Our Memory Like Dust

by Gavin Chait

  ‘The woman who did it was someone I knew. Someone I tried to help.’ Her voice trembles, tears dripping on to the table surface. ‘I helped her and her family escape from Benghazi. Her husband and father-in-law got sent back when we arrived in Paris. They were killed by Ansar Dine. Her brother told me she became depressed and suicidal. A local terrorist cell took her in, groomed her, used her at the Eiffel Tower.’

  She looks up, her eyes searching Viviane’s. ‘Simon once told me that sometimes there is no right choice and you have to make the least bad one. I think I made the worst one. If I’d left her behind, she would have stayed with her husband. She would have died anyway, her children too, but she wouldn’t have killed anyone else.’

  ‘And who would that make you?’ asks Viviane, her voice urgent, cutting across the silence of the room. She grips Shakiso’s hands tightly. ‘My sister, would you refuse to help a starving child for fear he would grow up to be a killer?’

  ‘No,’ says Shakiso, weeping openly, the grief in her heart breaking, like a fever.

  ‘Each person has their own journey,’ says Viviane, her voice gentler. ‘We may help should they fall, but we cannot afterwards dictate their destination. That is the lesson of the genii, that we choose for ourselves.’

  Shakiso nods, calmer now. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘There is a place you should visit,’ says Viviane. ‘Walk along the coast and you will find it. I go there often when I have need.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A place to hold our memories so that they may hurt us less.’

  Their coffee arrives. The young man delivering it to their table deposits it there with a level of bored indifference which goes some way to elevating its flavour of boiled grey ditch water. Shakiso and Viviane take comfort from holding their mugs, but neither of them drink.

  ‘Why do we even come here?’ asks Shakiso, her eyes smeared with drying tears.

  Viviane grins. ‘Because it is cheap.’

  Shakiso laughs. ‘How’s the trial? Do you feel you’re getting anywhere?’

  ‘Yes, although it goes slowly. Many of our witnesses are old, and the defence examination is difficult for them. Ag Ghaly . . .’ her bottom lip tenses. ‘He sits there. He has no interest. The suffering of so many passes him by.’

  ‘Does it matter what he thinks?’ asks Shakiso.

  Viviane smiles. ‘No, it does not. He will face justice even so.’

  ‘And Tiémoko?’

  Viviane blushes once more.

  Shakiso leans forward, staring into Viviane’s eyes and smiling. ‘If you love him, don’t let your shyness hold you back.’ She brushes at the mist in her eyes. ‘We have so little time in this world.’

  ‘I know it, my sister,’ says Viviane.

  A man in legal robes walks into the café looking rushed and scans the room. Relief as he finds Viviane. He gestures towards her.

  ‘I am sorry, my sister. I have a meeting I must attend.’

  ‘That’s fine, Viviane. I’ll visit you again this afternoon.’

  Shakiso sits, looking out at the courtyard. Tuft leans her head on her knee to have her ears scratched, purring deep in her chest.

  The air conditioning is frigid and, with the armour adding to the chill against her skin, she takes her leave. ‘Come, youngster. I think we’ll have that run I promised. Just for us. Afterwards, maybe we’ll go find that place Viviane thinks we should visit.’

  Tuft yawns, her teeth white and sharp, and follows behind as Shakiso heads up the stairs into the main hall.

  The usual throngs of those waiting for their hearings and those merely along for company fill the open space with nervousness and conversation.

  Shakiso turns away from the exit. One last look at the Ag Ghaly trial. There must be a belief that justice will find people like him.

  The soldiers at the security barricades around the courtroom are scarcely awake and pay little heed to the steady stream of people in and out of the court. Shakiso stands outside the barriers and hesitates.

  It can wait.

  As she turns, there is a sound. Screams and a muted crackle of gunfire from inside the court.

  The doors are flung open and men in black djellabas, turbans obscuring their faces, start shooting into the hall.

  Shakiso dives to the ground and tries to roll out of the way.

  Behind her she hears a voice, ‘That one. Her! Take her!’

  Ag Ghaly is surrounded by his men: a white king amongst his pawns.

  A huge man advances on her, his rifle pointed at her face. His ears are raw and bloody, and his eyes are wide and manic. For a moment, it is if they are enveloped in a dark cloud shrouding them in place.

  Tuft leaps, her teeth clamping on to his shoulder and her claws stretching to bury deep into his arm, side and back. Her prey shrieks in terror, floundering as he fights against the sinew and howling fury of the caracal.

  A shattering burst of gunfire and Tuft is flung into the air, sliding across the glossy floor, coming to rest motionless against the far wall.

  ‘Tuft!’ Shakiso screams.

  ‘Leave him,’ shouts Ag Ghaly, indicating the lifeless Khalil. ‘Take her. Take her. Go!’

  Shakiso kicks and pulls and bites until they overpower her, punching her in the head until her mind is too dulled to resist.

  -

  ‘Why the woman, Janab? What is she to us?’

  ‘You fool. Do you not recognize her? She is the man’s woman.’

  ‘We shall have our vengeance then?’

  ‘Yes. All comes to those who are patient. Look, she is awake.’

  Knocking her into submission once more.

  -

  ‘Where are the Russians?’

  ‘Kuffār!’

  ‘They have betrayed us. Where are the trucks they promised?’

  ‘Janab, look, we must take those.’

  ‘Yes. Good, Duruji. See there are no witnesses.’

  -

  When she recovers, her head is covered within a stifling hessian bag. She is dragged and dumped into what feels like the back of a boat. As she slips into exhausted unconsciousness, she feels the gentle rocking of the water as the boat leaves the shore.

  43

  ‘Where is she?’ Hollis’s voice fraying with anguish.

  ‘They have lost her,’ says Tiémoko. He is shocked and frustrated.

  He had been on dusty farmland outside Rosso trying to understand how one of their line printers had ended up driving through a groundnut field when he received the call. Stranded between the farmer demanding compensation and his engineers declaring that it looked as if the machine had been dragged there.

  The engineer had been waving his console, pointing out the moment when the printer suddenly veered erratically and reported unusual interference.

  Tiémoko had taken the console, noticing a news alert popping up.

  He had opened and read, trembling as the world around him blurred and vanished.

  Then his ear had vibrated. ‘Viviane.’

  ‘Mister Diagne,’ she said, her voice shy and frightened.

  ‘Viviane! You are well? Please, you are well?’

  ‘Yes, the soldiers are here. But – they have taken Shakiso.’

  Her meeting had been in the administrative wing of the court. She was far from the fighting. As soon as the jihadis had left, she was one of the first to venture out and begin trying to find out what had happened. An old man, cradling his wife’s head in his lap as she wept from horror and despair, had told her of Shakiso being taken.

  ‘Viviane, when this is over,’ says Tiémoko, his voice catching. ‘We—’

  ‘Please,’ she says, her tone telling him this is not the time, but he heard the smile in her voice.

  He called Hollis.

  ‘Ag Ghaly followed the old sewer canal from the court to a truck depot. His men murdered four mechanics there and stole their trucks. They have left the city.’

  Tiémoko can hear the sound of Hollis’s chair
rolling across the room, his exasperated sigh. ‘I thought they understood, Tiémoko. We told them of the risk. How did this happen?’

  ‘Our army – they have put too many of their forces beyond our borders chasing the last of the Ansar Dine fighters. They left only the most ineffective of their troops to guard the courts.’

  ‘There must still have been some security there?’

  ‘It was too focused on Ag Ghaly and not on the building. The only security checks were directly outside the courtroom, and those guards barely paid attention. Ag Ghaly’s supporters all arrived at the same time, his soldiers amongst them. The guards pushed everyone into the court to save effort. There were more of Ag Ghaly’s men around the building. More than one hundred of them.

  ‘Once they started shooting, it didn’t matter how good the soldiers around Ag Ghaly were, there were too many inside the court, they were overwhelmed. It was a massacre. They killed everyone they could find. Women. Children . . .’ Tiémoko hesitates, and Hollis can hear as he struggles to compose himself.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Hollis. ‘I should have – how is Viviane?’

  Tiémoko breathes out, a stuttering sigh. ‘Safe. She was in an office far from the fighting. She is already taking witness statements.’

  Hollis runs his hands through his hair, shaking his head. ‘She’s a remarkable woman.’

  ‘It is her way,’ says Tiémoko, smiling even through his tension. ‘She says it is chaos in the city. One of the soldiers told her that there are currently no orders to chase after Ag Ghaly. Our military has no way to track those trucks.’

  ‘At least we know where they’ll be going,’ says Hollis darkly. ‘That special forces team? They still available?’

  Tiémoko grins. ‘I have their number. They will be eager to hear from you.’

  Hollis is hesitant to ask. ‘I know this is going to be low on your list but – did Viviane know what happened to Shakiso’s caracal? Tuft?’

  ‘I am sorry, Hollis. Not yet. The troops are still going room to room checking for any explosive traps left behind. They did find a dead jihadi. He had been torn apart by an animal, so we know she was there.’

  Hollis sighs. ‘What a mess.’

  ‘Why do you think they took her, Hollis?’

  ‘You know that. Pray we find her in time.’

  44

  Their convoy of trucks lurches over stones like rubble, seeking a road where there is none, and the wind howls against the canvas tarpaulin, crackling and snapping in outrage. The vehicles are obscured in the driving dust of the harmattan, invisible even to each other.

  ‘This place, it is nowhere, Janab. What is there for us?’

  ‘That is where the planes crashed. We can re-arm. More than that. Once we are there you must search for this, see here on the console.’ The voice is that of Ag Ghaly.

  ‘I do not understand, Janab. What is this?’

  The second voice is that of Duruji. Shakiso is learning to recognize them. She can hear the scuffling in the back of the truck as the console is passed from man to man. She is immobile, her hands and feet securely bound with lengths of canvas cut from the webbing holding the equipment in place. Her breathing is careful and quiet to minimize the dust seeping through the rough sack over her head and to avoid attracting further attention.

  Each time she moves, they beat her until she stops.

  ‘It is strange. These glass rings? What are they for?’

  ‘Look,’ says Ag Ghaly, ‘the vial is fixed at the centre of the loops. No matter how the glass case is moved, the vial always faces upright. And the shock absorbers on the pins fixing the loops to each other prevent the vial from being jolted.’

  ‘This red liquid. What is this?’ asks Duruji once more. There is a gap where Khalil should be. He ignores it.

  ‘Fear and power,’ says Ag Ghaly. ‘Find me this glass case and the kuffār will fall at our feet.’

  The truck lurches as it strikes a large boulder. It swings to the left, hits another boulder and the engine whines and stalls.

  A panting, exhausted silence inside the truck as the wind scrambles and tears at the canvas.

  ‘We can go no further, Janab.’

  ‘Good, we walk from here. Cover the trucks and bring all that we need.’

  Shakiso is dragged along the floor bed by the webbing tied around her ankles. She rolls on to her chest to ease the cramp and agony in her arms locked behind her back.

  One of the men pulls her on to his shoulder, dumping her down on the ground nearby. Outside, the wind is a continuous smothering weight and the dust an overwhelming presence.

  Shakiso breathes slowly and as deeply as she dares, trying to calm her fragmented feelings of terror and outrage. She feels bruised and uncomfortable but has, so far, not suffered any crippling injury.

  Around her are the sounds of the men scrambling to prepare to leave the trucks behind. They work quickly, covering the vehicles in large camouflaged tarpaulins and hammering stakes into the reg to hold the sheets down. Any satellite observers will have difficulty finding them.

  Shakiso’s ankles are yanked upwards and the straps abruptly cut. She is jerked to her feet by her shoulder.

  ‘You will walk,’ says a hissed voice in her ear. ‘And if you do not, you will be dragged.’

  She feels a rope being tied around her waist. It links her to the man in front and behind.

  Each of the men is linked in this way, for the harmattan is blinding. A person stepping out of the line can be lost to the desert even though they be only metres away.

  They begin to walk, Duruji and Ag Ghaly in front, the coordinates blinking on their map.

  Shakiso takes two tentative steps and clips a boulder, stumbling and losing her balance. She curls inwards, protecting her head and letting the armour on her back absorb her fall. The rope jerks taut against the two men to her front and rear.

  They shout in outrage.

  One of them calls to the front. ‘Duruji, can we not take the bag from her head? She cannot see, and it will slow us down.’

  Duruji makes his way along the line. Shakiso carefully clambers to her feet, trying to orientate herself facing forwards.

  The bag is yanked clear. She blinks and is instantly blinded by the searing blast of the harmattan in her eyes. She coughs and tries to bury her mouth and nose in her shirt.

  Duruji shakes his head. ‘We need a turban for her,’ he says.

  ‘There is no extra, Duruji, but I can cut some from mine,’ says the man tied in front of Shakiso.

  ‘Quickly. We cannot wait.’

  The two men charged with flanking Shakiso cut a length from the turban and crudely wrap it around her head.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  The two men push her. ‘Go, go.’

  Duruji knots himself in at the front once more, and the column begins walking.

  Looking up the line, Shakiso can see that each man carries an AK-47 and a bag filled with what she assumes to be rations and equipment. Duruji and another man also carry large Igla anti-drone guns along with spare backpacks necessary to power them.

  After a few hours, the stones and boulders of the reg give way to the soft drift of the erg. Sand sucks at their boots, slowing their pace.

  They walk in silence. The yawling, howling madness of the harmattan prevents conversation, and shouting takes too much energy. Each man carries his own water.

  No one thinks to share with Shakiso.

  Her face hidden within the turban and shrouded in the churning dust, she pops out a thin tube from the collar of her armour with her chin. The bladder holds two litres, and she sips sparingly.

  The cramps and bruising from the earlier beatings have eased, and she would, under other circumstances, enjoy the challenge of pitting herself against the desert and the wind.

  Instead she carries a flint-like rage.

  They did not search her. She holds on tightly to that.

  A shout goes down the line, and the men come to a ragged,
stalling stop on the lee side of a steep dune. Hard rations are distributed, and each man chews unhappily at the familiar tough, chalky protein bars.

  ‘Give this to her,’ says Duruji. ‘She must not fall behind.’

  Shakiso is sitting with her knees drawn up to her chin, her hands behind her back, roped in place between her minders.

  One tosses a silver-wrapped bar into her lap. He watches morosely as she levers the bar up and between her knees, tears the sachet open with her teeth and takes a bite.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says cheerfully, refusing them any sense of weakness, chomping on the unpleasant texture.

  She recognizes the dull flavour. When she was a student, she would compete in endurance races on weekends. Starting on a Friday afternoon and running, climbing, swimming, cycling and canoeing until Sunday evening along slippery mountain trails, rivers and the open road. These were the bars that were supplied to the competitors along the route. Nutrient-rich and packed with ampakines, designed to keep you awake and alert.

  Duruji clearly intends that no one will be resting until they reach their destination.

  The searing heat of the day cools into a reddened, golden dusk. The sun is a murky burning orb through the brown foam of the harmattan.

  They stop only once before sundown to share out more of the nutrient bars.

  They walk through the night.

  Dawn sneaks like a yellow blaze through the dust and, with it, the temperature rises.

  Shakiso is beginning to feel fatigued. Sand has finally eased its way into her boots, and she can feel chafing against her skin. She grins as she considers that at least she has not spent the last twenty hours carrying a backpack strung with weapons and ammunition through a sandstorm.

  Hours pass and the day begins to fade.

  She looks around. Along the line, the men move as if sleepwalking, their heads lolling and eyes partly closed. Visibility is limited, obscured by dust and noise, but she is sure she can see a strange, angular black shadow in the air ahead of them.

  A jubilant shout and heads jerk up and out of reveries.