Borderlines

by Michela Wrong

  ‘You’d better talk me through the case.’

  ‘We’re going to need to raise our blood sugar for that.’ Winston made a vague gesture, and two slabs of vanilla ice-cream were placed before us. Vanilla ice-cream, I was to discover, was the only dessert that ever passed his lips. He would become agitated if any attempt was made – an oozing gash of raspberry ripple, a dollop of puréed fruit – to ‘jazz it up’. ‘It’s perfect,’ he claimed. ‘Never tamper with perfection.’ Carving cat-tongues from his magnolia ingot with a teaspoon, he laid it all out.

  5

  Most of us have watched so many police thrillers and legal dramas, we have a pretty accurate grasp of what form a criminal court case takes. International arbitration is different. It usually happens in private. It can take any form the parties decide. In this case, the two presidents had agreed to a two-stage process. First, the course of the contested border would be established by an independent Border Commission made up of lawyers and academics with pedigrees in international dispute settlement. Each government’s legal team would plead its case before those veterans, who were both judge and jury. Once the border had been decided, the issue of who bore responsibility for starting such a wasteful scrap – jus ad bellum, as it was technically known – would be decided by a panel of inquiry to be set up in Addis Ababa by the African Union, which was keen to demonstrate its readiness to police the continent.

  I was arriving late to the party. Both sides had already filed Memorials, opening salvoes in a contest that would climax with a ruling dubbed ‘final and binding’. It was the experience of drafting the ‘granddaddy of Memorials’, as Winston referred to it, that had finally persuaded him he needed help. The Memorials summarised each side’s arguments and were bursting with pertinent facts, set in historical context and backed up by legal argument and precedent. Winston had clearly found the task near overwhelming.

  ‘It’s a damn good piece of work, if I say so myself,’ he said, scooping up his ice-cream with surprising speed. ‘But, then, their side’s isn’t too bad either, as you’ll see. I’d recommend that’s all you do for the first few days here, just sit down and read the two Memorials. You’re going to end up knowing them as well as a pulpit-thumping preacher knows his Bible. We have six weeks to prepare our counter-Memorials, demonstrating what fools and liars they’ve been. Then both sides swap those and prepare for the final showdown, the hearing.’

  ‘What are we arguing?’

  ‘We’re going for a multi-strand approach. Hopefully each strand of the argument complements the others to form a nice thick rope of validation. First,’ he said, ticking one stubby finger, ‘we’ll use nineteenth-century colonial treaties and the beautiful, beautiful maps that go with them.’ Briefly he looked quite dreamy. Then his expression changed. ‘Did you know that a map, without a treaty attached, carries almost no legal weight?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Any fool can draw an outline on a sheet of paper and claim it represents this stretch of land, that area of sea. Before aerial surveys and satellite photographs, maps were little more than explorers’ imaginings. But maps have an emotional impact that all the written text running alongside them – which is what really matters in court – just can’t match. Humans are very visual creatures. You can almost hear arbitrators heave a sigh of relief when they’re presented with a map, however suspect: “Oh, now I understand.”’

  The prettier the map, he claimed, the greater the impact. ‘I’ve built up a wonderful collection, which I’ll probably end up donating to Lira’s National Museum, once it exists. All thanks to our volunteers. We’ve got two youngsters sifting through the British National Archives in Kew, while Francesca de Mello, an Italian PhD student, is checking the Foreign Ministry’s records in Rome. One of your duties, by the way, is to liaise with Francesca – sweet woman but needy, very needy. They’ve been sending me the treaties drawn up by Italian and British cartographers in the 1880s and 1890s, when the European powers were divvying up the region, anxious to avoid misunderstandings with the Negus of Darrar. A shame we didn’t learn more from their example,’ he said, pushing his empty bowl away.

  ‘I thought the colonial powers were rather sloppy in that regard. The cuttings I read,’ in the nick of time I stopped myself saying ‘this morning’, ‘kept referring to “poorly delineated” colonial borders.’

  ‘Well, imperial powers are like one’s parents, aren’t they? The satisfaction of criticising them just never wears off. It’s true they don’t go into quite as much detail as we would like. And there are some developments the colonial masters couldn’t foresee. They used promontories, rivers and trees as reference points, and over a century rivers change course, trees die, coastlines dance around with shifting wind patterns. So it’s difficult to build a case on treaties and maps alone, though I intend to have a damn good try.’

  ‘What else, then, if you’re worried that won’t be enough?’

  ‘Basically, a track record of administration, or “subsequent conduct of the party in question”, as it’s called. The other side, you see, is arguing that supposed “facts on the ground” made a mockery of cartography that was little more than colonial wishful thinking. Whatever the maps showed, Sanasa and other contested border areas were actually run by their officials, inhabitants voted in their elections, local businesses paid taxes to their capital. Just like the law, a treaty, especially one drawn up by foreigners who didn’t speak the lingo, can be an ass, flying in the face of how residents actually behave. Or so the other side claims. We have to prove the opposite.’

  I was suddenly aware of a strange sense of floating, the table seemed to be heaving. Jet-lag was kicking in. I frowned, forcing myself to focus. ‘Presumably we also need to be planning Phase Two, the question of who started it.’

  ‘Yes, and the outcome of that will pack enormous emotional and political punch. Just think of a teacher pulling apart two scrapping children. The first thing the kids shout is “He started it!”’

  ‘But the teacher’s response to that is always “I don’t care. I just want some peace and quiet.”’

  ‘That’s never true, though, is it? The kid that gets its bottom smacked is always the one fingered as the aggressor. An obsession with justice is a human universal, or you and I would be out of a job. And the issue of who initiated a fight is particularly important in macho societies where loss of face is seen as unacceptable.’

  ‘They, presumably, are claiming North Darrar went first.’

  ‘Went first and then deliberately escalated the conflict, rolling a column of tanks into their territory in an uncalled-for act of belligerence.’

  ‘That rings a bell.’

  ‘CNN ran the images of those T-55s pounding away on the eastern and central fronts for weeks. Which doesn’t exactly help our case. There was a good tactical reason for that move, by the way. You can’t defend an area by keeping your troops down on the plains. You need to take the high ground. That’s what our army did.’

  I registered that ‘our’. ‘So the African Union inquiry is key.’

  ‘The international community’s not very good at shades of grey. The press, the diplomats, the aid industry and foreign investors will expect the AU to tell them which country is a testosterone-charged bully, which one a blameless victim. The reverberations of that ruling will echo through the decades.’

  I could see it all ahead: the nights in the office, the Styrofoam cups of cold coffee, the documents edited and re-edited until the English language seemed to lose its meaning.

  Winston saw my expression and gave me an impish smile. ‘Courage, my girl! Did you think you were coming on vacation?’

  ‘Sorry – it just seems a bit daunting.’

  ‘Relish the challenge, that’s what I do. Having discovered early on that I was both good at and immensely bored by most of the jobs for which I was qualified, the search for something more testing began. It’s no coincidence that all my pro bono clients have been involved in disputes i
n which the odds ran firmly against them. For an outsider who feels in his bones that he snuck into the legal establishment and could be ejected at any moment, the ultimate thrill will always be to pull off the seeming miracle. What is the appeal of representing Darrar, regional giant, friend of the West? I don’t know how the other side’s lawyers get up in the morning. Underdogs, that’s my thing. Takes one to know one.’

  He gestured to one of the waitresses, slouched against a wall, and made the air scribble that is recognised the world over.

  6

  And so I settled into my nest, like a dog turning round and round on a cushion, working the stuffing with its paws until it feels right.

  My new home was an apricot-coloured villa, one of a dinky, pastel-coloured set of five built around a tennis-court-sized patch of dry grass on the edge of Lira’s industrial district. It had been built so quickly that it was already falling apart, recently laid ceramic tiles cracking underfoot, light switches jiggling at the touch. I quailed inwardly as Abraham showed me around, registering the tiny bedrooms and a design scheme that had the kitchen opening directly onto the living room. The shelves in the bathroom were already crammed with lotions. There wasn’t going to be much privacy.

  My new housemate, Sharmila – owner of said beauty products – was a Sri Lankan-American using her time in Lira as the basis for a PhD. She was nominally in charge of three US student interns, the Braces-and-Barrette Set, as I mentally labelled them, who lived in the raspberry-painted villa next to ours. When we were introduced, Sharmila gave me a smile that showed perfect teeth but failed to reach her eyes. Her slim hands were smooth and manicured, making mine feel as rough as a butcher’s. I sensed that she resented my prospective presence at the breakfast table.

  ‘How are you finding it?’ I asked, as she leaned against the door jamb, watching me unpack.

  ‘OK, if backward shitholes are your thing.’

  ‘Oh.’ She’d succeeded in shocking me. We clearly applied different standards: I’d been struck by Lira’s sophistication. ‘What do people do here when they’re not working?’

  ‘I have a boyfriend, Steve, who works for the UN. We hang out. And you? Man on the scene?’

  ‘Nope.’ I pronounced the word very deliberately, accentuating the p.

  ‘I suppose Lira could be fun,’ she conceded, picking up a book from my case and giving it a careless once-over, ‘if we weren’t working for Winston. The other expatriates are mostly aid workers and they’re up in arms about the government’s human-rights record. So we get treated as pariahs. It’s such a bore.’

  ‘Don’t you ever meet any locals?’

  ‘I’ve tried, but it’s pretty hard work. Not much in common, amazingly,’ she said, with heavy sarcasm. ‘I didn’t spend twenty years fighting in a trench.’

  On the first afternoon at the office, I grappled with the faux-leather chair, adjusting the back support and seat height, aware that these small adjustments marked the start of a new phase in my life. This was now my perch, a place where I was going to spend many future hours. I tipped the chair and swivelled it the full 360 degrees a few times, slowly taking in the view.

  The Legal Office of the President of the State of North Darrar operated out of a former five-room apartment on the second floor of a colonial building. The main office, separated by a frosted-glass door that he always kept ajar – the better to oversee the rest of us – was for Winston. The rest was open-plan.

  The local team included Barnabas, the office manager, and Abraham, driver, fixer, errand-runner. Winston loved referring to ‘my two office prophets’, occasionally adding, to no one in particular, ‘If you ever meet an Isaiah, tell him he’s got the job!’ A quiet rivalry simmered between the two men, I came to realise, rooted – as the secretary Ribqa explained – in the fact that lean Abraham was an ex-Fighter (you could hear the respectful capital when she said it), while Barnabas was a trained civil servant, with an office worker’s paunch, a man who had once dutifully served in what Abraham’s comrades regarded as an alien administration, from which he expected to collect an eventual pension. That difference found expression in a strict division of tasks. Any problem arising inside the office – paperwork, form-filling, utilities bills, computers – was Barnabas’s business. Anything involving the bracing, manly outdoors – the jeeps, fuel for the generator, field trips, picking up visitors – was Abraham’s.

  Then there were Yohannes and Ismael, two youngsters Winston had commandeered from the Ministry of Justice, talent-spotted while he was lecturing at the University of Lira’s beleaguered Law Department. ‘Very lucky boys,’ Ribqa said to me, nodding towards them. ‘If you work at the Legal Office of the President, no military service for you.’ And, of course, there was Ribqa herself, whose attitude to all our goings-on could best be termed as one of tolerant contempt, our work something she indulged but did her best to ignore. Her interest was the food she brought to the office: home-made bread or almond cake, which she would invite us all to sample.

  The apartment must once have been the home of affluent white settlers, an urban pied-à-terre, perhaps, for an Italian family running an up-country coffee estate who felt they needed injections of city culture if the youngsters were not to run wild on the farm. It was still cluttered with dark, heavy furniture – ponderously carved dressers and armoires with blue-veined marble tops and tilting mirrors patched with golden mildew. While I was helping Abraham to push one of these to a wall to make way for a flat-pack desk – ‘It’s OK, Paula this is no work for a woman’ – we paused to marvel at a manufacturer’s metal plaque on the back.

  ‘1831! Wow,’ said Abraham, ‘really old.’

  ‘Yes. And really ugly.’

  There was a quiet poignancy about the apartment’s lofty ceilings, with their alabaster light fittings and plaster mouldings, the wide, superfluous corridors in which we perched our printers, shredders and photocopiers. The people who had built it had assumed they were in Africa for good, so why stint, when labour and materials were cheap? Be sure to leave enough space for the servants you will always depend upon and the grandchildren you are certain to have.

  Mantelpieces meant for wedding photographs now held stacks of memory sticks and hard drives, staplers and cartons of paperclips. In between the giant maps that covered the walls – courtesy of the UN Logistics Office and dotted with Post-it notes and coloured drawing pins – you could see the ghostly outlines left by auctioned oil paintings. The tiled floor was the kind an Italian grandmother would order to be waxed, then protect with polishing slippers: I could almost hear the shrieks of delight of the children sliding along it when her back was turned.

  There was a large kitchen, where we brewed coffee when working late, and a bathroom with deep-bowled washbasin and bidet dating from an era when the ‘quick shower’ had yet to be invented. The tub was kept permanently full of water, with a red bucket alongside, and had acquired its own ecosystem, a floating population of drowned beetles, spiders and expiring mosquitoes.

  ‘What’s this for?’ I asked Sharmila.

  ‘Oh, you can never count on water supplies in Lira,’ she said, with an airy wave of one beautiful hand. ‘It’s our do-it-yourself toilet-flushing system. Disgusting, eh? If my parents could see me now! They left Sri Lanka to get away from this kind of thing.’

  ‘I think I can probably handle it.’

  She gave me a hard look. ‘Just wait till you get an upset stomach. Then you’ll see just how much fun a non-flushing bathroom is.’

  The ceilings were high enough to accommodate old-fashioned fans, whose steady whumps, on a good day, conjured up memories of Somerset Maugham, gin and bitters. But those whumps were intermittent because power, like the water, came and went, a constant source of office tension. ‘Oh, Jesus, no, no, no,’ an intern would wail as a long-awaited fax from Washington stalled in mid-flow or a half-written document vanished from a screen before being saved. It was amazing how quickly one moved from self-admonition (‘This isn’t the US, adjust’
) via frustrated panic (‘How am I expected to work?’) to sardonic fury (‘This place is stuck in the Middle Ages’), the process culminating, in my case, in a swift exit to kick a wall and smoke a calming cigarette.

  The metal shutters on the apartment’s windows had long since rusted into immobility, so those of us who sat beneath them were always simultaneously surveying and under surveillance. I spent so many hours gazing meditatively down the quiet street that by the end I could have drawn it in my sleep. The pavement of dimpled ceramic tiles. A blue-overalled workman digging up a decayed sewer. Local boys kicking a stuffed sock tethered to a whitewashed fig tree. A tabby cat taking the sun on the wall between the houses opposite, squeezing its eyelids rhythmically in silent pleasure. And, at the periphery of my vision, the corner where the street met the main boulevard, two soldiers, AK-47s slung over skinny shoulders, all hip bones, jutting Adam’s apples and oversized black boots, checking the papers of passing pedestrians.

  One soft spring evening, they spot one another at the opening of a photography exhibition sponsored by Hitchens at a SoHo gallery. A Senegalese musician is picking at a kora and the chilled white wine is flowing. There are no canapés, so they are both slightly drunk by the time Jake offers to walk her home. Relief floods her when he makes clear that she should take his arm – finally, an excuse to touch – and once their arms are interlocked he places a proprietorial hand over hers, making disengagement impossible.