Rosewater

by Tade Thompson

  ‘Call me Mrs. Alaagomeji.’

  ‘I almost always do as I’m told.’

  ‘Be careful. That entire family is bad news. I’m too busy to explain, but Aminat has an ex-husband —’

  ‘I know.’

  She sighs. ‘You were easier to manage when you were an outlaw.’

  ‘S45 has other sensitives. Go bother them.’

  She is silent.

  ‘Femi, you do have other sensitives, right? I’ve met them in training.’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’

  She frowns. ‘Don’t get alarmed, but some sensitives have died. The rest are sick, and one or two have lost their skills.’

  I sit forward. ‘When were you going to tell me this?’

  ‘There was no reason to tell you. You are operating fine and show no signs of deterioration. We think the xenosphericus is killing some of your people. You are the oldest active sensitive we currently have on record.’

  I am speechless. I think of Molara.

  ‘I have to go,’ says Femi. ‘There’s a thing I have to deal with. A guy washed up in Lagos, said he’s from America.’

  ‘There are many Americans —’

  ‘Last week. He said he left America last week. Be careful, Kaaro. I prefer you predictable and boring. Go back to the fucking interrogation.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lagos 2043

  My mother probably thinks Fadeke is my accomplice. Either that, or she thinks seizing Fadeke will make me stop running. Both are faulty assumptions and do not take into account the selfish mind of the thief, or the desultory nature of my relationship.

  I watch from the end of the street. One of my shoes is gone, but I barely register this. The mob pulls Fadeke out of the car and starts beating her. A youth climbs onto the roof of her car and bounds up and down. They pull her hair and kick her in the stomach. The mob breaks in two and one strand makes its way towards me like a malign tentacle. The roil drowns out Fadeke’s screams. It is like a football match. Ole! is the chorus and I do not like the tune. I am ashamed to say self-preservation trumps my affection for Fadeke. I run. Past the church, past the saw mill that doubles as a bus stop, past the fake spiritualist, past the bolekaja that almost hits me, past the swine herd.

  Four people with clubs cut me off. More people stream out of doorways and alleys. I see Jeff Norton, the Englishman, staring from his veranda, smoking, calm. He is a bank robber, or so they say. He spends the whole day getting sunburnt and inhaling carcinogens. I have never sensed anything of value in his house.

  I sense the blow before I feel it. It is from a housewife with a wheel spanner. I lose my footing and someone sweeps my feet out from under me - known as “clearing” in local parlance. I take the hits. I have no defence and I know I am about to die.

  ‘Lo mu ibon mi wa!’ Go get my gun.

  I close my eyes and protect my genitals. Death by bullet won’t be so bad.

  The mob rips my clothes. My unshod foot bleeds. I know what comes next. Tyre around the neck, wood, dry grass, kindling, and someone with a match and a lighter. I have seen it before.

  I mentally search for my brothers and sisters. The kinsmen. The ones like me. I have never done this before, but desperate times, etc. In my minds eye I can see my thoughts as white waves against a black background, the darkness of solitude.

  My distress call goes out and I endure kicks, punches, clubbing, and fear. I am doused with petrol. I start to choke on fumes and beg. I open my eyes and the petrol gets in, stings me, and I squeeze them shut again.

  Brother, I see you, but I cannot come to you.

  Help! Fucking help me.

  Do you see the swine?

  What?

  Pigs. Do you see the pigs?

  I open my eyes again, a steel-toed boot lands on my lower jaw, adding dirt to the blood I already taste. I blink to clear my vision. The pigs, the pigs.

  Where?

  Your left.

  I see them. Grey, long snouts, hairy, some spotted on the back, unbothered by the commotion, rooting in rubbish.

  Wait, wait, wait. Go! Now! They are distracted looking for a tyre to burn you with.

  The herd is stationary because there is something to eat at this spot where the mob has found me. I crawl into a puree of moist garbage and night soil. The stench is overpowering and must make the mob hesitate. I move faster. I hear the squeals of swine as they complain. I gag and dig deeper into the shit. I am at the edge of a deep ravine. What happens is people throw their rubbish off the edge, turning it into a landfill site. The problem of course is that some people throw better than others, so that over time half of the street has become a tip and only one lane of traffic is open rather than the two it is designed for. I dive into the pit and suppress my gagging. I’m trying to dig a hole and hide while I think of my next move. It works for some seconds, then I am sinking deeper without effort, then I wonder. I slide into a pathway of mud, then start to fall in an ersatz avalanche of faecal sludge mixed with refuse.

  I lose my sense of up or down and am banged on outcroppings, broken pipes, and pieces of timber. A brief flash of pain signals what I find out later to be a dislocated shoulder. I fall forever and land on the roof of a rusting VW Beetle feeling no pain at all. There is a mile of filthy incline between me and my tormentors who hurl insults and missiles at me, but this is half-hearted, as if they have begrudging admiration for my escape. I am covered in shit, but already my nose has accommodated because it does not smell as bad. It smells like fucking freedom, and that’s always sweet. I run along the floor of the ravine. I know there is a streamlet close by and I aim for it. The bobbing of the run alerts me to the dislocation but there is nothing I can do but hold the bad arm with the good.

  The stream is sluggish at this time of year, but it is water and it flows and is therefore good enough for me. I wash. I cannot get clean without soap but I fear infection because of my bruises and cuts. I also need a doctor to set my arm. I don’t know when they arrive, but I look up and two men are there staring at me on the other bank of the stream. They are casually dressed and stink of otherworldliness. I know I can trust them.

  ‘Come with us when you’re done,’ says one.

  ‘No hurry,’ says the other. ‘I don’t want that stink in my car.’

  One of the men makes me stand naked in a courtyard and hoses me down. It is cold and surrounding taller houses have windows that look down, but I have no choice, and only the living, the free, and the honest deserve modesty. I am a thief and therefore beneath contempt.

  ‘Raise your hands,’ the man says.

  ‘I can’t.’ I point to the dislocation.

  He aims the jet of water at my armpits all the same. When this ends I wait in the cold, shivering. He brings talcum powder and clothes. The trousers are small, the t-shirt too big. There are red thong slippers which I slip on. The man makes me sit on a wooden bench and I wait some more. It is dark now and there have only been two power failures all evening. I hear a church bell somewhere — midweek service. A television blares out of a window. Just within earshot a couple argues violently. I smell pepper soup and smoke. I am hungry, but I do not wish to ask for food because my hosts have been kind enough. I wonder about my mother and Fadeke.

  ‘They killed her,’ says one of the men. I do not know how he came within inches of me without me knowing. ‘Fadeke, not your mother. They locked her in the car and set it alight.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Fire purifies,’ he says.

  ‘Fadeke was a money-grabbing serpent, but nobody deserves to die like that.’

  ‘I agree.’ He looks at my shoulder. ‘We’ll have a doctor look at that in a minute. What are your intentions?’

  ‘I don’t know … I thought I’d go back home when my mother cools down.’

  ‘Don’t do that unless you want to spend time in prison. She is absolutely convinced that the best thing to do is to deliver you to the authorities. She thinks she has fa
iled to teach you morals.’

  ‘It’s not her fault.’

  ‘She thinks it is.’

  ‘It’s no big deal. I didn’t steal a lot.’

  ‘You think a little stealing is all right?’

  ‘Oh, God. You’re not like Jehovah’s Witnesses are you?’

  ‘No. We’re like you, heard your call. This is my house and you are welcome to stay as long as you need to find your feet. Call me Alhaji.’

  ‘Is the other guy your brother?’

  ‘You mean Valentine? No, he’s my lover. The absolute love of my life.’

  This is a tricky confession to make. I have nothing against homosexuals and I have seen and interacted with enough of them at night clubs to know we are all the same, but it’s a criminal offence to be gay in Nigeria. Being arrested is the better outcome if one is discovered. Usually the flames are reserved for thieves, witches, and gays. That’s the way it is. I decide that being caught here is likely to complicate matters further.

  ‘I understand,’ says Alhaji.

  ‘I’m grateful that you helped me, but I do not like how you read my thoughts.’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I spend so much time pretending not to. How do you control your gift?’

  ‘I do not read thoughts.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘No. I find things. I can hear the thoughts of people like us, but that’s it.’

  Alhaji laughs. ‘And how do you think you find things? You think an angel shines a divine light that shows you the way? People think about the things they value a lot. You trace the thought pathway. It is reading thoughts; you just have not paid enough attention to your gift.’

  I ponder this briefly, but then the doctor arrives and my world becomes pain for a time.

  Although I have seen posters of related subject matter, Alhaji is the first person to talk to me about Bicycle Girl. He tells me because he is convinced that whoever she is, she is one of us sensitives. He is wrong about this, but neither he nor I can know this.

  I am twenty years old, and on the verge of leaving the sanctuary that he and Valentine have given me. I steal, but more carefully than before. I do not stockpile anymore, for example. I steal what I need for a week. Alhaji will not accept ill-gotten wealth as my contribution to the household so I get a job loading items at a shipping company and give him one hundred percent of my wage. He still is benefiting from crime because there is no way I can afford to give him all of it, but he does not know, so no harm. Loading hardens my muscles into the kind you cannot get in a gym.

  I do not steal from the needy. I get a sense of the household and give many a pass. I take a small amount from many different people to spread the liability, taxing them in a way. I mostly steal from those who can afford it. At some point, I can’t say when, I decide to take from those who have surplus and break into the needy and leave something there, minus my cut. This is not altruism. I simply become more aware of widespread deprivation and it makes me uncomfortable. Giving makes me feel better about being able to buy what I want.

  I learn to screen myself from Alhaji. He smiles and is happy when he can no longer read me. When I am not partying I try my own experiments in hearing thoughts. These do not yield much, but I become better able to tell which women are willing to sleep with me. Motivation, I suppose.

  I drink copious amounts of beer and Jack Daniels.

  I think about my parents, but there is no seismic emotion attached. I hate my mother for about five minutes. I am not a good son; I cannot blame her. If I were a good son I suppose I would be better able to muster resentment. The fact is that I do not miss my parents at all. My father only cares about and attends to his business, his chain of shops where he sells grain and other foodstuffs to the Nigerian lower-middle class who buy in bulk. He is reasonably successful and gives my mother and me a reasonable life. Not rich, but not in want and respected in the community. He is indifferent to me from birth.

  Because I am fickle and young, I stay with Valentine and Alhaji only until I get irritated by their mentoring overtures. I resist Alhaji’s attempts to foist Heidegger on me. A few of my neurons are firing and I know he is trying to improve me, but at that age the hormones speak louder than neurotransmitters, and the blood flow to my brain is always compromised by my erection. I start to go out again. I steal more, but not anywhere near the home. I buy alcohol and drugs and lap dances.

  ‘Have you ever heard of Bicycle Girl,’ says Alhaji one day.

  I’m watching the football. The Black Stars of Ghana are trashing the Green Eagles of Nigeria. Valentine is fussing about Alhaji’s head with an implant scanner. There is a rumour that government agents have identified and cracked the encryption used by homosexuals to hide the identification signal they use to recognise each other in public spaces. Alhaji just had the signal removed and Valentine is checking to be sure the removal took. Valentine never speaks. He is younger than Alhaji, though older than me. It is difficult to tell what he is thinking because his face is smooth and expressionless most of the time. When they make love one of them makes pleasure sounds which spread through the house, but I do not know which of them it is.

  ‘No. Who’s Bicycle Girl? Is she an athlete?’ I ask.

  I say this without thinking, but I remember being handed a pamphlet in the market once or twice. I have also seen the police take down posters.

  ‘She is an activist. She speaks against the government and takes willing people with her to a new society that she has formed.’

  ‘And why does the government allow her to live? Or her society of perfection to persist?’

  ‘That’s the problem. Nobody knows where it is. They say she lives and operates from a travelling village called the Lijad.’

  ‘Not Lijad? The Lijad.?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That sounds like bullshit, sir,’ I say.

  ‘I know it does. I think there is some truth within the myth. She is like us, I think. Sensitive to and manipulating thoughts.’

  This does not interest me and I turn the television up so I can catch the commentary of the football match. Alhaji does not bring it up again, but I see her one day, this Bicycle Girl. At least, I think so. I am drunk and stagger out of a nightclub to vomit and make myself decent enough to go home without detention by the constables. Around the corner I see a woman raise a defiant fist and turn into a shimmery … gap in the air. There are seven people standing in front of her as if listening to a speech. When the gap disappears they notice me. I finish vomiting as they disperse. One of them hands me a leaflet that says: Is Life Better in the Lijad?

  I do not tell Alhaji.

  A week later, I meet Klaus, the mad Belgian.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Rosewater: 2066

  Interrogation involving sensitives has a protocol.

  The subject never sees the sensitive. There has to be a continuous environment between subject and sensitive. There should be no involvement of the sensitive in the inducements and encouragements. Inducements and encouragement usually means beatings and electrocutions. The protocol means I don’t contribute to the physical side of the interrogation. The torture. I can’t ask questions either. I can, however, give the agents a list of words to read out. They are hooks, trigger words that summon thoughts.

  I have already established that this subject has something to hide and that he is aware of the use of sensitives. His countermeasures prove pathetic, but their existence means knowledge.

  Trigger words work best after a period of sensory deprivation. At the very least white noise headphones should be in place for an hour. This subject has been wearing them for twenty-four hours because I was jaunting with Aminat in Lagos.

  I have never been dedicated to my job at S45, but I have never neglected duties. I am indifferent to my duties. This is an improvement. I used to despise them. It is okay to live with working for them when I have nothing else to live for. Aminat is a change in the equation, an imbalance.

  I’m in the
Department of Agriculture in Ubar. Level minus four. A smaller room than before.

  He, the subject, is seated opposite me. One agent sits between us, facing neither, able so shift gaze between us, back to the wall. She holds a sheet of paper on which I have written trigger words. She has her hair cut short and wears glasses. She is tall, though not in the upper torso, all legs and trouser suit. She smoothes the paper and has done so seven times by my count. It means she is nervous.

  I try not to yawn and wonder what Aminat is doing.

  The subject is naked, on a plastic seat, hands cuffed behind him. He is sweating because a heating lamp is trained on him. They use a female agent to increase the embarrassment factor. He has cuts all over and his face is as bumpy as the last time I saw him. I’d guess they beat him daily.

  The agent looks at me and I nod.

  ‘Mother,’ she says.

  The subject twitches and a face appears in his mind, a middle-aged woman, corpulent, smiling, big bright eyes, hair in braids. The emotion around the image is overwhelming love of the Madonna variety. She might as well have a halo. There is a house, four other people whom I guess are siblings. The forensic artist will have a lot of work to do. I do not recognise any of the locations, but I memorise the details. This is easy, I’ve been trained to do this.

  I nod, and the agent says, ‘Father.’

  Weak. Bastard.

  It comes out as words and the smell of … honey? Yes, honey. And physical pain — sharp pain, not agony. An image accompanies: a man, bearded, harsh, works with his hands as a labourer? Some kind of manual worker. The mother image intrudes every fraction of a second. This is normal. What happens is when people experience or think of something difficult, painful, or uncomfortable they insert happy memories automatically, a mordant. We all do it.

  ‘Latin,’ says the agent.

  Natus ad magna gerenda, the subject thinks.

  This is a sneaky one, but devised entirely by me. Most Nigerians do not read or know Latin, with the exception of their school motto. The first and usually only Latin phrase in their thoughts can be back-tracked to their alma mater. From there identity and known associates is easy. Femi commended me when I shared this technique.