‘What’s Sanasa like, George?’
‘What was it like. Most of it has been destroyed.’
‘OK, so what was it like? I spend my entire time discussing what happened there, but I’ve never clapped eyes on it.’
‘Oh, it was like all those Red Sea ports. As a boy I hated it, of course. It was so hot in the daytime, I couldn’t really speak the language and the local kids made terrible fun of me. But in the evening, when it began to cool, the light turned everything gold, the whitewashed buildings went pink and suddenly this scruffy little port looked …’
‘Beautiful?’
He laughed. ‘Almost. All the men would muster outside the mosque after prayers, lots of gossip and jokes, handholding – the men do that here, it doesn’t mean they’re gay. Then the shops opened and, to a kid, those kiosks lined with glittering packets of coffee, spices and chewing gum – all the merchandise here comes wrapped in silver and gold foil – looked like magic grottoes. There’d be women selling pastries at little stalls down the alleyways and the restaurants on the main square served up fish caught that morning, smeared with spices and roasted over an open grill. It was always a competition whether you could finish yours before one of the moth-eaten cats jumped onto the table.’
‘It sounds idyllic.’
‘Yes.’ He paused and his voice changed: ‘But I’m learning not to trust those memories, you know. The places diasporas care about don’t actually exist. We reinvent them, then expect “our boys” to fight for our fantasies. At the end of the day, none of us in the diaspora would want to spend more than an afternoon in a place like Sanasa. You have to remind yourself of that.’
When I returned to Winston’s villa in the mornings, I almost always discovered that he had been working quietly at the pile of documents in the night, drilling as methodically as a woodpecker attacking a redwood. It was a punishing routine, as repetitive as that of any detained felon, but I had no complaints. I found it all deeply soothing. The harder I worked, the easier it was to keep thoughts of Jake at bay.
‘What’s with the nicknames, Dawit?’
We were sitting in Sumbi’s, both of us nursing a third beer, flushed with alcohol and the adrenalin of a table football match that I, for once, had won. My question had been triggered by Dawit’s introductions to a group of middle-aged men heading out of the bar. ‘My friend, we call him Mule, his brother, known as Beanstalk, their cousin, Sinatra.’
‘The nicknames. Everyone here seems to have one.’
‘Correction. Every former fighter has one.’
‘Well, same question. What’s wrong with their real names?’
He waved his cigarette in the air, threatening to put my eye out with it. ‘Oh, here, you know, there are only about six traditional names. They get used and reused. We ran out of combinations about a thousand years ago. So if that was all anyone used we would never know who we were dealing with. It just makes things easier.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Snappy, to the point.’
‘But you said it was only the former fighters.’
‘Well … You’re making me think, Paula. This is what I like about you.’ He twiddled a forefinger in mini windmills around his temple. ‘You ask such stupid questions,’ he said, with a smile. ‘They force the nails in my brain to go round.’
I laughed. ‘Cogs, not nails. They’re not stupid. Deceptively simple, maybe, yet insanely intelligent, I think you’ll find.’
‘Perhaps. So what you have to realise is that the Movement was, above all, a national organisation. Our commanders always told us it didn’t matter what God we worshipped, what sex we were, which province we came from because we were all born equal, one people, fighting together. Over here you can usually tell from people’s names where they come from. Really, you know everything about someone from his name, because it tells you who his father was, his grandfather, which village he comes from, whether it is highlands, coast, lowlands, whether he’s Muslim or Christian. So a nickname is neutral. You are just a man, facing another man, it carries no – what do you guys say? – no luggage.’
‘Baggage. I guess that makes sense.’
The question had triggered some train of thought. He stared into the distance, smoking, then began to play with his cardboard beer mat, frowning slightly as he drew its edge through a splash of spilled beer.
‘Maybe there is something else, too, Paula. Something not so nice.’
‘Like what?’
‘You have to become someone different to kill people. If you stayed Dawit, or Paula, and your commander told you to take this AK-47, go and sit on that hill all afternoon, wait for the sun to go down, and when you see an old man coming over the crest, back from the fields with his goats, very calm and contented, you must take aim and put a bullet through his forehead – an old man who has never done you any wrong but whom the Movement thinks just might be a spy – well, then, you would go mad, wouldn’t you, during the long hours of waiting?’
I stared at him, imagining the cold dread of that long stake-out. No wonder he found it hard to sleep.
‘But,’ he continued, ‘if you are Rambo or Tarzan or Cobra when they ask you to do that, it is not so hard. You can do it, and live with yourself afterwards. Because it is not really you doing that terrible thing, it is someone else. And that is how you can tell that the guys we bump into at the Zombie Café, the Restaurant Torino and the Café Oriana are not yet ready for civilian life. They are still those other people. Buster, Kennedy, they will never be anything different. Abraham, maybe he will change back.’
‘Abraham? Our Abraham? I thought that was his real name.’
‘We baptised him Abraham at the front because he was such a good driver. We knew he’d get us to the Promised Land, like Abraham in the Bible. Me, I dropped my nickname when I came in from the field. I forced all my friends and family to stop using it. They did not want to at first, but I would not listen when they used it. These guys should do the same. We’re not in the field now.’
‘So what was your nickname, then?’
He cackled nastily. Lips curled, he gazed at me over the rim of his glass. ‘Me? Bingo. I was a sniper. I never missed.’ He took aim with an imaginary rifle, looked over the sights at me and made the sound of a bullet splatting against a target. ‘Bingo!’ he said again, with sarcastic relish, and downed the rest of his beer. ‘Another one? Your turn.’
‘I need the loo first.’ When I returned, he was rooting ostentatiously through my handbag, impatient at the delay. ‘Come on, woman, get on with it.’ Too late, I made a lunge for repossession. He leaned back, out of reach, brandishing a photograph.
‘Aha. What’s this? A photo? I love photos! But it’s of … two dogs.’
‘Yes.’
He slapped himself on the thigh with delight and gave me one of his Hallowe’en-pumpkin grins. ‘Wonderful, wonderful. What kind of dogs?’
‘None of your business.’
‘They look special. Expensive. Are they – what you call it? – pedigree?’
‘A Hungarian Vizsla and a Weimaraner.’
‘And what is the name of these special snob dogs?’
‘This isn’t particularly funny, Dawit.’
‘But it is extremely funny to me, Paula. What is their name? Let me guess. Rex and Lassie? Charlie and Roger?’
He flipped the photo over. ‘Laurel and Hardy. Very witty. You know, this tells me a great deal about you, Paula.’
‘Like what, exactly?’
‘Ah, you Anglo-Saxons, so sentimental, but always about the wrong things. A Spanish, a Frenchie, a Russian would have a picture of his kids in his wallet. Or a mistress. But you lot give your hearts to dumb animals that can’t answer back. Maybe that is why you love Africa so.’ He slapped the table in delight, choking on cheap cigarette smoke and his own wit.
17
Captain Peter Lewisham’s Diary
Kakardi, 1951, pages 91–7
22 April – The last of Tiny’s booze has run out. Danny says we should
start on the local beer, which looks like muddy water. He says it doesn’t taste too bad, but I’m not keen. I’ve got my eye on these fig cacti. Come summer, I reckon we might be able to set up a still and use the pears. Cactus cocktail, anyone?
27 April – The day of the Great Parley. Drove in two jeeps to the foot of the escarpment. These guys know how to disappear when they want to. I could have sworn there was no one there, then suddenly there was a shifta on every rock. Skinny chaps wearing bits and bobs of Italian uniform. We agreed that four of them would stay behind as hostages. Rupert, Derek, Tesfay and I then made a bit of a show of disarming – I wasn’t going to let a shifta run his dirty fingers all over me, told them the word of a former British officer would have to do. Then we followed a guide up onto the ridge. We were sweating like pigs after the first five minutes, but they climbed like goats. The path snaked through some giant limestone rocks. Marvellous views. We came across a chain of shallow caves, full of droppings: Derek said bats, Rupert said goats, I reckoned baboons. In the third cave we found old One Eye waiting for us, sitting as they do here, knees around his ears, Lee Enfield at his side, taking snuff from a little liquorice tin. He offered us a drink, gestured to one of his men to bring us some of their looted beers, which he handed over with a twinkle in his eye. Cheeky bugger, but it had been a hot climb so we drank them. One Eye only spoke Italian, so we got Tesfay to translate. Rupert very politely (called him ‘sir’, which struck me as overdoing it) asked One Eye what his intentions were and why he ‘felt compelled to take up arms’. One Eye looked a bit surprised at that. I’m guessing he thought several truckloads of grain, fuel and a sizeable stash of ready cash were pretty compelling, but he muttered something about ‘foreigners’ and ‘occupation’, which Rupert wrote down. Then Rupert asked him which nationality he felt he was, given all the talk in the newspapers of independence, union and federation. One Eye thought for a moment, smiled, then said, ‘My loyalty is to the flag which leaves me alone.’ Which seemed clear enough to me, but Rupert looked a bit nonplussed. I then took over the parley. Told him the British government was offering an amnesty and a plot of land to any shifta who put down his weapon and swore loyalty to the King, but that the offer expired in thirty days. He nodded, we shook hands and scrambled down to the valley, where the lads had been getting impatient.
30 April – Another letter from Flo, accompanied by some tea and Gentleman’s Relish. All very welcome. She says they hear almost no news from these parts on the BBC, so to keep the letters coming.
6 May – Bad news from HQ. It seems Johnny was shot dead on patrol yesterday, hit in the chest by a sniper. Died very quickly, his last words for ‘Mum’. Only twenty-two. Not clear why or who was involved, probably someone who just likes taking pot-shots at British coppers. It’s happened before. Everyone at the station is in mourning. I found the cook in tears, even Tesfay very downcast. ‘He was just a boy, just a silly boy,’ he said. I took the photo of Johnny grinning with the rest of us at our Christmas feast down from the noticeboard and will send it to his mother and tell her what a sport he was.
17 May – News from HQ. Word in Neraye is that Johnny was shot by the father of the girl he got pregnant. HQ say they’ve collected a few witness statements and I’m to arrest him. We piled into a jeep and drove down to the compound, only to discover the old man hadn’t been seen since he set off with his son and two rifles last month. He leased his plot before he left and the villagers reckoned he’d settled on the other side of the border. So it was all prepared. I asked Tesfay what happened to the money we’d collected as compensation and he said he’d never got round to paying it. I think Tesfay hoped we’d forget about compensation and he could pocket the proceeds. I tore a strip off him in front of the lads, told him we’d be sending it to Johnny’s mother back in Blighty along with three months’ worth of Tesfay’s docked wages, as what he’d done might have cost Johnny his life.
25 May – HQ say to prepare for imminent locust invasion. There’s a swarm heading our way, best warn the farmers. So we hooked up our loudspeakers and toured the whole of the eastern sector from Sanasa all the way down to Gurah, taking in Tentet, Buleb and the settlements along the Abubed. Took us three days. In the end, a few crushed grasshoppers were found on the main road and that was it. HQ later say the winds changed and the swarm missed us. We all felt a bit silly.
30 May – Tesfay came to me, eyes big with excitement. Said he’d heard where Johnny’s murderer was holed up. So we drove down to the border at Gurah, stopped the jeep and Tesfay pointed to a whitewashed house on the Darrar side. ‘That’s where the old man lives now,’ he said.
‘He might as well be in India,’ I said, pointing to the militiamen at the border post.
‘We could sneak across tonight,’ said Tesfay, ‘take the goat trails, arrest him and bring him across. No one will know we were there.’ Trying to make amends, I suppose. ‘You bloody fool,’ I told him. ‘HQ wouldn’t thank me for triggering a diplomatic incident.’ On the way back we spotted Johnny’s girl washing clothes at the back of the father’s old compound, big as a house. No husband, no father, not much future. After all that fuss over her honour, she’ll probably end up a prostitute.
2 June – Woke up last night in a sweat. It was something Flo said in her last letter. ‘The village girl must have been showing very early.’ Got me thinking. The dates just don’t add up. So either Johnny was walking out with the girl a lot earlier than he said or some local boy was involved. We’ll never know now. A bloody awful episode, when all’s said and done.
5 June – Another early-morning shifta attack on a truck on the Tentet–Sherano route. No one killed, but they took the supplies, removed the tyres, the tools, even siphoned off the fuel. The driver was beaten, tied up and had a note stuffed in his mouth. It read: ‘No thank.’ Rupert tells me the amnesty has shown results in Central and Western Province, with 135 shifta handing in their weapons. One Eye isn’t going to be among them. Tough old bird. I’ve got a sneaking respect for him.
18
The year’s end was approaching. ‘Darling, I’m going to miss you dreadfully,’ my mother lamented on the phone. ‘I hate the thought of you there on your own.’
‘Well, I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.’
Winston announced that a Christmas office party would be good for morale, while somehow making clear that it was up to us to put the idea into effect. So, Sharmila and I spent the day tidying up the villa, Ribqa installed herself in the kitchen and Yohannes and the one American intern who had decided not to fly home for the festivities draped tinsel around a plastic tree. On my short-wave radio, the King’s College choir was singing carols. The references to holly and snow felt pleasingly surreal: there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and we were all in T-shirts.
As the first guests started to arrive, I ventured into the tussocky back yard, where Steve was eyeing six chicken wings and a few lamb chops sizzling on a metal grill with an expression of acute suspicion.
‘Things OK?’
He had the proportions of a Greek hero, but not of the lissom, androgynous variety. No David or Hermes he. This was the other male type glorified in classical sculpture: the heavy-set Atlas who could effortlessly hoist the globe on his shoulders in his prime but who would in middle age undoubtedly run to fat. He had blond eyelashes – the kind any woman would immediately coat in mascara – wore his hair shaved down to a russet fuzz, and had a milky complexion ill-suited to the Lira climate. I’d spotted a bottle of factor 50 in our bathroom cabinet.
‘Well, we Aussies pride ourselves on being able to start a barbie just about anywhere, but this one nearly had me beat.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘The matches suck, the charcoal’s damp and I have my doubts about the whole grill design. Apart from that, it’s fine.’ He showed me the can of lighter fuel he was holding. ‘In my book, this counts as cheating.’
‘I won’t tell anyone.’
It was our first proper conve
rsation, and felt like progress of a sort. We chatted cautiously about the weather, career paths in the UN, and rival diplomatic definitions of the term ‘hardship post’. But then his eyes travelled to the kitchen window, where Sharmila was waving at him, and he seemed to recollect himself.
‘You like it here?’ he asked abruptly, turning a chop with his tongs.
‘Yes, but I’m still settling in.’
‘Whaddaya think of Winston?’
Before I could say anything, he gave me the answer: ‘Bit of a weirdo. Sharmila says he’s got no family, no kids – think he’s gay?’
‘No. Asexual, maybe.’ I immediately regretted the indiscretion.
He snorted. ‘What does that even mean? Anyway, what I do know is that he sucks when it comes to management.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well, he should never have put you and Sharms in the same villa.’ I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear any more. The conversation had gone from friendly to confrontational with startling speed. It seemed Steve had played with the idea of some kind of entente, only to think better of it. ‘You know that Sharms applied for your post?’ he continued. ‘How would you feel if you had to live with the person who whipped your job from under your nose?’
‘I didn’t know that. But thanks for telling me. It explains a lot.’
‘Yeah, well, rather you than me,’ he called, with fake cheerfulness, as I walked back into the kitchen. There I found Ribqa, craning over the sink, watching Steve through the window.
‘Why is that man making a barbecue when your cooker works?’ she hissed. ‘I was going to prepare everything here in the kitchen. Doesn’t he know it’s illegal?’
‘Illegal?’
‘That charcoal. He must have bought it by the road. Our government has banned the sale of charcoal. How can we reforest our country if people keep chopping down the trees? Doesn’t he know that?’
I could see Abraham drawing up outside the villa in the Land Cruiser. He discharged Winston, then helped out three old men, draped in white cotton shawls. They moved gingerly towards us, using their silver-topped canes to test the ground, gossiping all the while among themselves.
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