‘You speak it very well.’ This was not really true, but Tamara was being nice.
Kiah invited her to sit on the rug. Before doing so, Tamara went back to the door and glanced out nervously, screwing up her eyes against the sudden brightness. She looked towards the car. The cigarette vendor was bending down by the driver’s-side window with a carton of Cleopatras in his hand. She saw Ali behind the window, his scarf wound around his head, making a contemptuous flicking-away gesture with his fingers, evidently not wanting to buy cheap cigarettes. Then the vendor said something that altered Ali’s attitude dramatically. Ali jumped out of the car, looking apologetic, and opened the rear door. The vendor got into the car and Ali quickly closed the door.
So that’s him, Tamara thought. Well, the disguise is certainly effective. It fooled me.
She was relieved. At least he was still alive.
She looked around. No one in the village had taken any notice of the vendor getting into the car. He was now out of sight, hidden by the tinted windows.
Tamara nodded with satisfaction and went back inside Kiah’s house.
Kiah asked her: ‘Is it true that all white women have seven dresses and a maid to wash a different one every day?’
Tamara decided to answer in Arabic, as Kiah’s French might not be good enough. After a moment’s thought she said: ‘Many American and European women have a lot of clothes. Exactly how many depends on whether the woman is rich or poor. Seven dresses wouldn’t be unusual. A poor woman would have only two or three. A rich woman might have fifty.’
‘And do they all have maids?’
‘Poor families don’t have maids. A woman with a well-paid job, such as a doctor or a lawyer, will usually have someone to clean the house. Rich families have many maids. Why do you want to know all this?’
‘I am thinking of going to live in France.’
Tamara had guessed as much. ‘Tell me why.’
Kiah paused, collecting her thoughts. She silently offered Tamara another bottle of beer. Tamara shook her head. She needed to stay alert.
Kiah said: ‘My husband, Salim, was a fisherman with his own boat. He would go out with three or four other men, and they would share the catch, but Salim took half, because it was his boat, and he knew where the fish were. That is why we were better off than most of our neighbours.’ She lifted her head proudly.
Tamara said: ‘What happened?’
‘One day the jihadis came to take Salim’s catch. He should have let them have it. But he had caught a Nile perch and he refused to let them take it. So they killed him and took it anyway.’ Kiah’s composure was shaken, and her noble face twisted in grief. She paused, suppressing emotion. ‘His friends brought me his body.’
Tamara was angered, but not surprised. The jihadis were Islamist terrorists, but they were also criminal gangsters. The two things went together. And they preyed on some of the poorest people in the world. It made her mad.
Kiah went on: ‘When I had buried my husband I asked myself what I should do. I can’t sail a boat, I can’t tell where the fish are, and even if I could do both of those things the men would not accept me as their leader. So I sold the boat.’ She looked fierce for a moment. ‘Some people tried to get it for less than it was worth, but I wouldn’t do business with them.’
Tamara began to sense a core of steely determination within Kiah.
There was a touch of desperation in Kiah’s voice as she went on: ‘But the money from the boat won’t last for ever.’
Tamara knew that the family was important in this country. ‘What about your parents?’ she said.
‘Both of my parents are dead. My brothers went to Sudan – they work on a coffee plantation there. Salim had a sister, and her husband said that if I let him have my boat cheap he would always take care of me and Naji.’ She shrugged.
‘You didn’t trust him,’ said Tamara.
‘I didn’t want to sell my boat for a promise.’
Determined, and no fool, Tamara thought.
Kiah added: ‘Now my in-laws hate me.’
‘So you want to go to Europe – illegally.’
‘People do it all the time,’ Kiah said.
This was true. As the desert spread southwards, hundreds of thousands of desperate people left the Sahel looking for work, and many attempted the perilous journey to southern Europe.
‘It’s expensive,’ she went on, ‘but the money from the boat will pay my fare.’
The money was not the real issue. Tamara could tell, from Kiah’s voice, that she was frightened.
Kiah said: ‘They usually go to Italy. I can’t speak Italian but I’ve heard that once you are in Italy you can easily go to France. Is that true?’
‘Yes.’ Tamara was now in a hurry to get back to the car, but she felt she had to answer Kiah’s questions. ‘You just drive across the border. Or take a train. But what you’re planning is terribly dangerous. People smugglers are criminals. They may just take your money and disappear.’
Kiah paused, thinking, perhaps seeking a way to explain her life to this privileged Western visitor. After a moment she said: ‘I know what happens when there is not enough food. I have seen it.’ She looked away, remembering, and her voice went quieter. ‘The baby gets thinner, but at first that doesn’t seem too serious. Then he gets sick. It’s a childhood infection such as many children catch, with spots or a runny nose or diarrhoea, but the hungry child takes a long time to recover, then he gets another illness. He is tired all the time and grizzles a lot and he doesn’t play much, just lies still and coughs. And then one day he closes his eyes and doesn’t open them again. And sometimes the mother is too tired to weep.’
Tamara looked at her through eyes full of tears. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I wish you luck.’
Kiah became brisk again. ‘It is kind of you to answer my questions.’
Tamara stood up. ‘I need to get going,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Thank you for the beer. And please try to find out more about the people smugglers before you give them your money.’
Kiah smiled and nodded, responding politely to a platitude. She understands the need to be cautious about money better than I ever will, Tamara thought ruefully.
Tamara went outside and found Tab heading back towards the car. It was close to noon, and the villagers were no longer in sight. The livestock had found shade under makeshift shelters evidently built for that purpose.
When she stood close to Tab she noticed a light aroma of fresh sweat on clean skin, and a hint of sandalwood. She said: ‘He’s in the car.’
‘Where was he hiding?’
‘He was the cigarette vendor.’
‘He fooled me.’
They reached the car and got in. The air-conditioning felt like an Arctic sea. Tamara and Tab sat either side of the cigarette vendor, who smelled as if he had not showered for many days. He held a carton of cigarettes in his hand.
Tamara could not contain herself. ‘So,’ she said, ‘did you find Hufra?’
*
The cigarette vendor’s name was Abdul John Haddad, and he was twenty-five years old. He had been born in Lebanon and raised in New Jersey, and he was an American citizen and an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Four days ago he had been in the adjacent country of Niger, driving a battered but mechanically sound off-road Ford up a long hill in the desert north of the town of Maradi.
He had worn thick-soled boots. They were new, but they had been treated to look old, the uppers artificially worn and scratched, the laces mismatched, and the leather carefully stained to appear much-used. Each deep sole had a hidden compartment. One was for a state-of-the-art phone, the other for a device that picked up only one special signal. Abdul carried in his pocket a cheap phone as a diversion.