Borderlines

by Michela Wrong

  It was the coffee break. The three of us had walked out across the car park and into the formal garden, halting only when there was a tacit consensus that we were out of both earand eyeshot. We were in a gravelled rotunda, surrounded by shin-high privet hedges caging prissy arrangements of yellow primulas.

  ‘You heard the chairman,’ said Winston, calmly. ‘This isn’t a court case. If we keep interrupting we risk losing the commissioners’ sympathy.’

  ‘But we cannot just let them keep telling these terrible lies.’ Kennedy drew jerkily on his cigarette. ‘We can prove who started the war, but we have chosen not to. Because we believed you, YOU,’ he said, jabbing a finger at Winston, ‘when you told us that the question was irrelevant and would only be decided by the AU.’

  ‘And that is still true. The other side’s protestations are so much hot air.’

  ‘But we are letting their version go by default. You are not even interrupting any more. I may not be a lawyer, but I know military strategy. And what I learned in the field is that you do not let your enemy notch up easy wins because, in the end, you find yourself surrounded.’

  ‘If you notice, Your Excellency, I was starting to annoy the chairman. And your military experience must also have told you that the long game is the one that counts and that the pain of small surrenders is wiped out by overall victory. This rhetorical posturing will come to grate on the commissioners’ nerves, believe me. They will appreciate our side’s focus, economy and professionalism. We will go for the jugular in Addis, where we will present the AU with Paula’s evidence establishing a steady pattern of encroachment, I promise you. But not here, not now. This debate about the border’s course is essentially a technical issue, and we should not allow ourselves to be distracted.’

  The minister paced fretfully up and down the privet, finishing his cigarette, muttering under his breath. After a few beats, Winston said: ‘You spoke to Him.’ More a statement than a question.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What does He say?’

  ‘“When you hire a water diviner, do not try to be his stick.” It’s a proverb in my country. It means …’

  ‘If you keep a dog, don’t bark,’ I suggested.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘So,’ Winston said quietly. ‘We are your dogs. Let us bark. We’re good at it.’

  Reginald Watts was next. I immediately understood the reason for Winston’s ‘Breast Boy’ nickname. He was over six feet tall, with large feet that tended to splay. I suspect that at some stage he had taken lessons in public speaking. His tutor must have told him to use his hands. He had done his best but had come up with just a single gesture, a circling motion that made him appear to be cupping two giant breasts in mid-air.

  I camouflaged a giggle with a snuffle. ‘I wish you hadn’t told me that,’ I whispered to Winston.

  ‘Once you notice, it’s hard to see anything else, isn’t it?’

  But the humour died fast. Watts threw us a probing look, then unveiled his Exocet.

  ‘Mr Chairman, venerable commissioners, the other side spent most of the first day showing us the many, many treaties and maps they say bear out their border claim. They focused in particular on the diagonal, which supposedly establishes Sanasa’s location on their side of the line. We have submitted a great deal of paperwork, but we intend, in this instance, to focus on just one written document and accompanying map.’

  ‘Here we go,’ murmured Winston.

  ‘I will draw your attention to an 1899 letter written – as a matter of urgency – by the Negus’s secretary, Heriu Tekle, to the Italian Foreign Ministry. The Negus, who took power after his father’s suicide, had been on the Darrar throne only a few years and was anxious to shore up his empire. The letter is currently stored in Rome.’

  Watts’s assistant tapped her laptop and Tadesse’s letter appeared on the screen. Time had rendered the mundane beautiful. The paper was the colour of Winston’s vanilla ice-cream, the sloping copperplate as delicate as Arabic calligraphy. Ismael’s dots were visible only if you knew what to look for.

  ‘It is written in formal Italian and was triggered by an incident three months earlier, in which the Negus’s troops were pursuing a band of shiftas – bandits – who had raided a village in the north-east and stolen livestock.’ His hands caressed the air, lending emphasis where none was needed.

  ‘The Negus’s men pursued this gang on horseback until they rounded a hill and encountered an armed militia from the Italian colony, which claimed they had crossed the border. The militia attempted, unsuccessfully, to arrest them as trespassers. Shots were exchanged, no one – luckily – was hurt, and the Negus’s men withdrew. The incident was clearly considered serious enough to prompt this exchange of correspondence.

  ‘Let me read out the relevant section, which we have translated into English.’ In the new PowerPoint image on the screen, the words had been helpfully highlighted in luminous green.

  ‘Tekle states as follows: “Please be advised that your officials have long confused the junction between the Abubed and Shishay rivers with the junction between the Abubed and the Daro, another watercourse entirely, notwithstanding the many testimonies of nomads and local farmers. The true focal point lies fifty kilometres directly north of the Ram’s Head outcrop. Hence, your militiamen were trespassing on the Negus’s land when they attempted to arrest his troops.”

  ‘As you can see, Tekle has attached a detailed sketch of the area, illustrating his point.’ The map was now on the screen, hand-drawn but somehow all the more compelling for that fact. Ink squiggles for rivers and roads, ice-cream cones for mountains, a square with a cross on it marking the Ram’s Head outcrop. As Watts teased out the water-courses with his laser pointer, I caught a whiff of restrained excitement on his side of the room, the kind of suppressed tension you feel when a group of adolescents is watching porn together. This was intended to obliterate us.

  ‘Our argument is this, Mr Chairman, esteemed commissioners,’ said Watts. ‘As this letter makes clear, there has been a fundamental confusion, dating back at least a century, over the name and location of two key rivers. This unfortunate mistake, on which the other side’s belligerent action was premised, has ended up costing both countries dear. The letter sent by the Negus’s secretary – one can only sympathise with his dismay – makes clear that every single map,’ Watts hammered on the desk with his forefinger, ‘submitted by the other side is incorrect. The hundred and twenty maps, of which the other side seem so proud, are a hundred and twenty worthless bits of paper.’

  ‘Steady on,’ muttered Winston.

  I could see Kennedy’s hand open and close spasmodically in a frustrated fist. As an ex-fighter, he probably knew how to handle himself in a brawl.

  ‘By our measure,’ continued Watts, ‘there is no fifteen-degree angle. There has never been a fifteen-degree angle. The angle is a much sharper forty degrees. Not so much a gentle green slope as a double black diamond.’

  ‘That’s going to be the single solitary joke of their entire presentation,’ predicted Winston, sotto voce.

  Then Watts called up the 1998 Michelin map, and showed us what it meant on the ground. I shook my head in disbelief as he ran his pen over the contours of Darrar’s claim. At its base at the Tolandino monastery, the difference in angles was barely discernible. But the long sliver kept widening, swallowing hundreds of square kilometres before hitting the new river, which meandered down to the sea north-west of Sanasa. The port sat marooned on their side of the border and land-locked Darrar had miraculously acquired a generous stretch of coastline. It was a very, very greedy land grab.

  The second day of their presentation was devoted, as ours had been, to subsequent conduct. At Henry Alexander’s bidding, a small, dark man in his mid-fifties walked to the front of the room and positioned himself in front of a lectern. He placed his hand on a leather-bound copy of the Koran and took the oath.

  ‘Please state your name for the benefit of the commissio
n.’

  ‘My name is Suleiman Jama.’

  ‘Did you live in Sanasa until the seventh of June 2001?’

  ‘Sanasa is my home, yes.’

  ‘And how long did you live there?’

  ‘Since December 2000, when I was transferred there by Darrar government.’

  ‘And what role did you play there, Mr Suleiman?’

  The witness gave a big smile, revealing a large gold incisor. ‘I am the mayor.’

  I scribbled a note and passed it to Winston. ‘WASN’T MAYOR KILLED IN FIRST BOMBARDMENT?’ He inclined his head ever so slightly and wrote on my note. ‘LET HIM TALK.’

  ‘Do you have any official document confirming that, Mr Suleiman?’ asked Alexander, with a sideways glance at us. ‘A letter of appointment from Darrar’s Ministry for Local Administration, for example?’

  The witness gave an apologetic smile and shrugged his shoulders helplessly. ‘I have nothing, nothing! When the shooting and shelling began, we all run. We leave everything. But everyone in Sanasa know Suleiman.’

  ‘So please tell us what your official duties involved. What does the mayor of Sanasa actually do?’

  The witness puffed his chest, stretching out his arms to encompass the globe. He was clearly a man who enjoyed being centre stage.

  ‘Mayor does everything! Everything.’ He ticked off the items on his fingers. ‘He run local court, he pay militia. If someone beat you on the road, you come to Suleiman. You have sick child for hospital, Suleiman, he arrange.’

  ‘And are you also responsible for making sure residents vote when there are elections?’

  Judge Mautner leaned forward to interrupt. ‘Please do not lead your witness, Mr Alexander.’

  ‘My apologies, Mr Chairman. Let me rephrase.’

  But the witness was talking already, defending himself from some accusation no one had voiced. ‘My country is a modern democracy. Voting is good.’

  ‘And who is responsible for distributing seeds, fertilisers and credits to local farmers?’

  ‘In Sanasa, no farming. Just fishing.’

  ‘Well, what about handing out food aid on the Darrar government’s behalf?’

  ‘I told you. Suleiman do everything.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Alexander, gazing meaningfully at the commissioners.

  ‘Exactly,’ muttered Winston, under his breath.

  I looked at him uneasily. However scratchy, Suleiman Jama’s testimony was doing us no good at all, challenging our attempt to prove a track record of administration by North Darrar. As Henry Alexander went on to talk the commissioners through a stack of bureaucratic records, a hint of a smile appeared on Winston’s face and he closed his eyes. The books of supposed tax collections, the piles of utilities bills, the seed-distribution certificates failed to trigger a response. A couple of gratuitous references to how our side had initiated hostilities sailed past without disturbing his serenity. Hands clasped over his belly, Winston resembled a fuzzy, honey-coloured Buddha who had achieved Nirvana.

  ‘You’re looking very pleased with yourself,’ I said, as Judge Mautner brought the morning’s proceedings to a close.

  Winston opened his eyes, heaved a sigh and looked at me with an expression of delighted wonder. ‘“And the Lord shall deliver thee into mine hand, and I will smite thee and take thine head from thee.” First Book of Samuel, chapter seventeen. I think we’ve got them.’ He shook his head, marvelling. ‘It’s a truly lovely, lovely thing when one feels that, Paula. Triumph hovering somewhere in the ether, so close that all you have to do is reach up and pluck it.’

  We reconvened after lunch.

  ‘Mr Peabody, do you wish to cross-examine the witness?’ asked Judge Mautner.

  ‘I certainly do.’

  ‘Please ask the witness to come in.’

  Suleiman Jama walked to the front of the room. The joviality of the morning had evaporated. Perhaps he had not expected a cross-examination. He took out some orange plastic prayer beads and began to thumb them across his palm.

  Winston peered at him over his bifocals, the epitome of avuncular interest. ‘No need to be nervous, Mr Suleiman. I’m just going to ask you a few questions about your time as a mayor. You have told us quite a lot about your professional duties. But perhaps you can tell us a little about your personal circumstances. For example, your house in Sanasa. How big was it?’

  ‘Just a house. Nice house.’

  ‘And where was it located?’

  ‘Near the sea.’

  ‘Sanasa is a port. Everything is near the sea. Were you, perhaps, near the oil tanks? The shipping yard? The container depot?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was looking rattled.

  ‘Which one?’ Winston was hunting now. You could hear a relentless, driving quality in his voice. ‘The oil tanks, the container depot, the shipping yard?’

  ‘The shipping yard,’ hazarded Suleiman.

  ‘I’m afraid Sanasa has neither oil tanks, shipping yard, nor a container depot,’ said Winston. ‘It is a very small place.’

  He tried to recover. ‘My English is not so good. Your question … I did not understand it.’

  Judge Mautner leaned forward. ‘Would you like an interpreter? We can provide one.’ The witness shot him a brooding, peeved look, but nodded. I controlled a spasm of irritation: Judge Mautner had granted him a precious breathing space.

  There was a delay as a clerk clucked around, plugging in headphones and testing the sound before fitting them on Suleiman Jama’s head. Across the Small Hall of Justice, there was a rustle of movement and a chorus of coughs as everyone donned headsets and fiddled with volume control. An interpreter in the booth behind us cleared his throat in anticipation.

  ‘So, Mr Suleiman,’ continued Winston, ‘you were saying that you lived near the shipping yard, but we know there is none in Sanasa. How do you explain that?’

  You could almost hear Suleiman’s brain whirring as he made the most of the time it took to translate the question. The interpreter’s voice finally came over the headphones, higher than the mayor’s: I guessed he was a younger man. ‘My neighbour mends boats. For me, that is a shipping yard.’

  ‘You told us a lot about your work. You said,’ Winston read from his notes, ‘that you were responsible for the local court, paid the militia, dealt with local disputes and distributed food aid.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when you were not working, what did you do with yourself?’

  ‘Suleiman work all the time.’ He was beginning to sound petulant.

  ‘Well, when it was a public holiday, for example, what did you do?’

  ‘I have a vegetable patch where I grow beans, chickpeas, marrows, sometimes tomatoes. They grow well. I keep chickens and use the droppings as fertiliser. Vegetables like it.’

  ‘And did you have any friends in Sanasa? People you played cards with, perhaps, or met at the mosque, drank tea with?’

  ‘Yes, many friends.’

  ‘Could you name a few of them, please?’

  Suleiman paused. His eyes flickered towards the other side. It was clear he was reluctant to go ahead, but Alexander and Watts sat expressionless, offering no guidance.

  ‘Mr Suleiman? You must know the names of your friends,’ Winston said, with a small chuckle.

  ‘I play cards with Ahmed Jibril and Hebron Getze. With Mama Katy I sometimes read the Koran. And with Abdul Farah I watch football.’

  Then Winston did something that took my breath away. ‘Ah … Ahmed Jibril and Hebron Getze … Abdul Farah … Now, if I remember correctly, those names are on the witness list presented by the other side, are they not?’

  ‘Is that correct?’ Judge Mautner directed his question to Alexander.

  ‘We would need to check, Mr Chairman. It may well be.’ Wow, I thought. Winston knows their witness list better than they do.

  ‘That would certainly be helpful, Mr Chairman, as I seem to remember that Ahmed Jibril is listed as a Sanasa tax collector and Hebron Getze as a council e
mployee. I will come back to these names later. At this point I would draw the tribunal’s attention to a letter. It was submitted by Darrar as part of their counter-Memorial. For reasons that remain unclear, it was never translated. Perhaps that explains why my colleagues missed its relevance to Mr Suleiman’s supposed tenure as mayor of Sanasa.’

  With a tap from Yohannes’s index finger two pages appeared side by side on the screen. ‘Do you recognise this, Mr Suleiman?’

  It was the thin blue letter Winston had fished out during the long days spent reading in his Lira courtyard, the air thick with the scent of jasmine. Next to it sat Dr Berhane’s English translation.

  The witness squinted at the screen, making a show of being unable to read the words. Then he seemed to withdraw into himself. Any ebullience had drained away. He looked at Winston with obvious dislike, but said nothing.

  ‘No? Well, let me compare the signature at the bottom with the signature at the bottom of your original witness statement.’ At Yohannes’s bidding, the last page of that statement, with its final scrawl, appeared on the screen.

  ‘Would you agree that the two signatures are identical?’

  Suleiman Jama nodded reluctantly.

  ‘For the record, the witness has indicated his assent, so his authorship of this letter is not in dispute. As you can see here’ – Winston used the laser to point to a postal address at the top of the page – ‘it is addressed to the district police commissioner in Achamew, in the Federal Republic of Darrar. What is your connection with Achamew’s police commissioner, Mr Suleiman?’

  ‘We went to school together. I worked in Golpik, thirty miles away from Achamew in the 1990s, as deputy mayor. We had problems with lawlessness at the time, so I often was writing to him.’

  ‘So that would explain the letter’s chatty nature. Would you now oblige us, Mr Suleiman, by reading aloud the original, so we get it on the record?’

  Haltingly, Suleiman Jama read aloud, the interpreter translating as he went. The letter began with official business. Then, at the foot of the second page, came a handwritten paragraph of family gossip, the kind of personal PS that busy people scribble on Christmas cards. At this point, he stopped.