The Liminal People (3 page)
Read The Liminal People Online
Authors: Ayize Jama-everett
Tags: #Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Mysteries & Thrillers, #novel
The sun came before I realized the moon had left. All hopes of sleep were dashed by memories. And thanks to Nordeen, my memories of Yasmine were clashing with my memories of my brother. Both people like me, but both rejected me. Maybe both for valid reasons. Maybe my brother rejected me because somewhere he knew our relationship had to come down to some serious sibling rivalry. And maybe Yasmine knew I was a freak all along.
Suleiman calls ten minutes after my girl comes through with some apricots, juice, and nuts for breakfast. He lets me know Fou-Fou just dropped off a cash card for me, along with a set of keys. He's asking where he's supposed to take me. If Nordeen is setting me up, he's doing a lot to make sure I don't suspect it. I tell the right-hand man to grub with his family and then pick me up when he's ready.
We're about twenty minutes away from Europe. But it's a different type of Europe. It's filled with hash and illegal immigrants. I could get to Yasmine that way, but then I'm under the radar and still identifiable as Nordeen's. So I take my breakfast slow and then go to the drawer I never use. The drawer from my past, in the closet. It holds the last Italian suit I ever bought and my American passport, the real one. I put both of them on, and it feels like I'm regressing a good ten years. Yasmine better be in real trouble.
Suleiman enters my house with a pulse that's pounding so hard I'm thinking I'm hearing it with my ears. I can imagine his thought process. Maybe Omar made some deal that required Suleiman's head and maybe I was the one who had to do it. It's that kind of thinking that makes him Nordeen's Number 1.
“How do I look?” I ask, showing him open hands as soon as he comes in. It relaxes him somewhat.
“Like a bullshit Frenchie.” He's never seen me in civilian gear. “What's the plan?”
“I've got to catch a flight from Fez.”
“And then?” Like I know.
I don't even pretend to sleep until I'm installed on the plane. It's less than an hour flight to Marseilles, but it feels like another planet. Planet Old Life.
I met this kid once. He was maybe twelve years old. His dad owned the biggest telecommunications network in Mogadishu. Don't laugh; those Africans will kill for wireless, literally. The kid was like me, only he talked to the land. Once his hands were in the dirt he could make things grow: enrich soil, deplete it, whatever he wanted. After I showed him what I could do, we became friends. I asked him one time if he wanted to get out of the Mog. He told me even if his father would let him, he wouldn't leave.
“I will die without this land.” He said “this” land like he was talking about the plot directly below him. I was still kind of fucked up at the time over Yasmine, so I just chalked it up to his youthâsome kid not wanting to have a new experience of the world. But now, as I'm sitting on this plane, leaving Africa for the first time in five years under my real name, I'm realizing how much I had in common with that kid. I'm afraid I'm going to die on this little journey and never come back. It's the never coming back part that's hitting me more than the dying.
After Yasmine wrote me off I went on this ironic death journey around the world, trying to save as many lives as I could. I didn't put myself in danger's way; I pulled up a chair in front of the death TV and started in on a bowl of cocoa crisps like it was Saturday morning and I was a kid again. At first I went through official channels. Somewhere, I think I still even have my Red Cross jacket. Wherever medics were being fired upon, that's where I went. And once there I broke the rules and went into the no-fly zones. Shit, if suicide by terrorist bullet didn't get me, this trip shouldn't be so hard.
Strange that it feels the same. When Yasmine left, I was alone again. My parents and I had worked out a nonverbal agreement: they would pay for college and never mention my brother or the house they had to sell, so long as I never came home or asked them for anything. Even after she left, I always filled out Yasmine's name and address in the place marked for next of kin. Working my trick on a young village boy or girl torn up by automatic fire as bullets whiz by me and all I can think about is what Yasmine going to do when she finds herself the proud owner of my headless corpse? Never happened.
I can't say a few bullets didn't catch me, or that my ambulance never hit a stray landmine, but my body has an automatic healing effect. It's autonomicâhell, it happens even faster when I black out. It only took four fatal gunshot wounds to realize that. And I couldn't even get drunk enough to mourn my inability to commit suicideâmy body wouldn't let me. So instead I got immoral.
Turns out an EMT is like a street doctor for those who can't afford a hospital visit. As I was about to go back to London from Sri Lanka, an African with a British accent approached me about doing some fieldwork in the Continent. He was looking for field-trained medics unafraid of bullets. And he definitely paid more than the Red Cross. So to Somalia I went, working for a warlord. I ordered enough supplies I didn't need and made sure to not heal anyone too quickly. Still, I got a reputation for being able to handle almost anything after the warlord got cancer in his foot and I “saved” him without chemo. You'd think he'd be appreciative. Instead the bastard started renting me out. First to a Liberian friend of his and then to some Colombians he knew. But the cash was good and I was treated like a king. I liked the life and would've stayed in it if not for the mother who brought her daughter to me one night begging that I heal her. The girl was nine years old and had more herpes sores covering her hairless vagina than zits covering her face. The mother pleaded with me to heal her as she was my warlord's favorite and he didn't know the mother had been renting the girl out to other people. I healed the girl in silence. No tricks, no fake medications, no examination. I just laid my hands on the sides of her head and spent my rage on every cell of that virus in her body. The sores literally fell off of her. And I fell off the planet.
I'm not going to say I was innocent back then. But I knew less of what people were willing to live with, to put up with, to invite, in order to survive than I do now. Had I seen babies turned out as prostitutes before? Of course. Had I seen them ravaged by S.T.I.'s? Most definitely. Had I seen creatures disguised as mothers pimping their kids out previous to that? Yes. But to see it all together, at once, staring at me with hopeful eyes filled with understanding, inviting me to join their compromised way of life, it was too much for a younger me to bear. How was I to know I was just delaying the inevitable?
I figured someone would come for me. I couldn't just walk out of the Mog. But that's what I did. Out of Mogadishu into Kenya up to Ethiopia and then across the Sudan, Chad, and the Niger. My dark skin helped me blend in. Anyone who came at me with guns, I healed. When I needed shelter I healed people for it. The same with food. There are a lot of sick people in Africa. I became a bit of a legend. I never spoke to anyone and never rested more than one day in any place. It took me a year and a half, but I walked from Mogadishu to Bandiagara, Mali. Why there? No idea. The place pulled me to it. The people there, the Dogon, were the only ones that reacted to my healings with absolutely no surprise. I stayed amongst them for a month, learning their language, helping them find a way to eke out a survival in the poorest country in the world, crying about all I had seen . . . before they kicked me out.
“Healers are poison to the warrior soul,” the village chiefs told me. “They make us forget the gift of death. This is a hard land, and we must be as hard as it to survive. You are a good man, but you make us soft.” Where do you go when dirt farmers don't want you?
It's only after the plane touches down that I realize I actually did fall asleep. Haven't been to Marseilles in a while. Didn't realize the Parisians were buying up vacation spots. I wonder how long it'll be before they own the minarets? Doesn't matter. I'm through customs with my carry-on and American passport with only a little bit of trouble. I have to explain why the last country I was supposed to be in was Sri Lanka and why I'm coming in from Morocco. Too bad the customs agent was taken by fever, cold sweats, blurred vision, and swollen glands, which all got worse the longer he spoke with me.
A cab is easy enough to find, and my French is still passable as native. “The best hotel you can find” is all I say to the driver. He sees the suit and knows I'm not bullshitting. I walk in with my cash card that looks like a credit card and get a suite without a reservation or an explanation. Forty minutes after getting off the plane I'm in a hotel, alone. No Yasmine, no razor-necks, no one. Yup. Another planet.
I thought I was hard until that Somali girl. I thought I was used to solitude until the dirt farmers told me I had to go. I thought I knew what power was until I met Nordeen.
All through my silent trek, I dreamed about what it would be like to have the kid who talked to dirt with me. We could've cut a green healthy veldt through some of the roughest patches of Africa. A few times, after healings mostly, people would try to follow me, even worship me. But I'd keep walking. I'd walk without fear near wild animals or wild people. My followers would suffer the Peter syndrome and betray me three times before my death. Some people shot at me, some people hit. No one ever stopped me. The animals were smarter. They'd try and stalk me but soon they'd realize something was different and, like most of my life, I'd be left alone. Still, the power to walk, to be quiet, and to barely eat or drink for over a year had me focusing on my abilities in a whole new way. In the darkness of African nights, when no one was around, I had to ask myself the uncomfortable question. Was I a God? I still slept and I still ate, but a strange inkling in me questioned the need. If I were stronger, more in tune with my power, like my brother, would I even need those last vestiges of my humanity? It was a question Nordeen had been contemplating since well before my birth.
I first met Suleiman and Fou-Fou in Mauritania. I was wandering north, for the same reason I had spent a year and change wandering westâjust 'cause. They came upon me in the middle of nowhere and called me out in the most bizarre way possible.
“My employer says he knows about you. He says for you to know about yourself, you should come with us and meet him.” I went to their Jeep and reached for a hand to get in. Both men recoiled.
“With respect,” Suleiman said, “my employer also instructed us not to touch you in any way.” In its own way my life as a healer prepared me for being treated as a threat, so there were few words between me and the razor-necks until long after I made my first peace with Nordeen.
They drove me out to a clear piece of desert and flagged down a low-flying aircraft. Within a few hours I found myself in a small villa just outside of Marrakech. Creature comforts such as food, water, a bed, and a roof over my head were distant memories. I greeted them like war buddies long thought dead. One luxury I was better without was a mirror. It was as though I had absorbed my patients' illnesses, not cured them. I was pockmarked and blemished from the sun on all the spots of my face that weren't covered by a kinky mat of hair. Whatever pigment, other than rust, that had once colored my eyes seemed to have retired years ago. I examined my body visually for the first time since the Mog and found that I looked like someone who had crossed African cities, savannah, mountaintops, and desert on foot with no supplies. I had feet, and then I had calloused rhino-hide skin between where my feet ended and ground began. If I weighed more than ninety-two pounds it was not due to food. My clothes, before Nordeen's donation of silk pants and a loose-fitting djellabah, were gifted to me by some of the poorest people in one of the poorest nations. Any thoughts of godliness felt like a joke at that moment.
Razor-necks don't operate in Marseilles. Angelwise Crew, the Question Marks, even the Brunfeld Collective, none of them set foot in Marseilles. It's a no-fly zone for scams, deals, anything illegal. Nordeen always had special prohibitions against me coming here. All he'd say about it is that it used to be cursed and now it's protected. That's exactly why I'm here.
I pay my tab with the card then put it in an envelope and mail it to one of our drop houses. It'll take a month before it gets back to him. No way in hell he's not tracking every purchase, every cash withdrawal on it. Wouldn't expect any less of him. But I've got to handle this on my own. And the boss has a way of making things more . . . difficult than they need to be.
So I ditch the hotel, burning the credit card for sure, and take a cab ride from an Algerian up to Avignon. He gets paid in cash. I utilize one of my old drop houses and pick up a much smaller bundle of cash and three different IDs. Next to the Palais des Papes, I find a hotel at the end of an alley with no internet service and no links to any crew I know of. It's the perfect spot to wait and see. I told Nordeen I didn't want to track mess in his house with this. In truth, I don't want to bring him anywhere near Yasmine.
“You're a king playing the role of vizier to sycophants and insignificants” were the first words the boss said to me. They were coughed out between battles against rising sputum, sometimes settling in a draw. Behind me Fou-Fou, Suleiman, and a host of other loyal murderers sat outside the door. I felt most of their pulses rise, their throats close, and their jaws clench as we set about entering the room and approached the small sand igloo that the man rested in. As usual he was covered in blankets and shadows. I made out two eyes perched immediately over a pit of darkness, all a child's height above the ground. But nothing else.
I'd never met anyone I couldn't feel before. Still haven't, though I'm sure there are others out there. At the time, it was the first confirmed surprise regarding my power I'd experienced. Nordeen had no heartbeat, pulse, respiratory functions, or even digestive system that I could feel. Every time those deep yellow orbs that he calls eyes blinked, I was surprised. That was probably why it took me a few minutes to respond to his critique of my life.