Moses Isegawa - Abyssinian Chronicles

At first it was very exciting to hear people’s edited versions of themselves, especially how they had got money for passports and air tickets and what they had experienced in Sweden, Britain or America. But as it became a weekly and sometimes daily event, with bored souls coming to Keema’s just to watch television and to listen to music and to gossip, it became tedious. They were almost all economic migrants, despite the political-refugee guises some had donned because it was the only way to enter the country. The majority of them had washed their garments in the humiliations of the camps and were marked by the years of waiting in limbo for permission to stay, but they were now brimming with resilience and optimism. Most of them did back-breaking jobs in greenhouses, on farms, in meat-packing factories and in all sorts of dirty places. They arrived at Keema’s with the blaze of hard labor in their eyes and the anvils of fatigue grinding their overworked limbs. I could appreciate their need for frequent visits to such a popular haunt. I gradually appreciated their reluctance to take me in, for who was I to them? How could I survive without working? What was I looking for here? What was my secret? How could I be trusted?

Privacy was a rare delicacy, which I savored in measly portions. Nostalgia-laden conversation from the sitting room penetrated the walls of my bedroom and made it impossible to rest or to think while the visitors were around. I was forced to join the group and masticate the cud of jaded conversations. The parties were a torture. Thirty or more people would invade the house, smother it in perfume and aftershave, and make the walls vibrate with noise, music, dancing, arguments and the endless gurgles of an overworked toilet. The arrangement suited Keema very well: during the week, she left at seven and returned at seven; on weekends, she wanted to party, to please her friends and to meet her contacts because, as I found out, she got paid for housing these people in transit to Britain or elsewhere. The preparations alone took a day or two, what with the shopping for drinks and eats, the cleaning of the sitting room and other rooms, the cooking of meals and the frying of chicken to be eaten through the night, and the whole energy-consuming atmosphere of a bar before opening time. The meals would be eaten early, and then people would start arriving, ushering in the drinking, dancing and feasting that would last until the small hours of morning. A big quarrel or a fight between two women over a man or two men over a woman would stir up lingering passions and gossip.

The ghetto resembled Uganda during the guerrilla war: the day belonged to the forces of law and order, the night to pirates and their minions and victims. In order to gain a taste of both worlds, I gradually took to nightcrawling and visiting the haunts of small-time drug dealers and users. From around eight o’clock on, the culverts, certain nooks of the behemoths and some well-known cafes came alive with customers. A customer came in, whispered something, handed over cash and got a little parcel wrapped in plastic. At the culverts, some customers could wait no longer and just turned round, faced the wall, opened their parcels and rubbed the fiery powder into their mucous membranes.

Crack users had their own haunts, often derelict houses, where they squatted, lighted a fire and put the rock on a spoon, which they put over the flame. It was quite an experience to watch bliss grab a face, permeate its fibers, soothe its bones and then turn around and desert it. The tight muscles would then slacken, the mouth would gape and drool, the eyes would glaze over and the body would furl like a deflated balloon. Souls passing through this purgatory looked frighteningly tormented. They resembled a viral-plague victim in the throes of a hellish fever. Finally, as the talons of hell sank in, the souls would ooze from both terminals or climb to groggy feet to look for another fix. That was when switchblades flashed. I always extracted myself from the spot before flashing steel could be pushed under my nose.

Along the culverts, in spaces about meter apart, stood youths in baggy clothes with caps pulled over their eyes, waiting for customers. They reminded me of crocodiles ambushing their prey, immobile and dedicated to the point of letting flies go in and out of their mouths. And sure enough, the prey would come looking for the powder of ecstasy. These were dangerous places, and the worst thing that could happen was getting caught in the cross fire of some little fight or stickup. The police never lifted a finger. Police policy was to arrive after the flames had died down, or rather when one of the combatants had been knocked out cold or killed. They never concerned themselves with threats: if somebody threatened to harm you, the police never did a thing till he honored his threat. And many criminals were released as fast as they were arrested. This sort of danger, this uncertainty, added an edge to my prowls.

The knife was the symbol of respect here. Youths with baggy clothes often had one, mostly two- or three-inch devils. I was more afraid of being cut up than of getting shot, but whatever little fears I had did not keep me from going out at night and watching junkies shoot drugs into blue veins in defunct lifts and under the stairs, women sucking or fucking men for money, and men and women fighting over drugs, money or nothing.

The scariest thing about the ghetto was that people were moving every day. No single day passed without somebody moving in or out. Starved of intellectual occupation, I would sit on the railing at the entrance and watch men and women lifting furniture in and out of vans. The junkies I saw sleeping or reclining in pools of urine and vomit and saliva under the culverts on Sunday mornings seemed to rise, shed their degraded bodies, don muscular ones and move fat, hissing sofas, creaking double beds, glass-fronted cupboards and bulky suitcases out of waiting vans and up the endless stairs. Later, the muscled figures whisking furniture up and down stairs seemed to wilt under my gaze and become the blank-eyed zombies craving their fix day in and day out.

Gradually, I started reaching out to Africa in diaspora. It was hard because of the language barrier, and because I did not work or go to nightclubs or do drugs. I looked around for a library where I could borrow some books and hopefully meet people, but there was none. I finally asked Keema’s naughty girl to arm me with the rudiments of the Dutch language in exchange for favors and a little money. I built up a crude arsenal of everyday Dutch, waiting for my chance, and when one night I came upon a woman who was being stalked by the crocodiles under the culvert, I was happy. My reaction to the situation was perfect. When I saw her, with the crocodiles a few meters behind her, I said out loud, “I am sorry for being late, darling. I should have met you at the station as I had promised.” My view was that the boys had not really wanted to do her any harm. If they had insisted, they would have caught up with her long before I met her. Instead, they followed her at a distance, called her names and asked her to blow them. I found her perspiring and out of breath. She could hardly think quickly enough to mouth the words, “Yes, where have you been all this time?” but when she did, the crocodiles stopped, looked at her and me for one long moment and then slowly turned back. It was the night that had saved her from further humiliation. The boys could not see me clearly, and neither could I make out their faces. They must have considered the possibility that I had a gun or connections in the underworld. They just played into my hands.

The woman thanked me and invited me home for a drink. Her name was Eva Jazz. “I have to be somewhere, I am sorry,” I said, just to test her. She insisted, and I knew that she was single or a single mother determined not to work through her horror alone. I dreaded the prospect of being greeted by two or three sullen children who had been waiting all evening for their mother. It was a two-hundred-meter walk through a park softly lighted by spaced roadside lamps, and I could see her eyeing the flower bushes warily.