Harmattan (3 page)

Katie and Hope Boyd
Member No. 515820
Ballygowrie
Co. Down
N. Ireland
BT22 1AW

Dear Katie and Hope Boyd,

I have received happily your new letter with the little gifts and photos (ten coloured pencils, two notebooks, four pencils, twenty-five balloons, two erasers, a pen, three pencil sharpeners, some candies, three photos, three postcards of your country). For these gifts thank you.

My father is working and my mother is working. Soon we will see my brother. I am fetching water. I have a friend called Miriam (also eleven years old). We like to play in groups. My father and mother wish you God’s blessing. Also to your father and mother we wish you God’s blessing. Peace be with you.

I am liking school very much. My teacher Monsieur Boubacar shows me where is your country. I am liking the photos and the postcards. It’s my supervisor Richard Houeto who helps me with writing to you.

Lovely,

From Haoua

***

It was early September. The sun continued to beat down relentlessly and the air was humid and alive with mosquitoes at dusk and dawn. The rains had been good and the hard, baked ground around Wadata was covered in a thin fuzz of greenery. There was a feeling of well-being in the village but, not long before Abdelkrim returned home, a fierce and unexpected
harmattan
blew in from the north, whipping up the desert and coating everything in a thick blanket of red dust. Darkness enveloped Wadata. The storm lasted three days, during which time it was difficult even to venture outside. Tempers flared in our little house. Meals consisted mostly of dried dates and
boule
without sugar. On the afternoon of the first day, my father abandoned his basket-making, wrapped his
cheche
around his head and made himself scarce, leaving my mother to cope with the problem of how to keep Adamou, Fatima and me from squabbling. While the wind howled and beat our wattle fences flat and the sand worried and bombarded our walls and stripped away what little hardpan topsoil there had been to nurture our crops, she sang to us and proudly told us stories about Abdelkrim’s childhood. She made plans to make a hard, goat dung floor. She told us about her visits to Niamey, of my grandmother, Bunchie, of her hopes for all of us. I missed school desperately and, when I wasn’t helping Mother to prepare food or repair clothing, spent most of my time reading to Fatima and writing to Katie and Hope. It was a great relief to everyone in Wadata when, finally, the battering ceased and a strange silence filled the air. I eagerly bundled my books together and skipped most of the way to school, across unmarked sands. I could not wait to hand my letter over to Richard. I had also made a little drawing of our chickens for Katie and Hope because Hope had written that their father also kept some animals.

Later that day, when I returned from school, I was surprised to see what appeared to be a civilian truck parked near our compound. Very few vehicles passed through Wadata. Aid workers visited, of course, and, very occasionally, a bush taxi or a party of lost
anasaras
would turn up on the outskirts of the village. Yet any vehicle that did make it here was still an object of wonder. Even the trans-Saharan
camions
would not venture this far off-piste, so that anyone returning to Wadata, having already endured a long, arduous journey onboard one of these massive, over-laden trucks, still faced a three hour walk after drop-off.

Although we had been expecting Abdelkrim, we had not known exactly when he might arrive, and it did not occur to me that the figure sitting on the bonnet of the white Land Rover might be my brother. When I drew nearer I could see that he was dressed in army fatigues and a maroon coloured beret. He wore expensive looking sunglasses. A cigarette hung from his lip. Another soldier, somewhat older and scruffier, stood beside the vehicle, talking to my father, who pointed towards me as I approached.

‘Aiee! It’s the scholar,’ my father said.

The soldier on the bonnet inhaled deeply on his cigarette, then tossed it into the dust. ‘
Fofo!
Look at you, Little One,’ he said. ‘How you’ve grown!’ He jumped nimbly down from the vehicle and removed his sunglasses.

‘Abdelkrim?
Mate fu
?’ I said, uncertainly. The handsome, athletic looking young man standing before me bore little resemblance to the gangly youth I’d last seen some four years earlier.

Abdelkrim grinned and held out his arms. ‘
Bani samay walla.’
When his lips parted in that cheeky, lop-sided way, I knew that this was, truly, my brother. Pressed close to him, I found his garments and military accessories alien, their scents unfamiliar, and yet somehow I felt safe in his arms. It was a feeling I had also experienced when Bunchie used to rock me, singing, ‘Haoua-Haoua-Haoua, HaouaHaoua-Hoo,’ over and over again, until sleep took me. My father often teased me with my gentle grandmother’s lilt but, although he was not always a cold-hearted man, I had no memory of him holding me like my brother did now: Abdelkrim held me like he knew not to let go until I’d had enough. The only other person who could make me feel that way was my mother.

We went into the compound where my mother was talking excitedly to another of Abdelkrim’s comrades. Fatima clung to Mother’s
pagne
, clearly using her as a shield.‘Haoua,’ my mother said, tapping the soldier’s forearm lightly, ‘this is Sergeant Bouleb.’

I nodded, a little shyly. Sergeant Bouleb was a massive man: taller even than Abdelkrim, with broad, square shoulders and piercing eyes. His cheeks were marked with small, regular scars and, when he smiled, his teeth seemed even more perfect than Sushie’s. He transferred a fat cigar from his right to his left hand, before greeting me with a little wave.

‘
Foyaney.
Ça va, Haoua?’ His accent was not local; his voice deep, almost musical but slightly intimidating. Scarification was not something we saw often in these parts, but I guessed that he was
Hausa
nevertheless. I could not stop myself from staring at the gold ring on his finger; valuable, unclean, forbidden. Towering above the slight figures of my mother and sister, he looked odd here in the bush; like he did not belong here, like someone who had never before left the city perhaps – like a hippo who has strayed too far from the river.

‘Abdelkrim’s friends will eat with your father,’ my mother said. ‘Fetch some wood now, while I make some tea for the sergeant. That’s a good girl.’

I could tell that she was nervous and keen to impress my brother’s superior.

I had just gone a few yards when I met Adamou, coming back towards the compound with a freshly slaughtered chicken. He flapped his elbows and made a silly squawking sound in the back of his throat, then held the bird up by its legs and shook it, dripping, close to my face.

‘We’re having chicken!’ he exclaimed. A slick of blood on the bridge of his sandaled foot was peppered with dust.

‘I know,’ I said, dodging past him. Meat of any kind was for special occasions only. I followed the trail of blood spots back out to the little animal enclosure my father had made, and gathered up some twigs and branches under the watchful eyes of our few scraggy sheep and goats.

I had not realised that I had missed Abdelkrim quite so much until I began to think of him leaving again. Fatima had been too young to remember our brother when he had left to join the army but, as I watched her watching him that evening, I could tell that she had already begun to feel a strong family bond towards him. Adamou, too, was clearly pleased to have Abdelkrim home. He took great delight in showing off his soccer and wrestling skills to our big brother, and to Mohammed – the soldier who had been talking to my father earlier that day.

As we served the men their supper, Sergeant Bouleb told us that he had had to ‘pull some strings’ in order to be able to visit Wadata; our village was something of a detour from the route to Tera. The vehicle in which the soldiers were travelling had been specially built and imported via the Togolese port of Lome for the use of the Presidential Guard. It was to be taken to the military base for ‘specialisation’ and its paint job. He described his experience of sheltering in the Land Rover with two other grown men during the sand storm in such precise detail that I could almost smell their bodies and feet. His strange, clipped pronunciation of our language mesmerised me and I listened, fascinated, as he told us how, at the age of seven, his parents had sold him as a slave. He had been taken to Sierra Leone and worked in the diamond mines. Then he served as a child soldier. He eventually converted to Christianity and, many years later, returned to Niger to live with his uncle, finding happiness in the form of both the army and what he called ‘a modern approach to spiritual life.’ It was impossible for me to imagine such hardship.

I was about to join my mother and sister so that we too might eat, when my father called me back to his guests. ‘Be sure to drink plenty of goat’s milk, Haoua,’ he said, hooking a ball of rice and meat from the dish. He smiled, slyly, at Sergeant Bouleb. ‘We must fatten this girl up!’

We ate quickly, leaving the dishes to steep in a basin, so that we could rejoin the men without further ado. Abdelkrim amused us with his story of the soldiers’ ferry crossing that morning. It seemed that they had arrived at Bac Farie around mid morning and had had to bide their time for an hour or so before the ferry arrived back at shore. A huge, African-American woman – a C.A.R.E. worker, my brother thought – was also waiting with a small party of colleagues and another vehicle.

‘She was very loud; very irritating,’ Abdelkrim said. ‘She kept yakking on and on – I think she had an eye for Mohammed here!’

‘Aiee! It was you she was after, you fool!’ Mohammed pushed Abdelkrim, playfully.

‘Walayi!
Not me, my friend. Although why any woman would pursue a Peulh farmer like you is beyond me. She’d have been better going for Bouleb here.’

Abdelkrim nodded towards the sergeant, ‘At least he has some money!’

Sergeant Bouleb said nothing. Instead, he shrugged and held out his huge, clean palms towards my mother, as if to say, ‘And why not?’

My mother rocked forward, grinning, and slapped her thigh.

‘There was an incredibly tall, thin
mulatto
with them,’ Abdelkrim continued, ‘I think he’s something to do with the clinic at Goteye. He had a camera with him, and the old girl kept plaguing him to take pictures of us.’

‘It was my uniform she liked!’ Mohammed said.

We all laughed. Mohammed’s uniform was identical to Abdelkrim’s, yet somehow it seemed to hang on him like a
jellaba
.

‘Of course photographing military personnel is not legal,’ Sergeant Bouleb reminded us, ‘but this was no ordinary camera, my friends…’

‘No, indeed!’ Abdelkrim interrupted. He drew a small, almost square picture from his jerkin pocket. ‘Look, Mother,’ he said, handing it to her.

‘I told the American woman and her friend that I would turn a blind eye,’ the sergeant continued, ‘on the understanding that she gave each of us one of these instant photographs.’

Mohammed and Bouleb passed their own images around our gathering also. All of the pictures were quite similar: the three soldiers were on the ferry, standing proudly and sternly beside their Land Rover.

‘She kept telling us to smile,’ Abdelkrim said.

When my father had looked, briefly, at Abdelkrim’s photograph, he handed it back to my brother, without a word.

Abdelkrim passed it to Mother again. ‘It’s for you,’ he said.

‘
Toh
,’ my mother said, nodding. ‘Thank you.’

Then Mohammed intrigued us with his account of sharing an evening with a group of nomads –
Wodaabe
, who were slowly making their way to Ingal, near Agadez for their
Gerewol
at the festival of
Cure Salee –
a celebration of the fattening of the cattle after the summer migration. Their Fulani traditions, beliefs and rituals are so very different to ours and Mohammed’s descriptions of their elegance, finery and wide-eyed dancing were so vivid that, when sleep took me later that night, I dreamed of a vibrant city, alive with laughter, music and colour, and awoke the next morning feeling as if, somehow, I had really been there.

As we sat around our dying cooking fire that evening, listening to the soldiers’ stories and jokes, it became clear to all of us that Abdelkrim was as popular away from home as he always had been here in Wadata. The sky was clear, the moon a mere sliver, so that the stars glittered like the gemstones I’d seen in Mademoiselle Sushie’s magazines. Fireflies danced around thin plumes of smoke rising lazily from the fading embers and broken-hearted cicadas sang like an invisible
Samaria
troop. I looked around the compound at my family and friends and suddenly everything seemed close to perfect. I felt safe and warm and thankful.
Mother is right
, I thought:
God has smiled upon us
.

At last, Sergeant Bouleb and Mohammed thanked my father for his hospitality.

They would not, they said, join us to watch television but would instead retire early to their Land Rover, as they needed to be underway before first light. They wished us goodnight and, taking a plastic kettle filled with water for their ablutions, disappeared into the darkness to pray.

Abdelkrim remained seated and took a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.‘Aren’t you going to pray with your comrades?’ my father enquired.

Abdelkrim lit a cigarette and shook his head. ‘You go, Father,’ he said, through a cloud of blue smoke.

My father sucked his teeth, then followed our guests. Through the darkness, I could hear him spitting. When he had gone, Abdelkrim rummaged through his kitbag and presented all of us with gifts: candies and delicious guavas for we three children; a beautiful Agadez Cross on a black leather string for my mother; and a yellow, nylon toothbrush for my father. Abdelkrim handed the cardboard package to Mother. ‘It’s from the French
supermarché
in Niamey – very expensive!’ he explained.