They were sitting at one of the canteen’s plastic tables, the wind catching the woman’s hat.
“You speak English beautifully,” she said. Adam thanked her. He’d learned English from a Sudanese Christian missionary. His father had wanted that for him.
“Do you know what it means to be a humanitarian?” asked the woman.
“To teach English to refugee children.”
“No. To be a humanitarian you need only do things for other people.”
The wind blew the woman’s hat from her head. Adam didn’t remember how the conversation ended, but it didn’t matter. I always note the important things, he thought. He remembered that Susan had a son who was addicted to cocaine back in London. Adam had never been to London, but he knew that an awful lot of people lived there. “Cocaine addiction is a sickness,” Susan said. Along with it comes a lot of suffering. Their suffering is obviously greater than mine. Everything is greater with white people, Adam thought and looked at his ankle. The shirt was already sutured to it with dried blood. Somebody was bound to come this way sooner or later. He stuck his head up from the grass and spied the road, but other than a few birds, he didn’t see a thing. Adam was sure that someone from the nearest town would herd their animals here to drink, by nightfall at the latest. He could stay alive that long, no problem. It was just a matter of having enough water. He reached out a hand for his plastic bottle. The water was warm, and ran down his chin.
“To be a humanitarian you need only do things for other people,” he had explained to Mireille in the village. They were sitting in their adobe hut. Mireille was seventeen when he paid a bride price of 200 dollars—enough to live on around there for two years—to her father. He wasn’t sorry. For him that was just two months’ pay, thanks to the whites. Mireille raised her eyebrows. She still didn’t understand the word’s meaning.
“Then in our village everybody is a humanitarian.”
“No, you have to work with people outside of the tribe. The whites have no tribes,” he tried to explain, before alighting on a better example. “Being a humanitarian means the same as being a good Muslim. Only that the whites don’t know this.”
The answer must have satisfied the girl, because she reached out and stroked his cheek. She offered him milk, but he didn’t want any. He just watched how the warm goat milk flowed into her mouth. He loved her, but he couldn’t say why. Perhaps because she was the first to offer him something to drink when he came across the border from Sudan. Perhaps it was because she had the lightest colored palms from among the village girls.
Adam heard a car engine and machine-gun fire. He sat up and saw that a United Front truck was coming up the road. Eight passengers were riding in the back, all off to the fighting. At least three from the group were not yet fifteen years old. He could tell which army they belonged to from the robes they wore. Adam gritted his teeth and kept down. He knew what it would mean if they noticed him; not one of them was of his tribe. He shuddered for a moment, thinking they had seen him, because the truck slowed, then stopped. The soldiers went to the largest pool of water and filled their canteens. He watched as the younger ones kicked around a stone as if they were playing soccer.
He had watched the championship game with the rest of the humanitarian workers. Everybody was rooting for Cameroon; they were playing Egypt, and they won. On the base there was no difference between the whites and the blacks, at least that’s what Susan said. Only that the black canteen workers always served meals first to the whites, who gave them bigger tips than the local black employees.
He rarely went to the base. He had worked in Goz Beïda for five months. When the contract expired, he went to Abéché to pick up his pay. Lots of the Sudanese refugees lived in Goz Beïda. He taught their children the ABCs in English. By now they knew enough of the language to buy a hat.
In the refugee camps everybody loved the whites, because they knew they had them to thank for their flour. When SUVs arrived at night, children ran out alongside them, and women waved from the huts. The camps were bigger than any city in the country. And they had their own militias, so they could protect themselves from the smaller groups of raiding bandits. This, however, didn’t deter the larger armies, which did what they knew best. A refugee camp was the best place if an army wanted to replenish its ranks or indulge its soldiers’ sexual appetites. In a country where there are simply too many laws to possibly obey, a man with a rifle in his hand is God himself.
He knew the belt around his leg had come loose, because the shirt began to redden again. The soldiers had already departed and nobody was on the road. When he retied the belt, he felt dizzy. Slowly night was falling. Adam thought about how the cocaine users must suffer.
The first SUV had arrived at the base at ten. Confusion was already taking hold. The base’s administration—Susan among them—had placed guards at the blue-painted entrance. By the door they set up a table to check passports. Everybody stood in a line. It was very hot and the men were sweating through their shirts.
“Those with European passports go first,” said Susan as she packed. She had already placed the framed picture of her with the Sudanese children of the camp in her suitcase. Adam’s expression must have been one of abject fright, because the woman stopped packing when she saw his face.
“Wouldn’t it be possible for my wife and me to go?” he asked.
“Not now. First the Europeans need to go.”
“But I am also a humanitarian.”
“I know,” the woman said as she resumed packing. “Don’t be afraid; we’ll be back soon. Nothing will happen here like in Darfur. We won’t allow it.”
“And when are you coming back?”
“Within a few days. A week at the most.”
“Then I will go and tell my wife not to worry,” Adam said with a smile.
“You shouldn’t be on the road now. Wait until the fighting ends,” said Susan, and with her suitcase in hand headed off toward the entrance.
It was a clear starry sky, more so than usual. A chilly wind blew. Adam was about an hour’s walk from the village. He began to shiver. He felt the belt cut into his flesh. He had already lost a lot of blood. Adam looked down at his leg, and thought it was so white it couldn’t have been his own. He peered into the darkness on the road, straining to see. No movement. It’s possible that the townsfolk only come to water their animals in the morning, he thought. I am strong. I can last until then. I was always strong.
He thought about streetlights, how he would be able to see much better if only the road were lit with them. The topic had come up with Susan once. In London everything is lit up. In France too. At night all of Europe is flooded with light. Only Africa stays dark at night. Surely in Europe you’d be able to see the village lights.
The crackle of machine guns sounded along with grenade bursts. In the distance something began to glow. It lasted twenty minutes, then the weapons went quiet, and all he could hear were the bugs in the grass. Probably the United Front was trading fire with the national army, thought Adam. The village wasn’t the target; because of the whites they wouldn’t dare. They must have lit a few houses from the outskirts on fire. The houses there burn easier.
He remembered that once, when he was a child, he had nearly set their hut alight after he’d stolen his father’s pipe to test it out. His father had lashed him with a belt for that. Adam had no idea where his father was now. Somewhere in Darfur, in a village, if there were still villages in Darfur. This isn’t Darfur, he thought, and shook off his worries. He never understood why, on the TV they watched in the canteen, the tribes’ names were never mentioned in news broadcasts. Otherwise, the information didn’t mean anything to anybody.
Adam looked at his leg. It wasn’t bleeding anymore. He determined that if he were to cut off the foot, he would be able to move. Perhaps he could drag himself to the village. He took out the knife and considered how to go about the job. To remove the foot he would have to cut the remaining tendons. The bone had been
blown in two by the shrapnel, so he wouldn’t need to contend with that. He had witnessed similar operations in Abéché, in the hospital. There were children who, while herding animals, had stepped on a mine or an unexploded grenade. The goal in every case was to keep the limb from turning gangrenous and stemming the spread of infection. These days, lots of kids in the village market square played soccer with one leg and a crutch.
It spooked him that the cutting didn’t hurt at all. But it was over fast. He tried to crawl to the road, but he was weaker than he’d thought. After a few yards he gave up and passed out.
He saw his wife before him, how they made love. Recalling how good her scent was, he saw flowers in front of him and felt the touch of her skin.
Adam slowly came to. People were moving on the road. Civilians. Men, women, and children were running into the field. He held out his hand. A man found him. The man leaned into the grass and whispered that the United Front had declared the villagers enemies and began to shoot everybody. They had shot at least ten people in the head in the village square and had rounded up the women. Those who were still alive were fleeing. Adam stayed quiet. He asked the man if he knew where the soldiers were heading. “West,” said the man, who ran onward. In the field, mines exploded, and the sound of moaning filled the morning air. Adam couldn’t see the other wounded, but he heard their voices.
Don’t worry, he thought. This couldn’t happen in my village. The whites are coming back; they wouldn’t abandon us. For a while he listened to the whimpering from the field. The soldiers then arrived there from the direction of the village, and one after another shot the wounded in the head. After a while everything became silent and only the sound of insects could be heard. The warm smell of blood drifted across the field.
In the waiting room of Heathrow International, Susan sipped her coffee and looked impatiently at her watch. Her husband had called to say he would be a few minutes late. Sitting across from her was a young man who had studied political science at Cambridge. They had sat next to each other on the plane after he boarded in Libya. They talked about Chad, how the United Front had reached the capital, N’Djamena. The man was interested in what the United Nations would do.
“You know, the humanitarians will do as much as they can for them,” said Susan, and took another sip of coffee. She grimaced. It had already gone cold.
“But everybody has already been evacuated from there,” said the man.
“Yes, none of our people remain. Unfortunately, it’s like this when the army comes. We have to go, and there is simply nothing to be done about it. But we always return.”
“When will you go back?” asked the man.
“It depends on the political situation. Maybe in three months, maybe a year. But don’t worry about Chad; there’s no ethnic cleansing there. It’s not Darfur.”
Meanwhile Susan’s husband had arrived. She finished her coffee and changed to her local SIM card. She was late: the city’s street lights were already blazing.
The Desert Is Cold In the Morning
Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.
—Ernest Hemingway
Father really was dead. I was at an editorial meeting when the doctor told me the news. Twice I said I couldn’t take his call before he was able to inform me. He said, “Your father is dead,” and I said, “So what.” He told me that he wasn’t able to contact my brother in Berlin, so I’d have to return home and take care of the papers. And there was the dog. The doctor was a friend of the family. He’d already seen to the cremation.
I knew the old man was ill, and I had been expecting his death, though I never thought he would kick the bucket on such a chilly Wednesday, after lunch. He was well known for his sense of timing: he had missed my high school graduation banquet due to a drawn-out hunters’ party.
So, like I said, I was standing there in the editorial office, listening to the evaluation of the latest issue of the magazine by our know-it-all editor-guy, and I seriously resented the fact that I had to leave town. When the meeting was over I followed the editors to the cafeteria. By 3 PM there was nothing left but cheap, 650-forint plates of batter-fried cheese with tartar sauce. So I chose the fried cheese. The taste of a dead father is that of fried cheese soaked in oil with overcooked rice, vinegary tartar sauce, and a few slices of cucumber. I left my plate shining and empty.
My photographer drove me over the Danube to the Pest side of Budapest. I went into a café to drink a coffee. I opened my laptop to check the schedule for trains to the provinces. I bought some drugs to make what was to come more bearable. “I always calm down on amphetamines,” I said to myself as I purchased five grams. It was still a bit sticky when I slid the paper-wrap into a little pocket on the side of my moleskin pants. By seven that night I was at Keleti railway station, ticket in hand. Adult fare, round-trip. The ticket cost 8,000 forints.
I sat in the buffet car on the westbound train that left Budapest. The journey to Csorna took four coffees, three beers, half a pack of cigarettes, and a somewhat decent fuck in the bathroom with the forty-something blonde from behind the counter. The tracks running farther west, to Szombathely and Sopron near the Austrian border, parted at Csorna. The buffet car with the blonde headed for Szombathely.
I drank four more coffees—instant—and got permission to smoke as long as the window was open. I knew where we were with my eyes closed. For an entire semester at university I’d traveled slumped next to this window.
I arrived at the station at 10:35, my shirt reeking of sweat and of the particular odor of the Hungarian State Railways. The station looked the same as it had for the last ten years, with the same old welcoming slogans posted for arriving passengers to see: “Welcome to the town of fidelity and freedom,” and “Don’t forget: the cyclamen is an endangered flower!” I recognized a few of the gypsies hanging out in front of the station’s bar—we had gone to school together.
I got off the train, with only my laptop dangling from my shoulder. I walked past families embracing; first-year students met by their parents in the vestibule. I’d been met by my parents like this some time ago. Not anymore.
I took a cab home. Neighbors peeked out to see who was coming. There was a “For Sale” sign in the window. Our house was the most repulsive imitation farmhouse on the street. It was painted a pale shade of light green. A dead geranium was rotting on the windowsill. I never could understand why the pale green, why my mother chose this very color. The cellar window was open. Somewhere in the gloom behind that window I’d lost my virginity. It wasn’t pretty.
I paid for the cab and fished for the keys in my pocket. Father’s dog barked behind the door. It took me three tries to find the right key. The dog was sitting by the bottom step of the foyer staircase, sweeping the floor with his tail. When he saw me enter, he threw himself on his back, belly to the sky. He was expecting me to scratch him; he was whining with joy because he recognized my smell. Bootsi, the wire-haired dachshund. Ten years old and thirty pounds.
I opened all the windows and cleaned the dog shit from the carpet. The ambulance driver had closed the front door, so Bootsi couldn’t get out to take care of his business. I poured water into a bowl and he drank. I looked around for something that could pass for dry dog food, filled his bowl, then entered my father’s room. The dog refused to leave me alone for a minute.
I had carried Bootsi home myself from a nearby village some ten years ago. He was small enough to fit in my palm. I hadn’t thought he would survive the first winter. He was the scraggliest of the litter, which is why my mother chose him. Up until her dying day, she was convinced that in the end it was always the youngest son who turned out to be the smartest, the luckiest, and the happiest, like in fairy tales. So that must have been the reason behind her choice. My brother and I had been begging for a dog for seventeen years. Finally my parents got themselves one.
I don’t know how he did it, but Bootsi the dachshund turned my parents into avid dog lovers in a under a year. He was sma
ll and constantly crying, but would calm down when my mother picked him up. It got to the point where the three of them slept side by side in the conjugal bed: mom, dad, and the dog. They were convinced that the animal understood everything. After my brother and I moved to Pest, they began confusing our names with Bootsi’s. He became their last child.
I reclined into my father’s armchair, in front of his desk. His computer was still on. I cancelled his downloads and I checked my email. My brother was desperately sorry he could not come.
The dog was lying at my feet, looking up at me from time to time. Noticing I had taken off my boots and socks, he began to lick my toes. I shouted at him, and he ran to hide under the table. I looked around for a place to sleep. My father’s bed still held his imprint. I spent some time looking for sheets and blankets, with the dog close at my heels. After rummaging through the apartment, I came up with no sheets but a half a bottle of Metaxa. I slumped into my father’s chair again, methodically sipping from the bottle as I deleted his stuff from the computer. The dachshund sat back on his hindquarters and placed his paws on my knee. He would have already jumped up on my lap by now, but he was aging and having problems with his spine. He was waiting for me to lift him. He’d wait in vain. I brushed off his paws and told him to leave me alone. Bootsi crawled back under the bed. I finished the bottle and collapsed into Father’s bed, fully dressed.
I opened my eyes to find Bootsi’s muzzle facing me on the pillow. He was sleeping with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. I had no idea how he’d managed to get up the on bed, but somehow he’d managed. I felt his breath on my face. But I had a headache and no energy to get pissed off. I climbed out of bed and lit a cigarette. It was nine o’clock. I was already late. The notary public was waiting for me, but before that I had to get my father’s papers together and pay for the cremation. The dog raised his head and looked at me. He walked me to the door; I had to push him back to get rid of him.
The Devil Is a Black Dog Page 13
