Gabrielle and the prison counsellors conspired to sign me up for The Open University. Other prisoners often took certificate courses in word processing and the like, but a university degree was less common. I would follow the same basic social science course that Gabrielle was taking, sending in the homework by post in the usual way. The prison let me watch the early morning or late night lectures on TV. Gabrielle and Geoffrey helped me on their visits and The Open University made special arrangements for me to make up for the summer school I could not attend.
With my first essay, the one about Bayswater, I found my new life. It was true I did not have the heart to consider creating anything ever again in the world outside, but I had not imagined there was this alternative, an inner world just as large, made up of books and research, connection, ideas and memory. Apparently I was made for this world too, because I sped past Gabrielle and got my first degree in record time. I was Cookham College’s new star, the evil Zanzibari redeemed by British education, someone to set next to Myra Hindley, their famously intelligent mass murderer. My tutor registered me for a doctoral thesis in the Systems Department, which embraced unruly scholarship that would not fit elsewhere, and I set about writing my thesis on Bayswater immigration that proved to be such a local hit.
At a distance, I followed on the news the disintegration of the BCCI. There was our bank being banned by decent governments and dissected on the slab, proving that everything and everyone was connected to everything and everyone else. Ex-President Carter had been taken in and ex-Prime Minister Callaghan retained. It was Noriega’s bank. And all the other drug lords. They were in the Gulf War, helping America by secretly flying in tanks from East Europe to make the Kuwaitis look good. There they were, making connections, moving money, keeping secrets, accumulating obligations around the world. The CIA had used them before it investigated them. There were the arms deals, the secret ownership of American banks, the ceaseless movement of money, false accounts, phony charitable foundations. The whole fish skeleton of a world beyond law and place. This had been my bank, the immigrant’s bank, the one made in the shape of people like me. Though I listened for it in the reports that picked through the indecent ruins, I heard no mention of South African uranium for Pakistan.
I had come within fifty feet of Benji without any sixth sense telling me he was close. When I arrived at Dar-es-Salaam airport on the British Airways flight that deported me, he must have been among the untidy, noisy crowd of welcomers just outside the door. I never reached him because David had taken charge and, instead of delivering me to the appropriate immigration officials, was whisking me to an Egypt Air flight that was about to leave for Cairo, connecting for New York.
In perfect symmetry with my first departure, my second escape from Tanzania was also a joint production of Geoffrey and David, this time deliberate. Geoffrey had finally found a use for the card David had pressed on him, and had called to ask for his help in Dar in diverting my deportation. And David, for reasons of his own, had been pleased to help. So while Benji was waiting on the other side of the wall, his thoughts all on me, my thoughts were all on the urgency of making my flight to Cairo, and on David pressing at my back, brusquely instructing officials to rubber stamp me with no nonsense.
My first freedom in eight years was the transit hall at Cairo airport, a bleak, cavernous place where I was told that to buy tea I first must purchase a ticket. At the cashier’s desk the only life was two cats who looked at me and stretched themselves. I forgot about the luxury of tea and sat on a bench next to a young Moslem woman who was covered entirely in black, including a mesh over her eyes, except for the incongruity of a lovely exposed breast that was held out on offer to her baby. It was so long since I had seen a baby. England had stolen from me the years when I might have considered one for myself. That policeman with the scratched ear took them.
In New York I presented my invitation to Moore College and the J-l visa that Geoffrey had helped me to organise. When I filled up the visa application in the Cookham Wood visiting room, I lied in the part about convictions. We all agreed that the truth would have been misleading.
It had been a near miss for Benji and me: five thousand miles away, then fifty feet away, then seven thousand miles away. It should mean something that I did not guess that he was there.
It has become clear to me that the person I must speak to about Benji’s Zanzibar proposition is Geoffrey. I could call him. Benji’s call has forced me to appreciate the possibility of international phone calls. The idea of phoning England had not entered my head. I’ve preferred to think it impossible.
“Hello.” It was a woman’s voice, surprising me.
I started to put down the phone, then trusting intuition, asked, “Gaby? Is that you?”
“Marcella! Are you calling from America?”
“Yes. I’m sorry I sounded so surprised. I thought I was calling another number. I must have dialled yours by mistake. But it’s lovely to hear your voice.”
“No, you probably have the right number. I’m at Geoffrey’s house. You sound just like you’re down the road! Are you all right? Oh,
