Our Memory Like Dust

by Gavin Chait

  A shattering noise as the gate is unlocked, light slashing down on them, wrenching Samboa away and smashing the door closed again.

  The baboon watches as the naked man is dragged away. He listens to Samboa’s wailing long after the retreating flashlights are no longer visible.

  When all he can hear is the even breathing of the blue-eyed man, he draws a line in the air, opening a path back to the deep desert and stepping through towards the bright searing reflection of a tree-lined ouahe.

  The tributaries of this story have united; now he will follow their waters where they lead.

  13

  All along the dusty track south, Shakiso has the feeling of going the wrong way. People are moving any direction but towards the camp.

  The taxi owner is asleep, stretched out over the front seats, his kufi skull-cap pulled down to shield his eyes. Shakiso is in the back with Tuft sprawled over her lap, panting in the early-morning heat. Behind her, hanging in the window, are a pair of baby shoes, tied shut and serving as a gris-gris protecting against accidentally knocking over a child.

  Shakiso was forced to stay overnight in Bakel at a small hotel near the bus station. It was an unquiet experience, leaving her and Tuft grumpy this morning. None of the taxis were prepared to take her to the Ballou camp. It was either too far, or they were uncomfortable transporting a wildcat as a passenger. She waved her card in the air and counted francs until car doors started opening.

  The road is slippery with dust, but they are soon at Ballou and passing through the main gates, alongside ranks of white shipping containers shielded from the sun underneath raised sheets of UN-blue shade-cloth. One of the UNHCR camp guards points her in the direction of the Climate school, and she pays off the taxi.

  She has never been to a camp that has been so curiously somnolent.

  The prefabricated school buildings extend for half a kilometre, endless classrooms designed to cater for thousands of students. Their spare rooms, sufficient to build three more schools, are collapsed and piled high alongside the main administrative building.

  There is a muffled silence, many of the classrooms empty and the presence of lessons betrayed only by the bubbling-chiming warble of children calling out to their teachers.

  Shakiso passes through the entrance hall, past the canteen and up to the main office. There is no one around.

  Moussa Konte, their camp controller, is half-asleep with his console on his lap and his feet up on the desk as she strolls in, Tuft at her heels.

  ‘Howdy, I’m your new boss,’ she says as he scrambles to his feet, knocking his console on to the floor and just catching his mug before it wanders off the table.

  ‘That busy, huh?’ she laughs, leaning against the door frame, light from the corridor burnishing her hair to a coppery glow.

  ‘I am so sorry, Ms Collard. I was only expecting you next week,’ as he bounces around his office trying to straighten the picture on the wall featuring an unlikely frozen lake, and the small lamp in the corner. There is little else, besides the ceiling fan, to keep him entertained.

  ‘That’s fine, Moussa. Please call me Shak. I wanted to get in early and see the operation for myself,’ offering her hand and shaking his with a warm smile.

  ‘How did you get here? I could have sent a car,’ he asks, recovering his composure.

  ‘I took a bus from Dakar.’

  ‘A bus!’ He says the word as if she had told him she had arrived by flying canoe.

  ‘Show me around. I want to see how the world’s largest UNHCR mission is managing with hardly any seekers to look after.’

  Moussa looks miserably at the floor. ‘We do have some seekers,’ he tries.

  ‘And most of them appear to be children,’ she says. ‘Show me around, Moussa.’

  He guides her outside, past the long rows of warehouses and out towards the area allocated for living quarters.

  The ground is flattened and criss-crossed with pathways where once hundreds of thousands of people walked and gathered. Tangles of thorn-tree brushwood form fences lining the paths. Most are falling apart through lack of daily maintenance, and it is possible to see through to the abandoned and collapsed tents and homesteads within.

  A few remaining occupied tents are gathered close to the feeding and medical centres. Pipes for water and sanitation run back and forth into washing booths.

  Otherwise, it is silent.

  Shakiso stares out at the remnants of the camp, astonished at both its vastness and emptiness.

  ‘What do you all do all day long?’ she asks, genuinely intrigued. ‘I’d be out of my mind with boredom within a morning. Hell, I’m bored just looking at it.’

  Moussa shrugs.

  ‘Where has everyone gone? Give me numbers,’ she says.

  ‘There are only a handful of arrivals each day. Usually families with sick children, or someone needing an infection treated. Broken bones. They stay until the patient is well, then they go,’ He sighs, fidgeting. ‘You guessed correctly. This is a dormitory town. The children are here only to go to school, and they leave on weekends.’

  She stares at the tents, gnawing at her top lip.

  ‘I passed maybe five hundred seekers on my way here from Bakel this morning. There are probably thousands more passing by along the river. Most are only looking for somewhere safe to stay. Very, very few are going to put their lives in the hands of Ansar Dine and try crossing the desert.’

  Moussa nods and shrugs.

  ‘A year ago, there were half a million people here. Where is everyone going, Moussa?’

  He shrugs morosely.

  Tuft spots a mouse moving in the shade near one of the tents and stalks silently across the dust.

  ‘Moussa, I’m not Oktar. You can drop the helpless Haratine act for me,’ she says.

  He meets her gaze for the first time, his eyes curious and alert.

  ‘If I open those warehouses, what will I see?’

  He grins. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing missing.’

  She strides ahead and hauls open one of the immense sliding doors. Inside are bags of coarse-ground maize piled high on pallets. They rise to the ceiling, an impenetrable fortress cut with narrow access routes.

  She walks into the nearest tunnel, running her hands on either side along the sacks. Moussa chases along behind her and stumbles into her as she abruptly stops. She slips a knife out of her boot and slashes at one of the bags.

  Moussa shouts, and then sighs, as sand pours out on to the ground.

  ‘It gets replaced,’ he says. ‘We are waiting even now for a shipment from the cooperative in Tambacounda. We do not do it for the money.’

  ‘I guessed that much, Moussa,’ she says gently, her eyes filled with compassion and humour.

  ‘How did you know?’ he asks.

  ‘I would have done the same thing if I’d been stuck here,’ she says. ‘You’re sending food where it’s needed, not where it’s supposed to be. Why don’t you explain the situation?’

  He shrugs and leans back on the sacks. ‘They go to Aroundu. About one thousand people a day are arriving in Aroundu. They do not want to be here at Ballou. They know what life in the camps is like, and they have no expectation of ever returning home.’

  ‘And Aroundu can’t feed and house all those people, so you help out? Who else is involved here? Climate can’t have enough to go round.’

  Moussa grins. ‘We are a long way from Geneva,’ he says. ‘Oxfam and Médecins Sans Frontières refuse, but UNHCR and most of the others are involved.’

  ‘Why not just move the camp there? I assume you’re giving the stuff away?’

  ‘We sell it to the seekers settling in Aroundu and the other new cities. They have no wish for charity. The other seekers receive a free grain allowance from our barges all along the river. And,’ he says, ‘you know why we cannot move the camp.’

  ‘Politics,’ she sighs, slumping back on the wall of probably-sand. ‘So, who’s in charge there? Who do I need to s
peak to?’

  ‘There is no one in charge. There are tribal councils, national groups, but no central organization.’

  ‘Moussa, you’re working with someone there. That person will be awfully well connected,’ she says, raising her eyebrows.

  He grins, nodding. ‘There is someone. He works in the city centre.’

  ‘Well, let’s go,’ she says, replacing the knife in her boot and leading the way outside.

  ‘Ah, Tuft, you had breakfast already,’ she says, as the caracal comes barrelling towards her, her whiskers tinged with blood.

  Moussa steps back nervously, but the cat jumps up demanding a scratch.

  ‘She’s OK, just rub her behind the ears. She loves it.’

  Moussa scratches gingerly on top of her head and is rewarded with a dry and abrasive lick.

  A long shade-cloth keeps the camp vehicles in some semblance of coolness. They get into Moussa’s white Range Rover, and he keys in the route.

  ‘I still don’t understand, though. What’s so special about Aroundu?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ he says, and laughs, turning up the music and humming along.

  They travel back along the same dirt track, turning off to the right before they reach the highway. After twenty minutes, they bump up on to a new sealed road, merging into the frenetic flow of vehicles and passing, along the embankment, the parallel congestion of people pulling carts or carrying suitcases.

  A shaded arch high over the road appears before them, sandbags stacked in walls on both kerb sides, and a cluster of white shipping containers modified as offices between them. UN-blue shade-cloth spans the walls.

  ‘Let me guess. That’s from Ballou?’ studying the activity intensely as they pass.

  Senegalese soldiers stare into the vehicle and let them pass under the arch unimpeded. She cranes her neck and spots a queue of people being scanned. It all looks friendly, though. Almost celebratory.

  The land gets greener as they travel. Trees and grasses growing, with small thatched huts or clay-walled houses roofed with branches and plastic. She recognizes Climate tents grouped near a solar water pump and what looks to be a group of new arrivals setting up more tents nearby.

  Trucks filled with food are going in and others with ceramics, clothing and furniture are coming out. Along the road, groups of workmen are controlling machines printing cable and raising it up on to concrete posts. From within a cloud of dust, she can see an automated grader laying out a road, with surveyors pointing in different directions and shouting at each other. A massive brickworks is churning out blocks which are being yanked away before they are properly annealed. Houses are being built, and everywhere she looks something is being constructed.

  Shakiso scratches her head. ‘It’s like they’re trying to win the world championship for city-building?’

  ‘We must leave the car here,’ says Moussa, as they pull in to a clearing filled with buses and cars. ‘There are too many trucks, and it will be easier.’

  All around the car park are stalls selling clothing and food. A queue of people are waiting to board a battered shuttle bus. Moussa taps a transparent plastic card on to a reader as they get on.

  They end up between two trucks ferrying sand, shedding a fine mist which soon covers everyone inside.

  The bus stops in a wide market square. A line of shipping containers fills up the one end, while shops and restaurants make up the rest. In the middle, hundreds of people are standing before goods piled on wagons or beneath shade-cloth, demanding the attention of the drifting river of people.

  The sand trucks are emptying their load directly behind the containers.

  ‘What’s going on there? Those containers don’t look like offices?’

  She ignores Moussa trying to steer her towards a nearby office block. Tuft sticks to her heels, looking nervous amid the noise and activity.

  The containers form a half-circle. The sand is being poured on to a conveyer belt which winds up and into a silo. At the bottom of the hopper, more conveyers lead towards the containers which, up close, turn out to be machines.

  ‘This is all Chinese?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes. They are printers.’

  ‘How does anyone here afford these? This is cutting-edge stuff.’

  A tiny Chinese woman steps out of a nearby office, surrounded by a group of men all shouting in a cavalcade of languages, their translators struggling to keep track. The woman looks Shakiso up and down, decides she is not buying anything and ignores her.

  A Chinese boy runs up to her and whispers in her ear. He releases his tightly balled fist and pours sand into her cupped hand. Her eyes harden as she massages it between her fingers.

  She turns on one of the men following her, flings the sand in his face and issues a volley of abuse which needs no translation.

  Clearly the sand is of an inferior quality. The man, twice her size, flinches away from her.

  ‘Right, I need to understand this,’ says Shakiso.

  They cross the market again towards a double-storey brick building painted brown and cream. It looks as if it has only recently been constructed, with scaffolding still leaning precipitously over the rear walls. There is a large satellite dish on the roof and a group of people leaning over the upper balcony having a noisy coffee break.

  Shakiso stares at the familiar Achenia logo bolted across the front.

  A man in an eggshell-blue boubou is walking down the stairs towards them as they go inside, across a tiled floor that already has paths worn in its thin glaze.

  ‘Moussa,’ he shouts, smiling. ‘And you must be Ms Collard?’

  Shakiso raises an eyebrow. ‘You let him know we were coming?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Moussa. ‘This is Tiémoko Diagne.’

  ‘Mr Diagne, you’re the man with all the answers?’

  Tiémoko sways his head from side to side. ‘Perhaps. Come, there is space to talk upstairs. It is cooler, and maybe quieter.’

  They climb the stairs and enter his office. The table is covered in a large console showing a multicoloured survey chart, and a large format printer is spooling out more plans behind it. A young woman is sitting at the desk, paper files open and scattered as she makes notes and captures the written scrawl in her console.

  ‘I am sorry, Viviane, could we meet here for a few minutes?’ asks Tiémoko.

  She smiles shyly, quickly gathers a few things, and slips out.

  ‘I’m afraid these offices are now far too small for us. Not so much anyone’s office as everyone’s,’ he says. ‘Please, sit as best you can.’

  Shakiso continues to stand, walking over to the window and looking out over the market, the city centre filled with trucks, and the horizon surmounted by scaffolding and cranes.

  ‘I’ve worked in some of the worst hellholes in the world filled with people escaping places that are even worse,’ she says quietly. ‘Any roots they put down are shallow. They sure don’t do that –’ gesturing out the window.

  ‘This is like a gold rush. China almost eighty years ago.’

  She stares at the printers, watching as components are gathered and stacked before being carted away.

  ‘Whatever you’re doing here is awesome. But, guys, why is this a secret?’

  The two men look uncomfortable.

  ‘What we are doing is not supported by any government,’ says Tiémoko. ‘Certainly not Senegal’s. You crossed the border coming in. We are on land between three countries and not administered by any of them. Seekers are welcome to enter the city, but the border guards will not let them return.

  ‘You know your own organization’s political difficulties here. We are a private company, but ours are little different. There is no clear guidance for any of us,’ he shrugs. ‘It is no secret, but the legal vacuum makes us all a little careful.’

  Shakiso taps her teeth, considering the complexity.

  ‘What’s the trigger? Why here?’

  Tiémoko looks bashful. ‘Opportunism,’ he says. ‘This
area is too dry to farm. A few nomadic herders cross here during the wet, but the towns are abandoned.’

  ‘And you work for Achenia, huh?’ says Shakiso, interrupting. ‘What are you guys doing here? I was told your main office is based in Saint-Louis.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Simon is based in Saint-Louis. He likes it there. Most of us work here.

  ‘I’m usually at the university in Dakar. About eighteen months ago, Simon got hold of me to help him buy land in the desert.’

  ‘How do you know him?’

  Tiémoko smiles. ‘It is a long story. We were in business many years ago, and before that we were in the same year in school.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ she says. ‘I really have to meet this guy.’

  ‘Inshallah,’ he says, his eyes clouding as he thinks of Simon in the hands of Ansar Dine. ‘He flew me out, over the border, in his helicopter. There is no property register for any of the land in Mauritania, but Senegal administers it on behalf of the UN. We did a survey, and he bought ten sections. Five hundred square kilometres. He has continued to buy land since then.’

  Tiémoko stands and points at a map on the wall. ‘There is nothing there. I do not think anyone has tried to farm there in fifty years. Even the nomads avoid it. I asked him, what will you do? He said, grow desert roses.’

  ‘The solar farms,’ says Shakiso. ‘You’re distributing electricity here? Why?’

  ‘We have no choice. Eight months ago, I went to visit Récolte Rouge, our nearest solar farm to Bakel. The land will make you weep. Nothing lives there. It could be the moon.

  ‘Simon and I met with the engineers to discuss the connection of a transmission system running west to link the farms. We travelled back to Aroundu together before he went on to Saint-Louis. We had coffee in a restaurant across the market from here.

  ‘We were talking, remembering old times. I do not remember what –’ he pauses. ‘There was an explosion, and the front wall of the restaurant vanished. I was thrown to the back. I could hear nothing. Someone was shooting into the room. I was helpless. Simon dragged me to safety. He was wearing some sort of metal-gel armour and shielded me with his body even as bullets hit him.’