The Hungry and the Fat

by Timur Vermes

  Nadeche sits up straight and opens her eyes, and with a clarity and focus Marion has never seen before, she says, “We are going to plan some schedules. And get him to join us. I want him to be there.”

  Grande is keen to add something; she takes another deep breath, but then simply nods. All that can be heard is the car’s engine and Astrid’s scribbling, interrupted occasionally by the hasty rustling of paper when she starts a new page, as if she were losing valuable letters every second.

  Slumping into her seat, Nadeche closes her eyes. “Marion,” she says. “Would you please take off my make-up?”

  Nadeche Hackenbusch:

  her greatest nightmare

  Hardship, poverty and violence. During her selfless work in the heart of the Dark Continent, the German superstar comes face to face with her own tragic past

  By Astrid von Roëll

  It is often said that women are the stronger sex. When it comes to pain, women are braver. Than men, for example. But how much suffering can one woman endure? For nobody can put up with infinite suffering, not even Nadeche Hackenbusch. Over the past few days this courageous woman, still a young woman, has – one cannot put it any other way – gone through nothing short of hell.

  Nadeche Hackenbusch has been in Africa for weeks now. Around the clock she is busy with preparing every detail of her programme “Angel in Adversity”. This is the Nadeche Hackenbusch who remains hidden to the public, the Nadeche Hackenbusch you only meet behind the scenes of the glittery world of the rich and beautiful. A disciplined worker, a woman who mans up twenty-four hours a day and more, but never complains. “As a woman you’ve always got to be a bit better than the men,” she once told EVANGELINE, but as ever there was no trace of bitterness there, only real enthusiasm for the challenge. This is so typical of Nadeche Hackenbusch. Always a good person, a role model, but a woman too. Over the past few days, however, even she has had to acknowledge the limits of what a human being can endure. In the heart of Africa she is suddenly facing her greatest, her darkest nightmare.

  The beginning of the day provides no clue as to what she might expect later on. It’s one of those mornings when the African sun shines equally for everyone. Lionel, her young, good-looking guide, accompanies her to the local hospital. Throughout the camp there is sheer delight at a visit from the angel, who tirelessly lends a helping hand wherever she can. People aren’t living on the other side of the moon here; thanks to their smartphones and the Internet they know almost everything about Nadeche Hackenbusch and the fantastic work she has already done in Germany. They are amazed at how modestly she arrives, her plain, sand-coloured jeans, the simple T-shirt beneath a shirt with rolled-up sleeves. “I pinched this from Nicolai,” she tells me in her wonderfully relaxed manner. “He’s going to get a big surprise when he sees it on T.V.”

  A black doctor greets the helping angel from distant Germany and offers her his hand. Closeness between people can be so simple. “If only the politicians were more like the people,” he jokes gratefully, and Nadeche Hackenbusch gives a hearty laugh. He shows her the rooms inside the hospital, humble but clean, as is so often the case with simple people. But shortages are evident everywhere. “Not enough,” he says frequently, “not enough,” pointing out of the window at the long queues of those seeking help. It is so typical of the German angel’s hands-on attitude that at once she says, “We’ll try to film this as quickly as possible so you can get straight back to your patients!”

  In Africa the enchanting way in which she talks to normal people is winning hearts. This infirmary bears no comparison with a German hospital. Here it’s full, with two to a bed, sometimes even three children sharing. Don’t bother looking for white sheets here, or pretty pictures on the walls or reading lamps. The electricity even cuts out occasionally, and yet for Nadeche Hackenbusch this is no second-rate hospital. “These people are trying their best,” she acknowledges. “They’re doing a magnificent job in their own way. They’re working in very modest circumstances and yet infant mortality is lower than one in five.” In a flash she takes the initiative, drafting plans, organising projects. Repaint the children’s ward in bright colours to counter the greyness of everyday life. Set up handicraft classes. “Back in Germany we did this with a chain of craft shops, Fanta-Si! I’m sure they’d help out again.” Time and again her wonderfully practical, fresh perspective on things takes everyone by surprise.

  She’s a good person, a role model, but a woman too

  “In Germany we don’t know how good we have it,” she laughs, “but here you’re soon jolted back to reality.” And how true this is. After the children’s ward Nadeche Hackenbusch discovers a room of young girls. Is this fate?

  This is a group of girls who escaped the clutches of Boko Haram only a few days ago. Many are silent, some say nothing at all, but two of them are in high spirits, bizarrely cheerful. It may sound strange, but there is almost a hint of despair about their laughter and beaming smiles. This is one of the rare moments when Nadeche Hackenbusch sits beside one of the quiet girls and asks the crew to switch off the camera. When the girl says nothing, she says nothing either. Lionel wants to leave with the camera team, but Nadeche asks him to act as translator. He squats on the floor, not too close, just close enough to hear what’s being said. If anything is being said.

  She doesn’t touch the girl, she just sits beside her like a big sister. Minutes pass. And then she nudges the girl’s foot with her glittering trainers. Once, twice, three times. On the fourth occasion the girl nudges her back. She says something, so softly that Lionel shifts closer because he can barely understand her. He asks a short question in his gentle voice. She smiles, points at him and Nadeche, then he translates: “Beautiful shoes. We both have beautiful shoes.”

  “How are you?” Nadeche asks.

  “Fine,” she says. “Now.”

  Occasionally one is fortunate to meet special people and Lionel is one of these special people. For what the girl now says is something a girl would only ever disclose to her big sister, but Lionel manages to translate as if he were not even in the room. The abduction. The fear. The imprisonment. The men. Sometimes just one. Sometimes two. How she started thinking some were less bad because they left her in peace afterwards. Better than those who wanted her to spend the night with them because supposedly Allah had brought them together. The men who felt ashamed of their weakness the next morning and beat her because she had bewitched them. At this point, anyone with a heart can have only one question in mind: “How can Nadeche Hackenbusch bear to hear this?”

  For here in Africa, the land of the tiger and the marabou, there is probably not a single woman who can empathise as intensely with this bitter misfortune from the depths of her heart.

  If only the politicians were more like the people

  Remaining courageous, she places her arm around the girl’s shoulder, no doubt pondering her own terrible summer. Her apparent happiness with LeBrezel. Then that horrific night. The endless days in court. The war of opinion in the media. What felt like a second incidence of rape when justice ignored her suffering with the heartless claim that “No” only means “No” if you actually say it. And that now, however justified she may be, she is prevented from giving expression to her accusations under the threat of a 500,000 euro fine. It is the harsh, bitter, intolerable confrontation with her own past that makes Nadeche Hackenbusch, this strong, stunning, self-assured woman, reach out for a hand that momentarily affords her support. The hand of Lionel, a quite special man. And one can see clearly how here, in the heart of the Dark Continent, the distressing story of a young woman briefly unites two long-suffering hearts that are both ready for greatness.

  10

  It is a week before the refugee realises that the money won’t be enough.

  He’s taken his beer from Miki’s dimly lit bar and is leaning wearily against a shack, gazing up at the vast, starry night sky. He puts the fairly cold bottle against his forehead. That can’t be right, he thinks. He earns well
, very well in fact, and he works hard. And yet it seems as if his goal is growing ever more remote. He rubs his eyes. They feel sticky, as if they won’t open or close properly. They began early, those Germans, and they worked the whole day. Today he was out collecting firewood with them. Because Malaika isn’t just a gorgeous woman.

  To begin with he thought she was just gorgeous and he wondered what a beautiful woman like her was doing in such an ugly camp. That’s why he started by taking her to the infirmary. The angel would have probably made her way there without him, but it was the only place he reckoned was sufficiently clean for such a gorgeous angel. An angel, moreover, whose own car wasn’t clean enough for her. He himself had heard that the angel wanted a white car.

  Thinking back on it now, it’s as if he met two angels in one that day. He recalls driving to the infirmary with the angel in the angelmobile. The angel was talking or incessantly tapping on her white-gold glittery angelphone to communicate with the angelworld. Only at the very last moment, when they pulled up at the infirmary, did the angel say something that sounded like the end of a conversation. Then he got out and the angel said they’d have to do it all over again, because she thought it would look better if he came out through a different door. The angel had a real look of concern, as if she had to inform someone that the entire infirmary had burned to the ground.

  And then there was the other angel. The one who calmly sat down beside the girl who had escaped. Who listened to stories that no angel ought ever to hear. The angel who came out of the infirmary.

  Who said nothing save for a single sentence, which she first kept repeating in German. Who turned to him, her hand on his forearm, and then said in a voice that no longer sounded anything like the voice of an angel, “This must different go. Total. I swear.”

  That was a week ago. Since then she hasn’t visited another building; she’d rather walk about with people. She fetches water with them. She tries to cook with what people have here and she’s collected firewood with Munira. This way of working must be highly unusual for Germans, he could see how her colleagues became impatient. If they’d had their way, after ten minutes on foot they’d have all got back into the clean car with its zebra stripes. Because in a region where almost nothing grows and two million people are out looking for firewood every day, you don’t find wood ten minutes walk from the camp perimeter. But the angel didn’t want to get into her car. She wanted to go with Munira, and if Munira had to walk for two or three hours to find something to burn, the angel was set on doing the same.

  “She go three hours?” she asked him again. “Real?”

  “It’s true, Malaika.”

  The angel’s helpers protested.

  At which the angel let the full fury of heaven thunder from her mouth.

  He’d never seen someone crush five men using their voice alone. Let alone a woman. But that’s what happened. The angel simply fetched a different, no doubt more comfortable pair of shoes from the car, and from that point on it was clear that they’d be walking the whole way. Which nobody regretted more than Munira; she’d have loved a ride in the angelmobile.

  This is precisely how the refugee had imagined a German angel to be. Not merely good, but good through and through. She didn’t just carry a bit of wood for the camera; the angel carried as much wood as Munira herself. He’d have bet anything that the angel would give up after a hundred paces, but she lugged the wood just as Jesus the Christian did his cross. Twice she vomited into the dust with exhaustion, but she never gave up.

  And the Germans are just as thorough about the money.

  He sips his beer. Little Saba approaches him. “Mtu?” she says. This is the name the children have given him. Everyone’s been giving him a name recently. The Germans call him “Lionel”; he’d rather not ask why as he doesn’t want to be complicated. The children say “Mtu” from Mtu kwa malaika – the man with the angel. Saba puts on her cutest smile, but if he gives in now he’ll have every last child in the camp around his neck. He shoos her away, wearily, kindly, yet firmly. He tells her that he’s already given Saba’s mother a bit of help. Now he needs some peace, he needs to think. On his own. There are some things you can’t talk about with anyone. Not even with Mahmoud.

  These Germans are so thorough.

  They put an astonishingly large sum of money on the table, it’s true, but they won’t be fleeced. The middle-aged woman they call Grande pays him daily. They never string him along, never fob him off; at the end of the day he always has the agreed sum in his hand in cash. But there’s no advance either. And that’s the snag. His money would be enough for a smuggler if he got it all in one go. But it’s virtually impossible to save money.

  Money isn’t a problem if you have as little of it as everyone else. Nor is it a problem to have more money than others, so long as you can keep quiet about it. But if you can’t keep it quiet, like him, Mtu kwa malaika, “the man with the angel”, then you have to give the others a cut. Because you’re the one who’s making money out of the camp and other people’s lives. And if you don’t give them a cut, they won’t let you do it anymore.

  So he pays for the beers at Miki’s. He gives Mahmoud and a few others little jobs. Finding stories. And he gives Mojo the Blue his share. In theory. He offered it to Mojo and Mojo was surprised. But then told the refugee to keep the money, they’d come up with a good solution soon. It won’t be like this for long, though.

  He could take money from other refugees for having brought the angel to them, of course. But if the Germans found out they’d give him the chop. And if they didn’t, if he could actually earn more money, Mojo would muscle in and he’d have to set up his own gang to protect himself from Mojo. That costs time and money, and he has no desire to become a gang boss. What good would that do anyway? Mojo the Blue has been doing it since childhood; he’d last two days at most, and then someone would find him with his head down the latrine.

  In any case his time to earn money is limited, because sooner or later Mojo the Blue will muscle in. He’s just waiting to see how carefully the Germans are monitoring what goes on. But once he’s checked it all out, Mojo will politely take him aside and tell him that all future meetings with the angel can only take place for a fee. And with Mojo’s agreement, of course. Mojo will let him know what these meetings will cost. Or, better put, how much he’ll have to give to Mojo.

  And if that gets out the Germans will give him the sack.

  Or he’ll refuse and Mojo will have him killed.

  Terrific.

  He pushes the tip of his index finger into the neck of the bottle and gently flips it out. Pop. No, it is what it is. Even though he has the best-paid job in the entire camp, he’s in exactly the same financial position as before.

  Pop.

  And one day Malaika will leave. And he’ll grow old here and die. Unless . . . she takes him with her. But that money-dragon Grande ruled this out on day one.

  “This isn’t a ticket to Germany – understood?”

  Why should she, anyway?

  Maybe out of friendship?

  But the likelihood is low. The Internet isn’t exactly pulsing with stories of German camera crews taking home the subjects of their reports from Africa. The only possibility would be for a health issue. Someone with an illness, ideally a little girl who can only be operated on in Germany.

  Unfortunately he’s in rude health.

  There must be another excuse, that . . . that his life is threatened. By . . . Mojo the Blue, of course.

  That might work. It’s actually a really good story. Why is he in this situation? Because the Germans and the angel came here. Because they got him into trouble. Because they put him in this delicate position, caught between money and violence and Mojo. And now they have to help him out of it. Him and maybe Mahmoud too.

  The risk with this story is that it might wake some sleeping dogs which would better be left to lie. If Malaika finds out that deals like this are being done here in the camp she’s bound to ask if h
e’s been working for Mojo the whole time. But it’s worth the risk. He just mustn’t talk to her too soon.

  “Mtu!” Sabu says, sitting on the ground beside him. Her talent for being able to look even cuter is highly impressive. She looks cute from the start, but she holds plenty in reserve, which means she can keep turning it on. There’s no smarter child here. Should he be helping out someone like her?

  “You can have my beer.”

  “Really?”

  “The bottle, I mean. When I’ve finished.”

  Saba waves dismissively. “What am I going to do with a stupid bottle?”

  He drains it and puts it in front of her.

  “Take it to the Germans.”

  “And then?”

  “They might give you some money. I’ve heard the Germans give money for bottles.”

  “They give money for empty bottles?”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  He can see that she has her doubts about this.

  “How much?”

  “No idea.”

  “Tell me!”

  “I don’t know. A bit. Less than a beer would cost, of course. Otherwise everyone would bring them unopened bottles.”

  Saba lifts up the bottle. “So I bring them this empty bottle and they’ll pay for it? You’re crazy.”

  “Try it,” he said kindly. “It’s worth a shot.”

  “Why would they want the bottle?” Saba persists. “What are they going to do with it?”

  “I don’t know. German things. Maybe they’ll just fill it up with beer again. Maybe Germans have too much beer and not enough bottles.”

  Saba looks sceptical.

  “The bottles go onto a big ship, the ship sails to Germany and all the Germans are happy,” he says. “Then they dance their German dance.”

  “How does the German dance go?”

  He gets to his feet and leaps around a little, slapping his thighs. It looks like an elephant trying to move like a heron. “That’s how it goes. Like at the Oktoberfest.”