by M L Rudolph
Pickups. The word bothered him.
It was too hot to jog. He settled into a brisk walk. For being the seat of government there was very little traffic here. No pedestrians or street vendors. Quiet enough to hear the leaves rustle in the trees, or the grumble of an approaching car.
A military jeep zipped into view, driving recklessly down the middle of the road making Matt jump off the pavement to let it pass. Three soldiers clung to the roll bar in the back. They looked like boys, but boys who slept rough in their new uniforms and were roused from sleep, sweaty and grumpy. One soldier drilled his dark eyes into Matt. Another jeep followed with soldiers hanging on in the back. Then a third jeep, empty at the rear.
After the soldiers drove out of sight, Matt realized how quickly his situation could deteriorate; he was alone and on foot. He would have been powerless had they stopped him. He had no ID. Only a pocket full of cash. His immediate reaction was to start jogging. His new boots dug into his ankles but he wanted to get out of here as fast as he could. Pickups, he thought as he jogged. Were those jeeps the pickups? Was that what Fletcher meant?
Matt flapped his arms to flag down the first taxi he spotted. He gestured and muttered to the driver in his own mélange of Pidgin French and English to direct him south along the Niger River until he recognized a large baobab tree in the distance marking the rutted track that led to the Djédji family farm.
He asked the taxi to wait for him beside the Mercedes with the Côte d’Ivoire plates parked by the low mud wall. The rust-red dust that caked the Mercedes had been elaborately decorated by children’s fingers. The open trunk was crammed with small pots and baskets of yams, bananas, and dried fruits, folded mud cloths, and a crate of bottled water. The jerry cans full of petrol were tucked in at the side.
Several children wearing baseball caps and sunglasses popped their heads over the wall, then a group of boys and girls ran up to Matt to trail him as he walked through the arched entrance into the open area.
Shade trees shielded simple rectangular homes, their doors open to dark interiors. A round enclosure in the center of the space sheltered a low fire that gave off a chary odor. A pair of dogs joined the procession. One of the girls ran ahead into a home at the corner of the settlement and came out pulling Jean-Louis by the hand.
Matt stopped at the sight of him. Jean-Louis wore a royal blue kaftan over collared shirt and jeans, looking a world apart from the natty and sophisticated big city concièrge. Jacques came out behind him, still wearing his muscled tee shirt, the bleached amulet still dangling from his neck.
“What is this?” Jean-Louis kept hold of the girl’s hand as he walked up to Matt. He looked neither pleased nor displeased to see the American.
Matt lost track of how much time he spent running down a taxi then speeding to the farm. The jeeps with the soldiers could be a minute or an hour from arriving. He had no way to tell.
“I was just at the Embassy, and they sent me to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs up by the Presidential Palace….”
“I know where the Ministry is,” Jean-Louis snapped.
“Sure. Of course you do. But I ran into the guy I met at the Embassy. Fletcher. He said something about pickups. Then I saw these soldiers driving jeeps up to the Ministry. Jeeps, like that, they look like pickups. Or maybe he meant he was going to arrange pickups, as in come out here and pick you up.” He hesitated, unsure how to continue.
“Why would soldiers come out here?” Jean-Louis stared at Matt.
“To pick you up. Maybe you are the pickups.”
Jean-Louis gently squeezed the little girl’s hand then encouraged her to join the other children. She dropped his hand but stayed put, watching.
“Did you lead them here? Is that what you are trying to say?”
—What is it? Jacques asked. —What is he saying?
—Let me find out, but you should get Sally. We may need to leave sooner.
Jacques touched his amulet and slapped his thigh to draw the attention of the dogs. He walked off in the direction of a home in one corner of the compound.
“I might have.”
“You might have what?”
“Led them here by mistake.”
“Mistake!”
“They kept my passport. This Fletcher guy wanted to know how I got here with a stolen passport.”
“It’s the easiest thing in the world to pass off a stolen passport. You saw the border. He knows that.”
“I thought he’d write up some report. At worst, come question you. They say they don’t get involved in local crime. How was I supposed to know he’d involve the local police or army or whatever it is?”
Jacques brought Sally out of a hut. She wore an elaborately patterned brown and pink kaftan that, despite its full cut, couldn’t hide her attractive shape. She appeared taller and somewhat elegant. Her hair was braided with small colorful beads and fell in thin strands to her shoulders. Her right was eye now partially open.
Jean-Louis’s mother emerged from behind them, followed by young women in wraps with babies at their backs and a pair of older girls balancing toddlers on their hips.
“As soon as I realized what I’d done, I ran down to the road until I got another taxi and came right here.”
Matt’s mind raced through scenarios.
Who to trust? The devil he knew? Or the devil he didn’t? But which of these devils did he know? Consular Officer Fletcher, the interrogator? Jean-Louis Djédji the former concièrge, proven thief, and attempted murderer?
Whomever he trusted, he had to decide now. He felt for his remaining bankroll.
“I will pay you to drive me to Waga, or however you say it,” he offered Jean-Louis. “You know how much cash I have, so we can work out the price in the car. But I’m going with you.”
Chapter 22
Jacques drove slowly behind the walled settlement and turned south of Bamako to exit the city. The rutted track connected to an unpaved road through fields of planted shea trees where dusty-legged boys herded languid cattle and goats, and women gathered firewood and ground nuts.
“Maybe Robert will arrive at the farm at the same time as the soldiers. That would be one kind of justice,” Sally said, and smiled crookedly at the thought. She sat in the back next to Matt, the flowing folds of her kaftan spilling across the seat. The stopover at the farm obviously helped her start to heal.
—What do you think, Jacques? she said with a playful air. —Maybe Matt planned it all, for the soldiers to arrive at the farm at the same time as Robert. Wouldn’t that be perfect?
The driver laughed and touched his amulet. —Such is my wish.
—Yes, good. Let’s have fun with the man who almost got us arrested, Jean-Louis said, stone-faced.
“Matt warned us,” she reverted to English for Matt’s sake. “He could have stayed away.”
—Came to tell us about the problem he created, Jean-Louis snorted. —He is your problem, Sally. I settled my debt to him. I owe him nothing now.
They passed a field of eucalyptus, then stubbled fields sectioned by tree rows, and mud walls protecting simple storage facilities built on wood foundations. A lone camel stood to one edge of a field, statue-like, staring into the open plain, chewing. A low-flying aircraft pointed south to the Bamako airport.
“We turn on to the route nationale at the end of this road,” Sally said. “Then we head to Timbuktu.”
“Timbuktu?” Matt said, surprised at the notion.
“So you know the place?”
“Of course, I know the place. Everybody’s heard of Timbuktu. Just that, where I come from it usually means the end of the earth, where nobody goes.”
“Well, it’s a long way from here. And people do go there. But we’re not,” Sally said. “It’s just my trick.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We are going to stop for petrol after we get on the main route. We will talk about Timbuktu. And we will stop other places pretending to have some car trouble. And everywhe
re we will talk about Timbuktu. After missing us in Bamako, Robert will stop many places to ask about a Mercedes from Côte d’Ivoire. He will pay for information so everyone will talk to him, even if they don’t know anything. And he will hear about this car on the way to Timbuktu. He will spend three days driving there. When he finds out no one up there knows anything about this car from Abidjan, his mecs will get angry and force him to go back. Maybe they fight with each other. Maybe they leave him up there they are so mad at him. Leave him alone in Timbuktu.” She shrugged. “We can hope.”
“Not sure I follow,” Matt said. “What about us? Where will we be?”
“We will be in Ouaga, won’t we Ti-Jean?” she said, needling her uncle.
—Won’t we, Jacques? she directed to the driver.
Her cousin nodded and then shot a glance at their stern-faced uncle.
“By the time Robert gives up looking for us, we will be back at the farm. And you, you will find your son and fly back to your country. We will all be back where we belong and Robert returns empty-handed to Abidjan with everyone angry at him. Even Le Croc will be angry, maybe most of all, for wasting so much money and time only to look even more the fool than he already is. Robert will be everybody’s fool for a very long time. I like it. Robert’s friends will carry out my revenge.” She shifted in her seat and turned her crooked smile to Matt. “What do think of my little plan, Monsieur Reiser? Do you like it?”
Matt wasn’t sure and his confused look said so.
“We take you to Ouaga to find your son,” she said to Matt’s contorted face. “This is what you want, right?”
Matt gave her a tentative nod.
“We get rid of the passports on the way so there’s nothing for the authorities to find when we return to the farm. And Robert. He gets lost in the desert, maybe worse.”
At the sight of the first makeshift petrol station on the newly-asphalted route nationale, Jacques pulled in and everyone got out. Jean-Louis grabbed a bottle of water and a bunch of bananas from the trunk and Matt heard Timbuktu mentioned in the presence of the boy Jacques paid for a petrol top-up.
Next, Jacques stopped at a warehouse surrounded by nothing but scrub. A man in greasy overalls emerged from the side of the building and Jacques had him replace an air filter and tighten a bolt or two. Jacques mentioned Timbuktu as he paid the man, then they proceeded along the meandering asphalt to the northeast. At each stop through the spare Mali countryside Jacques talked of Timbuktu.
As they lay their false trail, Matt caught glimpses of life outside the cities and towns: a woman wrapped in colorful cloth leading near naked children along the road, mud huts tucked in among spare shea trees in a setting as old as the Bible, abandoned huts crumbling under the destructive power of rain and sun, goats licking at parched trees, boys milking camels, girls and women under shade trees ramming long wooden pestles into sturdy pots, everywhere the wispy smoke of cooking fires, the surrounding area stripped bare of kindling.
Unpaved roads intersected the modern highway. Habitation gave way to a stretch of dense agricultural forest, then abruptly to bush fields, empty except for stubborn gorse leached colorless by the sun. Every few miles another town or village with its roadside vendors of mangoes, bananas, spices, pottery and cloth. At every stop the mention of Timbuktu.
One village carved its space next to a massive baobab tree with a dramatic fat trunk resembling the upper portion of a missile, its branches extended upwards pleading for rain. In its shade, cattle nibbled and a pair of villagers reclined.
“Those trees are amazing,” Matt said, admiring the massive trunk.
“It’s the one tree that outsmarts man and desert,” Sally said. “The French call it l’arbre de mille ans, tree of a thousand years. It’s the only tree we don’t chop down for fire wood. That and the shea trees because of the nuts. But eventually we’ll chop them down, too.”
“It’s incredible, beautiful in a way.”
Sally laughed and looked at Matt as if he was a lost child. “You say strange things. If it was beautiful it would never live a thousand years. We kill things of beauty, to possess them. The baobab is ugly and powerful. And for that we respect it.”
An hour to the east, hurtling through open vista of rolling hills and bleak brown grasses, they passed a single berobed women loaded down with a basket on her head and a heavy bucket in each hand.
“Where could she possibly be going?” Matt said.
“Home, by the looks of it,” Sally said. “Bringing food and water to her family.”
“And I suppose that’s safe?”
“That is safe,” Sally said.
“I couldn’t even get out of the airport before getting robbed. How can she walk along a highway with passing truck drivers from practically anywhere and not get robbed, or.” He left the word rape unspoken.
“Up here, it’s safer. Not so much money and corruption. Abidjan has all the money and trade and that makes it a mean place.”
“And Yakro,” Jean-Louis finally spoke up. “You saw the big money being poured into le Président’s village.”
“That is true,” Sally said to her uncle.
“Here, everyone is poor,” Jean-Louis said. “There is nothing to steal. And if you do steal, everyone will know it was you, and you will be punished. In Abidjan, there is this belief that the money comes from somewhere else, from the rich countries. No one steals mangoes or shea nuts. They steal hard money.”
“Yes, Ti-Jean,” Sally said. “So that is how we justify our corruption.”
He ignored her taunt, turning his attention back to the road ahead. “We’re coming soon to Ségou. Our rich American passenger can compare river life to Abidjan.”
The asphalt ended at the bridgeless banks of the churning Niger River. There men in pirogues worked nets and baskets to haul in their perch. Herds of long-horned cattle plodded through the shallows driven by long-legged boy herders snapping whip-like branches. Women at the banks, their gowns heavy with water, rinsed and twisted cloths, spreading a patchwork of fabric on the rocks under the drying rays of the sun.
Jacques stopped next to a market beside the river.
“Voilà,” Sally said. “The pottery market in Ségou. Everyone comes here.”
Chapter 23
Jean-Louis and Jacques disappeared into the crowded market leaving Sally and Matt alone.
Ségou market was a flourishing commercial exchange for the hand-made and the hand-grown. Every child, woman, and man engaged in carrying, preparing, negotiating, eating, smelling, kicking, killing, and selling. Narrow wooden barges docked in various stages of loading or unloading at the riverbank.
A ferry overflowing with passengers swayed at the shore. Stragglers splashed through the muddy shallows to clamber aboard. A woman in orange and green pagne led a boy in an upturned bicyclist cap along the muddy bank. Passengers hunched together on the sturdy wooden roof next to stacks of bicycles laid flat next to a pair of sure-footed goats staring ahead as if hypnotized by the commotion.
“Where are they going?” Matt said. Beyond the opposite bank he saw nothing but brush and distant hazy hills.
“The only bridge is at the dam up north. This is the fastest way to Souba,” Sally said. “Or Timbuktu. It is easier than by road. And more reliable.”
The ferry engine began its stroke; two men lugging heavy clay pots scrambled to board as it drifted from shore.
“Non, merci.” Matt warded off a dwarfish old woman with a weathered face framed by a reddish-orange headdress. She beckoning at her clay pots stacked in the shade of her stall.
The ferry slowly angled upstream against the brown and raging current.
“At Ségou, the road splits between Timbuktu to the north and Ouaga to the east. Robert will end up here, convinced he is tracking us. He and his stupid friends will be certain they are close to us.”
“How will they be so certain?”
“He will talk and shop and learn that we were here. Not many Mercedes come to thi
s market. Not many men like you. Jacques is buying some things for the car like hoses, filters. What we would need to drive through the desert. He will talk to a lot of people. We will spend some money. They will notice us.”
“Okay. But isn’t Timbuktu more like a dead-end? Why would we go there? But, anyway, why wouldn’t he just wait for you in Bamako?”
“He has to prove himself. I know him. He can’t wait.” She turned her injured cheek toward Matt. “And there are only two places to go from here: Timbuktu or Ouaga. He has to choose.
“He will expect us to trick him by laying a trail for Timbuktu which will make it appear we really went to Ouaga. So he will think he is outsmarting us by going to Timbuktu anyway.
“What?” Matt said, his head spinning.
“So we will go to Ouaga anyway.”
“You completely lost me.”
“And we will lose him, too. He will choose up north because he will guess the only reason we would talk about Timbuktu would be to throw him off.”
Matt slapped his head in a vain effort to follow Sally’s reasoning. The clash of colors and smells of the market stalls didn’t help. Vendors signaled and shouted from every angle, selling mangoes, yams, roots, dried fish, wet fish, baskets, more pottery than he’d ever seen in one place, ginned cotton, nuts of all shapes and sizes, blonde berries, bundles of kindling, bundles of wool, calabashes the size of a fist and calabashes the size of an ottoman, fabric, spices, dyes, powders of every color, live chickens, and beheaded chickens plucked raw.
Smoke from low fires where vats of oil were kept hot for deep frying mingled with the fetid pungency of live animals and ripe human odors under broad canvas tops raised for shade under the scorching sun.
A tug on Matt’s jacket. It was the short old woman again. She followed them and held a small, intricately decorated clay pot.
Matt had no desire to transport a clay pot. Even such a fine specimen as this. He made a show of admiring the pretty work before turning the old woman down. “Very good,” he said, smiling. “Très jolie. But no merci.”
