Into Thick Air

by Jim Malusa

  “Yes, in the past the people were very reluctant to come under colonial power. They thought that the people coming from the outside were going to destroy their way of life. After all, they came with their armies.”

  With this news I understand Nesbitt’s dilemma as a man who failed to see that the Afar were brutal in response to his own brutality. He could not have imagined an evening like this, when Hemeda begins singing a beautiful ditty, with eyes closed and head rocking. Kamil keeps time, slapping a box of Royals cigarettes. Meanwhile, we destroy an entire bush. The floor is littered with naked stems. Hemeda finishes her song and Hatke inserts another cassette. The tape deck wails, Something’s burning. . . . And I think it’s love.

  It’s the sheesha and the Royals. When the smokes run out the bucket goes over the side. Hatke orders the exact number of cigarettes he desires, seven. They arrive at the window in a clever origami folded from a Singapore newspaper. Another call to prayer wafts in through the same window.

  More visitors: a woman, also named Hemeda, with the two-year-old nephew of Hatke, also named Hatke. The young dumpling finds and organizes a checker game into piles of red and black pieces.

  “A problem in Djibouti,” says Hatke, “is our failure to recognize the intelligence of small children and to help develop it.” A minute later, while nobody’s looking, mini-Hatke tries a suck on the sheesha. Although my glasses are streaked with sweat, nice-ankle Hemeda dramatically shivers and turns off the fan. Out of the blue, Kamil says, “I want a Harley-Davidson. How much do they cost?”

  I say, I don’t know—maybe $5,000?

  “No chance.” He pulls out his special bundle. “Try this. It’s the bourbon of khat. The best. Look: you can tell by the color of the leaves.”

  We chew and mentally ruminate until somebody pops in and steals Kamil away. Hatke explains, “They need him at the hospital, for a blood glucose test. No matter where he is, they find him.”

  Nice-ankle Hemeda and I share a cushion as an armrest. She flips through a National Geographic—Romania, Greenland, Mummies—then stops at an advertisement and pantomimes to me, What is this?

  It’s a woman with her arm around her bashful yet beaming husband. The copy reads, “I’m proud of him because he asked about Viagra.”

  Hemeda smiles. I helplessly smile back and notice for the first time she has a lazy eye askew. It’s attractive in its suggestion that parts of Hemeda are beyond her control, but a distraction, too, when I need to explain an erection drug with my Afar vocabulary of water, please, and thank you. I consider using my bicycle tire pump as a visual aid, but instead seek the help of Hatke. He explains. Hemeda titters and flips the page and tries another picture on me. “Amphibian Frenzy,” it says. “Sex in the Mud.”

  I divert her attention to the toddler, who’s disassembling the fan with a screwdriver. She alerts Hatke, who gently disarms the boy.

  An hour passes. Maybe two.

  Perhaps, says Hatke, it’s time for a stroll.

  It’s 1 AM, and every door and shutter in Tadjoura is open to the gulf breeze. The men are slapping dominoes at coffee shops and the women are still at their khat tables. Ramadan is not the ritual suffering I’d imagined.

  HEAVYWEIGHT CLOUDS subdue the morning sun. In the distance, a mist washes over the mountains; in the apartment, Hemeda washes my pants in a basin. I won’t venture out wearing shorts, so Hatke gives me a skirt. The futah is breezy, better than pants, but I still feel like a Chinese in a cowboy hat when I slink out for a coffee.

  I shouldn’t have worried. Although it’s 10 AM, the beach is littered with dozens of people still curled in sleep, under blankets and blessed by the overcast morning. Along the waterfront, every door and shutter is closed. The empty lanes are etched with hopscotch lines. No coffee.

  Back at Hatke’s, Ali is waiting to take me diving, but first we visit Kamil at the hospital. It’s a clinic, really, just three small white buildings around a planter of periwinkle. Kamil’s delighted to show off his centrifuge, refrigerator, microscope, and illustrated volume of unpleasant microbes.

  “In Tadjoura,” he says with understandable if misplaced enthusiasm, “we have everything!” By way of proof, he puts a stained slide on his scope.

  “Look at this—woo! The red is cocci bacteria. Tuberculosis. Two people died in the last year. It is problem in Tadjoura.”

  That’s not the only problem—there’s equipment for other diseases, like the brucellosis of unpasteurized goat’s milk, “but we have not the chemicals to run the machine.” It sits under a dusty shroud, waiting for what may or may not come.

  But Djibouti is a country of waiting. A fiberglass fishing skiff takes us to Sables Blancs, smack-smack on the waves and into a wind that has blown away most of the clouds. Lacking a diving mask, Ali plans to sit under a palm and wait for somebody better equipped to come by. I’ve packed a lunch, but cannot bear to eat it while Ali fasts. I silently decide that I, too, will fast. Together we wait while the sea rocks over the shadow of the reef I may or may not see. The quick clouds are very white. Nearly three hours later, a French family shows up and loans me a mask. Under the waves, big-lipped polka-dotted sea bass are waiting for me.

  Shortly after our return to Tadjoura, a boat faster than ours skims into the harbor. It’s 5:30 PM, and the citizens are not merely awake but surging toward the pier. They’re women trotting out to take delivery of the khat, which apparently arrives later during Ramadan. The sedate ladies begin baying like a pack of hounds as the thirty sacks are tossed one at a time. No money is exchanged; they know who and how much. The women hustle back to their street corners, divide it among their sellers, and the rest takes care of itself.

  No khat for me. Yet. I wander in my futah and made-in-China flip-flops I bought to complete my unconvincing metamorphosis. Near a waterfront mosque, a circle of men young and old sit around a blanket heaped with samboussas, flatbread, and empty cups. They’re yakking like woodpeckers, waiting for the chant that will break their fast. For once I share their hunger, their waiting, which really isn’t so different from pedaling all day with the promise of a heavenly camp in the evening.

  It comes: God is great. The men immediately offer me a place at their sidewalk feast with a sweep of the arm that means, “What is ours, is yours.” I’m dealt a sizable mound of food and served an orange drink that only later will I see is poured from an old oil jug.

  The meal is a quickie, to be resumed after prayers. They rise and invite me to join them. As soon as I’m through the door my awkwardness reveals me as a non-Muslim, but instead of booting me they assign me a helper. With sign language he says: Shoes off here. Spigots for washing here. He holds up a single finger: First, wash the hands. Then the face. The arms. Ears, neck, mouth. While finishing up with my feet and calves, my futah slips up and is gently tugged back down with a finger-wag meaning: no bare knees, please.

  The mosque is little more than fluorescent bulbs and ceiling fans, a wall niche indicating the direction of Mecca, and floor tiles that show where your feet go. I stand and mimic my neighbors. Arms crossed, then arms out with palms up. Drop to the knees. Then the ultimate submission: forehead to the floor. Three repetitions of this, and I give clumsy thanks not to God but to the Afar. For their kindness. With equal sincerity I pray that my futah doesn’t fall off.

  Out on the beach, the long night begins. Goats scratch their flanks against the moonlit palms. While the cats fight over the fish skeletons overflowing a dumpster, the ladies briskly bring in the cash and the men just as quickly spend it on teeny coffees and khat.

  Back at Hatke’s, I’m startled that he already knows of my visit to the mosque.

  “Tomorrow, everyone will know. There are very few Americans that visit Tadjoura.”

  And, I add, very few Afar that visit the United States.

  “I’m afraid to go to America. It seems to be a violent place. We know few American people, but many American things. Movies, videos. Even the smallest child in Tadjoura has seen the Titanic
.”

  I say nothing.

  “And 100 percent of the girls become romantic after this movie.”

  We’re chewing the khat, naturally. I believe tonight’s high-grade leaf is known as “truck-driver.” I waited for the now-familiar tickle of cathinone, as welcome as sleigh bells approaching on Christmas Eve.

  Ali comes by, plops down, and unwraps his khat. Hemeda and another Ali join us. Then another Ali. Hatke confesses that his name, too, is Ali. He’s called Hatke to avoid confusion. I sense another long night, and excuse myself to shower off the day’s salt. Ali number three holds up his hand: Stop. There are things you must know.

  First, don’t take a shower while chewing khat. The sudden change in skin temperature can cause a heart attack.

  Also, don’t exercise during a khat chew. Relax.

  Finally, never leave home with a mouth full of khat—you may catch a cold.

  Is there, I wonder, a bad time to chew khat?

  The answer: No, there is no bad time. Further, don’t try to kick the habit. You’ ll feel miserable.

  This accords with the World Health Organization, which says that the primary danger of khat is psychological dependence—which is to say the same danger as one hundred channels of television. Some go crazy.

  But, says Hatke, “These are our rules. Everybody has different rules. I’ve chewed in a mabraze, a special room just for khat. Sometimes people in a mabraze all fall silent after one hour. Some begin ambitious projects in their minds, projects they’ll never finish, and usually never begin. Others simply try to make toy houses out of the khat stems.”

  We fall silent. Hatke casts the empty bucket over the balcony, then reels in another keeper: Cokes and smokes.

  We talk of my plans to pedal to Dittalou tomorrow. “God willing,” is their earnest hope. I used to believe they said as much merely as reflex. But now I’ve the feeling they truly believe that tomorrow is a distant and unsure future, and that everything from the miraculous appearance of a diving mask to your eternal resting place is the will of God.

  Except for Hatke. He’s been tainted by nearly a decade in France, where things happen because people are willing to make them happen. Tonight he moans of the utter hopelessness of getting his flat fixed up during Ramadan. I ask him why he ever left Europe.

  “In France the black man is not welcome. A French wife doesn’t change this. You feel it. You are always referred to as an African. But when my wife visited Tadjoura she was welcomed into the community. She felt at home, so it was decided to make our lives here.”

  Another cat fight starts up in the alley. Ali number one, inspired by the imminent arrival of Hatke’s family, is drilling a hole for a stairwell gate meant to keep the goats out of the building.

  Hatke admits that life in Tadjoura for his wife will take some getting used to. “As an Afar, you are not an individual but a member of a tribe. Your wealth is measured in how much you help other members of your tribe.

  “One day we Afar will surely be more like Western countries. But then the question becomes: what of our identity? In the back of our minds there is an Afar nation. But simply to say this now makes me wonder: what is a nation?”

  Exactly, I’m thinking. Although this is not a mabraze, I’ve begun an ambitious project in my mind, the exact nature of which will never be known because it seems Hemeda is again making eyes at me, in her untamed way, one eye at a time.

  AS THE VULTURE FLIES, the rumpled landscape of Djibouti is only one hundred miles across. As the bicyclist rides, it seems to go on forever. It takes four and a half hours to reach Dittalou, fifteen miles and far above Tadjoura, in a dripping forest of hornbills and baboons. Along the way I dare not wander off the road. Like the man at the embassy said: land mines.

  The mines are the legacy of a smallish Djiboutian civil war only ten years past, between the Afar and Issa. Since independence from France in 1977, the Issa have run Djibouti, in part because Djibouti Town is in Issa territory. The Afar would like things otherwise. Parity within Djibouti government would be a nice start. But the “Afar nation” in the back of Hatke’s mind is much more: the unification of all million or so Afar. To do so would require Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Eritrea to give up large hunks of territory, a proposal to which their traditional response has been Drop dead.

  The Afar have yet to drop dead. Like the Kurds of Asia, they occasionally lose patience and revolt, but mostly they wait. Djibouti’s summer heat is not ideal for waiting, but the Afar can escape Tadjoura for Dittalou. Nearby is what Hatke called “water running over the surface.” It’s a creek, under big trees with flakes of bark like sycamores. Candy-red dragonflies bob and dip their tails in the water, and fat-headed tadpoles wiggle up to gobble the eggs.

  It’s getting late when I drop back into the slobbering-camel desert. I hurry past the soft humps of coastal dunes with their weirdly branching palms, stopping only once to let a stake-bed truck pass. In the back, standing tall among the jostle of goats, a man in a Titanic T-shirt yells, Peace be with you!

  Hatke is out of town but left his flat to me, for a night under the whoosh of a ceiling fan to discourage the mosquitoes. In the morning I gulp a Malarone pill and leave most of my first-aid kit as a gift for Kamil. For Hatke I leave a fat package of Ultra Lotus Baby diapers I picked up in Tadjoura, as well as a Top Ramen noodle dinner carried all the way from cosmopolitan Djibouti Town.

  That’s where the lucky ones shop, and here they come now, on the twice-weekly car ferry that moors crookedly on the pier. Off the ferry comes a rush of people carrying electric fans and baby strollers, only to meet head-on a crowd of one hundred propelled by the urgent need to bring twelve sacks of charcoal, a dozen five-gallon plastic jugs, three goats, two red volcanic boulders, and one bicycle to Djibouti Town.

  Moments after I board, the ferry inexplicably begins to pull away before the loading ramp is pulled up. Three policemen blow their chrome whistles and the people still on the ramp scream and jump, onto either the pier or the ferry.

  The Bay of Tadjoura is deep and dark; mats of root-beer-colored seaweed are pushed away by the bow. It’s time for prayer, and the passengers do their best to figure out the direction of Mecca. The water jugs come out for the ritual washing, and the prayer rugs go down.

  In an apparent effort to make up for the bumbled departure from Tadjoura, our captain relies on no fewer than three crew members on the bow to guide him to the Djibouti Town pier. Sadly, all three are yelling and pointing in conflicting directions. The captain is so far off the mark that the crewmen of an anchored cargo dhow leap off their prayer rugs, unsheathe their knives, and race to the mooring lines, ready to slice them if a collision is imminent.

  We slide by with twenty feet to spare. Twenty minutes later I’m riding through the Ramadan torpor of Djibouti Town. A rap on the door of the Djibouti Palace wakes Ahmed the clerk. Lucky me gets the key to room 9.

  I take a nap. Everybody else is.

  I wake at 4:30. Everybody else does.

  After a fish dinner at the Maskali, Nasir the cook invites me to his home. It’s five minutes away on the back of his 49cc motorbike, to a blue plywood box with a ceiling fan. He shares this spotless twelve square feet with two other men and a single copy of the Koran.

  “This window,” says Nasir, “lets in the sea breeze, so it is not so hot in the summer.”

  I wonder, did it get hot in your Somaliland home?

  “Oh, no,” says the refugee. “It is like California—very nice, all the time.”

  He changes into sharply creased slacks and a green button-up shirt, then takes me out on a night of endless introductions and questions. I don’t mind. Everybody in Djibouti has a notion of America—very nice America, violent America—but these are merely visions that float on the horizon. Djibouti makes me extra-proud to be a real walking American. My trip is so odd—What? You have come only to see Djibouti?—and the country so small that it is not an exaggeration to say that by the time I leave, most of Djibouti seems to kno
w me.

  So the hookers ignore me on my last day of cruising the European Quarter. The postcard vendor says, Hello, journalist. The barber at Coiffures Vijay doesn’t bother to demonstrate the alcohol bath for his razor.

  This familiarity sharpens the bite of leaving Djibouti. After the shave I sit in Menelik Plaza and say to myself, Be reasonable. This is no paradise. The flies are awful. The plaza is pathetic. One building has collapsed for neglect and nobody bothers to haul out the rubble. Most of the town looks as if constructed by ten-year-old boys. The refugee kids stoned me. The fruit drink poisoned me.

  I walk back to the hotel as the sky purples and the fast is broken. Checking out of the Palace, I notice that the Coca-Cola clock above the front desk is exactly as it was when I checked in, stuck on 2:37, the second hand struggling up, then falling back again and again.

  The taxi to the airport looks capable of blinding speeds, equipped with racing spoilers and air dams and scorpion decals. The driver putt-putts at 25 mph. He practices his basic English with me, and in doing so is one of the last Djiboutians to learn that I am just a tourist, not with the embassy or on business. I came to see Djibouti.

  On impulse, he makes a gift of the shiny thing that dangles from his mirror. It’s a necklace, a leather thong tied to a chrome ring crudely cut with the name of Michael Jackson. It’s the ugliest necklace I’ve ever seen, and I hold it to my heart like the Hope Diamond.

  The jet noses into the night and banks over a land without lights, apparently sleeping. I know better. It’s Ramadan, and the ventriloquist fisherman may well be working the jaws of his talking shark. The khat is surely being kept moist under wet burlap. And five hundred feet below sea level, I imagine, the flip-flop geologist is skipping stones across Lac Assal.

  NORTH AMERICA

  Not that we set out to make some

  sort of record; it was really just a

  cheap vacation that got a little

  out of hand.