‘Watch the carpet, Lindi!’ Naomi’s trill was kind of desperate. ‘Well, look. Why don’t we do coffee tomorrow?’
‘I’d rather it was now. It’s about Rula.’
‘Oh Christ, Debs. Really? You’re going to do this here?’
A fat bloke in a pink shirt came out of the downstairs loo. ‘Lovely party, Noo-noo.’ He had sweat rings under his arms. They fake-kissed, mwaa, then Naomi hustled me, and her, inside the loo. ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ She put the seat back down. ‘OK. What about Rula?’
‘Nothing really. Except I think it’s payback time.’
‘For what? Christ, shit happens, Deborah. Who died and made you a saint?’
My mouth got all loose and ready, but what would have been a fitting response? Really? I just swallowed, counted the little sticks in her fancy air freshener. Seven, there were seven sticks sooking up the woody goodness of Forest Nights Ambient Oil. At least she had the grace to examine her nails.
‘Naomi,’ I said eventually. ‘I’m going to need Duncan’s help. How is he with immigration law?’
So. Now I have the direct telephone numbers of two legal experts. One I’ve instructed to look into Gamu’s case again – and then again, until he has fully exercised his incisive and expensive brain – and the other . . . Well, the other I have in reserve.
Dadaab. The very name of it flops in a dollop of misery. If you’re looking for venal despair, here it is. They’ve built a city on it! Dadaab exists, and it should not. To return there would be a madness.
Yet. How do these things stop? At what point do you define a story, craft the frame and glass it in? State with a triumphant flourish: it is done? Where do the ends fall when you snip them off? I don’t think Dadaab will ever be done, I think it is a mouth of infinite need. And even if it were possible to sate it, another mouth will open, demanding to be shovelled full. You can keep on staring at the blue-blank sky, or out your window, or at your navel if you prefer. Dadaab will grind on regardless.
I still have my press pass, and my previous letter of permission. It’s the Republic of Kenya that grants you passage. Their online form is relatively simple; I must state my name, my nationality, my organisation and my purpose. This is key; I must prove how my presence will benefit refugees. The website informs me, sternly: Using the camps as tourist sanctuaries is highly discouraged. I tell the same untruths as last time: I am a freelance journalist, I am continuing my story about the water project. I compound this lie by scanning my previous permissions, and Rose’s official letter of endorsement. I’ve not told Rose I want to go back – I think she’d have me sectioned. She’s in Sudan at the moment, sending me cheery postcards from the edge.
Duplicitously, I attach both documents to the form. I wait ten days, ten days in which I have no contact with Abdi. I am in purdah. I am simmering but inert. Only a dull compulsion driving me on. Most of the time, I stay indoors. It’s Yuletide: there are cards to be written, parcels to be wrapped. I keep busy with distractions. Random interactions and occurrences: I know that’s all there is. But we persist in weaving narratives. It might be God, or Fate or Karma. Astrology, or aphorisms. For the realistic amongst us, the tugging thread might be nothing more than a blind imperative to get up each day and keep breathing.
On the eleventh day, a letter arrives. I read, reread. Request is a continuation of an earlier project. Permission granted. My heart ignites. I book my flights to Nairobi. Christmas, last minute; the tickets are extortionate. I could have given that money to Abdi. Or donated it to Oxfam. Guilt-ridden – and very possibly insane – I write a cheque for nearly a grand but do not post it. I prop it on my mantelpiece. If I get her . . . if I get her. I make a deal with Abdi’s God. If I get her, I’ll post the cheque. How’s that?
The flight from London to Nairobi lasts nine hours. I read a nice fat airport book where the words dance and I must keep respooling to get the gist of it. I never do. I’m exhausted, too tired to battle through the teeming airport, hunt for my bag, find a way out. I knew when I left, the aid flights to Dadaab were full: I have the option of paying around three hundred dollars for a dodgy cab, or taking the local bus, which works out at twelve dollars, and – I reckon – has the advantage of safety in numbers. It’s cramped, hot, noisy, but I do sleep, a little, once we’ve negotiated Nairobi’s bubble of bodies and beasts and traffic chaos; my money in a pouch beneath my bum, my bag embraced tightly on my lap. We jolt and rumble onwards. My stomach shrinks as the landscape expands. Bleak yawns and dry earth dirt. Two white men behind me speak in French for almost the entire eight hours, but I find the softness comforting.
Forever onwards on our flat, sandy track. No journey of discovery this time. Under limitless skies, I feel claustrophobic. Sweat slicks in little tongues; on my brow, my neck, my joints, my groin. Goes crisp in my armpits. I’m so stiff. Press my forehead on the seat in front. Retract at the ripe smell lifting from it. Doze and read and stare and listen and do not think beyond the forward, forward, forward until.
Again, it rises.
Dadaab.
On our approach, the vast stretches of tents and makeshift shelters seem even wider than before. In only one month, this virus has spread. It is definitely bigger, even messier than I remember. At the periphery reams and reams of bright barbed wire form higher fencing, newer pens. And in these pens, as we get closer, I see people. Quiet and undemanding, their natural elegance grotesqued to skeleton and skin. They wear brightly coloured wristbands; I have a horror they’re somehow condemned. That happened in Ethiopia, I remember it on the news. How nurses had to choose who were still worth saving. Snip-snip-snip. I turn round in my seat, to face the Frenchmen.
‘Qu’est-ce que c’est?’ I ask, touching my wrist.
‘Comment?’
I brandish my wrist again. ‘Les . . . band thingies? Pour quoi?’
‘Ah. Ils sont en raison de la famine. Pour des rations de secours? Um . . . to permit emergency ration?’
‘Ah. Oui. Merci.’
We arrive on a cloud of dust. My press credentials allow me to book an escort in the camp.
Tomorrow?
No. Today. Can you ask for Mo, please? I get an expansive shrug. I get my stamp, go in, get my towels and sheets. Jangly nerves and vicious coffee. I sip, drum my fingers. Refuse to be overwhelmed. My escort duly arrives, and is a surly, skinny man with a red neckerchief and a missing tooth.
‘Where’s Mo?’ I ask.
‘Huh?’
‘Mo? Mohammed? The policeman. You know him? Big . . .’ I blow my cheeks out. ‘Big heavy guy.’
He picks at his ear.
‘I would really like to see him. Is it possible for Mohammed to escort me, please?’
‘He busy.’
I offer the man ten dollars. ‘Please?’
The money evaporates. My escort beholds me blankly. I try another ten, then another.
‘I go see.’
Two hours later, when I’ve given up hope of having any escort at all, Mo appears. He’s wearing his khaki uniform trousers and his gun, but with a flapping grey T-shirt on top.
‘Huh. Is you.’
‘Mo! Yes, it’s me. Oh, I’m so glad to see you.’
He rolls his eyes. ‘What is you want, Missus Deb?’
I ask him to take me back to where Mariam lives, pretend it is a follow-up. ‘Is she well? Have you seen her?’
‘No.’
We travel in almost-silence, past the hooped white tents and matchwood shacks, the sofas made of mud. Past the tyres and scrap, the miles and miles of chickenwire, the shuffling dense mass going nowhere but round in circles. It’s more starkly awful than before. Greasy, infernal heat shimmers over man and beast, me on tour with my big white face. I feel as if I have flu.
Finally, the jeep stops.
‘You know which house?’
Mo nods. ‘Not house. She at the school.’
‘What school? I thought you hadn’t seen her again?’
‘You come.’
&
nbsp; Hat on, sunglasses on, scarf on the back of my neck, I follow him towards the clearing, that same one from before with the stunted tree. But something’s different. I can hear children’s voices, the familiar chant of rote learning. I can see a structure where there used to be a wall. Quicken my pace towards the sound. There are three white walls, an open awning. I remove my glasses. Discs of flattened oil drums painted red and green pock the lower part of the walls. They look like happy shields. Under the awning, a teacher addresses her class. Mariam.
‘Oh my God.’ I grab Mo’s elbow. ‘She fixed the school!’
‘Yeah, but they no have money to keep it going. One year, two year, then – phu.’ He snaps his fingers. ‘You kind OK, Missus Deb. But stupid.’
‘Mizz Deb!’ Mariam cries, hurrying out. ‘You come back!’
We hug, the children giggling. None of them leave their schoolroom, just extend their necks to see, and chatter in their place.
‘Oh, I am so very happy to see you. You like?’
‘It’s amazing.’
‘Is you gold, Mizz Deb.’
‘But I wanted you . . . I thought you’d use it for a better house. Or maybe buy your way out of here.’
‘Go where?’
‘Home?’
‘Who I go with?’ She pats my hand. ‘Whena fighting stops, I go home. For now, I gota children.’
Heat wiping me, sky live with flies. I hug her again, feel the bones of her. She is thin and strong. Then we stop, are holding hands. I beam, forgetting why I’m here.
‘I better go back’m . . .’
‘Oh, yes. Of course. They are very well-behaved.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Mariam. Before you go. Please. I wanted to ask one thing. When we talked about Azira, you said she went in the river. What happened after? Did someone find her? Was she buried?’
‘Uh . . . no. Tana take her.’
‘You mean her body was never recovered? But someone saw her jump in?’
‘Yes’m. Two peoples saw her. You want talk to them?’
‘No, no. It’s OK. Thank you, Mariam. Thank you so much.’
‘OK.’ She nods, clasps my hand for a final time. ‘Hey . . . you want say hello?’
‘Och no, I don’t think so.’
But Mariam is off. Mo and I follow. She speaks rapidly to her pupils, who all clap like crazy.
‘What did you just say?’
She grins. ‘I tell’m this you school. Because you.’ Mariam takes her place before the blackboard, scratches on it with flinty chalk.
DEB SCHOOL
‘No. Oh, no, no it isn’t. Please.’ I shake my head. On white plaster, the painted oil drums gleam. Each child’s white shirt, blue top, green dress is a bright thirsty fire. The colours pooling, the children clapping. Even Mo is smiling. I wave, blow kisses. Try not to feel like the Queen. No body was found. I clasp my positive negative, hard. Feel the solid press of it.
We return to the truck, Mo waddling, me waving, not looking where I’m going until I realise I’ve bypassed him altogether. Mo has stopped by a circle of low bush-huts. Their threadbare straw is clumsy, the struts which hold them gaping. He lifts one fat hand. ‘You wait. Bad smell.’
‘Bad smell? Mo, this place is absolutely stinking.’ I wind my scarf higher, so my nose is buried. ‘See? Don’t worry, I’m used to it.’
‘No. Not stink. Is dead-smell.’
‘What?’
We’re out of sight of the school, and in five seconds I will be hugely grateful for that, but for now I watch, stupidly, as Mo sniffs, shuffles, sniffs, then dips. It is all over very quickly; I barely see a thing. Just a roof of straw, and him, yanking at the straw, sheaves of it torn out and a tiny arm and a part-furled fist. Tiny. Mo bundles it up and a woman emerges, launches herself, wrestling with Mo and the tiny corpse. Everywhere is shouting, Mo bawling, the young woman bawling, a tired old man crawling from an adjoining hut. He is whickering. The woman weeping. Mo shouting some more; he speaks into his radio, the bulk of his shoulder blocking the woman from reaching the dead child. I can’t look. I can’t inhale, the smell is too thick. I take myself away to a pile of plastic containers. Sit on them and pull my scarf all over my nose and mouth. Another van arrives, two more police. They remove the woman and the baby. Mo addresses the old man, I think Mo’s going to shove him in his feeble chest, but he doesn’t. Eventually, he lumbers over to me.
‘You go back now.’ It’s not a question.
‘What happened? What happened to that wee baby?’
‘Is not baby. Two, maybe three. It die, what happened.’
‘Did she kill it?’
He snorts. ‘No.’
‘Then why . . . ?’
‘She hide him. So she keep getting his rations.’
Deep blue dusk is settling when we finally leave, falling in a cloak which Dadaab gratefully receives. Mo and I drive in silence, faint smells clinging and drifting between us. The gap between day and night comes like snow here. Sharp barbs become undulations. The plastic fluttering is blossom on trees. It will pitch rapidly, though, to absolute dark, the thick lightless panic of nature versus man, of bad versus good. You would be mad to be in Dadaab in the dark. The tip of Mo’s cigarette glows in the windscreen. All the edges of my nails are stinging. I take my hand from my mouth.
‘Hey. No cry, Missus Deb. Is not your fault.’
‘Mo. What if I set up a fund? So money could come here regularly for the school. Would that work?’
‘Why you ask me?’
‘Because you, my friend, are a fat wise man.’
‘And youa very rude.’
My rudeness is his Achilles’ heel, because he starts to chat a wee bit as we trundle through the dusk. He has two sons and two daughters and his father was a policeman too. At every gap in the conversation I hesitate. Will I say it now, will I say it now? Does it matter any more? Is it safe? We are alone in a growing blackness which chases us in waves. He could shoot me, dump me . . . anything. One wrong move . . . and I am now in a cowboy film. I hear Rose, feck-saking me. Carpe diem, you silly cow. Mo scratches his abundant thigh. In another police truck, a little body rolls in a blanket.
‘Mo,’ I say when we’re in sight of the UN compound. ‘Can you stop the car? I’d like you to look at something.’
‘No got time. Am day off, you know.’
‘Please.’
He tuts loudly and slows the vehicle, pulling in by the side of a feeding station. Keeps the engine running.
‘What?’
I bring out the picture of Azira. I won’t show it to him yet.
‘You know how we were asking Mariam about Azira?’
‘I no listen when women yi-yi-yi.’ He snaps his hand like a jaw.
‘Aye you do. You listen to everything. I am trying to find this woman, Mo. And I think I saw her, last time I was here. D’you know where I think I saw her?’
He lights another cigarette.
‘In the police station. In your compound, Mo.’
‘S’no my compound. I don’ live there. Work there, yes.’
‘But people do live there, don’t they? I mean, I saw a garden, other buildings.’
He removes a shred of tobacco from his tongue. ‘Some does. The men. The corporal stay sometime, and inspector when he come.’
‘And women?’
A dry laugh. ‘They keep some animal there.’
‘The women do?’
‘They not women. They dhilo.’
He means the women are the animals, I think. My nails press sickle-shapes into my knees. Azira’s face shines from the glossy paper on which she is printed; the swing of her hair, how her mouth folds and opens. How she demands attention. When Mo looks at her, he’ll . . . And then I remember he already has looked at her, and if not her, then hundreds and thousands of other Aziras, reduced to livestock and kept satisfactorily remote. What if it was his wife? I lift her up, flat on my palm.
‘Could you look at this photo, Mo? Tell me if you kn
ow her.’
Eyes barely skim the paper. Look at her. She is my last gasp and I am hers.
‘Don’ know.’
‘Mo, please. I’m begging you.’ I put it on his lap. ‘This is someone’s wife. Someone’s mother. Hooyo? Please, she has a little girl. Please let her go home.’
He looks for a long time, until his cigarette has burned to nothing. Ash crumbles, falls and the tiny breathing light extinguishes. Night has finally caught us fully, so I can only see his outline. Smell the desert, our breaths twining with residual curls of smoke. A bird screeches, there is a tumbling clang of metal buckets. People shout inside the compound. I want to be inside the inhabited warmth. Close myself in and tuck it all around me.
Mo’s disembodied voice comes slowly. ‘I no know her, Missus Deb. I sorry.’
Wife, mum, victim. Dhilo.
Wife, mum, killer, widow. Victim.
Victim.
You could rearrange labels all night when you can’t sleep, you’ve nae pals, there’s no electricity and all your lovely magic medications are at home or in the bin.
Economist, husband, disabled, dead.
Fisherman, husband, father. Refugee.
Now, isn’t that interesting? When I write them down: it’s only the men who get their professions first. You can extend the game by cutting up the paper to make actual labels. Rearrange them, shuffling them in a deck, deal them out in random allocations. Luckily for me, I get bored with this quite quickly, go wandering to find a drink of water (the stuff in the washroom tap is a funny brown). Meet a lovely girl in the desolate canteen.
When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, I wanted to die. Not one shred of brave fighting spirit. Just a terror of decay, the imperfection, the corrosion of my body. My body. How could it do that to me? The hormones that had struggled to make a baby could whip up a tumour with ease. Better to die intact than have bits lopped off. Then, when I finally succumbed and had a bit lopped off, I came home to a husband who unbound me, kissed me. Told me he’d always been a cup-half-full man.
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