by Gavin Chait
He could, in the few seconds of liberty this presents, try to run.
The erg stretches off in all directions. There is no sound but sand shifting with the wind.
There is nowhere to go.
The guards adjust their turbans tightly across their mouths, ensure their cloaks cover them from any aerial observation, then walk Simon forward into a depression in the sand lower down from the trapdoor. Looking back, even this close, it is almost impossible to spot. Just another clump of shrubs. Unremarkable in the never-ending desert.
They continue onwards, to the top of a high dune and over the other side. Blindfolded and left, you would not know how to return even to the entrance.
Simon scans the faces of each of his guards where he can see them shaded beneath their cloaks. Looking man to man. Judging them. Searching their eyes.
They are young and afraid to be out in the open. If Ag Ghaly has a permanent guard, these are not them.
One of the men is carrying a broadcast camera which he sets up in the sand. The men nervously drop their cloaks and are directed by the cameraman until they are in place.
‘That camera is not yet on,’ says Ag Ghaly. ‘Whether we have need of it depends on your answer.’
‘What answer?’
Ag Ghaly slaps him.
‘You know that which I seek.’
‘Sure, but aren’t I a little old for you? You seem to have your choice of little boys,’ says Simon.
Several of the guards start beating him, Ag Ghaly screaming and slapping. There is little method to their attack, and the unrelenting heat soon leaves them sweating and exhausted.
‘Very well,’ says Ag Ghaly, as the men back away, their eyes betraying their fear, Simon standing much as he was before, a cut on one cheek and an expanding bruise across his left eye and forehead. ‘We lost a convoy of planes in the desert. They carry $75 billion worth of heroin, and weaponry to equip my army. I want to know where they are. Tell me.’
Something clicks inside, and Simon stands up straight. His smile is of the benevolent and the blessed.
He stares straight at Ag Ghaly. His eyes glow, and they carry judgement.
‘Nit ku amul jom, amul dara,’ he says. ‘The person who lacks honour, lacks everything.
‘You may not be broadcasting, Abdallah, but that doesn’t mean I’m not.’
On the crest of every dune surrounding them, people begin to appear. There are men and women and children. Each is wearing a small broadcast band on their heads. Each stares silently down at the men.
‘I am Simon Adaro, and I brought you here,’ he says.
The men look around nervously. One or two half raise their rifles, unsure how to react.
‘I brought you, Abdelkrim Surkati, and you, Khalil Ibrahim,’ turning and staring at each of the guards. One by one, he names them: Abdullahi Janaqow, Nouri al-Somali, Abdelhakim Tsouli, Mohamoud Hilal, Abdirahman Motii, Ahmad Jama, Musa Benotman, Younes Abusahmain, Noman Belhadj, Saleh Afrah.
The tableau of an unclothed man stripping away the protection of men hiding behind turbans and djellabas against the endless flesh of the erg. He stares at each, his strange blue eyes laying each man naked before the world.
‘And I brought you, Abdallah Ag Ghaly,’ holding his gaze where he stands in glowering silence.
‘I brought you here to ask you: how would you wish to be remembered?
‘You can no longer hide. You are known. You are seen.’
One of the youngest, Noman Belhadj, cries out. He throws aside his rifle and runs up the dune, pushing his way through the people standing there. The others hesitate, afraid to look at each other, afraid not to.
Each drops his gun and runs away, over the dune and back towards the entrance to their city.
Only Ag Ghaly remains.
He pulls a pistol from within his djellaba and points it at Simon, advancing on him.
‘I don’t know what you have done here,’ he says. ‘I am not like them. I am not a coward. I know how I wish to be remembered.’
Simon puts up his arm, as if to block the bullet.
Ag Ghaly simply rests his arm on it, the muzzle of the pistol against Simon’s temple.
‘My men will call for help. We will kill these peasants, and you will be dead,’ tensing his finger.
Simon smiles.
‘No.’
He thrusts his arm upwards, shifting his weight and slamming Ag Ghaly to the ground. The bullet is lost to the sky.
Sand flies up on the slopes as special forces troops cast aside their invisibility cloaks and rush down to Ag Ghaly.
The last thing he sees, before a hood passes over his head, is the glowing blue eyes weighing him in judgement.
II
OUR MEMORY LIKE DUST
Our ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity are being sacrificed to our prejudices and fears. All that will be left is a mess of weak and squabbling states that can only be the playthings of stronger nations. I beg of you, let us not allow Europe to be torn asunder.
Thérèse Fillon, European Union President, October 2022, speech broadcast two days before a French referendum on EU membership
This is a victory for the Conservative Party and a victory for the British people. Generations from now, our descendants will look back and wonder how anyone thought this European Union was ever a good idea. Today, we put a final nail in the coffin of that mistake.
Andrew Seymour, British Prime Minister, April 2030, statement outside Downing Street following the Berlin Minute formally dissolving the European Union
They are old and divided, and we are too generous with our power. My grandfather cautioned patience, but now is the time to put right the greatest disaster of the twentieth century. We will reverse the loss of the Soviet Union and of our authority over tens of millions of people. Put your prices up by a quarter and you will see. They can do nothing.
Leaked Rosneft correspondence, December 2045, allegedly from Oleg Shkrebnev, President of United Russian Federation
17
Even the dry dust sings when the rains return.
As temperatures rise, clouds mass over the ocean and Atlantic winds push them into the coast, where water falls in great big drenching clods. The earth drinks hungrily and quickly, like one permitted but a single annual feast, for the hivernage will last only briefly.
Sloughs and marigots fill, rivers rise, and water stampedes for the shore. Villages all along these ancient desert watercourses trap the fleeing waters in reservoirs and dykes, there to store what they need to use themselves, for their beasts and their crops. Lac de Guiers, upon which most of northern Senegal depends, fills and – for a time – the conflict between the sugar plantations, subsistence farmers, nomadic herders and cities subsides.
For water is scarce, the dry is long, and all struggle under the burning heat.
With the rains, migratory birds come sweeping in along the coast. Great clouds of pelicans and flamingos, garganey, shoveler and ruff. Many have crossed the deserts of the Mediterranean and the Sahara. They settle in the Djoudj wetland where they may rest: some to stay, some to travel again further south.
Their flight takes them over the surging banks of the Senegal River where small overloaded pirogues and boats cross back and forth, ferrying trade goods and people between the villages and farms on either side of what was once the border between Senegal and Mauritania.
One of these pirogues is travelling rapidly downriver, cutting across ferries and passing slower barges distributing food and medical supplies to thousands of seekers camped along the banks. It began its journey four days ago at the river confluence near Ballou, where the waters of the Falémé join those of the Senegal, and will reach the port city of Saint-Louis tomorrow.
Shakiso, leaning out from the bow, looks up to watch the scudding flocks overhead, exhilarated as the wind clutches at her hair and warm rain pools in the folds of her poncho. Tuft is curled in sleep beneath her waterproof, escaping spurts sloshing through tears in
the awning over the boat as it rocks in the current.
‘Mademoiselle,’ says Mustapha, her guide and boat pilot, sitting miserably in a puddle alongside the motor. ‘Where do you wish to stop? It is growing late.’
He had assumed their voyage would be leisurely. He would do a little fishing, meet with friends in villages along the way, perhaps do some trading. Instead they have hurtled along as if all the genii are upon them: on the river before dawn each morning and only stopping to rest upon the bank well after dark. And her curiosity? She asks questions of everyone. How long have they lived here? What do they farm? How much do they produce? If they are seekers, she asks even more questions. Where have they come from? What was their journey like? Where will they go next?
‘That family we met said there’s a big seeker gathering at Bakao. I think we can get there in two hours,’ she says without looking back, grinning as she senses him shaking his head and crouching further within his sodden djellaba.
-
‘Look to the seekers,’ Moussa had said to her cryptically, seeing her off from Ballou. ‘They may have a solution for our distribution problem.’ There is plenty of grain available to buy and distribute, but Climate has too few boats and too many people to serve.
On the first morning, they had neared one of the Climate barges stopped along the river distributing propstock for farmers and grain for the seekers.
Dozens of boats had tied up alongside it, forming an impromptu market selling luxuries and reminders of all the distant places the seekers had fled: packets of egusi and ogbona spices, Malta Guinness from Liberia, bottles of fermented sesame seeds, and bags filled with everything from black beans to powdered yellow maize and pounded yam.
Each transaction was punctuated by the tapping of transparent cards: the same as those Shakiso saw used in Aroundu. She called Moussa immediately.
‘Those are the Achenian payment cards?’ she said.
‘Yes. I thought you would find it interesting,’ said Moussa.
‘What’s driving adoption? Everyone is using them.’
‘A banking system for people no one will invest in, backed by a distributed international currency?’
Shakiso laughed. ‘Fair enough.’
‘People understand that Achenia only issues the card and that no one controls the currency. Their money is safe from any government and no one can take it from them.’
‘And, let me guess, you think we can send them cash instead of distributing grain?’
Moussa was silent, and she could feel his tension hoping she will agree.
‘We’ll be accused of helping the seekers get to Europe,’ musing on the risks.
‘They sell the grain anyway, and the money we give is little. Our savings mean we can ensure more people are fed,’ answered Moussa. ‘You know how difficult it is just to manage our work in the new cities. This way we won’t have to spend so much of our time and resources managing distribution as well.’
She could see the chaos and frustration for herself. Seekers struggling to convince traders, their overwhelmed boats already sinking low in the water, to exchange their allowances of grain for goods. All anyone wants is cash.
‘You have three months. Test what works and come back with a plan on how we implement this,’ she had said.
Flecks of grey and gold dapple the river, its forested flanks growing darker as the sun sets. Through the trees and over the water comes the sound of drumming and singing and, as they round a bend, they near a seeker camp sprawled along the shore.
Mustapha drifts into the beach, nudging their craft between two other boats. He eases himself upright, drops over the side into knee-deep water, drags a muddy rope up on to the bank and anchors it to the shore.
‘Mademoiselle,’ he says, returning to the boat where Shakiso is collecting her backpack and preparing to carry Tuft. ‘Same time tomorrow?’ asked with a hint of despair that it will be far too early.
‘Yes, same time,’ hopping off the bow into the water. She deposits Tuft on the relatively dry sand above the beach and heads towards the loudest of the competing groups of singers. Tuft stretches and yawns, glares at the boat, and follows.
This camp is a strange hybrid of transience and permanence. Sandy paths are wide and hardened by countless passing feet. Tents abut thick-walled clay houses and improvised rooms of corrugated iron and plastic sheeting. Goats and children run and play in the narrow alleyways between the houses. An open muddy square tucked in amongst the houses and alive with the hoots and calls of young men and women playing football is surrounded by food stalls.
She queues at a tiny restaurant, squeezing in beneath their plastic awning to avoid the worst of the rain, and takes a seat on the bench before the cooks. The man and woman running the stand are soaked in sweat, spices and cooking oil. Shakiso receives no more than a querying glance, and she simply gestures that she will have whatever is available.
‘Fish or goat?’ asked even as a bowl piled high with broken rice is set before her.
‘Fish,’ she answers. ‘And for the cat,’ nodding to where Tuft has set her paws on the bench. A dollop of fish is added to her rice and another bowl with the same plonked alongside it.
She is about to pay with her card and, smiling, swaps to the Achenian card Tiémoko had presented to her as a parting gift. No one finds it in the least remarkable.
Dinner is filling, if not tasty, and she soon makes way for the next person waiting patiently behind her for a space. It is too early for sleep and, with the rain easing into a cool evening, she finds herself ambling randomly through the camp, savouring the polyglot of language and culture merging and mingling. There may be someone able to put her up for the night and, if not, there is always the damp discomfort of the boat.
Red and orange flames flicker, bright and welcoming, and she follows along with groups of people heading for the fireside. Hundreds have gathered here: families sharing their evening meal, teenagers laughing and whispering secrets, young lovers exchanging lingering glances. Before them, alongside the heat of the flame, stands a bone-thin man dressed in a greyed and careworn boubou, his eyes pearled with age and his hair an olive-coloured burst about his head. He leans on a long two-headed metal stave surrounded by people who seem awed merely to be close to him.
‘That is Gaw Goŋ, of the genii, come to tell us a story,’ says a mother to her children, who look as if they do not know whether to be thrilled or terrified.
An elderly woman waves emphatically at Shakiso. ‘You will be our guest,’ she says, inviting her and making space amongst the blankets, pots and plates.
Shakiso is engulfed into the bosom of quite a large extended family. They are from Bamako and have been in the camp for almost a year, awaiting their chance to cross the desert.
‘With that shayāṭīn gone, we hope it will be safe to cross,’ says the old woman, handing Shakiso an enormous enamel mug of overly sweetened tea.
Gaw Goŋ raises his stave above his head and the drumming rises, stopping instantly as he slams its foot deep into the earth at his sandals.
Shakiso feels as if the ground trembles and, for a moment, he stares directly at her, knowing her, recognition in his nod and smile.
She blinks and his eyes are flickering flame as he takes up a handful of dust, makes a fist of it and casts it into the fire even as he begins to speak.
‘Painted-dog’s child, running through the desert . . .’
Tales from Gaw Goŋ: Casamance, l’homme qui mourut deux fois
Painted-dog’s child, running through the desert, always hopeful, always hungry. Hunting the endless dusty ochre of the hamada, her paws bouncing lightly on the scalding stones, and her tongue hanging loose in a way her mother considers unbecoming for a future matriarch.
She pauses, scratching at her ribs with a hind paw, sniffing the air. Her curious yellow eyes stare towards a bracket of trees alongside an ouahe, the water searing white against the dark of the land. Rising above the green line of shrubs she can see an
idle waft of smoke and smell a taunting hint of lamb stew.
Her stomach grumbles, for it is hours to lunch and some time since her breakfast.
Always hungry, always hopeful, Painted-dog’s child sets her nose towards the ouahe. Her white-patch tail blazing, her oversized paws tangled beneath her, she runs in her hopping, loping way, yipping cheerfully as she goes.
Closer, and within the shade of a tangle of tamarisk bushes clustered around the base of overhanging date palms, she pauses and remembers her manners. She licks at her fur, trying to stop it sticking out and clean off the remnants of breakfast from around her face. She pulls at her huge, black, bowl-like ears.
Ready, or as best she can given the salivating distraction of the nearby cooking pot, she paces forward amongst the dense bourgou along the waterline and peers out through the long grass stalks.
On the other side of the shallow waters are two black-metal round-bellied pots – one large and one small – their looped handles each held up by individual scalded branches. Flames and coals spit and hiss beneath them, neatly surrounded by a stone hearth. A koubour, the three-stringed guitar of the griots, leans against a shaded boulder. Seated with his back towards the young pup is an olive-dark figure, tapping at the larger pot with the long two-headed pointed sombé he holds in one hand.
Painted-dog’s child hesitates, for – while she does not know him – she and her brothers and sisters have certainly heard his tales. The fearsome magics and the undescribed punishments that Gaw Goŋ reserves especially for pups who refuse to do as their exasperated mother says.
The figure’s back begins to tremble, shaking gently. He turns his head, his burst of fur grey about his long snout and his canines curved and hugely terrifying for the young dog. Baboon’s eyes are brown, warm and filled with mirth.
‘Aha, aha. Come out, Painted pup,’ he says, staring directly at her where she is attempting to hide behind her ears. ‘Your belly rumbles so loudly, it will wake the genii of this pool. And then where will we be, for his dinner is not yet ready.’