Such was the story of Aliko and the restoration of Shania’s knickers: Madame or Miss, I’ll address you as I please, and yes, I promised to buy you a new pair of knickers, for you could hardly go on wearing your old ones, full of shit as they were. Full of your own filth, because what would you have said at the next checkpoint when the guards asked you about the smell emanating from your tatty old handbag? You wouldn’t have been let in anywhere stinking like that, except maybe your own home. I’ll keep my promise, but until then your husband answers to me, because I spared him the pain of having to answer for what would have happened to you. He owes me. So I’m asking you to attend to Raymundi, Konaré, Cissé, Max Kemba, Djibril, Daniel Umó … as well as all the others you attend of your own account, for I know what you women are like, you can’t help yourselves. I don’t care whether your husband knows, it’s not my fault life’s hard. I’m just calling in my debt, I mean no harm to anybody. I’m just trying to get you your knickers back.
And so on. Things continued in this vein until Omar arrived on the mountain. Was it really him or someone who’d adopted his name and backstory? That could easily have been the case, or maybe it was a different person who’d acted in the same way but in a different place, someone who even looked like him and shared certain physical attributes. Whoever he was, he arrived on the mountain and learned who was running the show, who had something to sell. You might be following your dreams, but you don’t stop feeling like a man, and maybe that feeling must come to the surface now and again, because you don’t know what your life will be when you reach your destination, or even if you’ll reach it. Hey, Aliko, I want use of the woman you keep. I keep only a promise, brother. Fine, give me the promise then. It’s all yours, for a fixed price, tell her I sent you.
It was the story of how some Africans grab other Africans by the throat and rub their faces in the misery they’ve created for themselves, while others watch on or applaud.
Omar, whether in person or in spirit, arrived on the mountain, and he arrived with a thirst. Tell her I sent you. The story of how some grab others by the throat might have ended there, had that man with the thirst not been who he was. Omar, or someone claiming to be him, took Shania away and mistreated her, then did the same with her companion, a woman whose life and secrets we know little about. Shania was too slight a woman in too fragile a state for a volatile and frequently intoxicated man like Omar to abuse without doing fatal damage. Omar, we’re going to kill you, you’ll die before the women do.
The story of the restitution of Shania’s knickers could naturally be told a different way. The way it happened, for example, step by step, blow by blow, seen from the inside: Hello, girl, your creditor sent me, come outside and we’ll find a secluded place in the dark and cold bushes and you can pay off your debt. But he’s sent so many already, my private parts have started to protest, although I’m too ashamed to speak of what happened. Has gone on happening. I’ve lost my voice. What about my husband? Well, I said private parts, but the sky was my roof and the trees my witnesses. What about my husband! What will be, will be. All I know is Omar almost made me forget my objective, and my objective remains the same, to go on living, to go on living and answer destiny’s call. I can’t speak, but I must:
‘Do you hear that, sister?’
‘I have ears.’
‘What will we do?’
‘Bah, what will others do for us, sister Shania? We can but hope all the screaming doesn’t stop them coming for us, because something serious must be happening if we can hear it down here. If I don’t get up again, tell my mother I did nothing wrong, and ask her to take care of my children.’
A great ruckus ripped through the occupied part of the mountain, despite attempts to contain the aggression by those who feared attracting police attention. By the time it was over and tempers had calmed, Shania had discharged the foetus that had been growing inside her. Repeated exposure to vaginal violence presumed, unviable products of conception demonstrable. The blood congealed and stemmed the flow, leaving her clinging to life by a thread, in a dry riverbed at the bottom of Mount Gurugu.
The two men who’d been left for dead made it back to camp and confirmed the story their colleagues had told, the two men who’d escaped amidst the police beating and returned at first light. The two stragglers, bruised and battered, then described the location of the riverbed and a search party struck out to recover the women.
‘What happened to Omar and Aliko in the end?’
‘They were saved by their religion, brother.’
‘They were religious?’
‘They said they were.’
‘And there we were thinking we’d seen it all, that we could no longer be shocked by the evils of men. What about Shania’s husband, eh?’
‘He ran away. He was going to be lynched along with Aliko.’
‘But he was innocent.’
‘That depends on how you look at it, brother. Listen, there was once a boat that came to dock in Mombasa, to fill up its water tanks. It was a normal boat, but its passengers had strange faces and wore striking clothes, although they hardly let themselves be seen. They barely left their cabins, but when they did half-open their doors, smoke rushed out into the light and flooded the air. And if you sneaked a peek through the doors, you saw that the passengers really were curious looking, and you saw that there were lots of women on board, extremely beautiful women who would appear to have deserved better than those men, whose noses were as sharp and crooked as their cutlasses. A trader decided to take advantage of the boat’s stay in that great harbour of the African Indian Ocean, and so he approached the ship and asked to see the cook. They talked and he offered the cook a large batch of crabs, saying they were so fine a delicacy that only the most distinguished members of society could appreciate them, people of the calibre of the passengers on that ship. As an aside, and guessing at the true nature of the voyage, for he’d chanced a glimpse through a door, the trader added that invertebrate crustaceans had very powerful aphrodisiac properties, properties the boat’s esteemed passengers would surely appreciate. The cook was won over and bought the whole consignment. Everything on that voyage was of the highest quality and the cook wanted his dishes to live up to the high standards set by the passengers. He took the crabs into the kitchen and he rubbed his hands with glee, for he would apply his superior culinary skills to nature’s great harvest and rapture the passengers’ taste buds. Meanwhile, smoke billowed out of the cabins every time a door opened a crack, a sign of the exuberance and vice within. The cook excelled himself and the gastronomic masterpieces he served were duly gorged upon and praised. A few hours later, the moorings were pulled in and the boat pulled out into the open sea. Darkness fell and when night was at its thickest, the ship’s passengers, the beautiful ladies and their mysterious gentlemen companions with their angular features and well-kept beards, were all to be found leaning over the side of the boat making agonising attempts to expel the contents of their stomachs into the ocean. Discreet doses of a potent poison had been inserted into the crustaceans’ insides before being handed over to the cook to perform his culinary magic. As the passengers battled against their bellies and the waves, their grip on life and the ship’s railings slowly slipping away, a cloaked individual emerged from the shadows, grabbed them by the legs and tipped them overboard, down into the ocean and a fatal encounter with a school of sharks. It’s said that the hooded man had boarded the ship in the full knowledge that hundreds of sharks would be passing that day, migrating from the distant shores of Saint Helena to go to spawn at the Andaman Islands. It was, therefore, an ideal opportunity to fulfil a death vow he’d made upon those men, for reasons that remain unclear.’
‘Why have you told me this story, brother?’
‘Because any one of the passengers on that boat might have been innocent, just like Shania’s husband.’
‘I’m not sure I understand you. If I’m shaking my head, brother, it’s because I really don’t see the connection
between the two stories. What’s the boat got to do with Shania’s husband?’
‘Well, just as there was one cloaked man intent on murdering everyone in the dark on that pleasure cruise, one gumbooted man determined to ruin things for everyone in that cave. There are many men on this mountain as innocent as Shania’s husband, brother, for there are infinite numbers of innocents in the world, each one as innocent as the Common Birgus latro.’
By the time night set in, the women had been found and everyone in the camp was aware of the aggravated miscarriage. There was nothing left to say. Nobody had the will to eat or drink or even organise a game of football. Those from the lower parts of the mountain met and made important decisions. There would be a solemn burial for the only human being ever to have been born on the mountain, albeit born with its eyes closed and without ever actually being. They gathered cardboard and leaves and made a tiny coffin, big enough for a body that had never properly formed. They put the bloody remains of what Shania’s body had expelled inside the makeshift coffin, then carried the coffin out into the middle of the football pitch, the flattest plot of land on Gurugu. They waited until night had fully fallen, so that those who’d come to mourn could do so unobserved, then the five captains said a few words in their respective languages, words of farewell to the little African who’d been born amongst them. They dug a grave and placed the tiny coffin at the bottom. The mother wasn’t present, most people didn’t know where she was. They pushed the soil back over the coffin and began to fill in the hole. It was now the middle of the night.
Returning to matters of this earth, one of the veterans announced that the suspended football tournament would take place the following day and that everyone should be prepared, everyone. Those levelling the ground where the tomb had been dug performed their work with extra purpose, and others began to join in, the circle enlarging as they sought to make the field of play as flat as possible. It was night, it was terribly cold, teeth chattered, and so more people came to join in, stamping the ground with their feet. Soon, almost everyone was engaged in the task, stamping the ground with their strongest foot, a show of unity after the great pain they’d all suffered.
Because it was night, it was impossible to see people’s faces and read their expressions, but they never stopped stamping the ground. They stamped in time, together, so that everyone on the mountain would have heard the pounding, as if someone was beating their chest in a show of remorse or renewed conviction. It was as if nature was responding to a collective trauma, or some communal emotion had taken hold of all of them and compelled them to pummel the earth, and to do so for several minutes, hours even, to the extent that an outsider would have found the whole emotional outpouring strange and unnerving. It was then that they made the pledge. Without stopping the stamping of their feet, and unified by a great sense of solidarity, they closed their eyes and one of the veterans pronounced words that reflected their deep, collective will, and they all responded by pounding the earth even harder, rhythmically and emotionally in synch, and they repeated it until there could be no doubt as to what all this entailed. The veteran’s words were brief, intense and passionate; they spoke of the history of Africa and recalled the continent’s most significant events. Tears fell from many people’s eyes and splashed the earth, but nobody stopped stamping their feet. They stamped and stamped until the night had matured and turned old.
Close to dawn, before the Moroccan police had taken up their positions in front of a fence on a border that had once been open for people to come and go as they pleased, hundreds of Gurugu inhabitants climbed the fence. They were determined to get over and into the city and something about their determination, or some other force not easily understood, meant that those Africans who’d already managed the feat now approached the fence from the other side. Perhaps all those minutes and hours spent stamping the earth had communicated what was happening to them. Whatever it was, the Melilla Africans came to the fence, and they did so just as the Spanish border control police arrived on the scene, kitted out to confront an invading army. As if a certain synergy had been established by the earlier stamping, the Africans on Spanish soil, overflowing with emotion and welling up with tears, began to chant words of encouragement to their companions on the other side. Or a word of encouragement, one word chosen out of all their respective languages, but a word that was understood by everyone, or practically everyone, and that they began to shout in a single voice, their hands raised in a clenched fist: Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! One word that meant victory. Victory. That was the message that greeted the zealous Spanish police, and they tried to silence it, but the Africans in Spain wouldn’t relent: Bosa, Bosa, Bosa, Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa!! Bosa!! Bosa!! Bosa!!
On the Gurugu side of the fence, the Moroccan police swung their truncheons, making a great show of it. On the Melilla side, the Spanish police began to get twitchy, as they relayed events via their radios. Up on the fence, clinging and clambering as best they could, dozens of Africans became increasingly elated because they were nearly over and would soon face the final hurdle, albeit a final hurdle made of barbed wire, and so maybe they were about to set foot in Europe, that very African patch of Europe, the nearest bit of Europe to all of them. Nothing could have made them turn back now, nothing could have stopped them, not when they had just a few feet to go. A few difficult feet, to be sure, for they featured a barrier of reinforced barbed wire. Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! Bosa! chanted the Africans on the Spanish side, in a mixture of euphoria and tears.
The hours passed and the sun rose red over the horizon in the east, kissing houses on the European side, where news of the ‘mass storming’ of the fence had already spread. The early morning bulletins made a big deal of the matter and included a photo, several photos. Hours passed and anyone looking at the fence in the first light would have noticed two shapes on top of it. They had one leg either side of the fence, as if they were riding a strange horse, a horse with a spiky rump and razor-blades for a mane. The shapes were people, two of the hundreds of Africans who’d taken part in the collective scaling of the fence. But they’d remained there. They made no attempt to advance, nor showed any sign of turning back, their mission having failed. Down below, on the Spanish side, the police waited, all the while explaining what had transpired to the media and their equipment. On the Moroccan side, the police waved their truncheons and bounced around nervously; the scaling of the fence had showed them up as being ineffective at their job. But on neither side of the fence did the police dare go up. The two shapes were right at the very top of the fence and it was said that they would be intercepted by the relevant police force the second they came down. But the two shapes stubbornly stayed put. The hours passed and the sun burned at its fiercest, warming up the day, and finally the Spanish police decided they’d better do something. So they made their move. They would go up there and force the shapes down, because their powers of persuasion had come to nothing. With a fair amount of effort, because they weren’t equipped for such things, a team of officers managed to get quite close to them, close enough to see who and indeed what they were dealing with. Two people draped over the spikes on top of the fence. Who were they?
The scholars never came to Gurugu to analyse the poem and so what Peter’s father meant by the third verse remained a mystery. And godly battle will wage on high. Was the last line a prophecy or a portrayal of something nobody wished to see? Could on high have referred to the rugged crag where Omar and Aliko were summoned to judgement? Or might it have been the top of the spiked fence where those two shapes came to rest?
The search party found the two sick women in the dry riverbed, carried them up the hill and left them just outside the camp, the better to get some respite. When the stamping began, the two women felt the earth pulsating beneath them and they knew something big was happening. They rallied themselves and tried to cry out, so that their brothers, the Africans who had congregated on Gurugu mountain to enter E
urope via the Spanish border, the best path available to them, would remember them and include them in their plans. Whether because of their efforts, or because the men who’d left them there hadn’t forgotten them in the first place, a group of men eventually came to get them. They had gathered leftover rags and clothing discarded by people who wanted to travel lightly in the coming hours, and using branches and leaves pulled from bushes, they improvised padding to protect their sisters’ buttocks and thighs. And then again they left them, there was nothing else for it. The women were in very poor health, they were to rest and wait for the call.
When the call came, everyone stood up and several men carried the two women to the foot of the fence, alternating as they went. It was still dark, but the fence seemed to glow with the faith and conviction of the hundreds of Africans gathered before it. A decision had been made. Given the state the women were in, one of them having suffered a miscarriage, the other having been assaulted, they could not have been left to fend for themselves on the mountain. The omens were ill and the chances of them finding medical help in the Moroccan villages that skirted Gurugu increasingly slim. So it was decided that the women should be taken to the fence, despite their ailing health, and four men carried them on their backs taking turns. They got to the foot of the fence. It was the dead of night. The men tilted back their heads, sizing up the climb to the thorny summit, and then they set off. Going one step at a time, and via a thousand small manoeuvres, with everyone lending a hand and a little strength, they managed to get the two women to the top. The undertaking had pushed everyone to the very limit, because the two women were suffering badly and couldn’t hold on to the fence for themselves. But somehow, sweat pouring from them despite the early morning chill, the men got them up. They took hold of each woman’s right foot and swung a leg over the top, then they used strips of their clothing and a little rope to hold them in place, to stop them falling. And there the women sat, heads slumped forward, hands splayed to keep the spikes from their faces, one leg either side of the fence, like jockeys in some Dantesque horse race, riding to a party hosted by a mysterious man with hidden features. Their brothers left them there to be recovered by whichever police force and taken to whichever hospital, for the brothers had their own dates with destiny to attend to: they were trying to get to the other side, feeling and really believing that getting there, come what may, was a great victory in itself.
The Gurugu Pledge Page 12
