Harmattan (35 page)

A sharp pain in my ribcage made me open my eyes. Even in the half light, I immediately recognised the interior of Archie Cargo’s car. I found myself on the floor, wedged behind the driver’s seat, with the remainder of the case of mineral water bottles strewn over and around me. The vehicle had come abruptly to a halt and was now sitting, nose down, at an alarming angle.

Someone was groaning in the front. ‘What the hell happened?’ Archie Cargo shouted.

I sat up just in time to see him untangle himself from my brother who was squashed against the driver’s door.

Abdelkrim shook his head and then pulled himself up to peer over the back of the seat at me. ‘Are you all right, Little One?’ There was blood trickling from a cut just above his left eye.

‘I’m fine,’ I said, rubbing my ribs.

‘Fuck it, man! What happened?’ Archie said again, dragging himself across the front seat and through the passenger’s window, before falling out on to the ruined road. ‘I don’t know!’ Abdelkrim said. ‘You tell me.’

‘I was sleeping, man. Maybe you were too?’

‘No. One minute we’re on the road, the next we’re in the ditch!’ Abdelkrim put his shoulder to his door and tried to force it open. ‘Damn these ropes!’ he hissed, groping his way through his window instead. He tumbled out and made his way towards the rear of the car, pausing to yank at my door. ‘Wait a moment,’ he reassured me, ‘we’ll have you out of there in a moment.’

Archie had already untied the second rope which had been holding my mother’s coffin to the roof, and now opened the other rear door, scooping the jumble of plastic bottles, paper wrappers, blankets and jackets out of the way. ‘Give me your hand, Haoua,’ he said.

I reached out and he pulled me up and out on to the sand.

Abdelkrim staggered out of the ditch and lay down on the ground, a few metres away from where I stood.

‘You’re hurt, Abdel,’ I said, scrambling towards him.

‘It’s nothing!’ he snapped.

Behind us, one corner of the rear end of the car protruded over the ditch.

Archie had scrambled down and was inspecting the front for damage. A torrent of foul language told us that all was not well.

Abdelkrim sat up and steadied himself. ‘What is it?’ he called.

‘
Merde
!’ We heard the clank of metal being slapped or kicked, then Archie appeared before us. He took a deep breath. ‘Are you both okay?’ he said, but did not wait for us to answer. ‘Looks like we’ve had a blow-out. Driver’s side, front tyre.

Torn to shreds.’

‘You have a spare?’ Abdelkrim said, daubing at his forehead with a scrap of cloth. ‘Of sorts.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that your military comrades helped themselves to it the last time I made a trip down to Benin.
Tax
they called it. Took my spare battery too – and charged me three thousand CFA! Bent bastards! Someone gave me a replacement, but I haven’t really checked it out…’

‘Uhuh.’

‘That’s not all.’

‘No?’

‘No. I don’t think we’ll shift the car by ourselves. The chasis seems well and truly wedged on the rubble. And there‘s fuel everywhere!’

‘Great!’ Abdelkrim said, standing up. ‘Well, let’s see what we can do.’ He patted my shoulder and then turned to face his friend. ‘I told you I didn’t fall asleep,’ he shrugged.

Archie put his hand on my brother’s forearm. ‘There’s something else, Abdel.’

‘
Toh.
What now?’

Archie’s face contorted. ‘It’s your mother…’

We made our way to the top of the ditch and peered down at the twisted front end of the Mercedes. At first I could not see that there was a problem of any real consequence with the coffin. It was clear that the impact of the accident had caused it to slip forward so that only one end remained on the roof of the vehicle while the other now rested on the car’s bonnet. But as we clambered down the ditch to take a closer look, it became obvious that the structure had partially disintegrated.

‘
Walayi!’
I said, as the full extent of the situation became apparent.

Archie bent down to pick up the bottom end panel of the hastily constructed box. ‘I knew it should have been glued too!’ he said, holding the square piece of timber aloft.

As if to transfer blame, Abdelkrim immediately addressed me. ‘I told you not to keep hanging off that rope!’

I only glanced at him momentarily. I was transfixed by the sight of the puckered shroud and my poor mother’s withered feet, which were now protruding from the open end of the coffin and resting on the buckled bonnet of Archie Cargo’s car.

It had not even occurred to me to offer my help. I had been too upset. Instead, I had turned my back and run away from the stricken car and the burst coffin. I had climbed to the top of an escarpment and sat watching a new dawn through tired and tearful eyes.

When I was very little, Bunchie used to tell me that each new day of life was a blessing. Much later, when death was drawing close to her, she had called for it to take her – every day for two whole weeks. As I watched the fierce new sun rent the horizon, I could not help but consider my mother’s death. I prayed that it had not been slow or painful. I could not even contemplate the fact that she had died alone.

When, eventually, I looked down at the car again, I saw that the coffin had been removed from the roof and placed by the roadside. In the hulking shadow of the slope on which I sat, my brother and Archie, tiny as ants, were busy pushing and rocking the vehicle, with no success. It seemed obvious to me that they might as well not try; the car was stuck fast. Though I was sure that my added strength would make little difference, I decided that I should at least offer to help.

I was half way down the slope when I heard the rumble of engines approaching. Instinctively I looked north – the direction in which we had been travelling – and then south, but there appeared to be no other vehicles on this stretch of the road. Not even a charred or stripped shell. As the shale fell away beneath my feet, I turned my head to the west and saw a cloud of dust moving towards us across the scrubland at considerable speed.

By the time I reached the base of the outcrop, three military Land Cruisers had already pulled up near Archie’s car.

Each was brimful of gun-toting men clad in
cheches
and tattered combinations of civilian and military clothing. All of them sported dark glasses, and cigarettes hung from most of their lips. They jeered and whistled as they spilled from the back of the Land Cruisers. For a moment I hung back near the rocks, sensing malevolence and a feeling that this was no ordinary military patrol. A slim soldier, who had remained on one of the trucks, yelled at me to halt as I crossed the road and swung a huge, mounted machine gun around so that it was pointing at me. For a moment, I truly thought that he meant to shoot me and a warm trickle of urine ran down my leg and spilled over the heel of my sandal before soaking into the stretched and cracked surface of the ground. There was a huge guffaw and one of the soldiers lobbed a bottle high into the air above my head.

Another fired a volley of shots from a pistol. I sank to my knees and covered my head with my hands just as the bottle shattered on the rocks behind me.

‘Leave her alone, you bastards!’Abdelkrim shouted.

I remained at the side of the road, huddled in a ball.

There was the sound of a scuffle, and then another voice, gruff and authoritative, ordered me to get up. I felt rough hands clutching at my
pagne.
When I opened my eyes I was being dragged across the road towards Archie’s car, which had, effectively, been encircled by the Land Cruisers, despite the fact that it was actually going nowhere just then. Archie and Abdelkrim had been backed up to the bonnet of one of the trucks, where a group of the scruffy soldiers were interrogating them. A man wearing a beret and mirrored glasses was leaning menacingly towards them and brandishing a fat cigar. Rifles and pistols were shaken angrily each time he spoke. As I was led into the circle, he turned to face me and let out a shrill whistle.

‘Well, now. What tasty morsel do we have here?’

‘She’s my sister. Just a child. Just leave her alone!’ My brother sounded full of both anger and fear.

The man in the beret patted Abdelkrim on the chest and laughed. ‘Easy brother, easy,’ he said. He leaned closer, so that his reddish face was almost touching my brother’s. ‘That’s a nasty cut. You ought to be more careful.’

More laughter.

Abdelkrim put his arm out to catch me as I was pushed roughly towards him. A few of the other renegades had made their way towards Archie’s stricken car and were poking about in the trunk.

‘I’d stay away from that car with those cigarettes!’ Archie called. ‘We had a broken fuel pipe. A lot of gasoline has been spilled!’

The men took a few steps away from the vehicle and turned to face their commander. Several of them were gulping water from our supply of bottles.

‘Lose the cigarettes, you idiots!’ the man in the beret shouted. He looked at my brother and then shook his head, as if he were sharing some great joke with him. ‘I am Général Lucien Majila Ag Akotey,’ he said, crushing the end of his cigar on the hood of the Land Cruiser and flicking it into the scrub, ‘and we are
the Free People, the
Abandoned of God
.’ He scratched himself and sighed. ‘And you are a soldier also.

Are you going to tell me what you and your merry little party are doing here?’

‘
Chef
,’ Abdelkrim said, ‘that box contains the remains of our poor mother.

My sister and I are taking her to Wadata for burial. My friend here has kindly offered to help us.’

‘Uhuh?’ he eyed Abdelkrim up and down. ‘What is your name?’

‘Boureima. Abdelkrim,
Chef
.’

‘You are Songhai?’

‘Oui,
Chef
.’

He nodded towards Archie. ‘And the
anasara
?’

Archie stepped forward and extended his hand. ‘Archie Cargo, technician and lecturer, L’Université Abdou Moumouni de Niamey.’

Instantly, he was slammed back against the grille of the Land Cruiser by one of Akotey’s henchmen.

Akotey stepped forward and fixed Archie’s gaze. ‘I didn’t ask
you
!’ he said.

There was a brief, awkward silence. Abdelkrim pulled me closer, but by now I was shaking.

Akotey did not miss this fact. He looked at me and laughed again, then he backed away from us a few paces. He removed his sunglasses, put them in the breast pocket of his jerkin and took a pistol out of the holster on his belt. He pointed it towards the wilderness, looking down its muzzle with one eye closed. There was a click. I recognised the sound of the safety catch being released; Adamou had plagued Sergeant Bouleb to show him how his firearm worked when he had brought Abdelkrim to Wadata, so long ago. Akotey dropped the weapon to his side and let his arm dangle loosely. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I could do anything I want with you three.’ He nodded. ‘I could shoot you, one by one. I could hold the
anasara
hostage. I could have you all burned alive in your shitty car. Or, I could have you all raped!’ He smiled; a vicious, cruel slit on an evil face. ‘My men haven’t been with a woman for weeks, you know? A goat would do! They’re not fussy!’

There was a chorus of laughter. The sun had risen rapidly and already its immense power baked down on us, the ground buckling in the heat, yet I felt cold with fear.

Akotey stood close to my brother again and prodded him gently in the belly with the pistol. ‘What should I do, Boureima, eh?’

‘You should let us be on our way,
Chef
,’ Abdelkrim said.

‘You think so?’

‘Oui,
Chef
.’

He waved his pistol towards the Mercedes. ‘What, in that? It doesn’t look to me like you’d get very far.’

‘Your men could help us… get the car back on to the road… if it pleased you,
Chef
,’ Abdelkrim stammered.

‘Uhuh.’ Akotey stepped back and eyed us all up and down once more. ‘And why would I want to do that? So that you can report us to your superiors and receive commendation for helping track down yet another bunch of scum dissidents?’

‘
Chef
?’

‘You know what we are, Boureima – me and these
moutons
!’

Abdelkrim shrugged. ‘I know that many personnel are unhappy with their circumstances at present.’

Akotey leapt forward and pushed the gun under Abdelkrim’s chin, clutching at his collar with his free hand. ‘We are freedom fighters! We are foes of the oppressors!’ he yelled, threads of spittle spraying my brother’s face. ‘Enemies of the fat cats! You understand, Boureima? We are no mutineers – whatever the media may say.’

Abdelkrim nodded, his arm still around my shoulders, but his palm open, tense, his fingers pushing, clawing at the air. For a moment I thought that I might piss again.

Akotey relaxed his grip and looked down at me. He pinched my cheek between his thumb and forefinger and gave me a cold smile. Then he turned his back on us. ‘You’re a soldier, like us, Boureima,’ he continued.

‘
Chef
.’

‘Answer me this.’ He spun around to face my brother again. ‘Are you loyal to the president?’

Abdelkrim cleared his throat and looked nervously at Archie. ‘I… ah…’

‘Let me put the question another way,’ Akotey said. ‘When was the last time you were paid?’

‘Not for some time,
Chef
.’

‘
Toh
. Not for some time. Yet still you serve these dogs without question.’

‘I am just a humble soldier.’

‘Walayi!’
Akotey snapped. ‘Half the country is protesting against Mainassara’s rule, yet people like you do nothing! The military must unite against this corrupt system. Together we can force him to resign. He states that the only thing that can bring Niger out of its present crisis is order, unity and work, but why should we work for nothing?’

‘I agree with that,’ my brother said.

‘Yet still you serve your president?’

‘Mainassara declared himself a democrat when he seized power in ninety six. He promised that power would be placed in the hands of civilians. He promised free elections. It is true that those things have not yet materialised. Yet it is democracy that I wish to serve.’