In the Belly of the Elephant (11 page)

A tip of the beret to Laya, “
Bonjour
,
Madame
.” Then to me, “
Mademoiselle
.”

“
Bonjour, Capitaine
,” I said. “Can you tell us what’s happened?”

“Zerbo has overthrown Lamizana.”

“Is this good?”

“The military is behind Zerbo,” Drabo said. “The teachers and
Parti Syndicat
are happy. Businesses will reopen. The people have won.” A momentary smile passed over his lips. “But, for security reasons, all roads are blocked across the country. You won’t be able to go to the villages today.”

“How long will there be roadblocks?”

“Two, three days. There is a curfew from seven in the evening until five in the morning.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard.”

He briefly placed the fingers of one hand on my outer arm just above my elbow. “Please be careful to observe it. It was a peaceful coup, but some of the soldiers are young and nervous. They will be out patrolling the streets. You will be safe in your courtyards.”

I nodded. He gave me and Laya a short bow of his head, and we continued up the street. I was thankful Gray and Kate had made so many friends for us in the military—Roger, Achinga, Adamma, Lawrence, and Drabo. For the first time, the idea of a soldier patrolling the streets was comforting rather than frightening. The soldier had Drabo’s face.

The place where he had touched my arm was still warm.

Chapter 8

Vanity

December/Safar

“Drabo dropped by yesterday,” I said to Gray. “He’s going to Ouaga until after the New Year.”

Gray grinned at me, moving her eyebrows up and down. “Well, I’m sad to say, I’m on my way,” she sang out loud.

“Won’t be back for many a day.” I joined in, harmonizing. “Well, my heart is down, my head is turnin’ around. I had to leave a little boy in Dori town.”

The windows down, the wind blowing our hair, we sang at the top of our lungs and laughed out loud. Gray hit a deep pothole and I bounced six inches off the seat.

“Sorry.” Gray sneezed then wiped her nose on the back of her hand. Harmatton winds coated the inside of the truck with a powdery dust. Gray sneezed again.

The land flowed flat in all directions as far as the eye could see. Nothing but stone, sand, air, and the distant fire of a winter solstice sun. Even the baobabs didn’t venture this far north. I could never have imagined a place so empty. This must have been where the Fulani god,
Doondari
, had lived before creation.

At the beginning of things there was nothing. But God was, and he was called Doondari. Doondari created heaven and earth, the sun, moon, and stars. Then he blew onto the earth, and animals and plants were created.

“Did you know that when god created the world, he appointed the Elephant mistress of all things because of her wisdom?” Two others had also been appointed: the leopard because he had power and cunning, and the monkey because of his malice and suppleness.

Gray shook her head. “You and your elephants.”

It was the day before Christmas, and Gray and I were heading north for the holiday. The roadblocks had been lifted a few days after the coup, and the curfew relaxed for the holidays. Things remained calm throughout the country. Don had left for the Somalia office, and a blue sense of loss had followed me around the office since his departure. Dejlal had gotten his wish for the time being and was in charge of the Dori office until a new director arrived in Ouaga. I still hadn’t responded to home office’s offer to stay on another year.

Gray and I drove the rusty pickup toward the town of Gorom Gorom to spend Christmas with a group of British nurses. We followed a thirty-mile section of a three-hundred-year-old gold and slave caravan route that ran in a direct line from the Gulf of Benin to the Mediterranean Sea. If you started in the Gold Coast town of Accra, Ghana’s capital, and rode a camel due north along Lake Volta, past the towns of Bimbila, Tenkodogo, and Bongande, you came into desert country and to Dori. Past Dori, to Gorom Gorom, and on to Gao on the Niger River, you eventually came to the desert town of Tessalit, gateway to the route that crossed the Great Sahara to the coastal cities of Morocco and Algiers.

Instead of gold and slaves, the back of our pickup was loaded with boxes of groceries, Christmas presents, bottles of French champagne, a jerry-can of gasoline, a five-gallon plastic container of water, sleeping bags and pillows in plastic garbage bags, and a change of clothes.

Gray slowed to a stop. Outside the pickup’s windshield, the path forked into two different directions. Gray blew out of her bottom lip, ruffling the fringe of short brown hair that feathered across her forehead. “Uh-oh. Nobody said anything about a fork in the road.”

I got out and stretched. The air was warm with a sharp scent of iron. The sun was high but far enough south that the one-eyed king didn’t bake the brain into oblivion. The weather was actually pleasant, which did wonders for my sense of well-being. Here we were, two young women in a pickup truck with no map, following an ancient road on the edge of the Sahara desert. We looked at each other, and with smiles on our faces, screamed. I looked right, Gray looked left.

“Well,” I said, noting the western direction of the afternoon sun, “we’ve been driving north for the past thirty minutes. This one to the right looks to be going northeast, and that one,” I pointed to the road that forked left, “northwest.”

We looked at each other again, nodded, and got back in the truck. This time, I drove, taking the left fork heading west. “Onward!”

Adventure! It ran in my blood. Didn’t my own great-grandmother cross the American plains pushing a wooden handcart? If that’s not adventure, what is? She had sought freedom from persecution, to practice her religion by following Brigham Young. I was seeking freedom from just about everything by following my heart, and, on that particular day, by following my nose.

As we drove farther northwest, the land began to change. Intermittent rows of sand dunes crisscrossed the flat plain like windblown drifts of golden snow. A line of donkeys snaked around the base of a dune. Bella women dressed in bright blue robes straddled the donkeys, spurring the animals forward with short sticks. At the next turn, Gorom Gorom came into view along the horizon. Squat mud squares against a backdrop of hills conjured a biblical image of Bethlehem. A camel with a rider crested the dune. The rider was robed from head to foot in blue, his face swathed in a black turban but for his eyes. He was a Tuareg, a “Blue Man” of the desert.

“Think of it, Gray,” I said. “We’re closer to the birthplace of Christ than ever before, only a few thousand miles to the east.”

“We could be two of the three kings, bearing gifts in our trusty pickup.” Gray began to sing, “We two queens of Orient are…”

I skirted the southern end of Gorom Gorom, about four blocks long, and found the house and courtyard of the British Save the Children. Theirs was a medical project at Gorom Gorom’s regional hospital. Three women and two men came out the gate to greet us. One of the men was their director, Mr. Know-It-All himself, Philip. T other man, Jon, and three women, Sheila, Marilyn, and Wendy, all nurses, welcomed us, and in the best of British tradition, offered us tea. In the cool of late December, relieved not to be hopelessly lost and spending the night on a sand dune, we sipped the sweet, hot liquid. It washed the dust from our throats and tasted delicious.

Late afternoon, as Sheila and the rest did their rounds at the hospital, Gray and I browsed through the maze of people and stalls in the Gorom market, Gray humming, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”

People filled the market square:
Toubacous
in slacks and T-shirts, Fulani men in loose
boubous
, women in batik skirts, tops, and head wraps, and a blue-robed Tuareg here and there, heads wrapped in black cloth.

Milling among the crowds, we passed silver colored steel pots stacked three and four high. On the opposite side of the narrow market alleyway, leather pillows and sandals with green, red, and black geometrical designs lined a wooden table, and small purses with neck cords and long tassels hung from a wooden beam; the famous leather goods of the Tuareg. Farther down, meter lengths of cotton cloth in batik patterns hung neatly folded over wooden poles.

Afternoon wore into evening. The air grew cooler, and the sun dipped toward the western horizon to set around 6:30, thirty minutes earlier than it did June through August.

At 7 pm, the whole lot of us went to the small missionary church at the edge of town for an evening mass under the stars. Mostly visiting expatriates filled the courtyard. Gorom Gorom’s small Fulani population was Muslim. The Tuaregs who came and went had never accepted Islam, keeping their own ancient beliefs of nature as god and goddess, loyal to the god of their creation.

But Doondari grew lonely so he created a being almost like himself, using stone, fire, water, and air. Doondari gave this new being force, sway, and beauty. “Take the earth,” Doondari said to man. “You are henceforth the master of all that exists.”

The Tuareg and Fulani were still the masters of the Sahara, a place few others could survive in. The
toubacous
, a few soldiers, and
Voltaique
hospital staff were the only Christians. I was probably more Tuareg in my beliefs than Catholic, but I chose to honor my childhood tradition and attend mass.

As the priest mumbled the familiar words of the Catholic celebration, I looked upward. How wonderful to have the sky as a cathedral ceiling. I had always found nature more spiritually inspiring than the inside of a church. The North Star, particularly bright in the cool night air, shone above the horizon. Cassiopeia and the seven points of Orion shimmered among a galaxy of heavenly hosts.

The little bell of the mass rang small and clear, and I imagined the Christ child swaddled in a manger with Mary and Joseph, a donkey, a cow, and several sheep looking on. Shepherds, kings, and a bright star.

Beyond the courtyard wall, someone greeted someone else, “
Allah hoké jam
.” Allah give you peace.

Christians and Muslims—all of us praying for peace. The two religions and their two prophets, Jesus and Muhammad, were not so different.

Mawlid al-Nabi
, the feast of the Prophet’s birthday, would come in a few weeks during the Muslim month of
Rabi al-Awwal
. Like Jesus, there were stories of Muhammad’s birth and childhood. Facts embellished into legend. Like the angel visiting Mary, Muhammad’s mother, Amina, heard a voice telling her she carried a prophet. When Muhammad was born, his grandfather had a dream where he saw a tree grow out of his grandson’s back. The tree reached the sky and its branches grew east and west, and from this tree came a great light.

When they grew to be men, Jesus became a carpenter, Muhammad, a merchant. Both ordinary men until Jesus, at thirty, went forth to preach the words of his Father, and Muhammad, at forty, was visited by an angel and began to recite the words of the Qur’an. Both men wished to unite their people into a compassionate community where the poor were taken care of and all were treated as equal children of the One God. Christ was denounced by the Pharisees and crucified by the Romans. Muhammad was driven from Mecca to Medina by his own Quraysh tribe. Each persecuted for upsetting the status quo.

The priest raised the host, the bell rang again, and I wondered why great ideas had to be turned into religions. I agreed with John Lennon, imagining no countries, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion, too. Had Jesus preached for a new religion or had he simply wanted more compassion among God and men? Muhammad had prayed his revelations would unite the people of seventh century Arabia under al-Lah, the One God, just as Judaism and Christianity had united the tribes of the Byzantine and Persian Empires. All three sibling religions, sharing the one God of Abraham—Christians, Jews, and Moslems—a brotherhood of man.

Proud of his sway, his power, and his beauty, because he surpassed the elephant in wisdom, the leopard in cunning, and the monkey in malice, the first man grew arrogant and wicked.

I did not believe that Jesus or Muhammad wanted their teachings used as excuses for oppression, war, and plunder. Over the past 1500 years, had not both religions done more harm than good? All in the name of God.

The priest asked us to greet one another in peace. I hugged Gray and shook hands with those around me, wishing everyone a Happy Christmas. I recalled the Christmas before, when I had been home in Idaho. Back from Liberia only a few months, I had been restless and tormented by the frantic commercialism of the American holidays.

Aside from the glow of the altar candles and kerosene lanterns, the courtyard was in shadow. The silence of the desert’s edge reached past my ears and into my soul. Here, so near to the land of Christ’s birth, the commercial noise of the Western World was quieted; no TV ads, no strings of blinking electric lights or plastic Santa Clauses, no shopping day countdowns. In the hushed courtyard of a predominantly Muslim land, among the bowed heads of so many nationalities, black, brown, and white, I found a Christmas peace more profound than any I had ever known.

It was full dark when the mass ended. We strolled back to the house for a dinner of goat meat brochettes and wine. When everyone had gone to bed, Gray donned her Santa hat, and we snuck out to the courtyard and filled a cotton sock for each of us with Chicklets, hard candies, figs, and small trinkets from the market. We lined up several bottles of French champagne and tied them with red ribbon.

Christmas morning, everyone was delighted that Santa had somehow found us so far from home. We drank champagne and opened stockings. After a midday feast of imported turkey, boxed mashed potatoes, canned carrots and peas, cookies, cake, cigars, brandy, and a long
sieste
, we went to a party at a Dutch volunteer’s house.

Every
toubacou
from miles around attended—English, French, Germans, Scots, Norwegians, Dutch, with Gray and me as the token Americans. Conversations in five languages filled the living room, hallways, and kitchen. Red tinsel and plastic mistletoe hung in the corners and over the doorways.