish onto their other sides. Still looking into the fire, he asked Andrew if his father would be proud of him now. He knew Andrew hadn’t yet come out to his parents, and was concerned about their reaction.
“But if he saw how you were happy. Would this be enough to make him proud of you?”
Andrew thought to himself for a moment. “I don’t know.
“I want to think so. But, I don’t know. Even though I have my doubts, deep down I always hope that between my sister’s influence and him realizing that it’s his son we’re talking about, that eventually he’d come around.” He stopped to think if there was more to say but there wasn’t. “Would yours?” he asked softly. “And what’s his name, I don’t even know it.”
“John,” he said, looking up. “In our family many men are named after apostles.”
For Thomas, it wasn’t an answer he had to think about. He’d thought about it already for many years.
“No,” he said shaking his head. “He would not be proud of me. He would say I am not his son. That this was not how he raised me. That I was not a good African, that I was not a good Christian.” Looking up at Andrew with abandoned eyes he continued, “he would walk away from me, send me out, and turn away.
“I think he’s brainwashed about this. Our president and the church. They make everyone so crazy. It’s like they forget how we are humans too. Over the years, as they made more and more hysterical statements, and created this hatred, it’s gotten into people’s minds that it’s okay to abandon us, to want to cast us away. It wasn’t perfect before either, but at least you never had a president using homophobia to bring everyone else together.”
“Have you ever heard him give a speech about it?”
“No. But even before he speaks I can tell you what he will say. He repeats himself. It’s nothing new. It’s not news anymore. People are so used to thinking about homosexuality as this terrible disease that they don’t think twice when the president speaks that way. They’ve all been to church or their mosque. If their preacher says this comes from the Bible, that homosexuality is a sin that must be wiped away, how can it not be true? The president is only putting into action what the Bible commands us, or the Koran. So it makes it easier for people to cheer when they hear their president going after gays and lesbians.”
“When was the last time you went to church?” Andrew asked.
“Me, I haven’t been to church since I left my village. I would need to be forced hard to go back into one. For me, they are torture. Even now, with my parents in Banjul, I don’t go with them. They are very upset about it. I tell them that sometimes I go here, to a church in Serrekunda, or that I have to work. I don’t know if they believe me, probably not, especially since I don’t visit them as much on Sundays. At some point I know I will be forced to go. Thankfully they are still new to the church my brother takes them to, so they don’t feel embarrassed I am not with them. But I don’t like that I have to lie about it.”
“What’s so bad about them?” Andrew asked innocently. He had a sense they weren’t welcoming to the idea of being gay, but his naïveté shielded him.
“I mean, I want to believe in this goodness they say they stand for. That there is this all mighty and powerful, loving God who watches over us. And then you sit there as a young boy in this holy place listening to the preacher, a man you are taught to respect and admire, a man you see your parents looking up to, and following his every word, who comes over to you after church and puts his hand on your head and calls you a good boy. But just before that you sat in his pew and listened to that man call you a disease. A maggot that has infected a healthy body. And all you can do is sit. You can’t stand up and leave because everyone will see you, and then they will know, and where will you go? Nobody will help you. They all agree with the preacher. You are the disease. I tried not to listen, but even sometimes I could still hear.”
He kept speaking as he prodded the fish to check if they were done. “And you can’t change. You try, for many years once you realize you are this maggot he speaks of, you try so desperately not to be, but you can’t change it. So you sit there, trapped in the church, in between your family and your community as your insides shake, crying out for God – not the preacher’s god, not his god of vengeance, but the real God, the God of mercy, the God who created all of us – that’s who you cry out for, that He may take you away to some place safe. But that God doesn’t come. At least not here.
“No,” he continued, “I will not go back to church. I don’t think I ever could.”
Andrew reached out and took Thomas’s hand. So many of their previous conversations had only scratched the surface of what his life had been like in the village.
“When did you know you wanted to leave?”
“Maybe when I was around thirteen,” Thomas answered, looking like he was thinking. “Maybe it slowly started when I knew I could not change that I started wanting to leave, to find someplace else. It was when I understood how for me being gay was not optional. But I was only a boy, and a boy doesn’t want to easily accept that he doesn’t have a future with his family in his home.”
“I know,” Andrew said, thinking about his own situation. Though saying it made him feel guilty, as if bringing his situation into the conversation trivialized Thomas’s.
“And even you yourself had to leave too,” Thomas offered up enthusiastically. “You also said you needed to find some place else to go. Even though America is filled with places to go,” he teased.
“I wanted to combine mine with a little adventure. Make it less bleak.”
“I’m happy you found your way to our difficult country.”
“Me too.”
When the fish was ready and cool enough to touch, Thomas showed Andrew how he could eat it with his hands. His fingers weren’t as nimble as Thomas’s in working around the bones, so he made a bigger mess. They laughed at his efforts, lightening the mood a bit. The fish itself was moist. Whatever the seasoning Thomas used was tasty, and not too spicy. The fire was all but gone, only a glow and simmering smoke, leaving just enough light as they sat there, backs pressed up against the earth wall, each resting their fish on a palm leaf, eating mostly in silence.
“It’s really good,” Andrew said as he licked his fingers.
“I’m glad you like it,” Thomas said. He laughed to himself and thought for a minute before resting his head on Andrew’s shoulder and looking out. “Maybe one day I will take you to meet my father and you can tell him that I did a good job.”
Thomas was becoming a semi-regular fixture at Sunday football matches. As weeks wore on he and Andrew became more comfortable in public after growing accustomed to any awkwardness that came with their restrained public outings. They came to appreciate being out amidst others. They modified the expectations that flowed from being a couple and instead settled for friendship, the fun of activity, and for not having to look over one’s shoulder. Thomas fit in well with the group. He was enthusiastic and appreciative to be there, and people liked him for that. He was very good at teasing people with the ball, faking them with his head and eyes while sending the ball downfield to other, open players. He was content letting others score and rarely did moves that might give the impression he was showing off.
After the game, he and Andrew both started staying for drinks. Andrew especially came to like when Thomas began telling stories of nightmarish guests at the hotel. He liked watching people smile and laugh as Thomas spoke. It reassured him to see people genuinely enjoy having him around. It meant he was making a smart decision.
They le
ft the games separately. Sometimes Thomas left first, other times it was Andrew. The first to leave walked slowly, waiting for the other person to catch up. Just like on Fridays, they eventually found their way up the beach, pushing their bikes they rode to the games, before settling by the cove. These walks were more guarded – they began in daylight and the beach had yet to fully empty. To avoid garnering suspicion, on occasion one of them would bike up along the road and wait for the other at the spot. Sometimes whoever biked would stop for a bit of food – some fruits, or a bag of crisps. The other times they were empty handed. With work early the next day, school started at eight, they rarely went late into the night.
Walking up one Sunday evening, Thomas asked Andrew if he had spoken to his sister that weekend.
“No,” he answered, shaking his head. “I don’t remember when we last spoke. A week ago?”
It seemed to Andrew that for each step forward he and Thomas took together, he took one step back in his relationship with his sister.
“I thought she would come around. But she hasn’t.”
For Andrew, it became the biggest disappointment stemming from his relationship with Thomas. The person he’d been closest to in the years where her support mattered most was growing more and more distant.
“I tried explaining it to her – explaining us to her. She thinks I’m being reckless.”
“Do you think she might feel you’re drifting from her?”
Such introspective conversations made Andrew appreciate Thomas’s insightfulness. The ease with which Thomas dissected emotions stood in stark contrast to how he generally avoided confronting them.
“Maybe. But that would make her a bit selfish, wouldn’t it? She knew almost as much as I did how much I wanted to get away and have a completely different type of experience. And she supported me, and defended me to my parents. I mean, if this is how my experience is unfolding.” He shrugged.
Thomas was silent as Andrew kept processing thoughts in his head.
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