by Ishmael Beah
Elimane pulled the book from his cheek, took a beer for himself, opened it with his teeth, and drank long and hard until the bottle was empty.
“That is how it should be done, big brother.” Kpindi slammed his bottle against the table in applause.
“You should have joined us.” Ndevui struggled to speak through a fit of hiccups. He took a swig and held his breath, attempting to calm them. “Kpindi was a magnet. Everyone wanted to drink with him or dance with him.”
“There was fortune in our night,” said Kpindi. “We found money where it shouldn’t have been left. We corrupted it and used it to enter a bar, where we danced all night with beautiful girls.” Elimane’s eyes widened, reminding them that Khoudi and Namsa were present, but the two of them went on describing their exploits with a couple of the girls who had mistaken them for young men with money. They all ended up going to the home of one of the girls. After the girls had gone to sleep, hoping to wake up with these fellows with money, Ndevui and Kpindi went through their handbags and gathered whatever other valuables they could find, including the crates of beer. Somehow in all of that drunkenness, they hadn’t forgotten to abscond with a feast as well.
This was their code: They were free to do whatever they wanted with what they got on their own, but they had a general understanding that they shared with one another, and even in a state of inebriation, they rarely forgot it.
“The household was preparing for a wedding, so there was lots of food,” said Kpindi. “Let’s eat and be merry, merry, and merry!” He burst into a song while the others dug into the food.
Khoudi ate as quickly as she could, then wiped her hands, eager to be on her way.
“Are you going now? Already?” Namsa asked, her mouth filled with food.
Khoudiemata nodded.
“Can I come with you?” Namsa pleaded. “We could stop to see Shadrach the Messiah before you go off by yourself.”
Khoudiemata hesitated. “He might not even be there.” She could see that the boys had decided to go on a binge today. They would drink, smoke, and go wild until they passed out or the alcohol was finished, whichever came first. Much as they loved Namsa, they wouldn’t watch out for her the way Khoudi would. Khoudi herself was tempted to join in, drinking some of her own demons into unconsciousness, but it was her day to be alone with herself, and she didn’t want to give it up.
“Okay, come with me,” she said to Namsa, “but I leave you by the beach when we find Shadrach.”
The wind carried all manner of human sounds to Khoudiemata and Namsa from all directions as they walked into the day: singing, jubilation, howls of protest. Every Independence Day since Khoudi could remember, the protests had grown, as people had woken to the irony of celebrating freedoms that existed only on paper.
Shadrach the Messiah could often be spotted all around town, sometimes standing in the middle of the road and pretending to direct traffic, sometimes drunk outside one of the bars the boys liked to frequent, cautioning departing customers in his hoarse voice to “stay hidden, stay in the shadows.” The little family always found that admonition funny, because they knew they were already invisible. But today Shadrach would be out in the open, at the kiosk on the beach, or so the leaflet had proclaimed.
They followed the quiet, sun-drenched dirt road until they reached the entrance to the beach, its sand blindingly white. So many people milled around them here that it was no longer necessary for them to work at looking separate.
Beach Kiosk stood a few paces into the sand, but it was no longer as popular as it once had been. Perhaps it was too close to the harsh realities people went to the beach to escape. These days, it was mostly a spot where drivers found parking or dropped off passengers who wanted to walk deeper into the beach. But today a crowd was gathered here, and Namsa and Khoudi squeezed through to see what was going on.
It wasn’t Shadrach the Messiah but another fellow they found there. He was obviously young, but he had sprayed his short dark hair and beard white in an attempt to look older. He stood in the water in a white robe, his gaze and one hand raised toward the morning sky. Behind him, a line of people awaited his attention. He lowered his arm and extended his open palm toward them. “My multitude, please approach your prophet.” The first person in line, a young woman, advanced, placing some notes in his hand that he glanced at and put away inside a plastic money belt cinched around his waist. He pulled her into the water and submerged her, holding her nose and head and shouting incomprehensible phrases. She emerged from the water and walked onto the beach with a contented face, and the next person stepped up. Those in line observed the ritual solemnly, while most of the onlookers around Khoudi and Namsa chuckled.
“Ah, even prophets charge fees these days!” said one. “I wonder how you become a prophet. Do you just wake up and say, ‘Yes, from today on I am a prophet. I feel it’? Or is there a prophet school where you go to get a certificate, a degree?” The chuckles turned to laughter, but the people in line in the water remained unfazed, their faces reflecting their belief in what, it occurred to Khoudi, was indeed a miracle of sorts.
“My people, my people, that prophet baptized me a while ago, and all I have is the taste of salt water in my mouth to this day!” cried a piercing voice. Shadrach the Messiah was approaching from down the beach, dressed in his usual motley robe. He pointed his staff, with its carved head of a roaring lion, at the crowd, his white beard and hair and broad face giving him a gravitas that belied the rest of his appearance. Then he went toward the people in the water, cutting to the front of the line. The prophet tried to ignore him, reaching for the next supplicant, but Shadrach grabbed his hand and forced a few banknotes into his palm. The prophet looked at the notes suspiciously, then chucked them into the ocean. Shadrach fished them out, carried them from the water, and held each up for the crowd to inspect before laying them out delicately on the beach, each of them weighted down with a little sand so it wouldn’t blow away while it dried. The crowd laughed, seeing that this was old currency no longer in circulation.
“Today is a day of thinking, not one of celebration,” Shadrach addressed the crowd on the beach. “Think. Think. And rethink.” He paced around the banknotes, his ragged robe dripping and sagging with water. The crowd watched like spectators at a sports match, their attention split between him and the prophet.
“They say April twenty-seventh, today, is our day of independence, of freedom. Well, I ask you, do you feel free? And why do we need some outsiders to agree to our freedom? They came from across the seas and said they had come to save us, to give us civilization. But they didn’t even know we existed until they stumbled upon us. So how could they have known what we needed?”
“Amen!” cried someone from the prophet’s line.
Shadrach the Messiah pointed his staff at the crowd, which was now shrieking with laughter, whether because of what he had said or a scene that was unfolding in the water. The prophet was arguing with a woman who insisted he hadn’t submerged her long enough, even though she had paid extra, and that she was therefore short on the blessings she ought to receive. Finally the prophet had had enough. He exited the water, pursued by the woman, who was now shouting at him, and all the others in the water who had not yet gotten their turn to be baptized.
Shadrach the Messiah started running after the prophet too, pleading, “Come and listen to me, man!” But shortly he stopped and returned to the crowd.
“Eh, that prophet could surely win a marathon.” He shook his head. Then he mumbled something that he evidently found so funny that he turned red with laughter, which made those watching him laugh as well.
“How many of you have names such as William, Lightfoot, Boston, Frederick, Cardew, John?” he asked the assembly. More than a few raised their hands. “And how many of you know the names your great-grandmother would have given you, names such as Kailondo, Bai Bureh, Momoh Jah, Suluku, Mammy Yoko, Sarrounia Mangou, Nzi
nga Mbandi, Nyarroh?” The crowd fell silent. “Even our names are an indictment of the history we have accepted, the one that didn’t set us free but made us disbelieve our own worth.”
Some people began to head down the beach. They’d come here to have fun, not to embark on self-inquiry, or so they thought. Yet their faces now carried the very questions they had forgotten to ask themselves until now.
Shadrach the Messiah headed back into the water, talking to himself. “They say we are part of the Commonwealth. The only thing common about it is that some of the countries have all of the wealth. Hahahaha!” He looked about him. “Where is my staff? Oh, it is right there.” He retrieved it from the beach and went back into the water. “So don’t celebrate what is not your truth.” He bent down to swallow a mouthful of the salt water. “Pure water must have no taste. That is what I had learned in school. But this water is like a meal.” He licked the water with his tongue like a dog, then dived into it headlong, holding his staff.
New passersby had stopped to see what was going on, and the crowd was full again. Shadrach emerged from the ocean, his face shining with sweat and salt, more animated by the minute as he continued his sermon. Khoudi noted how easy it was to find something to take away with you when he spoke—curiosity at a question, a fact that needed rethinking, laughter. Even she, skeptical as she was, was tempted to dally, but she knew she needed to go, or her day would no longer be her own.
She looked around for Namsa and was surprised to find that the girl had vanished. Namsa was fascinated by Shadrach, almost obsessed by him. She sometimes thought she’d heard him say something before, or knew what he was going to say next before he spoke. So where was she now?
Before Khoudi could start to search, she spotted Namsa walking from the parking lot with a bottle of water in her hand. She made her way through the gathering and offered the water to Shadrach. But he only looked down at her, as if neither his face nor his hands knew how to respond. Namsa opened the bottle and drank from it and extended it to him again. This time he took it and poured some of the water over his already wet head. “He is indeed an entertaining fool,” someone called, and the crowd laughed. Looking in Namsa’s direction, Shadrach set the bottle of water on the sand, next to his bare feet. Namsa stayed where she was, in front of the crowd, watching and listening, and Khoudi decided it was all right to leave her there. For each of them, it was a day to get lost in what they liked. Besides, Khoudi hated goodbyes and all the emotions they brought up.
She whistled a goodbye, and thought she saw an answering smile on Namsa’s face, but the girl didn’t turn around to watch her go.
* * *
—
At the junction where they had gone down to the beach stood a little shop. On one side of the door was a sign that read ALL SHALL COME TO PASS, and on the other COME AND GO WITH ALLAH’S BLESSINGS. Whenever Khoudi looked in the doorway, she saw a smiling old man counting his prayer beads. His face always looked like it had been waiting to meet hers, and he would nod and wave at her. She had wondered if he greeted everyone who walked by like that.
But today, instead of waving, he gestured her inside. In a hammock behind the counter sat a woman as old as he, but whom age had painted with a magnificent elegance. She stood up and came to the counter, leaned on it for support. From below, she brought out a beaded necklace. She unzipped the neck of Khoudi’s hoodie, took off her beanie, and placed the beads around her neck. Then she turned Khoudi around to face a small mirror on the wall, her old hands cupping the girl’s cheeks.
“I made this one, and I’ve had it in mind for you ever since you first walked by,” she said. “You remind me of someone I once knew.”
Khoudi stared at her image, surprised at how much more slender her neck was than she’d remembered. Then her heart sank as she wondered how to tell the woman she had no money to spare for such adornments.
“It’s yours,” said the woman. “Just do this one thing for me, when you can: Count the beads, while thinking about what truly makes you happy. And remember, you are always welcome here, especially when you feel your heart is burdened.” She led Khoudi to the door. “Go on now, and no need to thank me.”
Buoyed by this exchange, Khoudi stepped out onto the road and went on her way, touching the necklace from time to time to reassure herself she had not dreamed the encounter. Where the main road reached a roundabout, she turned onto a small path that zigzagged between trees and dense bushes. She followed the path down through a field of boulders to a hidden inlet with a tiny sandy beach. Here, the salt water met a narrow river that traveled down from the forested mountains. Somehow no one else seemed to know of this place. Perhaps no one explored beyond the boulders. Khoudi herself had stumbled upon it only by accident, during one of her many times running from the police. Since then, it had become the refuge where she took a break from the hardness of the world. An old concrete pillar at the edge of the stones had the inscription 96 DEGREES carved into its base, and that was the secret name with which she’d christened this haven of hers. It made her feel like the title of one of her favorite songs: untouchable.
The last time she’d been here was a week earlier, after an excursion to the Maroon Park market at the center of town, where apparel and cosmetics were sold. Intoxicated with the smell of fabric and perfume, she’d watched for a promising gaggle of mother and daughters to follow into a shop. If she chose a group she sufficiently resembled, and took her hair out of her beanie and removed her hoodie, she could usually pass herself off as a member of the family at least long enough to get in the door, evading the suspicion of the shopkeeper. While her pretend companions shopped, she would lose herself in the smell of the soaps or the feel of the dresses, smiling as though she were in the habit of immersing herself in these luxuries every day of her life. The two young girls and their mother she’d attached herself to that day bought soaps with scents she had never heard of: bergamot, lavender, verbena . . . She whispered the names to herself as she rubbed the samples hard on her hand, so that enough residue remained for her to enjoy later on.
That particular family was so carefree and oblivious that she trailed them from one shop to another, managing to slip a bar of body soap and two small bottles of lotion, and, in a coup, two silky dresses into her raffia bag while the girls were trying on outfits and monopolizing the attention of both their mother and the proprietors. While they were distracted, she had quietly slipped away and come to 96 Degrees, where she had hidden her precious soap, lotions, and dresses before returning to the little family.
Now she made her way down through the boulders, then jumped onto the little beach. She went to retrieve her treasures, relieved to find them where she had left them, under a stone in the mangroves. Averting her eyes, she took off her shoes; they were so discouragingly ruined that she no longer allowed herself to view them before slipping them off or on, but accomplished the task by feel. She removed her raffia bag, then her sweatshirt and baggy jeans, placing a stone on them to hide them and prevent water, wind, or creatures from carrying them away. She inhaled the air and closed her eyes, then opened them to see the worn-out underwear, undershirt, and brassiere, whose color and provenance she could no longer determine or remember. Her spare pair of underwear was in the same state, she knew. She would return to the market on a busy day when she might hitch herself to another family out shopping for what she needed.
For a few minutes, Khoudi simply sat by the river with her feet in it. It was warmer than the ocean, and nearly salt free. She looked up at the slopes of the mountain and out at the vast glistening body of the ocean, its blue getting brighter as the sun became livelier. Gently, she touched the necklace the woman had given her, then took it off and put it with her clothes so that it wouldn’t get soaked. She found a deeper pool and lowered her body into the water until it reached her neckline. She stayed like this for a while, rubbing her hands against her skin and pouring water over her back, her arms, her face, her
belly.
Recently, she had started experiencing a new pleasure while touching her face and body in private like this. Her hand felt wonderful against her own skin, especially along her belly. A tingling rose up inside her body, so intense that she curled her toes and squeezed her legs tight with the pleasure of it. She knew the names for her private parts, but they made her uncomfortable to think about. Instead, she preferred not to think at all, just let her hand pass along the contours of her face and body.
From the plastic bag, she took the soap and lotions she had corrupted at the fabric market. She began washing her body and then her hair with the bar of soap. She tried untangling some of the knots in her lathered hair, but with little success, so she simply gave up and rinsed it with the fresh water.
The next task was to do her laundry. She went back to the stones and collected the things she had been wearing. She wet and soaped them sparingly, then rinsed them, wrung them out, and spread them on the stones to dry. She never felt comfortable getting completely naked, even here where no one was watching. What if someone was spying on her from afar? What if someone showed up by accident? What if she had to run away? The only place she felt less vulnerable was in the water, so she returned to the deep pool, submerged herself, and beneath the water, slipped off her underwear. She washed it the best she could, and then, with her body hunched over, she crouched closer to the edge of the water and laid her undergarments on a nearby stone to dry. Then she returned to the water and waited for the sun to do a little of its magic.
To avoid letting her thoughts wander to places and events she didn’t wish to revisit, she started running down a sort of catalogue she kept in her head, of girls she had seen wearing beautiful outfits and enjoying their time together. Would she ever be able to make such friends herself? She had some carefully hoarded money in her raffia bag. Perhaps it was enough to get her hair cut and styled, even a manicure and pedicure. It had been a long time since she’d had any color on her fingers and toes, even painting them herself, and she missed it.
