“Goodbye, Hamidou.” My voice was barely a whisper. “Thank you.”
He laughed in his quiet way and shook his head at me for the last time.
Next was Laya, resplendent in a new dress made from the batik pagnes I had given to her as a departing gift. A bank account and a few pieces of cloth—such pitiful things for all she had done for me. I started to cry, having given up on any kind of dignified farewell. Ousmann wiggled in the sling that held him to Laya’s back. She reached around, pulled him from the cloth, and placed him in my arms. He wrapped his arms around my neck, and I embraced Laya, wishing I was taking her with me, knowing I would wish it for the rest of my life.
A woman’s voice echoed across the room with the last call, “Air Afrique, vol six, soixante-deux, Ouagadougou-Abidjan, dernièr appel.”
Tricia tugged at my sleeve. “Come on, Susan, let’s not miss our plane.”
Jack stepped forward and folded me into his arms. Sweet Jack. We had said our goodbyes so he only smiled and kissed me.
Tricia shook hands all around, then raised her hand in salute. “Goodbye!”
She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me through the open door out into the heat and burnt smell of the blacktop runway. I turned away from the faces at the door and walked toward the plane, which rested in the middle of a wide airstrip. Three soldiers with machine guns stood guard around the plane. The asphalt burned through my sandals as I traversed the fifty yards toward the stair platform.
“These guys with guns give me the creeps,” Tricia said in a low voice. “Are they afraid we’re going to steal the plane?”
The soldiers were older, tough looking men. One of them reminded me of Drabo. How normal the presence of soldiers and guns had become.
Out in the field, a dust devil jumped in and out of millet stalks, making them bend and straighten, as though they were waving goodbye. Tricia started up the plane stairs. I followed, the last in line. At the top, I turned to look back toward the roof of the terminal building. A line of people stood against a railing that ran the length of the roof. I raised my arm in a wide arc. Four arms waved in response—Jack, Luanne, Laya, and Hamidou.
“Adieu!” I yelled as loud as I could, throwing both arms up in farewell. My chest tightened. “Goodbye my friends!” I called. Goodbye my family. The wind carried their answers back to me.
I turned to enter the plane, but stopped to scan the horizon one more time. Far out, a baobab tree stood alone, reaching out like a scarecrow with a hundred arms.
“Goodbye, Sahel,” I whispered. “Till we meet again.”
A ghost herd of elephants materialized in the heat waves and raised their trunks in farewell. I inhaled the scent of the desert, held my breath, and walked into the cool darkness of the plane.
Inside the plane’s belly, corked, taped, and packed between two towels in my backpack, lay a champagne bottle full of golden-red sand.
Unanana-Bosele and her children grew hungry inside the elephant. She asked her children, “What have you eaten?”
They replied, “Nothing.”
So, taking her knife, Unanana-Bosele cut the liver and through the ribs, eating the strength of the Great Elephant and freeing herself and her children.
As all of the people and animals left the belly of the elephant, they cried, “At length, we see the country!”
They made Unanana-Bosele many fine gifts of cattle, goats, and sheep. She returned to her village and her house in the middle of the road, rich with many treasures and her two fine children.
Part III
Through the Ribs and Out
Chapter 31
Lagos to Nairobi
July
Rain pummeled the plane window as the 727 took off. The lights of Lagos fell away into an ocean of mist. Across the aisle, a Nigerian in a voluminous boubou slurped as he sucked the marrow from a chicken bone brought aboard in a grease-stained cloth. A woman, even larger in girth than the man, overflowed the seat next to him. She chewed on chunks of bread torn from a baguette. The plane smelled of too many bodies, yeast, and fried chicken.
My stomach rumbled. I couldn’t decide which I was more of, tired or hungry. Tricia and I had snacked on peanuts during the flight from Ouaga to Abidjan, then grabbed a soda in the Abidjan airport between planes.
“When do you think they’ll serve dinner?” Tricia eyed the chicken leg across the aisle. “I’m starved.”
“Probably somewhere over Cameroon.”
The plane rumbled as the landing gear ground up into the belly. Exhaustion spread like warm sand down my arms and into my legs and feet. I leaned back against the headrest and closed my eyes.
Someone kept poking my arm. At the first turn of my head it was Adiza, the second time it was Fati, pulling at my sleeve. I opened my eyes.
“Susan, wake up! I think we’re about to get hit by a plane!” Tricia pointed out the window to a red light that blinked and wavered through the rain coursing across the double pane.
My heart skipped into triple time. Son of a bitch! What had ever possessed me to get on an airplane with Tricia!? She was a magnet for the weird and harrowing. Like the time a flasher zeroed in on her in a remote corner of the library and opened his trench coat. Like the sandstorm the day she tried to fly to Dori. Perverts, storms, and errant airplanes saw Tricia and came running.
My stomach did a double backflip. The red light blinked.
“Wait a minute.” I squinted and reached across Tricia to rub the grease off the window. “Isn’t that the light at the end of our wing?”
Tricia peered out the window. “Oh. Maybe you’re right.”
“Goddamn it, Tricia!”
“Sorry, it looked like a small plane.”
I fell back against the seat and rubbed my stomach. “I think I’m gonna’ throw up.”
Tricia ruffled through the seat pocket in front of her. “Rats. No airsick bags.”
“I’m all right.” I blew out a long breath then sat forward. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
She started to laugh. “I said I was sorry. Oh, look. They’re starting to serve dinner.”
I stared at her. This, my sister, was going to be my travel buddy through Kenya, Egypt, and Greece over the next few months. Travel buddies were supposed to watch out for each other, not hand out heart attacks.
Two flight attendants wearing blue caps pushed a food cart down the center aisle. The aroma of overcooked rice joined the chicken smell. Conversation ebbed as bodies shifted and table trays clicked free from seat backs. The sound rustled through the cabin like grasshoppers flying in the heat of midday.
A young woman with perfect skin and hoop earrings placed a plate of food on each of our trays. We ordered wine and were given two mini-bottles of French chardonnay.
Tricia rubbed her hands together. “Let’s celebrate.”
We twisted off the caps and poured wine into our plastic glasses.
Tricia raised her cup. “To Ethiopian Airlines, flight 823, Lagos to Nairobi. May we arrive in one piece!”
I clicked my glass with hers. “To the end of one adventure and the beginning of another.”
“Now, eat.” Tricia pointed her fork at my food. “You’re too skinny.”
Before leaving Ouaga, I had stood on the scale at the embassy and discovered I’d lost ten pounds. Months of overwork and intestinal trauma will do that. At just over five feet, nine inches, I weighed 120 pounds. When you took the condition of my hair and the state of my clothes into account, I was a veritable scarecrow.
The wine was cold and the chicken surprisingly tasty. Tricia flagged down the stewardess and ordered two more mini-bottles.
“So, your job is finished. How do you feel?”
My stomach was full, my head fuzzy. “I’m so tired, I can hardly feel anything.”
“You did a good job.”
“Yeah, I think I did.” And I was done. The realization seeped into my bloodstream along with the wine. I was flying away from two and a half years of in
tense work in a grueling climate on the edge of the world. Relief opened up a little door at the end of my big toes, and all the angst and frustration I had stored up spilled out.
Out the window, the rain finally stopped.
Sometime past midnight, I closed my book and yawned. After reading The Snow Leopard, I had searched out more Peter Matthiessen and found At Play in the Fields of the Lord on somebody’s shelf. It was a story about the loss of innocence, or the path to innocence, depending on one’s courage. I had always thought of innocence as the simple lack of experience. But I had confused innocence with being naïve.
Philip’s favorite pastime had been to tell me how naïve I was. Me and every other American he had ever met. In many ways, he was right. Naiveté was expecting the rest of the world to see things the way you did and being surprised when they didn’t. Innocence was purity of heart, even in the presence of experience.
Events of the past three years had pummeled much (though certainly not all) of my naiveté. But I could not say that I was innocent in the face of all that I had experienced in Africa. Along with all the adventure, friendships, and love, there had been fear, loneliness, sorrow, and regret. They had all pitched tents at one time or another in the campground of my heart. And they had left a lot of litter behind. But I was moving on.
Who ever knew what the next phase of life was going to be? Like Mohammed ascending the seven levels of heaven on his Night Journey, I, too, was climbing. Maybe Tricia was my Angel Gabriel.
I laughed to myself, then sighed, a shaky exhale over the fatigue and relief that jumbled my insides.
Tricia slept with her head propped on a pillow wedged between her shoulder and ear. I tucked Matthiessen into my basket, though one particular passage stayed in my head.
In the jungle, during one night in each month, the moths did not come to lanterns; through the black reaches of the outer night…they flew toward the full moon…the idea of the moths in the high darkness, straining upward, filled him with longing, and at these times he would know that he had not found what he was looking for, nor come closer to discovering what it was.
I turned out my light. Darkness muted the cabin’s interior save for a dim line of tiny lights along the aisle. The hush of people sleeping moved back and forth in the recirculated air.
Out the window, a full moon played hide and seek among canyons of thick, shifting clouds. Stars littered the blue-black sky. I rested my forehead against the pane. How to describe longing? A pang, a rush of melancholy that drained you until you were empty. A yearning that made you want to cry.
I had followed Rob back to Africa, hoping to find a lasting relationship and my place in the world, thinking I could make a difference, needing to finish all I had left undone in Liberia. Things hadn’t quite turned out the way I’d imagined. I had come looking for a cause, for love, and a feeling of belonging; but hidden within that longing had been vanity, falsehood, greed, and dissension.
When vanity and greed are sought above all else, Wagadu, the goddess of compassion and true life, forever eludes the seeker.
The one true thing I had found—a family of friends—I had left behind, again.
I saw the faces I’d said goodbye to eight hours before. I saw Drabo, who had left before I did, the faces of Lily and Luc. Six years ago, I’d said goodbye to my family in Idaho. Two years of gathering family in Liberia, then I’d said goodbye to them, too. Now, I had just left another. I moved away, moved toward, moved away again, like a moth to a lamp.
No, not a moth—such a quiet, fragile creature. I was more like those geese I used to watch whenever we went fishing on the Blackfoot Reservoir. They flew overhead in a V with great honking noises, as if debating whether or not to land. Wings spread wide, they skimmed the water, banked up over the lake, then banked to circle again. I knew they wanted to land, to rest and eat the grasses along the bank, to drink away their thirst from so many hours of flying. But for some reason, the geese kept banking, circling the lake, swooping, then rising again, as if spooked by their own reflections.
I had become one of those geese.
A coil sprang at the center of my belly—a momentary cocoon of sadness that unfolded into a fluttering in my chest. Good work, a lasting relationship, belonging, even family—I couldn’t go looking for them anymore than I could go looking for happiness. They were not the journey’s end; they were the bonuses, the by-products of finding something I could only hold in my heart, of finding Ubungqotsho! Good work, love, belonging, and family were the fruits of living life with innocence, confidence, and passion.
There is a story the Zulu people tell about a woman called Unanana-Bosele, who willfully built her house in the middle of the road, trusting to ubungqotsho!
I shook my head, pressed my hand against the fluttering that turned to a thumping in my chest. No, I didn’t have to find Ubungqotsho—it had always been tucked into the folds of my heart. My journey was to learn to trust it.
For, really, Wagadu is not of stone, not of wood, not of earth. Wagadu is the strength that lives in the hearts of men.
Out the plane window, moonlight shone—a silver wash on the surface of the clouds. A dizzying sense of liberation shivered along my arms, an unfolding and spreading of enormous wings. I flew outside the confines of the stuffy plane, free, alone. The night air buffeted my arms and legs, blew fresh and cold against my skin. I soared between the clouds, through the billowy canyons, upward into the high darkness, toward the full moon.
Chapter 32
Mombassa!
August/Ramadan
There were places to stay, the fancy places, the big hotels, where people found luxury and comfort and ended up missing the very place they came to see. Then there were the smaller places, the ones that charged less money, were less comfortable, but where the color of the country, the noise and the people filled the hallways and spilled onto the sidewalks and the streets outside.
Walking down the stairs of the People’s Hotel in Mombassa, I knew I was in the right place.
Fresh from four days on the beach in Malindi, sunburned and rested, I sang hello to the proprietor who stood behind a high desk. “Jambo!”
“Good morning, Bibi!” The proprietor smiled. His long robe and skullcap of white cotton and his prominent nose were all Arabic. But his high forehead and full lips reflected the Bantu tribe that inhabited the savanna lands of central Kenya and Tanzania. His skin, milk chocolate in color, was Arab and African. These two races had coexisted and blended since the seventh century when monsoon winds pushed Arab dhows south through the Indian Ocean to the eastern coasts of Africa.
I stepped out of the People’s Hotel and onto the streets of Mombassa. Mombassa! A storybook name, like Timbuktu, that promised mystery and adventure. People chatted and called to each other in Kiswahili—the Bantu language named by the Arabs, meaning “people of the coast.”
Balconies carved in ornate designs jutted out like misshapen noses on the faces of the buildings. Blue and green shutters framed windows that bisected all three stories from end to end. Riots of pink and orange bougainvillea hung from terraces. I breathed in the morning and filled my lungs with sea air and the scent of flowers. Palm trees fluttered their leaves against an impossibly blue sky. Mombassa!
At the end of the street, I entered a coffee shop through a bright red door. An Indian woman in a gold-trimmed sari greeted me with a smile. Tricia waved from a table near the window.
Two coffee cups on saucers, a porcelain pitcher of steaming milk, a bowl of sugar, and two plates piled with flat chapatis and triangular samosas posed on the table as if set for a picture in an ethnic cookbook.
“It’s amazing what food can do for the spirit.” Tricia tore a chapati in half and took a bite.
I sat and poured myself a cup of coffee. After two years of Nescafé, the perfume of freshly ground coffee picked days before in the highlands of Kenya nearly sent me into a swoon. And the milk was fresh, not powdered or out of a can. That Indian café on a corner in Momba
ssa was my second glimpse of paradise.
The first had been the past four days in Malindi. A beach of white sand stretched along an ocean of aquamarine and deep blue. Waves frothed over a coral reef halfway to a horizon so wide it bowed. I had spent most of my time in the shade of a palm tree in my bikini and T-shirt, my long hair thick with humidity and sea salt. We had passed our days swimming, snorkeling, drinking chai in the afternoons and beer in the evenings at the tiny beach bar of our three-dollar-a-night motel.
Steam from my coffee tickled my nose. “Let’s stay here forever.”
“I love this place.” Tricia talked through a mouthful of potato-filled samosa. “It’s like being in India, Africa, and some Arab country all rolled into one.” She flipped open the guidebook and I laughed.
“What?”
I shook my head and sipped my coffee, feeling happier than I had in I couldn’t remember when.
“Says here,” she smoothed a page open and pressed her finger down the center spine. “‘In 1896, the Imperial British East Africa Company imported thirty-three thousand Indians to build the railroad.’ Like the Chinese in America. ‘The Indians stayed and set themselves up as merchants, entrepreneurs, and tradesmen.’”
We had booked two seats on the train from Mombassa to Nairobi for the next day.
“Last night, I dreamed I was flying.” I stirred cream clouds into my coffee. “You know, just me, arms outstretched, flying. I haven’t had that dream since our boat trip up the Gambia River.” I bit into a chapati, a heavy, flat bread that tasted of butter and warmth, full stomachs, and India. “I wish I could just travel forever. Start in Zanzibar and travel up the coast to Egypt. Become a permanent bum.”
“We are going to Egypt!” Tricia said. “I can’t wait to see the Valley of the Kings and Queens.”
In the Belly of the Elephant Page 25
