Harmattan (43 page)

Before I know it, I find myself back in the branches of the Mgunga tree. My chest is heaving uncontrollably and mucus drips from my nose. I press down first on one nostril, then the other, and so clear the filth from my face. I wipe the tears from my burning cheeks with the palm of my hand, noticing again the bloody impression of Mousssa’s hand on my forearm.

From beyond the storehouse (the closest thing to a home which my husband has provided for me) I can hear Moussa re-sharpening his knife on a stone. The stinging pain on my cheek and the raked furrows on my jaw are nothing to the pain I feel inside my head. And his words are seared into my brain. Filthy, brutal lies. I picture the humble yet neat home that my mother kept, and Bunchie before her, and my eyes well up once again.

Down below, out on Rue de Kongou, the traffic thunders by: cars and camels and
camions
, taxis and trucks, bicycles and carts all threading their way through the sultry early evening haze. Heavy-laden pedestrians, tatty refugees, and office workers in crisp white shirts scurry past our compound gates like termites, heading for Plateau, Gao or the shanties at Pays-Bas. Mixed with the diesel fumes and dust and stench of piss, there is a frenzy in the air this evening; a feeling of celebration and excitement as people prepare for
Eid al-Adha
. I steady myself on the curve of a great bough, with my knees drawn close to my face, and wonder how it is possible to feel so alone in such a busy place as Niamey, home to so many people.

At last, my breathing becomes more steady and my vision less blurred and I hear someone calling to me from Doctor Kwao-Sarbah’s compound. When I look down through the branches, I see Khalaf, Doctor Kwao-Sarbah’s guardian, peering up at me, his narrow face beautiful like a girl’s, his skin the colour of sweetened coffee.

Across his shoulders lies a long, ancient stick, rubbed smooth by toil and handling, over which he has hooked both elbows so that, in the ebbing light and shadow of the great tree, he seems as if skewered like Moussa’s
mouton
.

‘Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle! Why are you crying? What has happened?’ he says, in his strange, syrupy accent.

‘Nothing, Monsieur Khalaf,’ I say. ‘I am fine.’

He mutters – Tamashek words at first, which I do not recognise – and shakes his head. ‘You are fine, yes. You are fine. And yet you weep. Why do you weep if you are fine, Mademoiselle?’

‘I am thinking about my mother. I am sad about my brother Abdelkrim. I am missing my brother Adamou and my sister Fatima, that is all.’ I claw at my eyes and feign a smile at the guardian.

Khalaf unhooks an elbow and uses his free hand to shield his eyes from the light behind me. He stares up at me with his mysterious, cat-like eyes and I feel myself bathed in his desire to be protective. At last he shrugs. Hooks his arm over the stick again and turns away to tend his animals or water his vegetables or do whatever he does. I have not yet had time to settle back into my misery, when I hear the deep rumble of Doctor Kwao-Sarbah’s vehicle pausing on the road. I look towards the Kwao-Sarbah’s compound gates in time to see the vehicle enter in a flurry of metal and glass and rubber and dust, the engine giving a final roar before dying completely.

The rear door closest to the boundary wall is the first to be flung open and, to my delight, Candice wriggles out, dragging her school satchel behind her. I force myself to drive away my jealousy as I peruse her neat uniform and beautiful shoes.

She spies me instantly and bounds across the compound towards the wall, a great smile on her face.

‘Hey, Haoua!’ she calls. ‘You’ll come to watch television at my house again later, won’t you?’

‘Oui,’ I say, suddenly overcome with defiance and the desire to do so.

‘Good! Well, we’ll talk later. I must go and help now. We had to go shopping and it’s getting late. My mother has prepared many lovely things to eat and my father has arranged for some musician friends of his from Zinder to come too. We will have a great time, Haoua!’ Candice beams at me again before charging off towards her father’s fine, white house, prancing like a young gazelle who has just found her feet.

* * *

There is to be no reprieve for me. No rest. No hiding place. When the stone hits my foot, I look down, expecting to see Doodi or Moussa. Instead, I note with surprise that Yola is my assailant.

‘Haoua! Haoua! Come down here now!’ She is hissing my name in an urgent whisper.

Without a word and ignoring the pain in my ribs, I swing down through the branches before, with a final lurch, dropping to the ground beside her.

‘Didn’t you hear the old witch calling you?’ she says, reaching out with a licked thumb to daub at my dirty, tear-stained face.

I shake my head vigorously.

‘Do you really want another flogging?’

I spare her the details of my most recent encounter with our husband.

She tugs at my
pagne
, straightens me up, before nudging me gently towards the house. ‘You are to finish preparing the soup and couscous while Doodi and I go to greet Madame Kwao-Sarbah and offer her galettes and lady’s fingers this evening.’

I stop and turn to face her, noticing only now that she has changed into her blue and cerise
pagne,
a great swirl of petals perfectly central and taut on her bulging belly. ‘Can’t I come too?’ I whisper. ‘Candice has already invited me, and we…’

She cuts me short. ‘It is not up to me, Haoua. I’m only going with Doodi because she insists that I accompany her. I’d just as soon be seen dead as with her!’

She leans in towards me, glances over her shoulder and then says, in a conspiratorial voice, ‘She’s such an old whore, that one! Wheedling her way around these rich neighbours of ours. Pretending to be gracious.’ There is a wicked glint in her eye as these words tumble from her mouth, like jagged rocks in a landslide.

I smile as she prods me gently in the small of my back, and continue trudging towards the entrance of the house.

Inside, Doodi is wearing her finest
pagne
and matching head wrap. Her wrists are heavy with finely carved bracelets and she wears a beautiful silver Agadez Cross around her throat. With some reluctance I have to admit to myself that, even with her hard and wizened face, she looks quite elegant. For a moment I consider how she might have looked as a young bride, as new to this household – and to Moussa – as me.

I remind myself that she at least was already familiar with Niamey. I wonder if she too was frightened and if she willingly endured Moussa’s attentions or suffered them in silence. Then her cold eye falls upon me and I cease to care about the child that she once was, intent instead on my own preservation. She looks as if she is about to scold or lift her hand to me again, but then appears to change her mind.

Instead, she speaks to Yola – indicates that she is impatient to leave. Then she tells me that I must be sure to have finished preparing the rest of the food before darkness falls; that she will send Yola back over to fetch it. She moves towards the doorway, Yola close behind her carrying a tray. She pauses to remind me that Moussa has forbidden me to visit the Kwao-Sarbahs’ house at all this evening – as a punishment.

Despite Madame Yola’s warning look, I cannot stop myself from asking the question. ‘Punishment for what exactly, Madame?’

She moves towards me, her eyes squeezed thin, her voice full of venom. ‘You are an insolent girl! You’d do well to learn some respect!’ To my surprise, she does not strike me.

After they have gone, I stand for some time in the centre of the cool, dark room, aware only of the relentless thrum of traffic on the road outside and the soothing stillness of the moment.

At last, I sneak a look out through the doorway to check that Moussa is not around. I am relieved to see that his bicycle has gone. When I am certain that it is safe, I make my way outside to the faucet. I turn the brass wheel and, miraculous as ever, the plumbing emits an initial belch followed by a gush of cool, clean water. I stoop down and let it cascade over my head, my neck and my aching shoulders.

Standing in the damp, darkened dust, I wash myself thoroughly; rub at my forearms, my feet, scrub at my neck and ears, scrape and poke at my encrusted nostrils, dab at my stinging face and work the cloth inside my
pagne
, under my arms and over my tender, swelling breasts. When I have finished, I stand upright, tilt my head first to one side, then to the other and slap the remaining moisture out of my ears with the palm of my hand – just as my mother showed me when I was little. It occurs to me then that, although I have had my twelfth birthday and I am married and living in a busy, important city like Niamey, I do not really feel as a woman should, and still yearn to be held in my mother’s arms.

I cross the compound to the storehouse, dry myself thoroughly and do my best to tidy up my hair and face. I check my reflection in my little cracked mirror, tilting it this way and that. I try to convince myself that I look fine. I peel off my soiled, damp and dirty
pagne
and take my old clean one from the nail on the back of the storehouse door. As I wrap it around my body I am startled by the peering eyes of a praying mantis which has fixed itself to my
pagne
and is now perched upon my thigh. Even though I know that the creature will not harm me, I gasp and pull the wrapper hastily from my body and shake the insect out of the door. When I have retied my
pagne
I cast an eye over Moussa’s tools and bicycle parts and the cluttered, oily shelves. On the underside of one of the lower shelves I have pinned the photograph of my mother and brother with Efrance and Momi in the shanties. At night when I lie awake on my bedroll, I gaze at this picture until the light fades completely or until sleep or exhaustion overtakes me. I bend down now and run my hand along the hidden surface, to check that the photograph is still there. To check that Moussa or Doodi have not discovered it yet and robbed me of this treasure also.

I straighten up and look around the storehouse once again. Candice has asked me to show her my ‘room’ several times, but always I have made excuses.

Now that I am clean again, I re-enter the house. I lift the lid off a large pot of Yola’s
o jo jo
meatballs, the smell making my mouth water. Also on the table, covered in little scraps of cloth, are basins full of okra fritters, platters of roasted cassava, bananas, chunks of fresh pineapple and mango salad; food which I had rarely seen or tasted in Wadata. When I have finished preparing the couscous, I spoon it carefully from the pan into three smaller basins and place these on a plastic tray. I cover these too with cloth, then wipe my hands and step back from the table.

Back outside, I wash cabbage heads, cauliflower, carrots, celery, tomatoes, peppers, onions, leeks. I return to the kitchen and chop the vegetables, wondering if I will even get to taste my spicy cabbage soup. I add ginger, laurel leaves, chillies and garlic, then fill the large pot with water and leave it to simmer.

Beautiful music drifts across from the Kwao-Sarbah’s compound: the plucked notes of a
gurumi
and the rhythmic beat of a
djembe
. I look out through the little window, as if to search for them, as if they might be there, floating in the air outside.

Then I stack the dirty utensils carefully into a pail and go outside to the faucet again. As I am washing the pots and ladles, the music ends and, after a brief pause, the rich, deep tones of a man’s singing voice begins. I look up into the branches of my Mgunga tree and the words, beautiful, tender, honourable and with a hint of sadness, fall gently around me, like ripened fruits.

She is beautiful to the eyes, oh my Lord, and God gave her
Gave her a breast new and green appearing like two balanced weights
Gave her a waist lined with stripes

Gave her a thigh with stretch marks reaching from her stomach to her knee
Gave her calves beautiful and soft, you have never seen such creations
Gave her a heel like none a son of Adam ever walked on.
The song gives way to sounds of laughter.

It is now that I decide to defy my husband: to pretend to be stupid; to pretend that I have misunderstood; to play deceit as ignorance. I decide not to wait for Yola to collect the food that I have prepared. I decide that I will take it to Candice’s house myself. I persuade myself that, when darkness falls and the whole neighbourhood is immersed in the celebrations, my indiscretion may go unnoticed.

* * *

Candice is delighted to see me. I am waiting, tray in hand, outside the Kwao-Sarbah’s iron-framed mesh door when I see her coming down the tiled hallway accompanied by Feisha, the family’s cook, a stern-looking woman with heavy scarification marks – like a meat griddle – on her face. Feisha looks me up and down, just as she does every time I visit Candice. My friend has changed out of her smart school uniform and into the most beautiful dress that I have ever laid my eyes on. Her smile reminds me a little of Miriam back home in Wadata, and for a moment I think about the journey we made together in search of Monsieur Longeur and his magic camera. Now, it is like thinking about a movie of someone else’s life.

Candice holds the pleats of her dress out wide for me. ‘It’s from America,’ she says, beaming, as Feisha swings open the heavy door to let me enter. ‘Papa brought it back for me.’ She bunches up the blue-green chiffon and invites me to touch it. I am almost afraid to do so, so delicate seems the fabric, like the wing of a butterfly, coated in magical dust, which, if touched, may spoil and thus lose the power of flight. I stroke the hem gently with the backs of my fingers. Then both of us giggle.

Feisha takes the tray from me and I realise that she is still staring at me – but in a different way now.

‘You look nice too, Haoua,’ Candice says.

I hang my head. Shrug. There is an old stain on the front of my
pagne
. I do not feel nice. Her words are just a kindness.

‘
Walayi!
What have you done to your face, child?’ Feisha says, balancing the tray on one arm and clutching my jaw with her free hand.