Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

‘What was the last dream you had?’

The young man shakes his head. It is slow going. A shuffling and a snorted laugh from somebody in the room. Adecali.

‘Yes?’ says Adrian, turning to look at Adecali.

He is becoming used to the laughter now. Strange and surreal, it permeates so many moments, not just in the hospital but outside. A memory of Mamakay comes to him, as one seems to every few minutes, of her translating for him a phrase he’d heard and not understood. ‘It means, “I fall down, I get up again.” When somebody asks how you are, perhaps you can’t honestly answer that you are fine. That’s what it is saying.’ Grim humour. Adrian pulls himself back to the present.

‘What is it, Adecali? What do you want to say?’

‘He hollers for his mama. He jumps out of his bed.’ Adecali suffers nightmares, too. Also incontinence. He has a terror of fire, of the wicks of oil lamps, matches, lighters. Nobody knew precisely from where this stemmed and Adrian wonders what memories fire brings back to Adecali, who also suffers from a complex combination of twitches and a stammer. ‘M-m-m-mama’. Of the four patients in the room, he appears the most outwardly deranged.

‘Would you like to talk about any of your dreams?’ Adrian finds the sessions demanding. By the end he is exhausted. He is also exhilarated. It is what he has longed for.

Adecali drops his gaze and shuts his mouth.

‘We are here to listen and to help each other.’

They are nothing if not compliant. Boys, still. Their commanders had taken the place of their parents and now they look to Adrian. None had questioned the purpose of the sessions, or considered their right to attend or not. They did as they were told, as they always had. Now the effort of attempting to obey causes Adecali to knead his brow.

‘I dream. It is such that I am afraid to sleep. But it m-m-m-makes no sense. Sometimes in the day they come, sometimes by night.’ His fingers work upon his forehead. ‘Sometimes I smell something that is not there.’

‘Take your time.’ Adrian urges Adecali on, careful not to push the pace too much. ‘What is it you smell?’

‘I smell roast meats. I hear screaming and banging. And then I smell roasted meat.’

In the afternoon Adrian has a meeting with Attila. He makes his way to the man’s office, forces himself to drop his shoulders, to take deep breaths of the sea-dampened air and walks on past the ornamental palms, the edges of whose great leaves move in the wind, creating a rattling sound which reminds him, as it did the first time, of the spinnakers of yachts at the quay in Norwich. High in the sky a pair of vultures wheel on the rising currents.

Five minutes later he is in the seat opposite Attila. Attila leans far back into his chair, elbows on the table, fingers laced, considering Adrian from beneath hooded lids. He loves a game of cat and mouse, thinks Adrian. Still, it was true to say that though the chief psychiatrist had more or less ignored Adrian he’d also given him the free run of the hospital, had not hampered his efforts. Adrian clears his throat and begins to speak, describing the sessions, their nature, the patients he selected to attend and the reasons for those choices. His choice was heavily determined by whether or not they spoke English, something he does not mention now. Attila listens in silence.

When Adrian has finished he waits for Attila’s response, noticing for the first time the glossy darkness beneath the other man’s eyes. Despite the robustness of his physique, he looks exhausted. Attila leans across and moves a pen a few inches across his desk, shifts a paper or two. It is all an act, thinks Adrian, this ponderousness. Attila is sly and quick and clever. He is dedicated to what he does. Nobody else would do this job.

Adrian likes him, he wishes he could tell him so.

‘What do you aim to achieve with these sessions?’

The cat pawing the mouse.

‘To return the men to normality, to some degree of normality. So they can live their lives. Achieve everything anyone else could expect to achieve.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Sorry?’

‘What is it they can expect to achieve?’

‘To hold down a job. To enjoy a relationship. To marry and have children.’

Atilla nods his head briskly. Suddenly he places his palms flat on the table and pushes himself up. ‘I have to attend a meeting at the Health Ministry. Why don’t you ride along with me?’

Adrian, who has things he could do, though nothing that could in any way be called urgent, senses this is a moment to comply. It is in the interests of his relationship with this awkward, heavy man.

‘Of course.’

Adrian follows Attila out, waits while he selects a key from a large bunch and locks his office door, then follows him to the front entrance of the hospital. Attila eases his bulk behind the wheel of his car, Adrian slides into the passenger seat. They pass through the centre of town, past the turning to the old department store. It is hot and Attila’s car does not have air conditioning. Adrian feels the sweat on his shirt and the back of his thighs.

Now they are away from the grid of roads, the traffic moves more freely here; a light breeze enters the vehicle. Adrian might have been relieved, except the breeze carries with it a foul odour of rotted fish and the high, sweet smell of sewage. The road leads sharply downhill. Tin huts reach out in either direction, an endless landscape of rusted tin. On the right is the sea. Not the green-blue sea visible from the campus, but water the colour of shit. Attila slows the car. Neither of them had spoken during the drive. Now Attila says in a conversational tone, ‘A few years back a medical team came here. They were here to survey the population.’

He pulls over, applies the handbrake and looks out of Adrian’s window, like a tourist pausing to appreciate the view. Ahead of them two shirtless men labour to push a cart loaded with scrap metal up the hill. Their bodies are lean and muscled, glowing with sweat and sun. A filthy dog, with perhaps the worst case of mange Adrian has ever seen, trots across the road. There are people moving in, out and around the huts. The rush of air as a car passes brings a fresh gust of the terrible smell.

‘Do you know what they concluded?’

Adrian shakes his head. Attila has said neither who the researchers were nor indicated the purpose of the study.

‘They were here for six weeks. They sent me a copy of the paper. The conclusion they reached was that ninety-nine per cent of the population was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.’ He laughs cheerlessly. ‘Post-traumatic stress disorder! What do you think of that?’

Adrian, who is entirely unsure what is expected of him, answers, ‘The figure seems high but strikes me as entirely possible. From everything I’ve heard.’

‘When I ask you what you expect to achieve for these men, you say you want to return them to normality. So then I must ask you, whose normality? Yours? Mine? So they can put on a suit and sit in an air-conditioned office? You think that will ever happen?’

‘No,’ says Adrian, feeling under attack. ‘But therapy can help them to cope with their experiences of war.’

‘This is their reality. And who is going to come and give the people who live here therapy to cope with this?’ asks Attila and waves a hand at the view. ‘You call it a disorder, my friend. We call it life .’ He shifts the car into first gear and begins to move forward. ‘And do you know what these visitors recommended at the end of their report? Another one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to engage in even more research.’ He utters the same bitter chuckle. ‘What do you need to know that you cannot tell just by looking, eh? But you know, these hotels are really quite expensive. Western rates. Television. Minibar.’ He looks across at Adrian. ‘Anyway,’ he continues, ‘you carry on with your work. Just remember what it is you are returning them to.’