The Liminal People

by Ayize Jama-everett

  “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.

  Chapter Five

  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 west—just ’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.

  “Why king?” I finally attempted in English, realizing I couldn’t recall what language he had spoken to me in. “Why not God?”

  “At best you might become a proper tuner of a god machine, little healer.” He responded in English, after a laugh that frightened me more than I thought possible. “But your providence is what—bodies? Flesh? Perhaps time even? The gods are beyond such things.”

  “I’m barely understanding what you’re saying. Are you like me?”

  “You are barely visible as one of my kin, little healer. Don’t presume too much.” There was spittle in his voice that brightened the room as he spoke. It came to me that the others stayed out of the room not out of deference to me but to him. “That the fates make your talent so capricious is your only value.”

  “You know what I can do?”

  “Do you know? I asked you earlier. Do you work all flesh, animal, fish, and fowl? Is your trick limited to the body, or do you see the mind and spirit as well? How do you heal? Do you reverse the ravages of time? Or do you connect to the eternal ideal of the flesh and return it to that monstrously stagnant vision? Speak quickly and know I cannot be lied to.” It was the only hint he ever gave me of his own abilities. I told him everything that I knew about my powers, though I left out my brother and my time in London with Yasmine. As soon as he said it, I believed he could tell if I was lying. I banked on omissions not being considered lies. But there was enough in my initial diatribe to make my soon-
to-be master/boss content.

  “From the sounds of it, you are a true healer. Unedited in the corporal connections amongst humans. You will serve my purpose well, if you so desire.” He coughed hard, and in those spasms I saw severely taxed organs illuminate from under his blankets. Whether it was with my power or with the naked eye, I can’t tell to this day. He seemed to be a man unimpressed with shocking others, so I did my best to conceal my surprise.

  “You mean I have a choice?”

  “Life worker.” He attempted a smile. “You above all others should know that when there is life, there is always choice. I will not hold you here. Tomorrow my men and I will be gone. If you decide to come with us, I will teach you as much as I can about the thing that has decided to rest inside of you. My payment will be your undying loyalty for as long as I deem fit. You will be taken care of. You will have to work, but it won’t be hard for you. In time, you will come to appreciate it.”

  “I’ve worked for warlords before . . .”

  “Yes, in Mogadishu. That was where you first came to my attention. And as you walked across the original lands to the first tribes who speak to the stars, you carved an arc of healing . . . heralding your presence to all who would look for those such as us.”

  “So why not kings then?” I asked trying to have a conversation instead of an interview. “Why not let whoever wants to find me, find me. If they are gods, I’ll bow. But if they’re men, let them come for me. I’ll just heal myself.”

  “I remember when I was your age and just as ignorant, little healer. Yet I pride myself on learning lessons from the past. So I shall not, as my teacher did, bury you in a well with a one-ton rock resting on it to test how long it takes you to build up your strength to climb and lift the rock. Suffice to say, there are fates worse than death that those such as we can inflict on one as limited as yourself.” I shook at the idea.

  “You didn’t want the others in here.” My head was beginning to hurt from the massive amounts of information Nordeen gave with every sentence.

  “They are not like us. Tell any of them what I am, and I promise you a slow death.” I started in shock, truly afraid for the first time in ages that I would be murdered. “The prologue to your necessary knowledge, little healer is this: the more people who know what you are, the more people are likely to use it against you.” I backed out of the room at that point, making a point to keep my gaze below the two yellow globes.

  If you can understand why I stayed with Nordeen, then you can understand me a little better. I’m not a sycophant. I don’t crave power, nor do I have a desire to be under anyone who does. Nordeen’s description of the power inside of me was perfect: “the thing that decided to take up residence inside of me.” On rough days, it made me feel like an alien beast or, as Yasmine would say, like a freak. But on good days, when I exercised my power in right relation to the world, I felt nearly unstoppable. I grew with power.

  Living a bipolar life, rocketing between freak and human, made me long for some stability. And despite the bowel-spilling terror Nordeen invoked, he offered that. I knew that under his protection and guidance I would learn more about myself.

  If you don’t have powers, then you probably can’t understand why I stayed. Best analogy I can come up with is this: imagine you’re a gorilla living amongst chimps. Yeah, they’re kind of like you, but they’re lighter, smaller, less substantial. They run around afraid all the time, screaming and barking at the slightest sound. You can throw your weight around and get whatever you want. So when you finally come across another gorilla, not only another gorilla, but an older, stronger gorilla that has a crew of chimps doing his bidding without doing much weight throwing, you want to figure out how it all goes down.

  Still, I knew Nordeen was serious about his loyalty pledge. I’d seen the razors around Fou-Fou’s neck. And I spent half a sleepless night imaging what depraved things Nordeen would have me doing, and what would happen if I tried to run. I was afraid to even think too loudly for fear of him hearing my thoughts. But I spent the rest of the night imaging the worlds and possibilities the shadow man could show me. After my brother and Yasmine, I’d only met one other person like me: the boy from the Mog. The way Nordeen spoke, it was as though he knew all of the people like us in the world. I had learned more about my power from the Mog boy than from all my anatomy classes, and the kid was barely ten. So I couldn’t afford to put distance between me and Nordeen.

  I met him again in his cobbled-together cave the next day. Again, my gaze was low, but this time I crawled in excited. I told him I wanted to leave with them. I expected some form of welcome.

  “Come and heal me then. Learn what you can from that, and let it be the seal on your healing for a year.” My family was never the religious type. I’d been to church maybe ten times in my life. But when I reached out to lay hands on this man whose full body I still couldn’t totally perceive, it felt like I was about to touch a holy icon. Touching his skin, an organ I’m used to feeling in my body long before I connect to it with my hand, was bracing. It held me tight, like a quick-growing fungus with deadly intent. At the same time my senses, and my special sense, were being flooded by an . . . intoxicating invisible liquid. I found myself ravenous and full at the same time, freezing and flush, dangerously open and totally intimate. In the end, it was up to him to break our contact. In a flash of insight I saw disappointment in what Nordeen perceived as his own weakness. I couldn’t help but remember what the Dogon had said about healers being the death of the warrior’s spirit.

  A day and a half in Avignon touring the streets, and I can’t figure out if I’m just too bat-shit to realize no one’s actually following me, or if I’m just too anxious to truly notice. I’ve still got another day paid up at the hotel, but I make my way to the train anyway and take the first one to Paris. I open my head on the train and take in all the bodies on the way with me. In my car alone three people have genetic diseases—ALS, sickle-cell, and the beginnings of Tay-Sachs—things I’d have to focus on all day to do anything with. Even then I could only do one a month. Five people have myelin-sheathing issues, either too much or too little. A seven-year-old boy will become blind because of it next week. A five-year-old girl has some sort of chronic respiratory distress. Her blood’s not fully oxygenated and hasn’t been for a while. Neglectful parents, or someone’s too busy cheating on their wife to notice; chronic respiratory problem girl’s dad has gonorrhea, her mom doesn’t.

  The woman with the smell of donkey sausage on her hands behind me has broken two bones in her life. Ten people have hypertension. Five people are drunk. I’m swimming in their biorhythms.

  “Ticket, please,” the conductor asks me. Missed him. Damn. I just felt a mass of cells and neurons. I give him his billet, and he stops looking at me as a hobo. At least temporarily. Fuck him. Parkinson’s is maybe five years away for that guy.

  I’m not mad at him, really. More at myself. I’m used to combat situations where I can trash about recklessly or covert ops where no one knows what I can do and I operate with impunity. To do this right I have to blend in. I have to have total access to my skills and not look like an epileptic who forgot his medication as I utilize them. Chewing gum and walking. It shouldn’t be hard, but it’s the price I’m paying for living in virtual solitude for the past few years.

  I can’t remember the last time I was in Paris. Razor-neck tends to stay away from tourist traps. We’ve got people in Clichy-sous-Bois, some suburbs in the east, but they’ve only been there three months. Still, I could call them, I think. Then . . . FUCK! I’m solo in this. No razor-neck. I’m grabbing the razor around my neck, letting it cut into my hand. I want to yank it off and send it sailing. But something primitive and scared deep in my belly in a place even my powers can’t see demands I don’t. I’ve seen enough of it to know the razor is indstructible. I’m afraid of what other dark tricks it might possess. Instead I find a pay phone.

  I dial numbers I thought I’d forgotten. It works just like the f
ormer CIA spook I paid to set it up said it would. I wait for a clean minute then hear a tone like a fax machine trying to dial in. I punch in another set of numbers, my brother’s ID number on his psych-ward bracelet, and I retrieve messages. No amicable operator telling me what numbers to press. One to hear, two to advance, three to erase.

  Yasmine’s voice sends my heart into spasms again. Cayenne-flavored honey. Extended vowels to cover a slight lisp. Well-manicured teeth massaged by a tongue that’s mastered so many languages she gets them confused in casual conversations. I know she’s hurt. I know it’s not fake. I know she called me a freak. I don’t care. I’m coming. I punch two sixes and a nine. No way Suleiman could know about it. It’s an automatic phone trace. You’d have to be another client of the CIA spook to get around it. The number spits back in robot Farsi and I memorize it. Then it’s two nines and a six. The line is dead and buried in the ground so deep down the devil couldn’t find it in hell. It was worth the ten grand to set up. I hang up the phone and pickpocket a cell phone from a café. I quick-dial the number. I hear a British “Hello?” I ask for Yasmine. They don’t know who I’m talking about. I ask who I’m talking to. A bloke on a street phone is what he says. Can’t be more than seventeen years old. His voice just cracked. What city I ask. “London, yaw tosser.” He hangs up. I wonder if she’s moved from the apartment.