Our Memory Like Dust

by Gavin Chait

  Duruji’s eyes widen. He gasps. Falls.

  ‘My Janab,’ he sighs.

  Ag Ghaly looks, recognizes, turns, and sees soldiers emerging from the dust.

  He puts the barrel of his gun into his mouth.

  As he fires, he is thrown to the ground, the bullet lost to the sky, his gun hurled from him.

  ‘No.’

  The last thing he sees, before a hood passes over his head, are glowing blue eyes weighing him in judgement.

  49

  ‘Aha, my president, you are here for coffee?’

  ‘Yes, my father,’ says Sidiki, ducking under the plastic sheet across the archway into the sculpture garden.

  Today, the pillar beasts are in repose. Their features seem warm and comforting. A baboon-like creature even reaches across to another which has hair burning like flame, in what looks to be the beginning of an embrace.

  ‘Are you a big man yet?’ asks Gaw Goŋ.

  Sidiki laughs easily. ‘No, my father,’ and his voice is unburdened and without shadows.

  ‘Good, my child. That is good,’ says the old man, nodding and clucking.

  He clears away a pile of sketches and drawings from a wooden stool, its legs each of different provenance, and gestures for Sidiki to sit.

  He disappears behind a rug covering the entrance to his home, and there is the sound of rattling and of heavy objects being moved from side to side.

  Sidiki sits and watches the ocean, breathing deeply and smiling as – in this place – he feels all the tension of the last few months flow out and away. He is feeling more comfortable in the role of president. He picks up one of the sketches, of a baboon walking in the desert, his sombé in his hands and a painted dog at his side.

  Sidiki smiles and grips the beach sand between his toes.

  ‘Aha,’ says Gaw Goŋ, returning. ‘See how my president blesses even an old man such as I,’ waving a new electric hotplate in one hand.

  ‘I heard they have electrified your neighbourhood,’ says Sidiki. ‘You keep the fire?’ gesturing to where the flames still burn.

  ‘A flame is more than heat,’ says the old man. ‘It is memory, and place. A connector of worlds.’

  He plugs in the small stove and places his battered kettle on top. Sitting back on a blanket, he prods at the fire with his two-headed metal stave.

  ‘You are meeting someone?’

  ‘Yes, my father.’

  ‘Aha, aha. A friend?’

  ‘I am not sure, my father. He has not been a friend in the past. But –’ he scratches gently at his head ‘– this feels as if it is a time of change.’

  ‘You feel that too, my child? That is well.’

  Brown froth bubbles from the mouth of the kettle, dripping and hissing down on to the hotplate.

  ‘Aha,’ crows the old man. ‘It is ready,’ and pouring two cups into misshapen mugs.

  They sit in silence, savouring the flavour and enjoying the soft motion of the water on to the shore. The horizon is clear, the sky unblemished, the genii at rest.

  A car pulls up at the roadside. Sidiki’s security are spread out along the beach. They respond, conferring and acknowledging the arrival.

  The door swings up and open. A soft-bodied toubab steps out, his body awkward and bent, although he is not yet an old man. He motions at someone waiting inside and walks out on to the beach.

  ‘Your guest has arrived,’ says Gaw Goŋ.

  ‘Yes,’ says Sidiki. ‘Stay well, my father. I shall be back in a few minutes.’

  He takes his mug, still mostly full with steaming black coffee, and joins the other man at the water.

  The white man stares silently at the horizon. He seems lost in reverie.

  ‘You are Rinier Pazanov?’ asks Sidiki.

  Pazanov nods and holds out his hand. Sidiki passes his mug to his left hand and shakes.

  ‘I visited Agado in London last week,’ says Pazanov, staring sullenly at the coffee mug. ‘I sat with him in that café of his. Insulting pictures on the walls. He would not serve me even water.’

  ‘There is a list,’ says Sidiki, delicately.

  ‘Yes,’ says Pazanov. His voice is tired. ‘My wife reminds me of it often.’

  ‘You have met with Agado, and now you meet with me. What is it you seek?’

  ‘I am the new head of Rosneft.’

  ‘Yes. I heard of your predecessor’s unfortunate passing. Is this a role you have sought?’

  Pazanov kicks at the sand, scattering grains into the thin foam on the ebbing surf.

  ‘Once,’ he says. ‘But it does not feel like a choice I made of my own will. My company is not known for offering much liberty. Or,’ he says bitterly, ‘compassion for misfortune.’

  Russian official media reported Uberti’s death as a heart attack brought on by the stress of the company’s losses. Unofficial sources say it was suicide.

  ‘My security advisers tell me that a charter flight full of Russian mercenaries left shortly before Ag Ghaly’s escape. Apparently you chose not to support him?’ asks Sidiki, feeling the other’s weight of sadness. ‘What do you wish of me?’

  ‘There was nothing to be won from destroying your country. No advantage. It would be an act of petty vengeance.’ He coughs, flings the remnants of his cigarette into the water and spits after it.

  ‘We are being granted a reprieve,’ Pazanov continues. ‘In exchange for certain guarantees, Rosneft must loosen the terms of its contracts and interfere less in the affairs of others. The Russian state must become less dependent on our revenues. There is much that would change, but the role of its senior executive – my role – is still as it always was.’

  ‘And you do not wish for that role to remain unchanged?’

  ‘No,’ spoken firmly but with resignation.

  ‘Gaw Goŋ would say that the story chooses its villains and heroes. They have no agency of their own. They cannot strive for a role of their choosing. There are no big men in history. Merely pawns of the narrative which society chooses.’

  ‘They are not in charge then?’ asks Pazanov.

  ‘No. They are the least of the characters who may choose. Their role is precisely defined by the circumstances of the story.’

  Pazanov nods, looking sad. ‘I am tired of being the villain.’

  ‘What will you do?’ asks Sidiki.

  ‘There are debts to pay. I do not imagine it will be easy, but I seek redemption.’

  Sidiki stares at him, searching him. He laughs softly. ‘Then you are already not the villain, merely a villain. Your future is your own.’

  Pazanov smiles. ‘As easy as that?’

  Sidiki shakes his head. ‘No. Opening the door is easy. The path of redemption is not.’

  ‘And for you? Your predecessors were villains too. Have you escaped that role?’

  Sidiki looks back along the beach to the sculpture garden. ‘I seek guidance daily. I walk here on this beach and ask counsel. That I not be led astray on to the path of the big men who came before me.

  ‘It is difficult.’

  Rinier considers. ‘It would help me if we could meet every now and then, to walk on this beach, to talk with you. Perhaps we can each keep the other on the way? I have no one else.’

  Sidiki thinks and nods. ‘That would be well. I would be neither the hero nor the villain, and that would be my salvation.’

  ‘And I may find my redemption.’

  They walk in silence along the beach, and the water ebbs and flows.

  50

  ‘We’ll bring it to you,’ says the barista, taking her order.

  Shakiso finds a table in the corner where she can look out and watch people passing by in the street, finding reassurance in the everyday interactions of others.

  Her eyes are the depths of the erg, and she stares as if seeing everything for the first time. The animated interactions of two smartly dressed women laughing over their croissants. A group of tourists pointing at the pictures on the walls. The hiss and roar of
milk being frothed and coffee beans being ground. Traffic flickering and flashing beyond the glass facade.

  A young man in a tight white T-shirt collecting his coffee notices her and visibly straightens his shoulders as he walks as if to introduce himself. She watches him curiously, her eyes the story of her journey, his stride faltering, and he chooses to sit on his own.

  The inner door to the Achenia lobby opens, and Hollis is smiling in relief as he reaches her table. His chair rises, and he holds her tightly.

  There follow the tentative words as spoken between two who have suffered much and must now gently find their way.

  ‘Oh,’ says Shakiso, after a time. ‘Ismael wanted me to give you this. “A souvenir from the desert,” he said.’

  She places a glass cube on the table between them. Inside are three concentric glass rings forming a gimbal. A glass vial filled with red liquid is fixed in its centre.

  Hollis adjusts the levers on the outside of the case, locking the rings in place. The lid of the case opens and he reaches inside, releasing the vial. He holds it, tilting it back and forth.

  The red liquid flows, viscous and sticky against the glass.

  ‘Funny how Ag Ghaly never thought to question an old trope like red mercury,’ he says. ‘It takes a special sort of craziness to imagine you can control the world with a little vial of liquid.’

  ‘What is it really?’ asks Shakiso.

  ‘Some red dye and metal foam gel from an old set of Simon’s armour. See,’ shaking it suddenly and explosively. The liquid instantly forms a solid foam, returning to liquid form as his hand comes to rest.

  ‘And a little surprise,’ smiling. ‘One of those experimental fractal circuits. This one is a location transmitter.

  ‘We were never sure what Ag Ghaly thought it would do, but we heard a rumour he was prepared to pay any money to get some. Simon positioned himself as a scientist from the Martian space programme and met with his regular arms dealer. We made it look as impressive as possible and offered a third of the price we were charging as commission if he could get it to Ag Ghaly directly. We thought we were being extremely clever, but the Caracas Cartel and the arms dealer had their own plans. I don’t think the red mercury thing fooled them at all. It was simply a very attractive lure for their own scam. They filled the planes with cheap garbage and lied about the landing dates. Ag Ghaly never received our package.’

  ‘Simon was never meant to risk his life like that?’

  ‘No. This was always supposed to go straight to Ag Ghaly. The transmitter would have given us his exact location, and we had an arrangement with the Senegalese Special Forces to pass on the coordinates,’ says Hollis. ‘We could have arranged for Ag Ghaly to find the landing site, but the transmitter stopped working.’

  ‘Couldn’t you replace it and then pass on the location?’

  ‘We’re a small private company,’ says Hollis. ‘We needed the Senegalese army to track the package and capture Ag Ghaly. After the crash, they worried that the arms might end up in some other faction’s hands and we’d never catch him. They would only help if we could guarantee Ag Ghaly. At the time, we didn’t know everything on the planes was junk anyway.

  ‘Simon tried to salvage the situation and went out to meet him. Maybe if you had been together before, he never would have, but then you might never have met.’

  ‘I asked him, towards the end, but he said you’d explain everything when it was all over. Is it over now?’ She smiles, but her eyes are clouded with sadness.

  ‘Everything? Yes, or as close as it can be,’ says Hollis, replacing the vial within its case. ‘Zhi is still at risk, but he should be with us in the next few days. We’re hoping that the Chinese government’s new agreement with Rosneft means they’ve lost interest in him.’

  ‘And the rest? Can you tell me?’

  He nods.

  ‘I told you about Trevor, my first love,’ his voice tender. ‘He was Tiémoko’s older brother. Zhi was Tiémoko’s best friend. We came together around my hospital bed. Achenia, the company, has always been all of us.’

  ‘But they’re not official?’

  ‘No. When we started, the naturalization policy was still in place. It’s only recently that it stopped being illegal for foreigners to own English assets. We always kept our agreement, and it’s always been our company.

  ‘When Sam developed the solar energy systems for Mars, we saw an opportunity here on Earth for both the orbiter and the desert farms. The solar orbiter depended on getting a space elevator in place, and we knew that would take a few years. Tiémoko thought the cheaper solar collectors would be perfect for East Africa, and he and Simon decided to start immediately. Tiémoko wanted to link his identity systems to payment, and Simon went to Tanzania to set up a pilot.’

  ‘And then Rosneft—’

  ‘Yes,’ he reveals a moment of pain. ‘That they would destroy an entire country, support terrorists, all to preserve their monopoly – we realized that we had been naïve. Originally, it was simply a business investment. After Tanzania, we all felt it personally. It was men like Uberti who decided that young boys should be conscripted for war. Men like that who killed Trevor and broke my back,’ his voice calm despite the anguish in his words. ‘That was when we began to disguise our activities.

  ‘We had to keep the solar orbiter secret in case they decided to attack the space elevator. We hid the components amongst the general traffic for the next flight of Martian settlers going up the elevator. And, to make sure they didn’t look too closely at the base station in Bologna, we pretended that the solar-farm output was destined for Europe. That was when we came up with the red mercury scam. We would even have built a line across the desert. Everything we did was to keep Rosneft occupied by letting them chase us around.

  ‘Of course,’ he laughs softly, ‘then we also had to worry about Chinese interest in the technology as well. Zhi whispered a few words to receptive ears about Tiémoko supposedly resenting Simon, and their ambassador in Senegal approached him for access to our systems.

  ‘Senegal was well chosen. There is only one active ambassador there, even though everyone “knows” there are supposed to be many of them. Tiémoko handed him a card with the private access codes to our main printer. It also had a passive location sensor so we always knew where he was.’

  ‘Why did you need that?’

  ‘We heard that Russian mercenaries were recruiting ex-Ansar Dine fighters. We figured that Rosneft would try to release Ag Ghaly and start a war. What we didn’t know was when.

  ‘There is a Chinese family in Aroundu who run one of the larger printing works—’

  ‘Mrs Chen?’

  Hollis nods. ‘Yes. Her son happens to be a lawyer, and he and Tiémoko have become friends. Tiémoko asked him to help us. Over the past few months, whenever we absolutely knew where the Chinese ambassador was, this young man would dress up in a grey suit and visit Ag Ghaly. He likes to talk, and we learned the plan. In exchange, we gave him the coordinates to the planes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell the Senegalese?’

  ‘We tried,’ he says. ‘Once the solar orbiter went live and Rosneft caved in to the Chinese, we assumed their plans would be suspended. We had taken Senegal out of the supply chain to Europe. The generals told us we were being overly paranoid.

  ‘I’m sorry, Shak. I let you down.’

  She shakes her head, taking his hands. ‘You came for me.’

  He nods. ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘There’s that job in Berlin I told you about. I’ll be starting there in a few weeks.’

  ‘You’ve decided then?’

  ‘Yes. There’s a story Ismael told me which I’ve been thinking about. It’s about two sisters. I can tell it, although I don’t think I’m as good as he is?’

  Hollis smiles and nods his head. ‘Please.’

  ‘Once, there were two sisters,’ she begins, her voice bright and her eyes damp.

  ‘Their village of Tessèm was a sma
ll place, too close to the desert and too far from the city. Only through care and hard work was it possible for so many to thrive on such barren land.

  ‘Each day, the two sisters would rise before dawn to milk their goats, and then help their family in the fields. After their work was finished, the sisters would go and play by the river beneath the shade of an old spreading tree.

  ‘In the tree and in the water lived the genii of that place. He loved to listen to the two children playing and would often join them in their games. He would take the form of a painted dog and run with them, or of a baboon, and tell them stories.

  ‘Their parents would ask them where they heard these stories, and they told them of the genii, but no one would believe them, for genii are beings of myth.

  ‘One day, the younger sister died.’

  Shakiso hesitates, her hands flat on the table. ‘I asked Ismael how she died. People don’t just die. Something must have happened.

  ‘He told me, “It is a story. It is not the manner of her going that matters, but the measure of her presence and the impact of her absence. She could have died performing a great sacrifice or by accident. Those who love her may wish she’d died differently, but for those who are party to her story and survive her passing, it is her soul and its loss that has the greater toll.”’

  She closes her eyes and breathes deeply. Hollis places his hands on hers and lends his strength to hers.

  ‘After her death, there was a terrible famine. The people of Tessèm suffered greatly, but other villages had it worse. Thousands sought refuge along the banks of the river near the village. The different tribes squabbled, and minor differences threatened to lead to awful violence.

  ‘The surviving sister said to her parents, “We must ask the genii to help us.”

  ‘“This is not the time for myths,” they told her, but no one knew what else to do.

  ‘The young girl was malnourished and very weak, but she gathered her strength and made her way down to the place of the genii. She wept as she told the tree and water of her suffering, and of her fear for all the different people who fight instead of working together.