“You ran the training camp in Libya. For West African freedom fighters.”
“For a time. I remember you. You were being trained for Sierra Leone. You ran away.”
“Not exactly. We were badly treated.”
“It’s true. I don’t blame you.” To us, Ashraf explained, “I had a spell with Khaddafi after Uganda. Not a good situation. The Libyans really did not respect the West Africans. So, Kamara, did you win? What are you doing in London?”
“I work here. It’s not finished in Sierra Leone. What are you doing here?”
“Me? I’m having dinner with my good friends.” He put a hand on Benji’s shoulder. “All that was a long time ago.”
“In a way.”
I poured a glass of wine for Kamara and asked him if work was going well, if he was married yet. He said work was as always and that maybe there was someone who might be his wife one day. He drank the wine quickly and I could see he was running and that I could not stop him.
After he had left, Ashraf stretched and laughed. “"You never know when you will run into your past.”
“Did you know Kamara well?” asked Benji.
“Not well. He didn’t last the training. He’s not a soldier.”
There was this meeting with Kamara, then one other meeting, and then no more. The truth I left out of Ka- mara’s case, to make it part of theory, was the scared young man who missed his family and tried to find another one in London, who aspired to do great, selfless things that were impossible for him and clothed himself in irony. I omitted his humiliation and absented myself from his story. I wrote only of the African from a corrupt African country who gravitated in London towards a corruption similar to the one he’d fled, a failure to properly migrate.
We were quiet for a time, and, unsettled by Kamara’s visit, I cleared the dishes. Benji followed me to the sink. “Nobody’s to blame,” he said. “Come back and join us.”
When I did, Ashraf was studying the table top, lost in thought. Finally, he said, “Sometimes you can’t tell if you’re on the right side or the wrong side. I don’t fight for just anyone, you know. Sometimes I say, no. I remember Kamara. I liked him. I’m sure he believed in what he was doing.”
Happy voices from the street rose through the summer-open windows. A passing bus rattled the glass. The phone rang. I walked to the kitchen counter to answer it, ruffling Benii’s hair as I went.
“Hello?”
“Is that Marcella?”
“Yes.”
“This is Geoffrey. Geoffrey Sutton.”
“Geoffrey! Of course I know which Geoffrey.” Benji caught my eye and smiled.
“It’s been a long time. How are you, Marcella?” “Well, not too bad, you know. Yourself?”
It had been a year or more. Geoffrey stopped phoning regularly after I started living with Benji. But I thought of him often. Argued with him, really, in my mind. Arguments such as: You thought I wouldn’t be able to make it in London without help from you or the government, but I have made it. You told me everyone would cheat me, but people have been generous. You told me I should do something useful instead of doing business, but look at everyone asking me for help. How many come to you for help, Geoffrey? I even pointed out to him, in my least worthy thoughts, that my home was far nicer than his dark cubbyhole, and that my car had so much more style than his bicycle. Geoffrey in Reading was the outrigger to my London canoe, something smaller and distant, but stable.
Now that he was actually on the phone, I was just pleased to hear from him, a welcome trustworthy voice. He said, “I may be coming to London.”
“This can’t be the first time, Geoffrey. You’re only half an hour away by train.”
“No. I mean I may be moving there.”
“You?” Why did this seem so impossible?
“I’ve applied for a job at something called the Third World Foundation. 'You know they do the Third World Review section in The Guardian among other things. I’m going up to talk to them in two weeks time.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
“I wondered if you might like to meet. It seems ages since we saw each other.”
An appealing scenario flashed through my mind. I would take him for a smart meal at Etty’s where everyone would greet me and he would see how popular I was and how well I’d done. I had a dress in mind. “I’ll take you out to dinner,” I said. “My treat. I owe you some meals.” “I’d love that. But you don’t have to treat me. Actually, I had another reason for calling. Do you remember the man who found me when I was hit over the head in Zanzibar? He said goodbye to us at the airport. An army officer.”
“Yes... David!”
“Exactly. Well, he called me. He’s in England. He asked for your phone number and I gave it to him. I wondered if I’d done the right thing. Thought I’d better warn you.”
“No, it’s all right, you don’t have to protect me, Geoffrey. My number’s in the directory anyway. Look, shall we talk when you come up? Say eight at Etty’s restaurant in Hereford Road? Two weeks? What day was it?”
“Thursday. OK. Good.”
“See you then, then. Bye.”
“Bye.”
I put the phone down, then looked over at Benji. “My predecessor,” he explained to Ashraf. “Still in love with her.”
“Of course,” said Ashraf.
THE EMPTINESS OF SUMMER IS SOON TO END. SOMEkeen students, or ones who hate their homes, are already back, hanging out on outside steps, making big, noisy greetings for new arrivals, hugging as if each was a miraculous survivor. I am more distant from them; in their absence Zanzibar has taken me away.
Julia is among the keen ones. She turned up, unheralded, on my doorstep, certain of her welcome. A summer in Bangladesh has changed the way she looks. She is tanned, wears her clothes more loosely, seems taller, sexier.
“Julia!” I embraced
