Christopher Hope - Jimfish

During their voyage from Mogadishu the news reaching them on the landing craft’s radio had been unfailingly bad. The dance of death Zoran predicted had grown into a grisly ball. Blackhawk choppers had been shot out of the sky and the mutilated bodies of American soldiers had been dragged through the streets to the cheers of onlookers. Throughout Operation Restore Hope, Somalis had gone on dying in large numbers, until eventually the Americans, along with international peacekeepers and aid agencies, declared that hope was not to be restored after all, and fled the country.

More and more often Jimfish found himself questioning the ideas of his old teacher Soviet Malala about rage, rocket fuel and the lumpenproletariat. It seemed to him as though many people were so poor and so hungry that rage was a fuel they could not afford; they were running on empty. The proletariat was not a class or category they would be allowed to join, and all they might expect was silent agony, speechless victims of the men in hats.

The two travellers arrived some days later in the port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, where their plan was to continue their journey by air. Their destination was South Africa, for Jimfish felt increasingly homesick and Zoran was as determined as ever to learn more about tribal homelands, ethnic enclosures and radical balkanization, as set out in the theories of Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, of which six brand-new tribal reserves carved from the old Yugoslavia were, said Zoran, a triumphant vindication of the vision of the apostle of apartheid.

Jimfish explained time and again to the Serb that South Africa was now another sort of place where old obsessions with race and colour had been eradicated.

‘That way of life is gone, it’s dead and buried.’

Zoran said simply, ‘Perhaps. But your past is our future. If I study what you were so good at: racial division, sectarian hatred, ethnic cleansing and triumphant tribalism, I might begin to understand what we’ve achieved in my ex-homeland.’

Jimfish’s satchel of diamonds, once the property of the late Deon Arlow, Commandant of Superior Solutions — a proudly South African company — which had been of so little use in Mogadishu would be perfectly good exchangeable currency in peaceful Dar es Salaam. And so it was on a sun-soaked morning in the port of Dar es Salaam that Zoran the Serb set out with the satchel to buy tickets for Johannesburg.

Jimfish was keen to see something of the capital city and he walked through the streets enjoying the friendly smiles of the inhabitants. Although still sad at losing his poor Lunamiel to Brigadier Bare-Butt, he was happy to have escaped from Somalia; the sun was shining, the sky was high and blue and home felt closer and closer.

He had just turned into a narrow street behind a row of tall houses when, suddenly, he was caught fast in a net dropped dexterously over him from a high window. The net must have been attached to an articulated arm, because Jimfish was hoisted into the air and whisked through an upstairs window into a large room.

He heard someone giving careful instructions to the operator of the articulated arm.

‘Raise him up into the rafters and rope him to a beam. Be careful not to touch him. Any human contact with the material will affect the potency of the magic.’

Jimfish was strung from a beam beside another man, trussed just as tightly, who told him his name was Benjamin and advised him not to struggle.

‘We’ve been netted like fish. Better to accept our fate. This is a saleroom and it will soon be crowded with buyers.’

Jimfish struggled to understand what he was hearing. ‘But what’s for sale?’

‘We are,’ Benjamin told him. ‘This is an albino auction. It’s absolutely illegal, but albinos are prize catches, demand is high and we will be knocked down to eager bidders.’

‘What do they want with an albino?’

Jimfish was again really angry for the second time in his life and he thrashed about in the net, which did no good at all, as his fellow captive had warned him.

‘Magic,’ said Benjamin sadly. ‘Ridiculous as it sounds. We are like rhino horn that some swear boosts sexual potency and pay vast sums to buy. But not even the very rich can afford an entire albino. Our body parts will be auctioned off a bit at a time. Eyes, legs, fingers and toes, each bit has a reserve price.’

‘Are you saying that we’re to be cut into pieces?’ Jimfish demanded, as anger ignited into fury and flamed within him.

‘Once the sale is over, yes,’ came the reply. ‘Until then, they need us in one piece to keep us fresh.’

‘This is barbarism!’ Jimfish said.

The other man shook his head. ‘The albino auction is the civilized end of the market. There are those in Tanzania and beyond who believe albinos are mystical creatures who bring luck or babies or riches or wives or husbands or cures for cancer. Better the auction room than the bounty hunters. They are really wild. You can be having a meal with your family and the hunters burst in and start hacking off legs or arms, right there and then. I’m sorry, my friend, in a few minutes we’ll be knocked down to the highest bidder, then killed, then chopped up.’

‘But I am not an albino,’ Jimfish said. ‘I am from South Africa.’

‘Better not say so,’ Benjamin advised. ‘Foreign albinos fetch even more than the homegrown variety.’

The room was filling with buyers now. The auctioneer opened the bidding and it soon became clear that, as his fellow captive had warned, they were being sold off, piece by piece: an eye here, an ear there, toes and fingers; a whole or half a leg. The bidding was lively and every so often the auctioneer’s assistants, armed with poles, would carefully poke each net and set it spinning, to allow the bidders to get a good look at the lots on offer.

It was agony for Jimfish. True rage was welling up in him at long last, yet he was helpless, a fish caught in a net, unable to move a muscle, forced to listen as various bits of his body — from his teeth to his testicles — were briskly sold off.

It was then that a man at the back of the room joined the bidding and, to his astonished relief, Jimfish recognized Zoran the Serb. He quickly outbid all competitors, first for Jimfish, then for Benjamin. Zoran had been bidding backed by the enormous funds open to him when he exchanged a handful of the diamonds he carried, courtesy of Jimfish’s late future brother-in-law. The two prize lots in the rafters were knocked down to him and the auction room rang with the hubbub that greets record sale prices.

‘Does sir want them dismembered?’ the auctioneer asked Zoran.

‘I’ll take them as they are, thank you,’ Zoran told him.

‘I can hear from your accent that you come from Europe,’ said the auctioneer to Zoran. ‘You’ve been very lucky to buy a pair of prime specimens — Africa’s answer to the unicorn. Albinos have proven to be infallible cures for rabies, scabies, infertility, cancer, impotence, dropsy and so much more. And they’re really so economical: a fingernail, an ear lobe, a single eye can work miracles. No part is wasted. Even the hair can be woven into fishing nets and guarantees a wonderful catch. Though, if you don’t mind my saying so, Europeans are often sceptical of albino magic.’

‘I’m from ex-Yugoslavia and, given the incredible things people in my part of the world already believe about each other, they’ll be perfectly ready to buy miracle cures made from Africa’s unicorn,’ said Zoran.

He paid the auctioneer, called a taxi and ferried his two purchases back to the harbour. Once aboard their boat, he cut Jimfish and Benjamin free of the enfolding nets and told them how he had happened to save them.

‘I was on my way to buy our airline tickets when a tout offered me the sale of a lifetime: two milky-white African unicorns. We Serbs are more used to massacres than magic and I thought “What the hell?” and followed him to the auction room. You can imagine my surprise to find you and Benjamin, each strung from the ceiling in great nets, like a catch of herring.’