Ghost season, p.23
Ghost Season, page 23
“I confeshed,” Mustafa lisped. “I told them I was the one who smuggled the guns.”
An upheaval in William’s chest. He didn’t know whether to embrace or hit Mustafa.
“Are you out of your mind?” He felt feverish with hunger and thirst and emotion.
“I told them to let you go,” said Mustafa. “But they won’t.” He buried his head in William’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.” He was crying, and William held him, the boy’s small bones quivering in his own big arms.
LAYLA, DENA, AND ALEX sat around the kitchen table, the satellite phone between them.
“Will they call soon?” Layla asked.
Dena translated the question to Alex.
“They said around two maybe,” he said.
He’d just hung up with the secretary in Khartoum. They had spent the morning waiting for a call from the office there. Layla was at her wits’ end. For three weeks now she’d been going to the garrison. She was refused admission—the guards wouldn’t even confirm whether William was being held there. She argued with them, but two days ago, one of them had threatened to hit her.
She still went every day, taking refuge with the hawkers who sold snacks and water near the road. The thought that she was close to William, that only a few hundred meters separated them, comforted her.
Today she didn’t go only because they were waiting for news from Khartoum. Alex had informed the office that the compound had been raided, that weapons had been discovered, and William arrested. The organization was in contact with the Ministry of Interior, trying to exert pressure to have William released. The rebels and the government were signing an agreement in Kenya—it was expected any day. But the agreement wasn’t official yet. Rumors and counter-rumors flew. In Saraaya, people ran down the street hollering that a deal had been signed, only to be contradicted five minutes later by others who declared the negotiations had fallen apart.
But today there was something to look forward to. Alex’s boss had managed to get a meeting at the ministry. He’d promised to call afterward, and so they were waiting.
Dena scraped her chair back. “Tea?”
Layla shook her head. Alex nodded.
Dena was almost back to normal—except that she was still afraid to leave the compound. Alex, too, was recovering well. The color had returned to his face. He’d removed the head dressing and was walking, though with a limp. She and Dena were surprised to learn that he planned to finish his map report. Hadn’t all his maps, his documents, been damaged?
“Yes and no,” he said mysteriously.
He was even well enough now to help Dena with putting the compound back in order. It was good to find a bit more of the yard cleared up when she came home after a long day of searching for William. Once, returning late from the barracks, she walked in on the two of them sitting on the hammock, shoulders touching, the camera in Dena’s lap. They were looking at footage together. Light from the viewfinder cast a glow on their faces. That picture of companionship made her pity herself. She missed William terribly.
AN HOUR SINCE Alex’s last call. They waited. The teapot sat empty on the table.
“Call again,” said Dena. “Before the office closes.”
Alex dialed. “Hi, Alex McClure again. Yeah. Greg back yet?” Silence. “OK. We’re waiting. Thanks.” He hung up and shook his head.
A few moments of silence passed.
“Any news from Mustafa?” asked Alex.
Layla knew that Alex was concerned, had been asking after Mustafa. She shook her head no—she hadn’t seen him since the day he’d surprised her on the road.
“Don’t you think we should try to find him? He’s learned his lesson. Keeping him out isn’t doing anyone any good.”
“Drop it, Alex,” Dena said. “William threw him out and Layla doesn’t want him back. So let’s leave it at that, OK?”
Layla caught the gist of their words, though Dena didn’t translate. Mindful of Layla’s feelings, Dena was careful not to express strong opinions when it came to Mustafa. But Layla sensed that Dena, like Alex, wanted him back. It made Layla wonder whether she was being too harsh. Maybe they were right. Maybe Mustafa had been punished enough and there was no point in keeping him out—it wouldn’t change anything for William. But she didn’t trust herself. If Mustafa were in her presence, she might box his ears. She’d barely been able to restrain herself when he’d fallen out of the tree that day, running to hug her, as though what he’d done could be forgiven so easily.
“I don’t want him here,” said Layla.
Dena turned to Alex. “Did you understand?”
Alex sighed, staring at the two of them with a look that said they were making a mistake.
THEY WAITED. Shadows grew long on the kitchen floor. Alex went to the office to work. Dena and Layla sat with the phone between them. Layla leaned back, hands folded in her lap, eyes on the satellite phone.
Dena glanced at her watch.
“Four.” She sighed. They’d been waiting for the call since ten in the morning.
Dena rose, went to the stove, came back, and poured herself a cup of tea.
They both jumped when the phone rang, its screen flickering green. Tea spilled onto Dena’s hand. Layla snatched up the phone. She didn’t know which button to press and shoved it at Dena, who pressed something and then Layla put the device to her ear.
“Hello? What news? Is William being let go?”
Only when she found herself unable to understand the words on the other end did she remember that this was Alex’s boss, who didn’t speak Arabic. Still gripping the phone, she ran into the yard, followed by Dena. Alex stepped out of the office and reached for the phone.
“Alex speaking.”
She could make out the sound of the voice on the other end. Dena was now beside her. They both crowded in, listening. She tried to read Alex’s face. He kept saying “umm-hmm.” Every once in a while he asked a one-word question—“When?” “Where?”—which she understood, and other, longer words which she didn’t, and then she looked to Dena, but Dena was engrossed in listening and didn’t translate.
When he hung up she grabbed his arm and Dena pulled at his T-shirt.
“So?”
His eyes crinkled and his lips parted, and his teeth showed in a grin.
“The agreement’s been signed in Kenya.” Dena translated as he spoke. “They’re exchanging prisoners. The ministry’s spoken to the authorities here. They’re letting William go. We can pick him up in a couple of hours.”
Layla shouted and Dena laughed and Alex bounced up and down, and then the three of them were embroiled in a hug.
Then over their own shouts they heard shouts from the road. They went to the gate and saw people opening their doors. The news was out. The rebels and government had signed an agreement. The word “Machakos” was on everyone’s lips. Only a first step, but it meant hope. The cease-fire would hold, maybe permanently.
They decided to drive to the garrison immediately, before the streets got crowded, to wait for William. But when Dena told Alex to get the truck keys he stopped.
“I can’t drive. My leg.”
They’d forgotten about his injury. And Dena didn’t know how to drive.
They stared at one another.
“I can drive,” said Layla.
“You can?” said Dena.
“Yes, I can. William taught me. Where’s the key? Alex?”
Alex and Dena were dubious, but there was no stopping her, and so Alex went to get the keys.
The truck was parked where it always was—by the gate. Dena sat beside her, and Alex took the backseat. It had been weeks and weeks since she’d last practiced with William. They’d stopped the lessons with the start of the fighting.
She did all she’d learned to do—adjusted her seat, the side-view and rearview mirrors, and turned on the ignition. She was so focused on clutch and gear that she forgot to put the gear stick in reverse. When the car moved, it lurched forward almost into the compound wall. Dena buckled her seat belt and Alex looked at her anxiously.
Another mistake and they might bolt from the car. This time she was careful—she asked Alex to check behind her before reversing. She managed to maneuver the car onto the road. It bumped forward, going too far to the right. Alex and Dena watched in tense silence. Her palms were already sweaty, the muscles of her calves tight.
After being cooped up in their compounds for weeks, people were flooding out onto the streets. The town, which had seemed so empty except for soldiers and militiamen, was suddenly full of dancing women and laughing men and children and honking cars and cattle and dogs and goats noising their approval. She tried to focus on the road. Behind her, someone honked in exasperation. In front of her, a donkey cart came to a halt and she screeched to a stop just in time.
But even as she concentrated on the road, the festive atmosphere flooded in. Music blasted from cars. Displaced villagers came out from their tents to celebrate with the rest. Men with guns let people stream through barricades. Three girls led a beautiful, long-lashed bull with carved horns through an alleyway. People banged on the hood of the car and reached their arms in through the windows. Boys leapt up onto the bed of the truck and made a stage of it, dancing and jumping. Layla nearly crashed more than once, while Alex and Dena panicked and laughed by turns.
The destroyed stalls and burnt shops seemed like the aftermath of a lively town party. Only the militiamen watched sulkily. The agreement meant an end to their looting—and they couldn’t be happy about that. But even they were powerless in the face of the decree that had come from Khartoum.
They made it out of town and entered the highway that crossed the plains. Now that she’d driven through the crowds, this stretch of the road felt easy. She pressed on the gas. Only when she found William safe, only when she had him back beside her, only then would she dance and sing and join in the jubilant scenes around her.
VII
IT WAS JUST AFTER THE ASR PRAYER. LATE-AFTERNOON light washed over the brick walls of the mosque, reflecting against its arched windows, sweeping over its green dome and the finger of the minaret gesturing to the sky. By the gate, William followed the comings and goings around him. Worshippers walked out of the archway; a little boy scampered by; a mother ushering her children along sang with them; young women coming from the market laughed together. Others stood in groups, exchanging pleasantries and farewells.
Under the cease-fire, and with news of the agreement, there was a special pleasure in greeting one another, in gathering, in ambling through the streets. He felt it too. After prison, it was a gift to linger or move as he pleased, to soak up these daily scenes.
Sixteen days ago, when a guard unlocked the cell door and announced that he was being released, he’d thought a trick was being played. The guard called his name twice, and still he didn’t move. Only when the other inmates congratulated him and ushered him to rise did it sink in. In his happiness, he got up and rushed to the door, and then suddenly remembered. He stopped and looked back to see Mustafa resting against the wall, staring at him. For two weeks Mustafa had slept beside him, shared his water with him, kept him company in the prison yard.
William told the guard he wasn’t leaving without the boy. The guard answered that the order was only for his release. But William refused, and so the guard left and locked the gate behind him.
When he went back to his seat, Mustafa curled up against his side.
“We’ll get out,” William said.
It happened sooner than expected. Three hours later the guard came back and told them both to follow him. The prisoners shouted blessings and congratulations, told them to hurry up before they squandered their chance again.
They collected their things—a plastic bottle, some rags that Mustafa used for a pillow—things for which they had no use but which they took along anyway. He held Mustafa’s hand as they crossed the prison yard, his eyes passing over the men in chains. He didn’t trust the soldiers. A fear gripped him that they might be walking into a trap—a place worse than this one. He was tense even as the guard unlocked the fence and led them past the barracks. Mustafa clutched his hand. The closer they got to the main gate, the more fearful William grew—at any moment their hope might be dashed.
But they arrived at the gate without incident and the guard pointed them out. He and Mustafa took a few tentative steps, looking over their shoulders, then passed through to the other side, where they saw soldiers drilling in the plain.
He stood blinking in the clearing. After five weeks in prison it was strange to be surrounded by so much space. The sky was a vast blue slate, and the earth was endless. He didn’t know which direction to walk in. And then he saw Alex limping toward them and Dena beside him and, waving wildly at him, Layla, her thoub flying and the wind lifting up dust at her feet.
Mustafa let go of his hand and flung himself at Alex and Dena. William sprang into a trot. Immediately he had to stop—his legs were rusty, painful. He was light-headed with hunger and thirst. He walked, keeping his eyes on Layla, who was slower than the others, hindered by her thoub. He was suddenly aware of what a mess he was, in clothes he hadn’t changed in weeks. But the sight of her drove him on. She was breathless with laughter; as he drew closer, he saw that she was crying as well as laughing, sunlight glinting against her wet cheeks.
Finally, he was face-to-face with her. He checked the urge to reach for her—impossible out in the open, with the soldiers. And he feared that he was quite disgusting. They had to settle for a show of formal greetings—How are you? It’s good to see you—until Alex winded William with a hug, and Dena reached for him.
In happy chaos, talking over one another, asking a thousand questions, they made their way to the parked truck. William learned that peace negotiations were in motion; a cease-fire had been in place since late June; something called a Machakos Protocol had been signed in Kenya; a prisoner exchange had been agreed; the office in Khartoum had lobbied for his release. In prison he had existed in timelessness, no news filtering in from the outside world, and it seemed a miracle now that so much had happened while he was inside.
When they got to the truck, he was amazed to see Layla take the driver’s seat. Yes, she had driven all the way from the compound, she said, and she would drive them all the way back. Alex and Dena and Mustafa bundled into the backseat. He took the passenger seat and was terribly happy and proud, looking at her in wonder as she started the car.
On the way back, he saw that the landscape was changed—there had been more rain during his time in prison. The air was rich with moisture and fresh grass had sprouted. The soil had taken on a dark tinge. In the villages he saw women and men hoeing and digging, yoked oxen plowing furrows. Acacias were covered in blue-green leaves. It felt as though the land were celebrating his release, had put on ornaments of grass and foliage, adorned itself with sun-speckled pools of water.
That evening, he and Layla decided that he would go to her family and officially seek permission for her hand. Peace or no peace, they needed to be married as soon as possible. But they had to convince her father first.
HE’D WAITED only long enough for his bruises to heal to visit Layla’s father. Though he’d often driven her home in the truck after work, when they’d steal half an hour or an hour so she could practice driving, she’d always insisted that he drop her off outside the village, so she could walk the final stretch.
Upon arrival he was met by a collection of unsmiling male relatives—a stern-faced father in a tattered sirwal, a potbellied uncle, and Layla’s two brothers. Layla’s mother and the uncle’s wife, along with Layla, remained on the other side of the homestead tents. Two dogs lolled under the shade of a thorn bush, one of them with her teats suckled dry, though there were no pups in sight.
He had been self-conscious, aware that his appearance signaled the gulf between him and the men who sat across from him in their threadbare jellabiyas and sirwals and their bandaged-together flip-flops, drinking water out of tin cans instead of cups. For Layla’s family was poor, poorer even than he’d imagined. The homestead was made up of a handful of tattered tents. There was a metal bed and some old chairs: he sat on one, the father, uncle, and brothers sat opposite him. There was one room made out of brush and leaves. The camp was enclosed with a fence of branches.
When he made the proposal, the men exchanged meaningful looks with one another.
After a pause the father asked, “You say you work for these white people, as a translator?”
“Yes.”
The uncle appraised William. The brothers hadn’t said a word since greeting him.
“You’ll be able to take care of Layla?”
“I wouldn’t be asking to marry her if not. I care about Layla. I’m coming to you because as you know there’s been a lot of trouble in the district these past months. It’s quiet now with the cease-fire. I don’t want to lose the chance. I’d like us to be married so I can look after her.”
The father asked him more questions then. How long William had worked for the organization, how much he earned. His gaze lingered on William’s watch, the leather shoes. William made it clear that he was well-off. He even exaggerated a little, knowing that the family’s poverty gave him an advantage. They might look down on him because he was a Nilot, but they could use him all the same. And indeed, there was a change in the men’s attitude over the course of the conversation. When he mentioned how much he earned, the uncle looked at the father. Some calculation, some message passed between them. They invited him to share a meal with them.
Over the meal they exchanged news about the cease-fire. Layla’s father told him about losing their cattle the year before. William listened attentively, expressed sympathy.
