Chaga

them hurt Mombi, she saved me. They can do what they like to Haran.’

The sound of heavy automatic weapon fire came from across the avenue, and was answered by the short flat barks of shotguns and hand pieces.

61

Day Zero.

The crowd outside the gates on the airport road had been the worst Gaby had ever seen, but she had managed to push the Landcruiser and its passengers through, past the soldiers who looked as if they knew that they could only hold the wire so long. She had thought that once they were inside the airport it would be all right. She was wrong. The crowd inside the departures hall was worse.

They stood in the lobby between inner and outer doors. Tembo clutched his exit visa. Mrs Tembo clutched After-the-Rains. Sarah clutched her best doll; Etambele clutched her favourite toy, which was a matted furry pencil case. They stood with their identity badges pinned to their clothes and looked at the crowd. It was almost religious; so many people so close in such a confined space. Souls wedged in a glass and concrete box, awaiting exodus, or judgment.

‘Oh my God,’ Gaby said.

Doubtless important PA announcements went unheard and unheeded over the babel of voices in the concourse. The people were too densely packed to obey them.

‘There are people in white uniforms at the check-in desks,’ Faraway said, seeing over the heads of the crowd. ‘We have the camera with us, the News Team trick might work again.’

‘With children and luggage?’ Gaby asked. She took a deep breath to prepare herself for the annihilation of the crowd. Faraway plunged into the crowd, swinging one hundred thousand shillings of video camera like a riot baton. Tembo and his family tucked into his slip-stream. Gaby took the rearguard, waving a microphone and shouting, ‘SkyNet News team! Let us through, please!’ The way Faraway smiled as he elbowed you away from the check-in desk, you would feel he was doing you a personal favour.

‘Five to travel,’ he announced to the woman in UN white at the desk, who did not care if people jumped the queue as long as her ticket out was safe in the back pocket of her pants. She checked the exit visas and tapped information up on her screen. She took such a long time doing it that Gaby wanted to drag her out of her little booth and press any key, every key, that might do something. The woman studied the words on her screen for a long time, and the visa for a longer time. She took Tembo’s passport and examined it for the longest time. She checked the names of wife and children against the passport and the exit visas and the screen. She checked the photo badges against the passport and the visa and the screen. Then she gestured for them to put their bags on the scales. Baggage allowance on the relief flights was one piece each, adult and child. Tembo and Mrs Tembo had managed to reduce it all to two big cases, which they dragged, and a backpack for Sarah. Etambele had not wanted to be left out, so she had a backpack too, a little cloth one Mrs Tembo had sewn together. It held her dolls’ clothes, one dress and her washing things. Gaby did not think she could be so merciless with personal possessions. Take little, leave little, lose little was her professional motto. The UN woman looked at the bags, but did not move to weigh or tag them.

Gaby was about to scream.

Faraway was about to hit the woman with the camera.

Tembo was fidgeting from foot to foot.

Mrs Tembo was transfixed with a dread that had begun with the Skateboard Kid and would not end until she breathed in the clove breezes of Zanzibar.

Sarah and Etambele looked about to burst into tears.

The woman at the desk rattled through a box of rubber stamps, picked one and looked it. Then, so suddenly that everyone almost missed it, she stamped the visas, tagged the bags and printed out boarding cards.

Tembo beamed as if Jesus had touched his brow. Mrs Tembo hugged him, her children, Faraway, and even Gaby. Faraway shepherded people and bags through the departure gate.

Down on the field, the big Antonov mass lifters were wing-tip to wing-tip, winding black threads of refugees into their cargo bays. Blue-helmets with clip-boards waved the people along the edge of the apron. Gaby’s hair blew in the hot back blast from the taxiing airlifters. Tembo and Faraway fought with the suitcases. Mrs Tembo pressed the precious boarding passes closer to her than even After-the-Rains. Sarah and Etambele struggled determinedly onward with their back packs.

A blue helmet stopped the line while a plane moved off its stand onto the taxiway. He checked Tembo’s exit visa and Gaby and Faraway’s press cards and sent them to the next aircraft. It was a little An72F. It had a Cyrillic name stencilled on its side. Dostoinsuvo. Gaby knew it would be all right now. She could trust them to Oksana’s care, the shaven-headed, shaman-angel of the turbofans. A woman was standing at the foot of the tail ramp collecting boarding passes. And Gaby realized that this was it. They were leaving her. She hugged Tembo.

‘You are the best goddam cameraman I ever worked with,’ she yelled. ‘I will miss you like death.’

‘There is no death,’ Tembo yelled back. ‘Jesus has beaten it, ten nil. We will meet again, as surely.’

‘Thank you for saving us once, and then saving us again,’ Mrs Tembo said.

That is the way to think of it, Gaby thought. Twice-saved. That way your ordeal and the Black Simba kid’s death do not go for nothing.

Faraway hugged Mrs Tembo, who pretended to be scandalized, and the children, and then Tembo. He held his dear friend a long time, like a man does who knows he will never see this dear friend again.

‘It will be good in Zanzibar,’ he shouted. ‘It is like paradise down there in the spice island. Maybe not your paradise, but my paradise. Sun, sand, cool palms, cool beer, warm nights, hot hot big-breasted women who smell of cinnamon and cloves. Listen, I can hear them weeping for your great gift, Tembo.’

Tembo and his family gave their cards to the woman and they went up the ramp into the belly of the big plane and Gaby could not see them any more. She and Faraway stood back and waited for the plane to fill and the ramp close. They shut their ears to the astounding blast of Lotarev engines lighting up at once. Dostoinsuvo moved off its stand. Until now, Gaby had not been certain Tembo and his family were safe. She waved, knowing it was supremely unlikely she would be seen. The plane turned at the end of the runway, made its run and took off.

‘Ah,’ Faraway said, watching the smoke trails turn over the distant towers of Nairobi. He sounded like a man who has felt part of his body die.

‘You’ll see him again; you’re his Deputy Station Manager, for goodness sake.’

‘I will not see him again. I am not going to Zanzibar. I have been decided on this for a long time, Gaby. I told you that night at Tembo’s, when he and I tried to make an African out of you: when the time came, I would take my chances with the Chaga. I am not leaving. The Chaga is the future. It is Kenya as she should be. I want to be part of that. Tembo has children to fear for; he has made the right choice for him. But me, what kind of future could it be without the incomparable Faraway?’

‘You pick your moments, man.’

‘Some things there is never a good moment to say.’ He smiled. Gaby could not resist it. ‘Surely you know that the only reason I stayed so long is because I thought I would get the chance to fiki- fiki the woman of my dreams. So I go to the new world happy now, because how many men in this world have made the woman of their dreams howl like a jackal?’

‘You.’ She play-punched him.

‘Gaby, I know you do not love me. I do not need you to love me. I am happy, like I said. It does not hurt me that you still love Shepard – I have seen you try to hide the look on your face every time his name is mentioned. I heard you shout his name when the bomb went off on Jogoo Road. At least you had the good manners not to shout it when my bomb went off inside you. Listen, I am such a great guy, I will tell you where you can find him. He is at the Kenyatta Conference Centre. They are clearing out every last trace that UNECTA was ever there. Hurry. You may still catch him before he leaves for here.’