‘Bullshit. Right, let me see your boss. Boss man.’
‘Me the boss man, lady.’
‘Indeed you are not. I’ve done business with your company many times. Now you get me Mr Obama. Right now.’
‘He not boss. I am boss.’
‘Don’t contradict me!’
Our armed escort – I’m not clear if he’s a policeman or a soldier – comes closer at this sound of raised voices. He adds his own to the mix, which has slipped into Swahili. Luckily, the irrepressible Rose can handle this challenge too; her quick-fire questioning is menacing. Or maybe it’s just the unfamiliar tongue and the threat implicit in our escort’s rifle, and the raging sun which is utterly cruel: all are menacing. I stand dumb. A sheep.
‘C’mon, Debs.’ Rose takes me by the arm. ‘We’re wasting our time here.’
‘Did you try him with a bribe?’ I say in a stage-whisper.
‘Shut up,’ she hisses, dragging me on. Outside, she whispers: ‘Never acknowledge that money’s changed hands, OK?’
‘OK. Sorry.’
‘But yes –’ She stops as our escort emerges from the shack. ‘All right, Mo?’
He clicks his tongue. ‘Man is right. Obama gone now.’
‘Did you not hear – he got elected president?’
Neither of them crack a light. I think I’m hilarious, manic with the skitters and lack of sleep. Gibbering, I’m gibbering. The volume of humanity pressing on me is terrifying. To find one person in this? Worse, to find the memory of one person? We’re in a kind of marketplace, people on cycles, or dragging carts by hand. Archetypes of Africans with swan-necked élan carrying unfeasible loads on their heads. What strikes me most is how bright and clean everyone’s clothes are. That and the men with their bright-red beards, the children with aqualine noses and bleached-gold hair. If you saw this on television, you’d think it looked . . . pretty. There are even stalls with some fruit and veg. But then you notice the slowness of the people’s gait. The harsh and sickly stench that pervades, the brutal thorns and chainwire. The sitting. Interminable sitting in non-existent shade. The huge black-winged storks that flurry and stand on bony legs, and peck and preen and peck. The fact that no one’s actually buying anything. Our escort mimes smoking a cigarette. ‘Two minutes, OK? I need get more.’
‘Sure, Mo, take your time.’
I tug Rose’s shirt sleeve. ‘Will we be all right?’
‘We’ll be fine. Just stay with me, and walk slowly. Fancy a –’ she picks up a gnarled purple plum. Smiles at the stallholder. ‘Je ni?’
‘Passion matunda.’
‘Ah. Passion fruit. Hey. Kubwa! They’re big!’
The girl giggles, hides her face. Rose gives her money without asking the price.
‘Asante.’
‘No, thank you.’
As we’re leaving the stall, a young man emerges from behind a rusting bus.
‘Missus, missus. Excuse, missus.’
Rose links arms with me. ‘OK, just keep walking, Debs. Don’t make eye contact. Let’s go to that other stall, the one with the fabric.’
‘Missus, please. You shouting ’bout bus get hit?’
Rose touches my wrist. ‘Let me do the talking.’
The boy wears cut-off shorts, is barefoot. Bare-chested. Puts his arms behind his head as if he’s showing off his pecs. Rose sighs and produces a single dollar. ‘Here. That’s all till I hear you speak.’
‘When you say this was?’
‘No, you tell me first what you know.’
‘I work there sometime. Two time this year, bus hit by bandits.’
‘Well, that happens.’
‘No, lady. Boss; he tell. He take-a money, tell whena Christian going.’
I lower my voice. ‘Rose. Did you mention about Christians?’
‘Nope.’ Her chin pushing air. ‘OK, sunshine. Tell me more. Who are these bandits? Where do they come from?’
He shrugs. ‘Bandit.’
‘Why do they pick on Christians?’
‘Lot money. And mzungo no get good guards.’
‘That’s fecking true,’ she says. ‘Do they kidnap them?’
‘Huh?’
‘Do they take them away?’
‘Uh-uh. Take-a money. Passe-port. Take-a shag.’ He grins. Thrusts his hips.
‘What about the year before? Did the buses get hit then?’
‘No know no more, lady.’ He holds out his hand.
‘And would you be willing to tell what you’ve told me to the police?’
‘P’shaw. Money go two-way, yeah?’
I can see Mo walking back towards us.
‘Here.’ I give the boy five dollars. ‘Asante.’
‘Asante, lady.’ With an elegant swagger, he’s absorbed in the rolling crowd.
Rose returns to her browsing, fingering a cloth of satin sunflowers.
‘You like?’ asks the stallholder.
‘Ndiyo.’
‘OK.’ My throat is hoarse. ‘What do we do now?’
‘All right, Mo? Get your fags?’
‘Fag?’
Rose puffs her empty fingers. ‘Fags. Cigarettes.’
‘Yeah. Want one?’ He slips a cigarette between his lips. Sparks his lighter.
‘No, ta. Debs and I are good girls. Nzuri wasichana.’
Our escort chuckles. Breathes out smoke. ‘Where you going now?’
‘Um, UNHCR.’ Rose speaks directly to me. ‘There’s a researcher from Human Rights Watch over. And they’re looking at setting up a security partnership. They might have pulled together stats, or interviews that . . .’
But I’m not really listening. If this was my forsaken life, where would I go? What does your mum tell you when you’re wee? If you get lost, you go to a policeman. Aye well, clearly not in this shithole. But she’d also say: Just stay where you are. Stay where we last saw each other, and I will come back and get you.
‘It’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht!’ I declaim. Stop short of doing a Highland fling.
‘Whit?’ Rose is scowling at me.
‘If the lassie was bidin’ awhile, might be in her ain hoose, eh?’
‘Debs, what the hell are you wittering about?’
If only they’d taught us Gaelic at school. I try to think of other ways to circumnavigate this lumpen armed guard whose ears are twitching. ‘Her ain hoose?’ I repeat. ‘D’ye mind her ain hoose?’
‘Oh God, aye. Now I get you . . . Actually, that’s not such a daft idea. They put most of thepeopleofanotherfaith in the same area. Mo!’
Mo pretends he’s not been listening to us, that he’s only been straining to relight his fag. ‘Mo, I think I’d like to go and see some of my old pals near the church. You know, Father Paolo’s old church?’
‘Is gone.’
‘I know he is, but I’d like to show Debs the church.’
‘Is gone too.’
‘Oh. Och well, I still fancy a wee look round.’
He gives up on his unobliging cigarette, flicks it away.
‘Back in jeep, please. I only got one hour, then finish.’
‘Sure, no problems.’
The jeep’s parked beside the transport depot. We scramble up. Mo is a gentleman of sorts – he stands outside to pee, turning slightly from our view.
‘Lovely,’ says Rose. ‘Right, listen. When I met them they were in an absolute hovel, right on the bare edge of the camp. It’s not very safe, but it’s out of the way, you know? Far away from hospitals, and police and officialdom and that. So she might have tried to make her way back there. Plus, if it’s true only Christian convoys are being attacked, most of the Christian families are dumped in the one place anyway –’
‘So there might be others there who’ve had the same thing happen to them?’
‘Exactly. Or know someone else who has.’
Mo wrenches the driver’s door open, climbs inside. It’s the fastest I’ve seen him move all day.
‘We go now.’
�
�Yes, that’s great. It’s up by the –’
‘No. We go back to the compound. Big shootings near hospital. Not safe. You stay inside till safe.’
‘Och, c’mon, Mo –’
‘No argument, lady.’
We hang on the sides as the vehicle clatters and bangs away at speed. I don’t like Mo, don’t trust him, but I’m suddenly aware of what a burden we must be. Ten cops, four hundred thousand people, unilateral poverty and violence – and here’s Mo, babysitting two middle-aged women on a sightseeing tour.
‘Ach weel,’ says Rose, pragmatic. ‘Such is life. At least we can talk to the researcher girl. She’s in our compound. We’ll head out to where the church was tomorrow.’
I whisper, although Mo is driving with one hand and shouting into the radio clamped in the other.
‘Surely the authorities must be aware of these attacks? I don’t mean the police, I mean, like the UN? If they’re happening on a regular basis?’
‘We knew there were attacks, yes. But not that they were orchestrated by the bloody people we were paying to get folk out.’ Rose shakes her head. ‘And it depends how “regular” you mean by regular. It takes a lot to give violence a pattern here. Fuck. I’ll tell you one thing. No matter what, before we leave, I’ll be filing an official complaint about the transport agents – with the UN and the police. Make sure their licence is revoked, with immediate effect.’
‘But we don’t have any evidence.’
She reverts to grimmest Glaswegian. ‘No yet we huvny.’
All that evening, we are cooped inside. The researcher isn’t there after all, has gone home for two weeks’ leave. We eat a little, drink a little. Talk a lot. I learn that Rose, like me, grew up in Glasgow. That she has two daughters and a husband called Bernard. That her scars are not from breast surgery, but a quadruple bypass, aged thirty-nine. After that, I just thought – seize the day. Life’s precious, you know? So do something fecking precious with it. She asks me why I’m doing this and I say to help my friend. One raised brow, her finger singing on the rim of her glass. I take it he’s a very good friend? Then I tell her about Callum, how deep in my bones I miss him. How Abdi and Rebecca make me less empty. We clink our glasses, shout Carpe diem! The next day, Rose has to go to the water project.
‘I’ll only be a couple of hours.’ She hands me a key. ‘That’ll get you in the office. We share it with a load of other charities. Why don’t you photocopy the picture of Azira? We can hand them out in the Christian area. Put your mobile number on the back too. Code for the copier’s 2991, all right?’
What can I say except, fine? I’m conscious that today’s my last full day. The UNHCR flight back to Nairobi leaves tomorrow at 10am, and Rose and I both have seats confirmed. The alternative is to make the return trip by road, which would mean I’d miss my flight to London. Do that, and my government authorisation will expire before I can get the next one. It’s only paper, I’m sure it could be sorted, but the thought of being trapped here is appalling. I feel I’m looking through a kaleidoscope, with time fragmenting into a smaller and smaller hole. You could lose your mind here, I think; if only to escape. That Abdi – that my wee Rebecca – survived this; no, not survived, that they are whole and human still.
That they are wonderful.
The photocopier hums; I’ve been warned it overheats. I make fifty copies of the photograph, fiddling until I work out how to get two images on one page. I keep Azira face-down as I work. Mobile number . . . I can never remember my own number, but it’s in my contacts list, under ME. If I can find my phone . . . Check my pockets, check my fetching bumbag. Ah. I have two missed calls, and three texts. Abdi, my sister and Gamu.
Hope u r njoing self. A
Don’t bother to tell me you got there ok or anything. Your loving sister.
Home Office reconsidered my case. Visa application turned down. Lawyer to appeal, but not hopeful. Thank you for all your help though. Your friend, Gamu.
Shit. I wave the phone about, trying to get a signal. Gamu was one of my calls too: she phoned me yesterday, waited a polite half-a-day before dropping me the text. I wave more frantically, bend my knees, stand on tiptoe. The signal is resolutely absent. Try the office phone, but there is no cheerful buzz to it; it sits mute, even when I press nine, then zero, then all the stupid buttons one by one. Mute. Rose returns around two, by which time I’m utterly scunnered.
‘All right?’ she says.
‘Nope,’ I say. I tell her about my friend Gamu, and how I’ve made a hundred postcards of Azira. And how it’s all a waste of bloody time.
‘That’s the spirit,’ says Rose.
And we go out anyway, because that is what we’re here to do. If we have no joy in the Christian area, Rose says we’ll go next to Group Four.
‘Security?’ I say dumbly.
‘It’s the block that houses dhilo.’
‘What are dhilos?’
‘Prostitutes.’
A raptor floats above us, broad wings motionless as it hangs and drifts. I think of the elder Rose spoke of, and of his crawing feathered demons. Rula sits on my shoulder as we drive. She is skinny, and doesn’t preen. There are no pickings on her. Like this land: there is no bush here as I envisaged; it is arid outback, it is the bare dry bones of the earth. We are driving on a giant corpse. But on my other shoulder rests Callum, and he is fine and glossy. I crane my neck to look up. Almost too high to be seen, the raptor wheels and turns. He is majestic. Part of this landscape, and above it all. It’s much nicer to be looking at blue-blank sky than the viscera we’re navigating. Yet Callum would be very proud of me, I think, and I don’t mean this to be glib or self-satisfied. I know it as a fact, just as my husband is a shining fact. Each fragment of him, from the clear young man I met to the broken mosaic that left me. I have a vibrant memory of Christmas, our first Christmas when we couldn’t afford a tree. In a fit of festive extravagance, I’d already bought the fairy lights. I was going to string them above the radiator, but Callum had a better idea.
‘Nah. You want them to be voluptuous.’
‘Everything I’m not?’ I’d pretended to go in a huff, knowing he would reassure me. And my breasts. Very nice it was too – so much so that we forgot about fairy lights. Next morning, I came down to fresh coffee, a yellow-white dark room and a softly glittering orb of light. His solution had been to pile up the fairy lights in a goldfish bowl. Outside, new snow was falling in steady deliberate drifts, casting yellow and pewter in the sky, swallowing the lampposts, layering itself on our windows. It quietened us in its yellow light. Contained within our square of house; our ball of light with all its flickering episodes of lights, made voluptuous by my clever husband, instead of stretched out and thin.
The raptor leaves us, or we leave it, and carry on past interminable rows of cylindrical tents. It could be an endless market garden. Eventually, even these peter out, and there is no regularity at all – excepting the sun of course, with its precise and searing beats.
‘Here we are.’
The Christian area is even bleaker than the rest of Dadaab. It lacks colour, lacks form, clinging to the outer reaches of the camp. Unfettered access from the scrub beyond.
‘That’s new,’ says Rose. ‘There used to be a fence here.’
Grey-cloaked figures, streets of crude mud-and-tin huts, some tattered tents. It’s as if the whole place is hunkering down, hoping for the storm to pass it by. If we don’t draw attention to ourselves, we’ll be fine. Rose hops out of the 4×4. Today, she’s wearing pale-lemon pedal-pushers and a mint-green blouse. An exotic flower in the dust. People begin to stare.
‘Mo, we’ll be fine. You chill out in the jeep. Debs here is a journalist. She just wants to talk to some of the people about life in the camp. I know my way around, it’s cool.’
‘I have to stay with you. Lot of troubles with bandits.’
We can’t shake him. For three hours we trudge the area, no longer bothered what Mo thinks or does. But he never once looks at the
photographs we distribute. I don’t think he cares; we are a duty he has to discharge. The ugly sun sucks the moisture from our skins, my swollen feet ache, my head aches. All I hear is clanging; the doleful clang that it’s all too late. What could Mo do now to stymie us? We hand out pictures, people nod and smile. See Mo, and remove themselves from our sphere. Eventually, all the photos are gone. The shelters are dwindling too. We’ve come to a clearing with a wide spreading tree in the centre; a single piece of almost-green.
‘Over there. That’s where the church was.’ Rose points to some white rubble. Rebecca would have been baptised in there, in the heat of the day with a white shawl tying her to her mum. My wee Glasgow girl.
‘And look, Debs. This is the old schoolroom.’
It’s just a mass of broken mud, the odd strip of corrugated iron. Several of the huts nearby have metal roofs, built with the spoils of war; you can see the dust-trails from school to homestead marking the spot. A part of one school wall does remain, and on it – incongruously – hangs a tatty blackboard. I stand where Abdi once stood. Smooth the surface of the blackboard he would have written on. Chalk traces of my hand make a pattern; I think of Rebecca’s finger people and Rebecca’s men on horses. I face outwards: teacher’s stance. Survey the class with my teacher’s face. The air is full of spirits.
‘Excuse!’
Mo is shouting us over. Beside him is a woman, wrapped in a plaid shawl. Her head is covered, she holds part of the scarf across her face.
‘Missus Gray. She want speak to you.’
‘Hi there.’ We pick our way across the rubble. ‘Hi,’ repeats Rose. ‘How can we help?’
The woman drops her scarf. ‘Missus Gray. I am Mariam. You help me to get passage?’
‘Mariam?’ Rose is frowning, eyes back and forth like she’s scanning, scanning. Connecting. Clicking. ‘Oh, yes. Mariam! And . . . Sarah?’
Briefly, the woman shuts her eyes.
‘Yes. Sarah.’
Mo nudges her. ‘Hurry. You want talk to Missus Gray? Dhakhso.’
‘Mo. Please. There’s no rush.’ Rose leads Mariam to a stump of wall. ‘Please. Sit.’ We squat beside her. ‘Yes, of course I remember you, Mariam. But I thought you’d be . . . but you didn’t get away?’
This Is Where I Am Page 32
