by Gavin Chait
The boy hugs her tightly and runs off, the food safely tucked under his dusty T-shirt.
Moussa drums his hands on the balcony wall. ‘It is good,’ he says to himself.
‘What is that?’ asks Tiémoko from inside.
Returning to the office, ‘I must go speak to that Chinese lady.’
‘To Mrs Chen? Is everything well?’ asks Tiémoko, looking concerned.
‘Yes,’ smiles Moussa. ‘You know her?’
‘Her son. Their printer gives them trouble, and I help him with its repair.’
‘You can tell me more later,’ says Moussa. ‘I think that boy trusts her. I will be back in a few minutes.’
Tiémoko watches him leave and shrugs. He returns to the map, scheduling line printers and managing demand on their grid. They have sufficient printers, but he – as does everyone else – struggles to employ enough engineers to keep the printers in order.
‘They do so like ditches,’ he says to himself.
His ear vibrates. ‘Gong Yuanxing.’
He frowns. ‘Yes,’ he says.
‘We accept your terms,’ says the voice of one of the grey men. ‘When can we have our printer?’
Tiémoko picks up his console and quickly verifies that he has received payment.
‘It is all there,’ says the grey man.
‘Yes,’ says Tiémoko. ‘I said it would take time, but Simon is heading back to Europe in a few days. He will finally leave the printer in my charge, and I will have the opportunity to manage its security. Give me a few months, and I will contact you again.’
‘We will grant you no more than twelve months. Be sure to understand that we will reclaim what is owed should you not deliver.’
The voice is cold, and Tiémoko is sure that he would rather not discover what they intend to reclaim.
‘You will have it. Before the end of next year,’ he says.
The connection ends.
Tiémoko finds that his hands are trembling and sweaty. He closes his eyes, breathing deeply, resting against the wall.
University life has its own form of intrigue, but he is not certain he is prepared for this type of thing. His heart is pounding. He will be grateful when it is over.
28
‘Explain again why we’re not eating here?’ asks Shakiso, staring wistfully at a couple nibbling their hors d’œuvres.
‘Because fifty-degree temperatures, no refrigeration, local standards of hygiene and French cuisine do not always go well together,’ says Simon as he guides her to an empty table near the stage.
‘But they’re eating,’ she says plaintively. ‘And them, and them, and them.’
‘What do you notice about them?’ pulling out a white, canvas-covered chair for her and dropping into the one alongside. Tuft has been left in their hotel, where a nervous concierge is attempting to placate her with endless cans of sardines.
‘They’re all toubab?’
‘Indeed. And what do we know about toubab?’
‘They are,’ she says, shaking her head sadly, ‘misguided fools.’
Simon nods, looking apologetic. ‘Which is why we ate earlier. Here we stick to the drinks.’
The dry has taken hold across the region, but the largess of the wet may still be enjoyed. As a benefit, Shakiso is experiencing a lull in demand on her time and suggested a vacation. Tomorrow, they will leave from Dakar.
Despite being near midnight, it is still early at Just4Utoo. Except for a few tourists struggling to stay awake as they realize how late entertainment in Dakar starts, the tables are only now beginning to fill.
The floor is roughly sealed concrete, and the open space between the two office blocks to either side is roofed with multiple spans of rubberized canvas, leaving wide gaps open to the stars. On the stage, a technician is fiddling with a green laser light, clicking his fingers in front of it and testing that the shapes it generates are sufficiently random. Another is tightening bolts on the last of the stage lights. The band are straggling in: the drummer hammering at the stays on one of his djembe with a mallet, the bassist sitting and sorting through a box of strings.
Dakar’s most popular music venue feels strangely transient, as if a group of musicians have randomly assembled in the hope of an audience.
A young man leaps on to the stage and shakes the hands of the drummer and bassist. He is joined by a guitarist and a young white woman carrying a saxophone almost as large as herself. Without any preamble, he begins to sing, the others following his lead. A string snaps, and the bassist goes back to his repairs. The others continue.
‘Is this the part of the project where you get bored?’ asks Shakiso, sneaking her bare feet into Simon’s lap, tapping along with her toes.
‘No,’ he smiles, ‘not yet. Hollis prefers it at least be making money before I throw it over the fence to him. And it’s not as if I’m willing to trust Pazanov and his friends.’
An elderly man, tiny within his faded black suit, leans discreetly over their table and offers them the cocktail menu.
‘Which one’s the rum and baobab mix?’ asks Shakiso. Simon holds up his hand to request the same.
‘What will they do?’ she asks.
Simon shakes his head. ‘Knowing them? Start a revolution.’
‘Nothing’s changed, then?’ she says, snuggling down further into her seat as Simon caresses her feet.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he says, smiling.
‘I mean besides your posterior now having personal fan service,’ she laughs.
Their drinks arrive and she studies him, condensation from the glass dripping over her fingers. She takes his hands, cool wetness trickling between them.
‘What made you so strong?’
He grins at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘I’m not sure how to take that.’
‘I mean,’ she says, ‘you seem OK with stuff I feel like I’m still struggling with.’
He caresses her hand with his thumb, studying the soft lines of her face and eyes. Her youth.
All your experiences print themselves upon you. The scars on the surface are the easiest to see and have the least impact. The ones that mount are those on your soul and spirit: when you have cared unconditionally and experienced loss. When you have been placed in situations where, whatever your choice, you will cause hurt and you must make that decision anyway. Life has ambiguity that resolves in ways that linger. Sweet sorrows for all the missing and forever gone. Stories untold, moments unshared.
He can feel the weight of his, and the lightness of hers.
‘Do you know the word saudade?’ he asks.
She shakes her head.
‘It’s Galician, one of those words that doesn’t translate very well. It’s the feeling of the love that is left after someone is gone. All the places, sounds, flavours, sensations that tie you to them and them to you. Lost moments of innocence.’
She looks up at the ceiling, her eyes clouding. ‘I think I have some of those,’ she says, a memory of Michèle, her eyes tense and afraid in the stifling heat of the freight drone on the last flight from Benghazi, the smell of the baby in her arms.
He squeezes her hands, takes them to his lips, kisses them softly and slowly, and holds them there. His breath is warm through her fingers.
‘As you put yourself at risk, you gather saudade until there are always reminders of those you have loved and are no longer with you. Moments where you caused pain you would take back if there had been another way, but there was not.
‘If you are unafraid, you learn to treasure those moments, make them a part of who you are.’
‘So what’s your earliest memory of saudade?’ she asks.
‘You want the sordid details of when I was a spotty teenager?’ he laughs.
‘Of course; I’ve told you mine.’
He nods, smiling. ‘I was in my first year at Bristol University after the army, and I met a girl,’ he says.
‘Weird,’ she says, interrupting. ‘Just realizing how hard
it is imagining you as a student.’
‘We all have to start somewhere,’ smiling.
‘So, your first love? Where is she?’
‘She wasn’t, not for real. I was twenty, on a scholarship, and she was captivating. A skinny blonde with the awful and endearing habit of saying precisely the wrong thing when she didn’t mean it. And I loved her.’ He shrugs. ‘She didn’t feel the same way.’
‘I cannot believe that is possible. Did you not show her your ass?’
‘I’m afraid I was too young to realize its quantitative and acquisitional potential,’ he says. ‘I don’t think it was physical. She was always looking to belong, and I couldn’t understand what that meant.’
‘I’ve met people like that,’ says Shakiso, looping a frond of hair around a finger. ‘They always bounce off me. I’ve never really thought about it,’ she says curiously. ‘What’s your excuse?’
‘I,’ says Simon with a great deal of pride offset with a vast grin, ‘don’t need one. I was in love with someone who didn’t feel the same way. Lots of opportunity for introspection.’
‘How does that help you with your teenage suffering?’
‘I learned that life isn’t always symmetrical. Sometimes there is no right choice, and you have to make the least bad one.
‘Loving, no matter how unconditional, isn’t enough,’ looking into her eyes and resting his nose against hers. ‘The other person must also love you,’ kissing her on each eye, ‘and you have to have the courage to let them love you unconditionally too.’
‘Do you miss her?’
‘Sometimes. Not her. Saudade. Her smell, the sound of her laughter, how it felt to be with her. All that longing and confusion. I haven’t seen her in almost thirty years. I’m not sure I’d recognize her now, or have anything to say. We’re not those people any more.’
The metal door at the entrance is nudged aside as a battalion of large men in dark suits and sunglasses push their way through and form a short honour guard. The owner of Just4Utoo, an old man in baggy trousers and a brown fedora, rushes forward to greet Sidiki Cissoko.
He leads him towards a large reserved table alongside the stage. As he walks, people stand to applaud, reaching out to touch him or shake his hand. The few foreigners look bewildered and ask those nearby to identify the man at the centre of attention.
The local elections are only weeks away, and the rival presidential candidates have kept up a continuous schedule of rallies and events. Neither gives the impression of sleeping, and their marabouts sing and hector from atop trucks filled with drummers and singers, travelling through the country. Each candidate claims support from amongst the spectrum of celebrities and musicians. Tonight is part of that hounding after votes.
The growing border cities have caused tension. How, people wonder, do these cities create such wealth where there is nothing? What do our politicians offer when so much can be achieved without them? The various local government candidates have struggled to answer. Whoever wins, a tonal change has come.
As Sidiki passes their table, Simon stands and they embrace each other.
‘My friend,’ says Sidiki, smiling at him and Shakiso.
At the entrance, looking drained and a little unsteady, a white man in jeans and T-shirt arrives, immediately wrapped in a friendly, relieved embrace by the tiny waiter in the oversized suit.
Sidiki and Simon exchange a glance. ‘The prawns,’ they say, nodding.
Sidiki puts his arm around the owner of Just4Utoo’s scrawny shoulders. ‘Tell me, Behzad, that man there,’ pointing. ‘I’m guessing he ate here last night. One day those prawns of yours are going to kill someone. Why do you still serve them?’
Sidiki and Behzad answer in unison, ‘Because they are so cheap,’ laughing.
The lights go off, leaving the venue in darkness except for glowing candles and luminance leaking from the kitchen. A man begins to sing, his voice deep and redolent of wild places.
‘Dee-da-de de dé, dee-da-de de dé, dee-da-de de dé.’
His rhythm taken up by the bass and saxophone.
The venue in silence.
Lights gradually rise and pick out the singer, with his great head and broad chin, his hair an olive-coloured burst about his head, dressed in a tailored mandarin-collared black suit. A faded portrait of his marabout in a frame hangs from a thick silver chain around his neck. He rests one hand on a two-headed stave as he sings.
‘The mama keeps on crying. Where is my child?
The fire keeps on burning. Where is my child?’ he sings.
Simon, his eyes lost in distance, ‘Where is the child?’
Shakiso noticing, putting her hand to his cheek and pulling him close, kissing him on the forehead.
The young saxophonist takes the lead, her voice the raw sorrow of the millions fleeing conflict and despair, seeking hope and peace. A man in the audience rises, stands before her, bows low and points.
Simon suddenly rubs at his ear, his body tensing. Nearby, Sidiki’s guards are moving swiftly towards the entrance.
‘What’s happening?’ whispers Shakiso.
‘Men with guns, outside, trying to get in,’ he whispers back.
Over the music, they can hear a series of dull reports, shouts, and a rising hubbub of panic near the entrance.
‘Time to go?’ asks Shakiso, moving to stand.
He shakes his head. ‘No. This is silly. They should know there’s no way to get close.’
Outside, stillness.
Simon rises, takes Shakiso’s hand and heads for the entrance, squeezing through the bewildered crowd.
Two men, their guns carefully held under the feet of the guards, lie motionless in the road. Another three men lie equally prone across the road alongside an open white van filled with what could be improvised explosives. A massacre halted.
‘Dead?’ asks Shakiso, mystified at the lack of blood given all the shooting.
Simon points upwards where drones hover quietly above them. They are visible only as a peculiar black void against the brightness of the night sky.
‘They’re non-lethal. My insistence.’
Sidiki joins them. ‘Ag Ghaly’s men?’ he asks.
Simon shrugs. Probably.
‘I must call Djimo. The Socialists are meeting at Mbaye’s across town. I am sure I was not the only target.’
A guard hands him an earbed which he inserts. ‘Djimo? They were there too? It is well.’
Hearing one side of the conversation, ‘I expect there will be more of this. Stay well. I do not wish to win this election by default.’
He turns to Simon. ‘The beast is dying, but it can still bite,’ he says.
Flashing blue lights as police arrive, leaping out of their vehicles and muscling the unconscious attackers.
On the horizon are the hills of the Deux Mamelles, and upon them squats the familiar ugly bulk of Le Monument de la Renaissance Africaine. It rises into the moonlit sky, its three peculiar not-African, not-Korean figures joined and pointing abstractly, as if drawing a great bow. Less a monument to an African renaissance than its most distinctive testament to its losing battle with corruption.
Sidiki glares at it.
With a muffled crump, it explodes. Heat and flame erupt from beneath it, and the monument stumbles, seems to recover its balance, and then collapses into pieces.
The horizon is clear save for a faint glow where fires are burning.
Stunned silence from those watching, recognition of the symbolism of its destruction.
‘You know,’ says Sidiki, ‘I am torn. I would curse Ansar Dine for their attempt on our lives, except for one thing.’
He puts his hand on Simon’s shoulder.
‘I always hated that statue.’
29
Dust rattles off the door as it scrapes open. The movement stirring up the smell of ordure and stagnant water lingering in the air.
‘They are returning, Duruji,’ says a man in a torn and faded black djellaba, a badly he
aling wound across his forehead. He returns to the ridge overlooking the path to the city.
‘Good, I’m hungry,’ says Duruji, seated in the shade at the rear of the abandoned goat shed. Light from the gaps in the reed mats making up the roof bands the floor and its sparse furnishings: a broken wooden table, legs taped to hold them from splintering; a scattering of chairs, all different; and small piles of blankets where each man may sleep. Hidden in the darkness against the walls is their collection of AK-47s. Only Duruji still has ammunition.
Khalil whimpers in the corner, his head bandaged so that he will stop rubbing at his ears. His huge form trembling and panting in the furthest part of the shadows. It is rare that he escapes his visions and terror of Gaw Goŋ.
As its power withers, the refugees of Ansar Dine have fled.
Those going north join with the seekers gathering at the Mediterranean. Some pretend at being victims in the hope of abandoning their past. A few may keep, in their secret hearts, the ambition of restoring Ansar Dine and answering a call, should it ever come.
Those going south join with the settlers in the growing independent cities. There they similarly seek new lives or, as with Duruji and his men, hold out for the return of their leader.
Sori Malé, constrained by the Senegal border to the south, is stretching east and west along the Senegal River. A city of four million has emerged without expectation or planning, growing too fast for any authority to impose itself. No centrally recognized courts or police or notaries or property register. It should not function save that all interactions are public.
Each person carries their Achenian biomimetic identity card. All their contracts stored anonymously in a distributed public ledger: the property they own, who they do business with, what they buy and sell. Every single thing in the city has an irrefutable record of ownership, an ever-growing network of visible trust permitting a semblance of order even amongst the distrust of so many.
The inevitable criminality in such a city is tangled by this tangible and tactile web.