Stringer

by Anjan Sundaram

  Another attack was reported on the radio—even on Sunday, I thought, these militias have no pity. I did not see it at the time, but the recurrent attacks had already begun to follow a pattern that pointed to a serious threat to Bunia.

  On the way out Naro and I stopped by my room. It was dark.

  “What is this place, man?” he said. “It looks like a dungeon.”

  “The other room is going to be much worse.”

  “Man, Hotel Ituri is not so bad.”

  “Their cheapest room is fifty dollars. That’s a bit expensive for me.”

  “Then stay at my house, no? It’s small, but we can put a mattress in the front room.”

  I picked up my bag, feeling buoyant, and locked the room. I would come back for the other things later. But halfway to his place Naro stopped at the Hotel Ituri—he had realized that he needed to inform his landlord. I took a seat outside at a white plastic table, waiting.

  There was a crackle and flicker above me—a blue tube. An insect, mothlike, had been burned by electrocution.

  On the street was a typical evening scene: palm oil vendors with yellow canisters on their bicycles; motorcycle-taxi drivers, mostly ex-militiamen, chattering in corners. Menial laborers walked by, having finished their odd-job shifts at the shops, restaurants and markets.

  And the foreigners: UN personnel, civilian and military, in jeeps; aid workers from Belgium, Italy, America. There were also the entrepreneurs. A group of Indians passed, all nearly identical, in shirts and pants and oily hairstyles. I felt a sudden closeness, and was about to call out, but they seemed focused on themselves.

  It had been less obvious in Kinshasa, because of the politicians and the corruption. Here Congolese society was plainly limp, poor; and every aspect of life was organized around the foreigner. And among the foreign employers the Indian had a special place: known as the most exploitative, rarely paying more than the “market wage”—meaning the minimum acceptable to the poor laborers, who were not in a position to negotiate.

  The Congolese would complain and complain about the Indian, but they would accept that only one race treated them worse: the Congolese (the African, more generally). In this was a double compatibility: the African seemed to accept and imitate his ruthless masters by an extension of his colonial ideas; and the Indian naturally admitted the black man at the bottom of the castes.

  But the Indian-Congolese relationship was more ambiguous than this, and also more intimate.

  It was the difference between the two kinds of Indians one met in Africa: there were those who had been brought generations earlier by the British; and there were the new immigrants. The two bore little connection. While the former had built an India within Africa, with strict rules of marriage and gastronomy (it was they who had given Africa the samosa and chapati, now the poor man’s staples), the latter lived as a hedonist, producing the métis, the half-caste.

  This aspect of the Indians was considered a benediction by women, who knew that their métis children would have a status above the Congolese. Kabila’s government was filled with métis. Métisse girls, with paler skin, were considered most desirable. And though the Indian métis fell below that of the European, he was still more likely to avoid the life of a laborer. He was more likely to survive.

  The new immigrants surrounded themselves with Congolese. They were strangers in Africa, without friends or relations, invited by no one. They had been sent, as emissaries of the great immigrant-business communities: the Shiite Muslims, the Punjabis and Sindhis; the Chinese, Lebanese and Israelis. A senior community member, usually a wealthy individual, would hear of Bunia’s profits, and front the capital to send a young agent.

  Among people thrust into Congo in this way there could be little camaraderie. Naro and Ali knew each other but rarely met. The Independence Day celebrations in Kinshasa had been muted for the same reason. The traders’ affairs demanded no collaboration; each created his own world. These were not individuals doing business—what mattered more was the intangible, foreign tribe of which one was an extension. Here, at the extremity of global commerce, each exile was made outcast in the other’s society.

  I felt a presence behind.

  It was Naro standing at the hotel portico, with pursed lips. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “The landlord is not agreeing. It’s nothing to do with you.” The meeting had apparently turned hostile: Naro had been bringing home too many girls, and the landlord wanted to charge for electricity, for water, for the unauthorized use of the house. It would be too precarious to have me stay. “I’m really sorry,” Naro repeated.

  I don’t know why, but that got me down quite badly.

  And I was feeling cold—the fever was acting up. A breeze had begun to blow; the sun was setting. I asked Naro for some pills—Panadol, Tylenol, whatever he had. He ran inside to get me some. I returned to the convent with his medicine.

  But in the morning I could not move. I awoke feeling giddy. The grill over the window faded and came into focus. My slippers, in the corner of the room, seemed far. I stayed in bed, watching my toes wiggle. There were other signs: my ears seemed blocked. I called out, and suddenly they popped; sounds were exceptionally clear; even the silence seemed present, as a bass static. And my sleep had of late become disturbed. The dreams had grown more vivid.

  I gave an account of these symptoms to a doctor who ran a clinic on the boulevard. I remembered his place for its large red cross on the signboard, and because the adjacent buildings, Italian and American aid operations, were guarded and locked. But when I swung open the clinic’s gate the yard was deserted. The doctor was on his second-floor balcony smoking a cigarette.

  The office was a spacious hall furnished with a glass-topped desk and a long metal table, cold to lie on. Above me oscillated a halogen lamp. In the corner was a pair of repaired crutches, and next to those, in a tall wooden cupboard, bandages, ointment and little bottles of medical supplies.

  The doctor listened patiently. He pulled at my cheek and shone a light in my ear. He asked how the fever had felt. A stethoscope was coiled over his chest, and his white gloves stretched up to his elbows. His eyes, behind chunky lenses, were larger than normal. They looked me up and down with interest. “Do you have your own syringe?” he asked, almost hopefully.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Sometimes foreigners like to bring their own,” he said, drawing a needle from his cupboard. It was new—he unwrapped its packaging—but its tip looked enormous. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said, “it won’t hurt.”

  He pricked my finger and took blood on a swab. The diagnosis didn’t take long: “I think you have malaria.”

  I nearly sprang off the table. “Call a friend to take you home,” the doctor advised. But whom to call? He told me to use the malaria pills I had brought from America, still untouched in their box. “And try to take rest for a few days.”

  But inaction was forced on me. That night, at the convent, as had happened all week, the electricity went out. I came to the front of the convent and yanked on a rusted metal bell; its vacant trill invaded the yard. The beatific boy attendant appeared, his face brilliant, as though covered in oil.

  “There’s no electricity,” I said.

  “I am sorry, monsieur. It will surely return.”

  “Why don’t we have a generator? The other hotels all have one.”

  “Monsieur can ask the sisters tomorrow. Jean-Paul is only a simple employee.”

  We looked at each other, and I dropped my eyes. Jean-Paul still had his chin up. “Don’t worry, Monsieur Anjan, after the elections we will have electricity. We will be like America and France. We will have democracy.”

  It was an extraordinary declaration. But a fever had begun to affect the country. The vote, which would pit Kabila against the vice president and former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba, was drawing closer and gaining proportion in people’s minds—no longer was it simply an idea or a foreign-imposed aspiration. There was a sense of mobilization in society,
a feeling of ownership. And now, only weeks from the polls, the expectations seemed to have become limitless.

  It was bound to be a unique moment for the news. The world rarely turned to Congo unless the war flared up; and now, during the elections, for once Congo would be important. I felt I had to profit. I decided to start preparing. But just as I started to feel the excitement I came to face the bureau’s power politics.

  The AP called to inform me that senior correspondents were being flown in from London, Cairo and Johannesburg. Without warning I was given a list of stories that I wasn’t to touch, stories that were fantastic: trips to the volcanoes, to see the gorillas; to the diamond mines in the heart of the country; to remote reserves that were home to the okapi, a rare cousin of the giraffe found only in Congo; and to the giant copper mines of the south.

  The editor wanted me to team up with the correspondents. “As what?” I asked. He said I should continue working as I had planned to—I should know where to look for the news, I had been living in Congo. And the chief Africa correspondent wanted to chat before she arrived, “to pick your brain, share ideas.” It sounded as if she wanted to steal my stories. The head of African reporting was in a sense my boss, but before that day I’d never heard of her. Now suddenly I was important.

  I had come to see the editor as a friend—and I wanted to be frank. So I told him the plan sounded suspect. He owned up. “I’m only trying to protect you,” he said. Once the correspondents arrived the AP would buy fewer stories from me. “I know it sounds unfair but we pay them a salary, so we have to prioritize their work. Anything we spend on you we have to justify. If you collaborate at least it’ll guarantee you some wordage.”

  So that’s how it was—Congo was becoming world news, and during this time I was surplus. The call felt like a stab.

  I had not anticipated my own camp would become an obstacle. I had counted on the elections for extra money, to live better and for travel. The list rankled more—I had worked hard to earn my place with the AP in Congo; and now, in a stroke, a dozen stories were being taken from me. The correspondents had claimed the country for themselves. The big stories picked off, I foresaw battles with the editor, requests turned down. Areas of Congo, it seemed, would all but close.

  There was also a feeling of loneliness. I had come to depend on the bureau. The editor was my most sustained link to the world—we spoke or wrote to each other almost every day. We had never met; he had only seen a copy of my passport; our link was imaginary. But we had, I felt, formed a trust—because the editor had once been a stringer in Congo. Moving about the country alone, I tended to share my impressions, what I marveled at, the emotions of the moment and the banal; often they went to him, for few people understood these places. He had seen and felt the jungle. With my family I had to make them imagine entirely, and often I abandoned my attempts, able to leave them only with half-formed ideas. The editor’s sympathy therefore provided little consolation. I felt he had betrayed our alliance.

  I became disturbed—more deeply than I immediately realized. I lost morale. There was a sort of mental paralysis. I fell asleep during the day, the bedsheet pulled up to my chin. I awoke, restless. The room seemed friendly; I feared losing it. A paranoia developed. The nuns threatened: another source of authority. Had the UN man arrived? I hid from footsteps, pretending to be asleep. People passed my door without stopping. I felt unknown, secreted. I kept my radio beside me. My alarm was set to repeat at the hours of the bulletins. In this way I spent my energy, feeling futile, alone with my noises. But I could never relax: in the rustling of the trees outside my window, in the dormancy of the red tulips, and in the voices on the street, there seemed a quiet vigilance, a sense of suspended anticipation.

  For the first time we received evidence that the militias were indeed moving—that the proximity of recent attacks had been no coincidence. The radio announced that General Mathieu Ngudjolo, leader of the Congolese Revolutionary Movement, a militia of about ten thousand fighters, heavily armed, was approaching some key electoral sites in Bunia’s sector. Of course, this alone did not make world news. We had to wait for something to happen.

  It was the day I began to take the malaria tablets. I hadn’t trusted the doctor’s diagnosis, because I felt my condition had not been growing worse. Then on the weekend I felt ill again, and I decided to take the pills as a precaution. They couldn’t do harm. Four pills, taken all at once, for three days in succession. I lay under the blanket and clutched my pillow, feeling the atmosphere infuse with darkness. A sharp banging disturbed me. Naro had stormed into the room; I hadn’t heard him knock. He wore a broad smile and was dressed to go out. “I have arranged the evening,” he said. “We will meet some of your people.”

  “I’m not feeling great.”

  “You’ll feel fine after a drink.”

  “The doctor told me to take rest. I’m on medication.”

  “For what?”

  “Malaria.”

  “You don’t look like you have malaria. Come, come. The doctors here call everything malaria, and the next day I’m always hale and hearty.”

  “I don’t know. You go ahead without me.”

  “But I already told them you were coming. Listen to me, they are representing big businesspeople, good contacts to have in Bunia. They are also from your part of India. Maybe they will help you.”

  Naro didn’t let up. He waited by my bed and then outside the door while I changed. His intrusion put me in a bad mood; and in retrospect I should have told him off. Once I had gotten out of bed, though, I moved more easily. “Hurry up or we’ll be late.”

  “Shut up, man, I have malaria.”

  Was I tired or just dejected? Stepping out could be pleasant, I thought. But as soon as we reached the bar I felt I should have stayed at the convent.

  They were three Tamil brothers—boys, really—gaunt and mustache. Their shirts were collared, in checks and stripes. Their jeans were light blue, and seemed of thick cotton. Originally from Pondicherry, the Tamils had learned to trade in Uganda, and had crossed over to Bunia less than a year earlier. They were unruly from the start: slapping backs, calling to the girls, loudly jeering. Naro raised his volume, easily keeping up. He summoned a garçon to our table. The Tamils ordered double and triple shots. It was announced that no one should drink beer. I asked for water. The conversation went low; I saw the exchange of glances. Naro ended the awkwardness with a lewd comment. The Tamils laughed. For the next hour I sat in Naro’s shadow, content to be silent. The boys stared at the bar girls, some of whom had appeared at the counter, strutting around, flattered by the attention; they made doe eyes and batted eyelashes; some were draped over chairs. A girl rose, wearing a black cocktail dress that exposed petite shoulder blades and was backless down to the tail of her spine. She looked savage, brut—she was perhaps here for the beauty pageant. Men in cravats and ties loitered, eyeing her. When the garçon returned with our second round of drinks one of the Tamils was leaning back in his chair, bending its legs. The chair buckled, and the garçon spilled some gin on him. The others laughed; the garçon looked terrified. The Tamil, who was wiping his shirt, cursed. The garçon asked if he was all right. The Tamil lost his calm. “What? You’re back-talking to me?” And suddenly he started to fling his arms. The boy cowered and held up his hands.

  Naro grabbed the Tamil. “Enough, man!”

  I started to feel drowsy. The temperature had dropped. As I stood the plastic end of my chair scraped against gravel.

  “What, man, you’re going?” one of the Tamils said. “Where is he going?” The Tamil was clearly drunk. “Arre. Come on yaar. At least have a drink with us. Get him a whiskey on the rocks,” he told Naro. I indicated with a finger that he shouldn’t place the order. The Tamil clicked his tongue. “What is this? Who do you think you are?”

  Naro touched his shoulder. “Chill, okay? Chill.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that,” the Tamil said impatiently, pushing Naro. “I can’t accept this. It’
s just not done.”

  “Come on,” Naro said to me, “order something.”

  “I’m not feeling well. I told you.”

  Naro leaned over to me. “Man, one more drink is not going to kill you.”

  “You have a cold?” the Tamil across the table yelled. He was standing and holding his glass to his nose.

  “Malaria,” I said softly, looking at my bottle.

  “Rubbish,” Naro countered. “He doesn’t have malaria.”

  I eyed Naro. The Tamil seemed pleased. “Gin and tonic, double shot!” he instructed the garçon. “And make sure the tonic has quinine.”

  “Quinine!” the other Tamil shouted. “Don’t you know that? It’s what they give to malaria patients.” The Tamils put their arms over each other’s shoulders and started to chant. “Qui-nine! Quinine!” The garçon left my drink on the table. I rolled it in my hands and took a sip. Bitterness filled my mouth; I pulled away. The Tamil beside me watched with wide eyes. “Come on! Cheers.”

  I felt the first shiver. “I should go,” I whispered to Naro. “I’m in bad shape.”

  The young Tamil blocked my path. “You can’t waste alcohol!” He nodded to the others around the table, gaining their approval. “You have to finish the drink.”

  “Drink,” the group chanted. “Finish the drink.”

  I looked at Naro pleadingly. He set his glass on the table and tilted his head, meaning we should go. “He doesn’t like us,” I heard someone say behind me.

  “Thinks too much of himself.”

  “Let him go, the bastard.”

  Naro held my arm because I was feeling limp. At the convent I swallowed a Panadol and crashed into the blankets, smelling medicine in my mouth. I was utterly exhausted. I rubbed a palmful of Vicks over my neck and put on a buttoned-up rain jacket and scarf. Over my feet I pulled thick white socks up to the shins. Naro had left the door unlocked; it swung back and forth, letting in a draft.

  My last hours in the convent were suffocating, dazed. My legs felt numb; the air seemed saturated with dust. I felt the urge to urinate. My eyes would not open; the sun shone as a uniform orange. The imagination brought fleeting relief: I dreamed of walking out my door and past a basin. Everything was a sparkling-clean white. I felt a warmth start at my loins and radiate over my body. The pungency. I called Naro. He said he would find someone who could help. Who else do you know in Bunia, he asked. “Try with Ali,” I said.