by Gavin Chait
‘Too long have we run before that fire. It is time we put out the flames.
‘I am not here to promise that genii will miraculously restore us and our lands. Lives that are lost, are lost. Hearts that are wounded, are wounded. Our pain is real, and it must be recognized.’
There are shouts from the crowd, acknowledgement and agreement.
‘Over the last few months, we in the Liberal Party have sought common ground with our Socialist Party opponents. We have convinced them that change is needed and that mutual cooperation is necessary. Whoever wins, there must be a united understanding for our nation.
‘There are many areas where our parties disagree, but there are two where we have found common purpose. Today, I am able to reveal these to you.’
A hush across the stadium. Many hold hands, for rumours have been circulating, and there is both fear and anticipation.
‘Thanks to the bravery of a man many of you have come to know, and with the support of our brave men and women in the special forces, we have captured Abdallah Ag Ghaly.’
A sigh, of both relief and superstitious dread.
‘There are many who have suffered. We have Abdallah Ag Ghaly, and he will stand trial before our great African Court of Justice, but we need to offer a way out for all those who served him or they will never put down their arms. There are far too many dead lost to the desert, and parents who wish to bury their children if they but knew where they are.
‘Ansar Dine and their kind have dehumanized us, and we have dehumanized them. We must no longer fight this way. We need to offer a path to redemption. A small window through which we recognize their humanity, in exchange for the truth. We do not wish to forget our pain, but we must not be imprisoned by it.
‘We have agreed with the Socialists that, on the same day that Ag Ghaly stands before the court, we will begin a Truth Commission.
‘Our Truth Commission offers this to those who have committed atrocities against those we have loved, against those who have suffered: we are willing to grant full and unconditional amnesty to all those who have ever been party to Ansar Dine in exchange for a complete disclosure of all the facts of all crimes committed.’
A flutter, a murmur, a roar of confusion.
‘We do not do this to forget the past, but to release ourselves from being imprisoned by it. Without forgiveness, we as a people have no future. And we do this now, while the war against Ansar Dine still burns, so that we can offer those who still carry hatred in their hearts an alternative to fighting.
‘We do this to remove the corrosive acid of resentment and hatred, and to bring peace and harmony to our land.’
Many in the stadium are weeping, for there is much pain, and much that has remained unsaid. There is uncertainty, but there is recognition that the answer to a lifetime of suffering requires absolution.
‘Peace will allow us to build, and it will allow investment. You know of the solar farms in the desert to our north, harvesting light where nothing will ever grow?
‘It has taken many months of negotiation, but we have reached an agreement with the owner of those farms. That electricity will no longer be sold in Europe. It will be sold here. We will soon be investing in new energy infrastructure that will bring electricity from those farms to all. We will no longer struggle to teach our children in darkness, or care for our sick in hospitals that lack life-saving equipment, or pump water from our great aqueducts.
‘The laying of cable to every home and every business will take time, but it will start very soon.’
It is true. Jubilation in the crowds.
‘We have suffered long, but peace is at hand. No longer to be blinded by pain, we will give you back your eyes. And in the coming of that light, we will bring investment and opportunity to your lives. That we live forever in hope.’
In the stadium, a roar, ‘Ci – So – Ko, Ci – So – Ko, Ci – So – Ko.’
A chant to raise the sky, and bring life back to the living.
23
Light from the street lamps reflects on the murmuring of the ocean. Stalls clustered around the bay, cheerful conversation from other late-night diners and the flowing rattle of generators.
Simon and Shakiso followed the crowds leaving the stadium down to the coast, finding dinner amongst the crowded restaurant stands before ending up walking along the water line and holding hands.
‘So,’ she says, leaning against Simon where they sit barefoot on the beach. She caresses his face, gently stroking around his eyes. ‘Who’d you trust enough to stick those in?’
‘Hollis’s husband is a rather good surgeon. They’re fully functional rims,’ he says. ‘Right now I can see your pulse rate is 71 and rising, and you’re highly aroused.’
‘Idiot,’ and she pushes him over into the sand. They tussle briefly before ending up with her resting against him once more.
‘Does all this help?’ she asks. ‘I mean, are you still angry about Hollis?’
‘Once,’ he smiles. ‘It fades. Became something I can use and manage. I’ve learned not to personalize it. You know, systems not people, but, yes, sometimes it’s stronger.’
He takes her hand, holds it to his mouth and kisses her palm. ‘What I was fighting against didn’t turn out to be any one thing or any one person. It’s a whole collection of small things, and I can only fight it in a whole collection of small ways. Anger helped get me going when I realized the scale of that, but it couldn’t be the only thing.
‘It’s strange. There are so many things I could have done with my life. Instead I got angry, created TheShitList on a whim and became wealthier than I had any right to expect. And then I met you.’
She pulls his arm across her belly, staring out at the darkness of the ocean. ‘There was a guy I was with years ago,’ she says, enjoying the warmth and intimacy, her fingertips stroking the inside of his arm. ‘Asafa. He was a tout outside the Empire in Shepherd’s Bush.
‘I skived off studying for a night. When I got there, the concert was sold out, but I thought I might be lucky if I hung around. There was this young Jamaican guy my age, thin, obviously poor, but dressed in an outrageous top hat and stripy suit and swaggering around like a celebrity.
‘He wandered up and down yelling, “Any tickets, I buy.” Twenty minutes later, a couple hopped out of a taxi and started arguing with him.
‘He knew I was standing there waiting. Knew I could step in any time, and there he is telling them – at a sold-out concert – there’s so little hope of him reselling, they may as well just give them away. I think he got them for a fiver, and before they even left he turned to me and offered them for two hundred.
‘I ended up going home with him,’ she laughs. ‘That wasn’t a great idea. Beautiful boy, bit of a substance problem.’
‘What makes you think of him?’ he asks, kissing the smooth arch of her neck, enjoying the warmth of her, the intoxicating spice of her scent filling his breath.
‘Sidiki’s speech,’ she says, staring intensely at the ocean. ‘Being an aid brat gives you a weird impression of the world. We lived in magnificent houses, holidayed all over the world, I went to trendy private schools. And the people in the camps are destitute. I thought the world was like that. This helpless broken part kept alive by a wealthy paradise where everyone else is permanently on vacation.
‘All these fragments – one of my earliest memories – my mom crying on a drone out of Nairobi. My parents worked for the UNHCR at this century-old seeker city called Dadaab which the Kenyan government decided to bulldoze. Two million people lost everything they had.
‘I felt terrible, but we’re not really part of it. We never see the conflicts, and we can do nothing about them anyway.
‘And the first time I realized that was meeting Asafa. This guy, with education and opportunity, could probably make a fortune. Instead he’s trading extra tickets at concert venues. I thought he needed my help, that I could help him.
‘And I was wrong,’ she says, her voic
e filled with an awkward mix of defiance and sadness. ‘He was happy. Even the drugs. He didn’t want to stop even if I wanted him to. We didn’t last more than a few days.’
Looking at him, her eyes the colour of the ocean before a storm.
‘Michèle. I don’t know what I should have done for her. If there was anything I could have done. Whether helping or not helping made any difference to her? And this country. The seekers. Everyone is trying stuff and – I know this all sounds muddled and confused, but I feel like I’m sliding around the edge of understanding something important. I know we shouldn’t force people into the camps. I know the stuff we’re doing in the new cities is right, but sometimes I wonder if we’re doing too much? That people are so much bigger on the inside, that it’s possible to help without helping, but . . .’
She hesitates, searching the calm blue understanding in his eyes.
He says nothing. Taking her hand in his, stroking her palm, touching it to his heart and holding her close.
24
‘Is it done, Gregor?’ asks Pazanov, a cloud and hiss of steam from the espresso machine obscuring his words. ‘I am not comfortable with the way Adaro is staring at us.’
‘Yes,’ says Valuchkin, sweat stubbling his cropped skull as he delicately re-stoppers the vial and palms it back into his pocket. A wide man, Gregor Valuchkin, his shoulders almost as broad as he is tall, and temperamentally nervous in the work as assistant to an assassination.
They are meeting Simon in La Fleuve, a café in the north of Saint-Louis Island buried in amongst the renovated hotels popular with expatriate contractors here for the building boom.
The two are standing at the bar near the entrance to the café, Pazanov watching Simon, who is sitting towards the back of the room, and ensuring he blocks Simon’s view of Valuchkin. Near the door, the young owner is lifted off her feet as she embraces an older man arriving for an early lunch. Pazanov can hear her husky laugh over the oblivious everyday conversations of the other patrons.
With Achenia’s announcement that they are giving up the energy route to Europe, Pazanov contacted Simon offering to meet and end their hostilities. His enemy must be weakened and distracted, for why else would he refuse the opportunity of running his cable across a desert he has risked so much to clear?
Observing him in person, he is less certain. The other man seems unusually alert and confident. Too aware. He wishes Valuchkin did not sweat so, for he can smell him even with the humidity and nearness of the kitchen and the tepid smell of food waste in the alleyway outside.
‘Watch everything you say and do nothing to attract attention,’ says Pazanov, turning to Valuchkin. ‘Assume others are listening and watching.’
‘You have told me this already. If he drinks, good; if not, we say nothing and leave. I know.’ The man’s shirt is damp. ‘It is the humidity,’ he says, seeing the other’s scowl.
Pazanov turns from the bar and leads the way towards Simon’s table. Valuchkin is carrying a tray on which are three white coffee cups, a steel pot of filter coffee and a small jug of milk.
‘Mr Adaro,’ says Pazanov, extending his hand.
Simon stands, beaming, his face the epitome of guileless innocence. ‘I’m so glad we could finally meet,’ he says.
Valuchkin nonchalantly places the tray on his side of the table, just sufficiently out of Simon’s reach, and pours carefully from the pot into each of the cups.
‘A peace offering,’ says Pazanov, ‘but not so expensive as to be taken for a bribe.’ His smile at his own joke never reaching his eyes. ‘This is Valuchkin, here for our –’ choosing his words deliberately ‘– protection.’
Valuchkin nods and puts his hands around the cup closest to Simon. His entire body communicates that he will shortly pass it across the table.
Simon, seemingly ignorant of him, stretches inelegantly and picks up one of the other cups before collapsing back into his seat. His smile is of childlike sincerity and genuine gratitude.
‘I accept this in the spirit intended,’ he says, raising his cup.
Pazanov offers a quick, curt glare and recovers. He sits and takes the remaining cup, jostling it in his frustration so that it spills into the saucer. His smile returning, like a forced glacier, to his face.
Valuchkin remains standing, awkwardly holding the cup. He glances behind him and mechanically sits down. He gently places the cup on to the table, seeming only to breathe again once he has released it.
Simon’s smile is a continuing picture of naïve contentment. He drinks deeply, sighing happily. ‘I do love coffee. Thank you. This café is probably one of the best in Saint-Louis; you’re in for a treat.’
Pazanov stares at him, politely picking up his cup but not sipping, not noticing as his hand brushes the slops in his saucer.
‘I was surprised you called,’ says Simon.
‘You have decided not to compete with us,’ shrugging. ‘We do not serve this market, and we have no interest here,’ says Pazanov. ‘It is only politeness.’
‘You accept, then, that I am not a threat to you?’ asks Simon.
Pazanov involuntarily purses his lips, as if holding back an instinctive response.
‘Shall we say, for the moment, we accept you are no longer interested in Europe? It is not clear to me as to why you have chosen this moment to change your plans.’
Valuchkin is doing his best to pretend that the cup before him holds no fascination, studying the wood grain on the table as if it is a sacred text. Simon appears unaware of his discomfort.
‘You’ve seen the investment pouring in here?’ says Simon, cocking his head at the foreigners at the tables around them. ‘It turns out the market on my doorstep is more interesting than the one across the Med.’
‘That may be as you say,’ says Pazanov. ‘But the desert is large, and you could still expand your farms. Our respite would only appear to be temporary.’
‘An honest businessman would recognize that his dominant position is threatened and start developing new markets and products,’ says Simon. ‘That’s what I’m doing.’
Pazanov grimaces. ‘Rosneft is an energy company. We cannot simply become something else.’
‘I don’t have a monopoly on buying bits of the Sahara.’
‘We do not have your technology,’ says Pazanov.
Simon continues, hounding his point.
‘Haier makes a vitrification printer that does most of what ours does. I think we must have transported around twenty into the region in the past few months. If you work with them, get some primary research done, I’m sure you’d get there.’
Pazanov shrugs. ‘It may be so, but I am not here to discuss our business strategy.’
‘Then why are you here? It doesn’t look as if you came to enjoy the coffee.’
Valuchkin’s eyes widen. He glances open-mouthed at Pazanov, who returns a subtle incline of his head.
Valuchkin gestures as if to call a waiter, muttering, ‘I think I need . . .’ His hand brushes against his coffee cup, threatening to knock it over.
Simon leans forward, his hand moving faster than they expect, catching and righting the cup. Not a drop is spilled.
‘Careful there, Valuchkin. Wouldn’t want any of that on you. You might get burned,’ he says.
‘No. Of course not. Thank you,’ says Valuchkin, sweating. ‘It is the heat,’ by way of unnecessary explanation, rubbing at his sodden shirt.
‘What is it you want from me, Pazanov?’ asks Simon, sitting back.
Pazanov laces his fingers on the table, staring at the toxic cup. Eventually, he looks up.
‘As I said when we spoke, I want to end our hostilities.’
‘I’ve never been your enemy, Pazanov. And it’s easy to stop being hostile: stop trying to kill me. You didn’t need to come all this way to tell me. Unless . . .’
He gasps, goes pale. Trembling, he points at his cup, his eyes wide.
‘You’ve poisoned me! You bastards! That’s why you’re not dri
nking!’
He makes as if to stand, a shout for help forming on his lips.
Pazanov looks horrified, his hands go up as if in surrender.
‘Quiet, quiet. No one is poisoning anyone. Sit down, please. Sit. Valuchkin drink your coffee. Look,’ drinking his. He glares at Valuchkin, gesturing emphatically.
Valuchkin, his eyes wide, sweat on his brow, drinks the coffee in a single, sweeping glug. His hands remain steady. He stares at Pazanov.
‘See, we are all friends here. I’m sorry you don’t trust us, Mr Adaro. We have come with honest intent.’
Simon allows himself to be mollified. ‘What do you want of me, then?’
Pazanov looks across to Valuchkin, who is turning pale. ‘Only to reassure you that we will leave you in peace. I am sorry that our trip was wasted. Now,’ he says, his hand on Valuchkin’s arm, ‘if you will excuse us.’
Almost dragging him, they leave. The back of Valuchkin’s neck is white and clammy, and he seems disoriented.
Their limousine meets them outside. As Pazanov helps the trembling Valuchkin into the cabin, he notices a group of orange-suited soldiers entering the back of the restaurant through the alleyway.
He swears.
‘Look,’ he says to Valuchkin. ‘Hazmat. They’ll be all over that cup. We need to get out of the country quickly.’
‘He knew all along,’ says Valuchkin weakly, slumping against the seats. He is in shock, for it is too soon for the poison to be absorbed.
‘Yes. I will call ahead. We may be able to neutralize the polonium before it does too much damage.’
Valuchkin, soaking the seats in sweat, closes his eyes and imagines the toxin seeping through his bloodstream.
As the limousine rattles across the Faidherbe Bridge, Pazanov feels burdened by a growing unease. That he has not seen something. That he has been disoriented by personalizing this battle. It is like fighting smoke, and the more he grapples for understanding, the more he seems to turn in upon his own doubts.