They roamed far up from their guesthouse, which was no longer in sight, and reached a point where they could see nothing but the natural world. It was their own piece of terra nullius. Standing next to each other without touching, looking out into the sea, with Africa at their backs, Andrew went to speak but nothing came out. He sniffled and quickly wiped at the tear forming in his eye, hoping he hid it from Thomas.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said finally. “I’ve never been this confused.”
The goodbye at the Banjul airport was strained and offered a difficult re-initiation into their new setting. Because they didn’t want to be seen traveling together, from the minute they arrived at the gate to board their flight back to Gambia, Thomas became a stranger to the three of them. Andrew had given him enough dalasis to cover a taxi to a point where he could catch a minibus or 7-7 to get home. Thomas said it would be too unusual for him to arrive home in a taxi and he didn’t want any of his neighbors growing suspicious. Andrew and Thomas kept turning to each other on the plane, but to be safe, did so in a way that could be confused with looking around for the sake of looking around. On the bus to the terminal in Banjul they stood next to each other but didn’t speak. Thomas turned his mobile back on and saw three texts from his brother. They were all sent before Thomas had emailed him to say his phone had broken.
Coming Sunday?
??
Where r u?
He looked back up at Andrew, his eyes looking desperate as a sunken feeling took over his insides. The fairy tale was over.
The bus stopped abruptly, jolting Thomas as he reached for Andrew’s arm to steady himself before quickly letting go and muttering excuse me. Once in the terminal building, they kept looking at each other in the immigration lines. But Thomas was in a line for Gambian nationals that moved much quicker, so he passed through before them. When he walked into the main hall he gave a quick glance back over his shoulder before disappearing into the terminal. Still in line, waiting with Alex and Liv, Andrew felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and took it out just enough to read the text.
I had a fun time with u. Everything will work out. You’ll see :-)
Part Three
21
It was dark when Abdou finally arrived home. Thankfully he sat in the front seat of the 7-7 so the other passengers didn’t have an opportunity to recognize him – something that was unfortunately happening with greater frequency. He kept close watch over his surroundings as he walked from the car into his neighborhood. Streets and walks that once brought the comfort of familiarity now made him tense. He’d never noticed how poorly lit they were; how many windows of parked cars he couldn’t see into. Clutching his torn briefcase – he wasn’t going to leave any important files at his unguarded office – he made his way briskly down the streets with his head down discreetly shifting his eyes, left, up, right, left, up, right. He swore the walk seemed to get longer and longer each night.
He sighed out as he arrived at his house and offered a good evening, thank you to the police officer begrudgingly keeping guard outside his gate. He only sought protection recently, one evening after he found the word TRAITOR painted on his home’s front gate. After cleaning it off, he implored the authorities that he had two young children and was only seeking to uphold the country’s constitutional guarantees of due process. Reluctantly, the police agreed to place a guard outside his home. None of the three officers who rotated the watch had been particularly friendly. It was obvious they didn’t want to be there and resented the assignment. Still, he was grateful for their presence and hoped he made his appreciation known.
As the gate finally creaked closed and he retreated into the safety of his own compound, he looked around at his surroundings. One of his neighbors peered down at him through her window. Their eyes met briefly before he turned away and made for the front door.
Walking through the door, he could see his wife Manima cleaning in the kitchen. The house was quiet. Their children would have been asleep. The past several weeks he’d seen much less of them on account of his late hours. Manima turned to face him as he put his briefcase down on their sofa.
“How are you?” she asked, continuing to dry whatever was in her hands.
“I’m fine. How are you?”
“Fine.”
“The children?”
“Sleeping.”
He nodded and stood while savoring the luxury of time. It was night. Morning wasn’t until tomorrow. He exhaled.
At the beginning of it all, Manima would have also asked how Thomas and Andrew were doing, but that wasn’t a question that jumped from her lips as quickly. She cared about them, was incensed and embarrassed by the injustice of it all, and still prepared extra food for them when Abdou went to visit, but a part of her eagerly waited to put this all behind them and pick up the pieces and move on. Nervous and scared for her husband, she was secretly relieved the trial was finally starting.
The fallout from defending Thomas and Andrew put strains on their marriage. He discussed the case with Manima before agreeing to it and she never tried to convince him not to take it. Even so, they both knew that whatever happened, it would change things. From the minute word got out he was defending them he’d be labeled a gay sympathizer, or suspected of being gay himself. She would be pitied for being married to such a weak man, afraid to stand up for real values and African masculinity. Friends and neighbors would castigate her for standing by him. Their children too, at least the older one who was seven, would be taunted at school, probably at the instruction of the other children’s parents. And then there was his law practice. How many of his clients would stay with him and risk whatever adverse consequences might befall their legal matters by being associated with a lawyer who defended gays? Abdou and Manima didn’t need the attention. It would be impossible for the pressure not to get to them.
But can I really say no, Manima? It was rhetorical.
“Why you?” she asked him. “Or why don’t you ask Ebrima to also join you?” she added. “That way you’re not standing there alone.”
“Ebrima wouldn’t do it,” Abdou responded while shaking his head. “He would be upset if I even asked him, that I would put him in a position where he would have to refuse me.”
In the silence they could each see that the other was thinking.
“Most people who might do it would only do it at a very basic level. Enough only to go through the process,” he told her.
“But others would do it, and some would do it properly... so why must it be you, Abdou?”
“Because I’m the one who’s been asked, Manima,” he said as they shared a look they’d shared so many times before. It was a look of trust, in each other.
“What should I tell our children if they ask why people are ridiculing their father?”
“That I am a good lawyer,” he answered her matter-of-factly. Smiling mischievously, he added, “who hopes he’s not making a stupid decision.”
Manima smiled back, but it failed to hide the melancholy. “Just do your job, and do it well. But that’s all. You have a family to take care of.”
“I know.”
Abdou had his picture in the newspaper and on television when it was disclosed he was representing them. THE GAYS’ LAWYER ran one headline on a day he tried not to venture out in public.
When Thomas thanked him for spending so much time on their case at the expense of all your other clients, Abdou omitted the fact that he had more time to work on their case because most of his existing clients had left him. In relaying that his legal practice was strong, he also failed to mention that his law firm kicked him out once he took up the case. They supported his decision, they wanted him to know, but as the exodus of clients demonstrated, the reputational damage was just too great. It would be best, for everyone, if you went your own way, the senior partner told him, the same senior partner who had recruited and mentored him after his graduation. This way you can focus more on these types of cases.
As
for his wife, besides being the laughing stock of the neighborhood, she was also taunted at work. As a manager for one of the country’s telecom companies, Manima once held the respect of her colleagues and the admiration of her supervisors. Not any longer. She was the wife of the gay lawyer. How could they trust her? She must support him.
Gossiping eyes followed as she walked to her desk each morning, or with her children in the neighborhood. She told Abdou that other parents were telling their children to stay away from theirs. It will pass, it will pass, Abdou kept telling her. But it didn’t pass.
Even with all the challenges – it became far more trying and taxing than either of them imagined – neither regretted it. He was doing the right thing. They deserve to have their rights defended in court, he insisted to her. The whole legal profession has gone silent on this, the entire defense bar, he lamented. Manima offered a more human perspective – it wasn’t only about laws. It’s about the type of people we are as a country, about how we treat each other.
“We made the right decision, Manima,” he said to her that night, ready to face the uncertain road ahead.
“I know,” she said. “Are you ready for tomorrow?” she asked him gently.
“As much as I can be.” His answer confirmed that while he was confident in his decision to take the case, he was less confident about its outcome.
He sat down at the kitchen table slightly deflated. Manima put a plate of food in front of him and he began eating it without stopping to look at what it might be. She imagined it was the only thing he ate since leaving in the morning. She rubbed her hand on his back before sitting down.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to be there tomorrow?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want you there. It will be too uncomfortable if it’s discovered that my wife is present,” he spoke resolutely, before becoming more lighthearted, “and you must go to your job, Madam Breadwinner. After this is done I’ll be on track for early retirement.” Small humor was how he coped.
Manima knew there was a decent enough chance he was right.
“And how are they?” she asked after giving Abdou time to eat.
“Tired,” he answered, scraping the last bits of rice from his plate.
“And their mental state?”
“I honestly don’t know.” They hadn’t given up, he told her. And certainly neither had he. “But it’s different from the first time I met them. The disbelief that this is happening is gone. They’re very aware of what’s going on and what it all means. There are no illusions. Both of them, I think, are realistic. And it’s hard to see how each is coping with it or to even imagine that they can.”
“Are they scared?”
He looked at her with an air of contemplation. Just a few hours earlier he asked them the same question.
Abdou usually shied away from inquiring about Andrew and Thomas’s emotional states. Andrew noticed how Abdou focused his personal questions on the physical – had their mistreatment ended, were they hungry, did they have enough space in their respective cells? Did they have any medical concerns? But he didn’t directly ask how they were feeling. It wasn’t insensitive; it just took some getting used to. Andrew had to remind himself that Abdou was his lawyer, not his psychologist, and was probably ill-equipped to delve into the range of emotional issues he and Thomas were each confronting. Instead, Andrew began to see Abdou’s concern for their well-being coming across through his work ethic and unwavering commitment to afford them a comprehensive defense.
But earlier that afternoon, sitting across a rusted metal table in an impossibly small and suffocating prison interview room, Abdou looked at his two clients. They had already been together for an hour to go over some final case details. All three of them knew that any chance to wrestle them out of their presumed fates rested with him. In that moment, Abdou paused, turning back to his notes before bringing his gaze up to them.
“Are you scared?”
The question caught Andrew off guard. The silence from Thomas suggested he felt the same. Neither of them said anything immediately. Andrew was thinking of how to answer. The past month had been horrible for him, hell. He knew the same went for Thomas. Separated almost instantly and only infrequently brought together outside of Abdou’s visits, what scared him most was the thought of facing whatever was to come alone. He’d burned through so much of his strength already he wasn’t sure he’d have enough left. On top of it, there was the fear that came from not being there for Thomas, of leaving the person he loved to fend for himself when he knew Thomas’s experience had been so much more horrific. It’s what scared him most of all – that Thomas wouldn’t be able to handle it, and he wouldn’t be there for him when it happened. But Andrew was too afraid to say it. He didn’t want to use these moments to worry Thomas with things they already knew, and knew they couldn’t change. Deliberately or not, Thomas seemed to have adopted the same approach. Andrew sensed some thoughts between them went unspoken.
“Of course,” Andrew spoke first. “Who wouldn’t be?”
Thomas’s expression showed no sign of disagreement.
In the silence, Abdou appeared to be searching for words of comfort. None came out immediately when Thomas started speaking.
“The trick is not to let them see it. In here, with you, with each other, we can be scared. We can admit we are fearful of them and of what they might do to us. But tomorrow, when we face them, we cannot let them see it. Otherwise they will only see us as trembling before them, either in shame, to beg forgiveness, or because of the punishment we know is coming.” Thomas remained calm as he spoke. “It’s important they do not see that side. It’s what they want to see, because if they do, it will be easier for them not to see how behind our trembling is a real person, no different than they are.”
Abdou agreed with Thomas’s suggestion, adding, “even if it is difficult, don’t give them what they want.”
He then turned to Andrew and asked if Maya had seen him that morning. She had. The Gambian government’s position towards Andrew’s status as an American was unsympathetic. It had denied him consular assistance for the first week of his detention until he was formally charged, and thereafter only allowed Maya to have intermittent access to check up on him. She hadn’t been completely transparent about every detail concerning the embassy’s efforts to get him released, but from what she had told him, he knew their efforts had not made much progress.
“And she’ll be there tomorrow?”
“Yes. She said she’ll be there every day.”
“And she and your parents have each other’s mobile numbers?”
“Yes. And you too?”
“Yes, I have their mobile numbers, and they called me this morning with their hotel contact after they landed. I’ve promised to call them after each day’s hearing.”
Andrew’s parents were in Senegal, the country next door.
Maya followed Andrew’s suggestion and got a hold of his father at work. It would afford his father more time to process what had happened before having to confront Andrew’s mother, whose control over her emotions Andrew doubted. Maya expected Andrew’s father to respond with shock and disbelief. It would have already been a sensory overload to find out Andrew was gay or that he was arrested in a foreign country. The fact that he was arrested for being gay proved, at first, too much. Andrew’s father grew angry at Maya and accused her of making everything up.
“Who are you? And what kind of nonsense are you trying to get me to believe?” he demanded to know. His son wasn’t gay, and what kind of a country criminalized that stuff anyway. He accused Maya of playing a practical joke on him and of not working for the U.S. government. “You’re going to have to take your very unfunny lies somewhere else. I don’t know what my son may or may not have done to you, but this isn’t making any sense.”
“Are you in front of a computer, sir?” she asked calmly. After he replied he was, she asked if he could search for the U.S. Embassy in Banjul’s website. He did. Sh
e asked him if he wanted to call the phone number listed where she would be waiting for him. He did. When she answered his heart sank.
It still sounded ridiculous, though. Maybe it was a mix-up, something that would soon be clarified.
“I don’t think this is going to go away quickly, sir.”
“What the hell is having carnal knowledge against the, against the what?”
“The order of nature,” Maya said, her tone businesslike.
“Is that even a real crime?”
“It is in The Gambia. And one they take very seriously, sir. It carries a maximum punishment of fourteen years in prison.”
“Fourteen years?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes, I’m afraid. Andrew’s not in a good situation.”
He asked her what she was doing to help him as he did his best to focus on the fact that his son was locked up in some African prison. If in fact he turned out to be gay, they could worry about it later.
“We continue to monitor the situation to ensure he’s being properly cared for by the authorities while also pressing for his release.”
Andrew’s father didn’t appreciate the diplomatic cloak to her language. “Is he okay and when will you get him out of there?” he yelled into the phone.
It was the next answer that finally forced him to grasp the gravity of the situation. Maya told him that Andrew was physically fine, and that she and the embassy staff would ensure that it stayed that way. But as to the second question, “that’s not so simple. In fact, with this government, we’re going to have to approach it tactfully.”
“When?” he wondered sternly. “A day or two?”
“I don’t know. It could take a while.”
While Andrew was not there to see what happened next, he cried gently as Maya told him. His father immediately called Lindsay and told her to meet him at home. He sat her and his wife down and plainly told them what had happened. Andrew, their Andrew, was apparently in a romantic relationship with a man in Gambia. The country had criminal laws against homosexuality, and they had been arrested and charged. When Andrew’s mother, whose emotions did stay under control, looked confused, Lindsay immediately offered up confirmation.
The Order of Nature Page 20