Our Memory Like Dust Read online

  ‘Brace yourself,’ said João, grinning, a chocolate biscuit clenched between his lips.

  Landing went about as well as could be hoped given the uncertain terrain. João pancaked into the sand and skated over the tops of the erg before their aeroplane shoved its nose into the ground, coming to an obliterating stop. Two of the other A380s managed to land in parallel in a similarly shattering way.

  The last two collided as they landed.

  An overly high, unfortunately cambered peak flung the one into a rolling tumble and into the path of the other. They crumpled together. Their surplus fuel expanded and exploded, casting a sudden red glaze over the fury of the last few minutes.

  There were survivors. João, Gabriela and Carlos stood blinking under the stars as fine white powder settled on them, like a surreal desert snowstorm.

  They built a small cabin in the wreckage. They had a party that lasted two days, until Gabriela overdosed. A day later, João and Carlos ran out of water.

  Within a week, the steady blast of the harmattan covered everything and buried the planes, and their cargo, in the desert.

  -

  In the sky, a face blurred within a burst of fur narrows his close-set eyes and grunts. There is so much more to know. He turns his gaze forward in time and further into the deep desert.

  3

  ‘Duruji, what does he say?’ asked the youngest of the men, his invisibility cloak worn out and only partially covering his black djellaba.

  Wind rattled where the men were huddled together inside the wreck of an ancient aircraft, its nose still buried in the sand of the erg. Its hull had been torn open, either after its original crash or from decades of tortured wear by the motion of the desert.

  Two men were out on watch on the crest of the surrounding dune, their Igla-AD14s, the flat-nosed anti-drone radio-frequency guns Ansar Dine had made their symbol, pointed at the sky.

  Duruji sighed. Another disappointing journey had gained nothing of value. At least this crumpled bit of scrap was actually an aeroplane. He stared at the ugly broken hulk, the metal rusted and perforated like lace. A black shadow against the night sky.

  The desert is a graveyard. Each new war adding another scattering of lost craft, their crew bleached offerings to the encroaching sands. Finding Abdallah Ag Ghaly’s missing cargo was an impossible task, but their equipment had to be replaced. Their invisibility cloaks were in tatters, their weapons needed repair, and ammunition was in short supply. Movement above ground would soon be impossible. They had to find where those aeroplanes crashed before their ability to control the region became even more restricted.

  On this excursion, they had spent almost a month traversing the erg fields, using the limited access they had to the maps on the connect to try to find anything of use. Ansar Dine troops had been criss-crossing the desert for the better part of a year.

  Duruji would prefer not to be out here, but Ag Ghaly insisted.

  They were long past recriminations for the loss of the cargo. Duruji and his men had waited in the desert, switching on the transponder at the agreed time. He had obeyed Ag Ghaly’s instructions, staying well after the duration of safety when it became clear that the aeroplanes were not going to arrive.

  There had been a mistake. They were at the landing site a day late. The aeroplanes already crashed and the cargo lost. Someone needed to be held accountable.

  The Cartel were unsympathetic. They had been paid. They provided instructions. If Ansar Dine were careless with their dates, it was certainly not their problem. However, losing the pilots was unfortunate and would need to be added to the cost of future deliveries. Would Ansar Dine be interested in another shipment?

  Jihadis tortured the man who had taken the details for the aeroplane arrival from the Cartel emissary. They raped his children before him. He died without revealing how he had got it wrong. Perhaps he did not know.

  Duruji believed the confusion over the date was deliberate, that the Cartel lied.

  ‘They were greedy, Janab,’ he had said to Ag Ghaly. ‘We should never have put so much money into a single deal. We should never have paid in advance. Should we ever find those aeroplanes, we will discover there is nothing in them.’

  Ag Ghaly had slapped him then, screaming incoherently, beating him even as Duruji cowered, and still continued to punish him by sending him out repeatedly into the desert to search.

  Once a week, at a random time, their radio was unshielded and a brief burst of encrypted messages was broadcast on the connect. They stayed online for less than a second to minimize the chance that their position would be given away. Sometimes they would receive messages back with new instructions and new coordinates to visit.

  Today, Duruji had received a message from Ag Ghaly himself. He had read it, but he had not yet shared it with the others. Each hoped that perhaps their missing cargo had been found and they could return.

  The men sat in darkness, for light and heat risked attracting observers. The desert belonged to Ansar Dine, but the sky belonged to those who hunted them.

  They had eaten the tasteless food bars that each carried, drunk a little water, and now they rested, preparing for the next long slog.

  The young man, his face clammy, asked once more, ‘Duruji? What does he say? Can we go home?’

  ‘The boy is afraid of the surface,’ said one of the men, chuckling. ‘He sees demons walking on the sands.’

  Each of the men suffered from a lingering agoraphobia from being above ground, exposed to the satellites and drones which searched the desert. Each hid it as best he could, except for this young man.

  It was his first time on the surface.

  ‘I saw it. It is following me,’ said the young man, fighting to keep his terror from his voice. ‘A baboon. It pointed at me.’

  ‘Khalil thinks he saw Gaw Goŋ,’ and a mutter of dusty laughter amongst the others. ‘That old woman’s tale, told to scare disobedient children.’

  ‘He says he saw a painted dog walking with the baboon,’ laughed another. ‘He lives the stories of Gaw Goŋ and Painted-dog’s child.’

  ‘They are real,’ the young man’s voice trembling and defensive. ‘My grandmother told me that, up here on the erg, during the day the horizon shimmers and the dark shapes we see are the demons trying to get in. Our world and theirs are closest in the desert. Gaw Goŋ judges us. He is judging me. Please, Duruji, can we go home?’

  Despite his youth and palpable fear, Khalil was enormous, a hulking giant chosen from amongst the children of the families closest to Ag Ghaly to join Ansar Dine’s elite troops, those sent out into the desert to exercise his power.

  He was too young to be out so early in his training, but any sympathy would get them all killed. The men offered him none: as much as they each received on their first tour on the surface.

  ‘No,’ said Duruji. ‘We go west, Khalil. Our Janab orders us west.’

  ‘Another wreck, like this one,’ said one of the men.

  Duruji shook his head. ‘He says he has captured a man who knows where the aeroplanes are. He travels to interrogate him.’

  ‘Without us to guard him?’ asked one of the men, his voice horrified and incredulous. ‘He never leaves the sanctuary.’

  ‘We are almost three weeks from him. He says it is too important to wait. We must get there when we can,’ said Duruji.

  Khalil was shivering, staring up at the face in the sky only he could see.

  The men walked all day, sleeping briefly in the evening, and began walking long before the sun rose. It was too risky to drive, too exposed. Only during the worst of the harmattan dust storms would they attempt to use vehicles on the surface.

  Two weeks previously, they had climbed over a rise and surprised a group of people out on the reg. They were seekers, attempting to cross without paying their tax to Ansar Dine. They had been unarmed and exhausted. They fell to the ground, quailing and begging not to be slaughtered. Money had been offered but too late to assuage the punishment due to
those who dare travel without permission.

  Some of Duruji’s men had wanted to rape the women.

  ‘We have no time,’ Duruji had said. ‘Do not waste bullets. We need them to last.’

  They had shot the men and used their knives on the rest. The women had fought fiercely to protect their children, but they were all weakened by their journey. They were little trouble to the jihadis.

  They massacred them, leaving their bodies to dry in the sun.

  Duruji had noticed a look of anguish on Khalil’s face at his order. He had approached the young man, wiping his bloodied knife on a shawl taken from one of the women. Behind him, the men were looting the bodies, keeping anything that looked useful.

  ‘Do not worry, Khalil, there are more than enough seekers crossing. When we return, we will have more time to take slaves back with us. You will have your fill.’

  ‘Do you see?’ Khalil had said, pointing towards strange shapes in the shimmering mirage that lingered on the horizon. That was the first day he had seen the baboon Gaw Goŋ pointing at him, his two-headed sombé in his hand.

  Khalil could no longer sleep, and in his nightmares he heard a howling roar as of a wildcat tearing at its prey. He felt something stalking him, encroaching on him, as if preparing to cross from the world of the gaw into his own. Duruji, determined to lead his men where ordered, could spare him little sympathy.

  ‘It is only the harmattan,’ said one of the men, as close as he could come to reassuring the traumatized youth. ‘It takes time to get used to the sounds and visions of the surface. We have all made that journey.’

  ‘We will rest for three hours,’ said Duruji. ‘From here, we will journey to the ouahe outside Timoudi. Your water must last until we get there.’

  He turned to the young man. ‘It will be months before we are home, Khalil. Make your peace with the desert.’

  Khalil trembled, his eyes locked on the horizon where the air shimmered and shadows pressed as of genii trying to reach him, the voice of the baboon, Gaw Goŋ, scratching at his ears.

  -

  Another path beckons and Gaw Goŋ, his eyes two dark points in the sky, follows across the desert to where others are gathering.

  4

  Amadou cherished this time of day, when the sun set behind the guelb and turned the jumble of rocks sloping down from the rough-hewn outcrop into gleaming bronze. Its shadow stretched across the barren hamada – the hard, rocky plateau stretching far into the Sahara – towards the vast field of solar collectors, and he could feel the warmth of the rock face on his back and legs.

  It had been an exhausting start, and his skin was sticky with dust. He leaned back in his chair, scrutinizing his men as they completed their chores and prepared their evening meal.

  Rich peanut-butter steam rose from the mafé stew simmering in the pot, its black sides steeped in coals. Dark shapes gathered at the fireside, assembled themselves into men, and sighed gratefully as they sat down. A pot of coffee was passed from man to man. Amadou smiled and waved his empty mug, motioning for a refill.

  ‘The genii are with us,’ he said, gesturing towards where dark eyes in a burst of fur looked down on them from the sky.

  ‘It is Gaw Goŋ,’ said one of the men, gratitude in his voice. ‘Perhaps he will ask the genii for a good season?’

  Amadou smiled and nodded. He could smell the hivernage coming: the brief rainy season that would cool daytime temperatures down into the mid-thirties. It was still far too hot this early in May – he tapped the tracker on his wrist and grunted as he saw it had reached 43°C at noon – but if he waited too long the roads would be choked with other farmers heading out of the coastal city of Saint-Louis and from villages along the Senegal River Valley.

  This way was cheaper. It had taken three hours to drive the one hundred and fifty kilometres from Saint-Louis, over the river crossing at Rosso, and to the turn-off at the tiny village of Mbalal.

  Dodou had arrived with his convoy of old rental trucks just before midnight. It was coolest to travel at this time, and Amadou had hired Dodou’s cheaper unrefrigerated vehicles for his goat herd.

  He had spoken softly with Dodou while watching his men as they loaded the tools, food supplies and spares they would need, then the goats, docile and heavily pregnant, before cramming themselves into the remaining space and sleeping as best they were able.

  The two old men had smiled and held hands. Their skins loose, clinging like the surface of dried dates over bone-lean bodies hardened by the passing of the sun. Their friendship measured in the accumulation of years and the experience of hardy survival.

  ‘I will see you at the turn of the season,’ Dodou had said. The other had nodded and swung up into the lead truck. ‘Good luck with those milkers,’ Dodou had called, and cackled.

  Amadou had ignored him, fastening his turban across his face, his eyes shining in the dark cabin.

  The trucks had engaged, electric motors silent in the sleeping streets, and wound their way through the endlessly sprawling city. Shattered glass outside an immigrant shop, stones and blood on the road from one of the mercifully dwindling fights between old residents and new arrivals. Lamp posts dense with election posters promising change, and every yard an assembly of awkwardly leaning temporary shelters filled with seekers.

  He was ten when his father had decided they could no longer risk their herd to the dry season. They had lost the majority of their pregnant does and all their ewes to the heat that year.

  Villages to the north of them had emptied. Towns like Mederdra and Beir Tores given back to the desert. Hundreds of thousands had migrated: a hostile, frightened mass of different nationalities and tribes, antagonized by their differences of language and culture, united in their pursuit of refuge and opportunity. Some to the river valleys of West Africa, some to Europe.

  Then had come the wall of steel built across the waters of the Mediterranean; the civil wars triggered by the unending drought had cast millions more from their homes, their harsh journey tempering them into the tenuous nation of seekers, and Ansar Dine had taken what was left and made an empire of it.

  The border had migrated north of Nouakchott following Mauritania’s collapse. Senegal had no wish for the destitution of that land, but they had required a buffer between the valley and the violence of Ansar Dine jihadis. Long columns of dust shadowed soldiers moving back and forth from the border.

  ‘We are Senegalese now,’ Amadou’s father had said. ‘Let us seek a living amongst our new people.’

  He had walked his family and their herd south, along the Senegal River to Saint-Louis. They had been lucky, arriving before the surge of fleeing farmers plunged goat prices to mere centimes, and had been able to sell most of their herd. He had bought land outside the city where they had built a shelter for their remaining goats and a one-roomed house for themselves. He had hired a drilling rig and returned to their farm, striking the aquifer fifty-five metres beneath the surface.

  Amadou had helped his father as they set up a small solar-powered pump and laid out drip irrigation pipes. Each year, during the cooler rainy season, he and his younger brothers would join his father to extend the range of the pipes. They had planted a row of palm trees, interspersed with tamarisk bushes and swallowworts, enclosing two acres around the guelb.

  Slowly, they had claimed life back from the desert.

  This was not land for the soft-of-hand. The guelb sloped up to stark shards of rock face, like the jagged teeth of some ancient desert beast, its skull buried in the hamada, and the scorched scales of its skin scattered across the earth. The ground was burned, and the surviving trees were blackened and bent. The horizon loomed, pressing in, searching for weakness.

  Those years had been difficult. Amadou had seen famine sweep away familiar faces and leave barren land which used to support sheep and goats. He would not wish this life for his children and was grateful that they worked in the city and would not need to depend on the herd.

  He had given himself a
nother five years before he sold up and retired. Until a year ago. The year he met the man with the strange blue eyes.

  First had come the surveyors with their maps. They had shown him the extent of his farm and had given him the formal title. Amadou had grown uneasy, concerned that this was a prelude to men with guns coming to take his land away. They had assured him it was not so, but that he was to get a new neighbour and that man had insisted he would only buy land with clear ownership.

  A few days later, just as his does had begun to birth, an electric helicopter had flown from the direction of Dakar and landed on the hamada. Amadou had been standing nearby, on the far end of the farm, the calls of his men, whooping through the dust as they counted and digitally tagged each new kid, rising from the plain. He had been holding a console, watching the numbers change as each kid was sexed and added to the herd tally.

  A toubab – a white man – in tailored trousers and shirt had left the helicopter, placed a white hat on his head, looked around and walked towards him. He had stopped at the farm’s invisible border and waited patiently until Amadou looked up.

  ‘Azul, ma idjani?’ the man had asked, speaking in Zenaga.

  ‘Azul. Ijak alxer da iknam,’ Amadou had said, pulling back his turban, his head tilted and eyes squinting in surprise at hearing a language few still spoke. He had stared up at the man standing so much taller than himself. His hair was greying where visible beneath his hat, but his body was strong and young-looking, like one of those laamb wrestlers. Amadou had met few toubab and could not read much from his face.

  ‘You have a fine herd,’ the man had told him, continuing in French.

  Amadou had nodded, acknowledging the respect shown to him. He had looked back at the helicopter and out on to the hamada. ‘What will you do here? You cannot farm,’ he had said.

  ‘We will harvest light,’ the man had said. ‘You will be the first person to see it happen.’

  Amadou had squeezed his eyes to disguise his confusion. Sable de Lumière. He tried to imagine buckets of light.