Little Family

by Ishmael Beah

  Ndevui shook his head. “Why do these foreigners always ask how you are going to improve your nation as soon as you do something interesting? And meanwhile they are here in our country, improving themselves.”

  “I actually enjoyed the conversation,” Elimane said. “And when we left, William Handkerchief said, ‘You are a natural!’ He told me that at one point he really believed I was studying at Oxford. ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘I almost believed you were my son!’” Elimane broke into gales of laughter.

  “This boss man of yours is really taking a liking to you!” said Kpindi.

  “He says he doesn’t like people working for him to have morals, because they become self-righteous as they make more money. Anyway, the food was okay. I liked the jacket more.” Elimane undid the necktie and took it off. “You know, I am doing this for us too.”

  “Yes, big brother. You seem to be enjoying it a lot, though.” Kpindi took the necktie from Elimane and hung it loosely around his own neck. Khoudiemata laughed. She sensed that Elimane was enjoying himself during these escapades with William Handkerchief. Not that she begrudged him—the work was yielding them a constant flow of cash for now.

  Ndevui stood up and stumbled to where they could all see him.

  “Here is my poem: ‘Elimane, Elimane, please don’t bring the crooked history of our land into this space, where we exist as freely as we can.’” Ndevui bowed and got himself another drink. Khoudiemata closed her eyes, remembering the feeling of her scalp being massaged, the smell of the oils on her hair, the chatter of the girls she now knew.

  “I am sure Shadrach the Messiah will be there tomorrow,” said Kpindi. “He is probably going to be the only one sober then.” He sat on the plastic bucket opposite Khoudiemata.

  Ndevui extended a bottle of beer and a joint toward Khoudi. “You have to catch up. We have all this beer and smoke. We should celebrate, Independence Day or not.”

  Elimane had gone to sit by the plane with part of a newspaper he’d picked up somewhere. “This is an interesting column. It asks what people would like to change about their country for Independence Day.”

  “What do most people want changed?” Khoudiemata came to look at the paper along with him.

  “They want to change the names of streets and cities and neighborhoods.” Elimane showed her the article.

  “I think all the politicians should be changed, because they are the problem,” said Ndevui.

  “You are right,” said Elimane. “I wish you could read it yourself.”

  “But how will you have time to teach us anymore, now that you are working for William Handkerchief?” Abruptly, Elimane turned the page. He seemed irritated, or perhaps guilty. Khoudi caught an ad for Noire Point. Come revisit and reawaken the beauty of your tradition, it read.

  Elimane crumpled the newspaper and threw it on the ground and went to get another drink. He opened the bottle and placed it on the makeshift table, tapping the surface contemplatively. Then, with one big swig, he downed the entire bottle of beer, following it with a gulp from a bottle of gin that made him wince. He sat himself down next to Khoudiemata, then turned to her, studying her.

  “Khoudi! Something is different about you today. In a good way.”

  Khoudi had forgotten about her toes, she realized. She wiggled them away from the holes in her sneakers and checked to be sure all her hair was under her beanie. She was glad after all that she had not gotten color on her fingernails. It wasn’t so much that she was worried about the little family’s knowing how she was taking care of herself as that she wanted to keep that other world as her world, apart. At the same time, she had always loved how Elimane paid attention to the details about her and showed that he understood the way she saw things, and the unspoken language of her thoughts. It occurred to her that he had not asked her how the canvas of her day was, as he usually did.

  “Of course, something is different about me every day. I am a woman.” She punched Elimane on the arm. She meant it playfully, but she hit him harder than she’d intended. Still, he seemed grateful that she’d fallen back into their old playfulness.

  “My masculine brain is incapable of comprehending you fully. But I am aware of my shortcomings.” He laughed and rubbed his arm.

  “Oh man, don’t ruin our enjoyment by talking like a dictionary,” Ndevui pleaded. “Live here with us and come out of that head of yours. I ask you, please, man!” They all laughed.

  The wind brought them the sound of Afro Trap from town, and it made Khoudi think again about the beautiful people she had met at the beach. What a constant creation life was! Any day, any hour, any minute, something good or bad happened and became part of you for a lifetime.

  The sun was beginning its descent from the sky. Khoudi put a spliff between her fingers. “Who has a match or a lighter? Ndevui, Kpindi, you think you can roll enough to keep up?” At such times, she generally encouraged them to smoke more than drink, as alcohol brought out the demons they were otherwise so good at suppressing.

  She took another spliff and put both in her mouth. Ndevui threw her a matchbox. She lit up and pulled hard, twice, before passing one to Kpindi on her right, over Namsa, whose head was down on the table with her eyes open. The other she passed left, to Elimane.

  “Full circle. I like it,” said Ndevui.

  “Kpindi, can you sing us a Bob Marley song?” said Khoudi. “‘Zimbabwe’?”

  “No, no. He can’t sing! Just hum the tune,” Ndevui said.

  “How about if Elimane plays it on the phone William Handkerchief gave him?” Khoudi suggested.

  Elimane looked confused. “It’s not a smartphone.” He pulled it from his front pocket and put it on the table.

  “It has 3G, so you can play the song right from the internet, Mr. Bookman,” said Ndevui. “It’s up to us to make the phones smart these days, until we can afford a smartphone.” He took the phone and adjusted the settings. Then he held it up and walked around the clearing until he found the spot with the best reception. In a few minutes the song came through, quiet but distinct in the night air. Ndevui perched the phone in a low bush, and they all sang along.

  “Every woman got a right to decide her own destiny,” sang Khoudi, certain that Bob Marley wouldn’t mind her small edit.

  “I wonder what Bob Marley would think about Zimbabwe today?” said Elimane, spliff in hand. “You know—”

  “Please don’t ruin the song for us, man,” Kpindi and Ndevui said at the same time. Khoudi laughed, and Elimane pulled on the ganja and passed it along. When the song ended, Ndevui fiddled with the phone again until he brought in the radio station Lion’s Roar, which played only reggae. The music became the background to their laughing and talking, their day of independence. In a sense, they knew, they were freer than most.

  “We have to meet this William Handkerchief fellow and thank him for the phone,” said Kpindi. “Look at how we are enjoying ourselves!”

  In the afternoon, Elimane told them, William Handkerchief had him go by himself to pick up a white fellow at the airport, take him to the port, and put him on a boat. For this operation, as William Handkerchief referred to it, he was provided with a copy of Animal Farm. Elimane was to pretend to be reading the book while waiting for the man; that’s how he would be identified. As for the white fellow, William Handkerchief told him, he would look like an older version of Jesus—or at least the way Jesus was portrayed in movies.

  As it happened, the man’s flight was delayed, and Elimane had to wait for him for hours. Elimane had read the book before, of course, but he ended up reading the entire book again.

  “I am sure you would have read it even if the plane hadn’t been delayed,” said Ndevui, and Khoudiemata and Kpindi smiled in agreement.

  “Sounds like you are beginning a whole other life going with this mysterious William Handkerchief,” said Khoudi. She wasn’t complaining. It was nice not having
to do that daily hand-to-mouth out of necessity, like before. Now they did it more out of habit, in preparation for a day that didn’t greet them pleasantly, when whatever they had going now came to its end.

  Their reverie was broken by the sound of Namsa shuffling her little body to its feet. As she made her way toward the plane, Kpindi and Ndevui began laughing at the way she staggered and stopped to hold on to a bush here and the branch of a tree there, as if her feet had forgotten their natural task. Khoudi and Elimane watched her with concern, though. It wasn’t the first time they had seen her intoxicated, but she hadn’t had anything to drink or smoke since rejoining them. Khoudi wondered if she’d been running errands for people down at the beach, the way Khoudi herself used to do. You could make a little money buying cigarettes, alcohol, snacks, and the like, and you could take a swig or a bite or a smoke here and there, and no one would notice.

  Elimane went to Namsa. She resisted for a moment but then let him help her complete her snail’s journey to the edge of the clearing, where he lowered her to the ground. Every time she tried to say something, hiccups convulsed her little body. Kpindi and Ndevui started to laugh again, and this time their laughter was contagious. Even Elimane joined in. While they were laughing, Namsa fell asleep, one side of her face in the dirt.

  Khoudi took an empty beer bottle and filled it with water. She walked to Namsa and shook her awake. Namsa grumbled gibberish, and Khoudi handed her the bottle, from which she drank.

  Namsa wiped her mouth. “This is terrible beer.”

  “You should try this one.” Elimane gave her another bottle.

  Namsa tasted it and made a face. “Horrible. Wait, if you want me to drink water, just say so.” She got up and returned to the table, took a bucket, and sat down, continuing to sip water between hiccups. Khoudi knew what to do next. She went behind the plane to harvest some of the aloe that grew all over the clearing. With her knife, she cut the plants into small pieces. Then she squeezed the aloe into a bottle.

  “Do we have any ginger beer?” she asked.

  “Yes, there’s some over there,” said Elimane. “What are you doing?”

  “Something I learned from one of my aunties who had a drunkard sugar daddy.” Khoudi gave the drink to Namsa. “Drink, little by little, and you will be fine in no time.”

  Namsa drank a mouthful without hesitation. “It is tastier than that water, anyway.” They settled back into their usual banter, with Namsa gradually joining them.

  “You all missed out on what Shadrach the Messiah had to say today.” Namsa stood up to do her impersonation, reciting what she remembered. “‘Look at all of you fools, including me, celebrating an Independence Day we didn’t fight for. Some foreigners who didn’t own this land decided that today you were free in a land where your ancestors lived before they arrived. This is why we are not free, because we have allowed someone else to decide when and how we should be free. Were we free before they arrived? Hmm? Hmm? Only a colonized mind can even entertain that question. Wake up, wake up, and don’t celebrate your imprisonment.’” She sat down. “Some people laughed and others didn’t.”

  “Perhaps the ones who didn’t laugh realized something,” Khoudi said.

  “Many just thought he was a crazy person who goes on and on,” Namsa said.

  Elimane had heard that Shadrach the Messiah used to be a professor and had held a position in government. It was said that as a professor, he always set aside the textbooks his students were reading and instead took them around the city to show them what was happening. He had tried to organize people too, in the shantytowns. But he grew frustrated at all the corruption, and one day he had just walked away from it, professorship and government post and all.

  “Do you know him?” asked Kpindi.

  “No, not personally,” Elimane said. “He taught my father at university.” He followed this admission with a gulp of gin, to wash away any thoughts that might be emerging from the past.

  “Please, let’s not talk about sophisticated people who lost their minds because of this and that,” barked Ndevui. “I hate these sorts of stories! If it can’t improve my life now, don’t tell it to me!”

  Khoudi laughed gently. “If you don’t like what you’re hearing, just don’t listen. Put your earphones on.” She knew it was the mention of Elimane’s father that was making Ndevui grumpy. No one asked Elimane any further questions, in any case, because they were all afraid of his telling a sad story they didn’t want to hear.

  Just then, the little phone that had been providing music chimed. Elimane rushed to pick it up, and the others quieted.

  “Hello,” he said. “Yes.”

  Then, “However big or small the job, I can find people to do it.”

  Then, “Yes, yes, reliable people who need the cash and won’t have questions.” They could hear how hard he was working to sound sober.

  Elimane listened some more, then looked up, alarmed. “But why tonight?” He listened again. “Okay, I do not need an explanation. I am aware that poverty has no holiday. I will bring my group. We will be there.” He hung up, but just to make sure, he took the battery out and put it back in. Clearly, he had had more than enough to drink and to smoke.

  “Ah, this is not good,” he moaned.

  Kpindi tapped him on the shoulder. “Everything okay, big brother?”

  “William Handkerchief wants us to meet him for an errand at the airport as soon as it is dark. So we have to get sober before then. I told you he was unpredictable.”

  “Don’t worry, we know how to hold ourselves up,” said Ndevui. “The trick is to drink more and smoke more. We are unpredictable too!” He took several pulls from the ganja, which made him cough. He bit off the edge of a sachet of sassman, the local alcohol that ran to 120 percent proof—it was guaranteed to make you impudent, hence the name—and drank it straight. Then he ran and launched himself into the crotch of a nearby tree in one swing.

  “You see that agility? Relax, man! Whatever it is, we can do it in our sleep. This is our life.” He returned to the table.

  The phone rang again. Elimane took the call and walked around the clearing, hunting for better reception.

  “Yes,” he said. “I can get them to the airfield without going through the main security entrance.” He winked at the rest of the group. It was funny that their boss man didn’t know that they lived within walking distance of the place where he wanted them to go.

  “I trust every one of them with my life,” Elimane was saying. “No, you don’t have to worry about secrecy. That is our life. And no one would believe anything we say, anyway. We are useful riffraff, as you told me yourself!”

  Another pause. “Yes, right when night sets in, which will be around nine o’clock. Right, twenty-one hundred hours.” He rolled his eyes. “Okay, over and out.” He hung up the phone.

  “This fellow always speaks like he is in the military. ‘Over, out, copy, twenty-one hundred hours.’” Elimane surveyed their faces to see if they were all ready for the unknown task at hand. “You heard the time. We aren’t to bring any identity cards or anything like that with us.” They all laughed. “And he promised to give us five hundred US dollars for tonight.” They whistled at the amount, which was equivalent to several million in their own currency.

  King’s property, everything is indeed going to be correct. They all jokingly competed with one another to say it as fast and as many times as possible, until they fell apart, laughing.

  Kpindi took one of Elimane’s notebooks, cut out a page, and folded it into a neat rectangle. Then he plucked a pen from Elimane’s chest pocket, drew some lines on the paper, and wrote something on the lines.

  “My ID card. Now I exist.” He laughed.

  “Nice photo. It looks so much like you.” Khoudi pointed at the smiley stick figure Kpindi had drawn.

  “Don’t bring it with you, I beg of you. We want that ca
sh,” said Ndevui.

  Elimane gave a deep sigh they all recognized, and Ndevui raised his hands, surrendering to what had almost become tradition. “Just say it, man, so it is out of the way.”

  Elimane spoke with reluctance. “You know that we are going to be engaging in the sort of plundering that makes the path of history crooked.”

  It was an old argument, and Kpindi and Ndevui disagreed with him, as they had expressed many a time. They were already on the crooked path of history, so why walk straight? You either got off or stayed on and lived as circumstances dictated, especially in their position.

  If William Handkerchief was willing to give them for one night’s work what it took most people six months to earn, they could only imagine how much he was making. They didn’t care. Five hundred dollars meant time just to relax if they chose to. For Khoudiemata, it meant more time on her own—or with her new friends. Elimane was thinking about time to read and wander about bookstores and newsstands in town, or to go to the open hearings at the Supreme Court. He could go on his own to some of the places he had glimpsed while working for William Handkerchief. For Ndevui, it was more time to play football or to run as long as he liked. He could even buy his own set of portable equipment, so that he could start a game anytime and anywhere he liked. Namsa and Kpindi just wanted to be. Who said that you had to have a purpose? Wasn’t the very process of living freely where the purpose lay, where you might find one?

  5

  It took only a short time for the little family to arrive at the barbed-wire fence from which they could see the entire airfield and the terminal. They knew from previous forays that the fence didn’t extend all the way around the field, but enclosed only the parts that were most visible. In the other places, rolls of rusting barbed wire lay scattered about. If the work had once been intended to be completed by a certain date, that time seemed to have passed.