One Day I Will Write About This Place (30 page)

Most of the stalls are bursting with fabrics. I have never seen so
many—there
are shapeless splotches of color on cloth, bold geometrics
on wax batik, pinks on earth brown, ululating pinstripes. There are
fabrics with thousands of embroidered coin-size
holes shaped like flowers.
There are fabrics that promise wealth: one stall owner points out a
strange design on a Togolese coin and shows me the same design on the
fabric of an already busy shirt. There are fabrics for clinging, for flicking
over a shoulder, for square shouldering, for floppy collaring, for marrying,
and some must surely assure instant breakups.

We brush past clothes that lap against my ear, whispering; others
lick my brow from hangers above my face.

Anywhere else in the world the fabric is secondary: it is the final
architecture of the garment that makes a difference. But this is Lomé,
the duty-free port, the capital of Togo, and here it is the fabric that
matters. The fabric you will buy can be sewed into a dress, a shirt, an
evening outfit of headband, skirt, and top in one afternoon, at no extra
cost. It is all about the fabric. There are fabrics of silk, of cotton, from
the Netherlands, from China, mudcloth from Mali, kente from northern
Togo.

It is the stall selling bras that stops my forward motion. It is a tiny
open-air
stall. There are bras piled on a small table, bras hanging above.
Years ago, I had a part-time
job as a translator for some Senegalese visitors
to Kenya. Two of the older women, both quite large, asked me to
take them shopping for bras. We walked into shop after shop in Nairobi’s
biggest mall. They probed and pulled and sighed and exclaimed—and
I translated all this to the chichi young girls who looked offended that
a woman of that age could ask questions about a bra that had nothing
to do with its practical uses. We roamed for what seemed like hours,
but these Francophone women failed to find a single bra in all the shops
in Sarit Centre that combined uplifting engineering with the right
aesthetic.

They could not understand this Anglophone insistence on ugly bras
for any woman over twenty-five
with children.

Open-air
bra stalls in my country sell useful, practical white bras.
All secondhand. Not here. There are red strapless bras with snarling
edges of black lace. I see a daffodil-yellow
bra with curly green leaves
running along its seam. Hanging down the middle of the line is the largest
nursing bra I have ever seen, white and wired and ominous. I am sure
the white covers pulleys and pistons and a flying buttress or two. One
red bra has bared black teeth around a nipple-size
pair of holes. Next
to it is a corset in a delicate ivory color. I did not know people still wore
corsets.

A group of women start laughing. I am gaping. Anglophone. Prude.

It takes an hour for Hubert and me to move only a hundred meters
or so. Wherever I look, I am presented with goods to touch and
feel. Hubert looks grim. I imitate him. Heads down, we move forward.
Soon we see a stall specializing in Togo football team jerseys. There are
long-sleeved
yellow ones, short-sleeved
ones, sleeveless ones. Shirts for
kids. All of them have one name on the back: Togo’s superstriker,
Sheyi
Emmanuel Adebayor.

I pick out a couple of jerseys and while Hubert negotiates for them,
I amble over to a nearby stall. An elegant, motherly woman, an image of genuine Mama Benzhood dressed in pink lace, smiles at me graciously.
Her stall sells shirts, and looks cool and fresh. She invites me in. I go
in and stand under the flapping clothes to cool down. She dispatches a
young man to get some cold mineral water. I admire one of the shirts.
“Too small for you,” she says sorrowfully. Suddenly I want it desperately,
but she is reluctant. “Okay. Okay,” she says. “I will try to help you.
When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow,” I say.

“Ahh. I have a tailor—we
will get the fabrics and sew the shirts up
for you, a proper size.”

It is here that my resolve cracks, that my dislike of shopping vanishes.
I realize that I can settle in this cool place—cast
my eyes about, express
an interest, and get a tailor-made
solution. I point at possible fabrics.
She frowns and says, “Nooooo, this one without fancy collars. We will
make it simple—let
the fabric speak for itself.” In French this opinion
sounds very authoritative. Soon I find I have ordered six shirts. A group
of leather workers present an array of handmade sandals: snakeskin,
crocodile, every color imaginable. Madam thinks the soft brown leather
ones are good. She bends one shoe thing into a circle. Nods. Good sole.

Her eyes narrow at the salesman and she asks, “How much?”

His reply elicits a shrug and a turn—she
has lost interest. No value
for money. Price drops. Drops again. I buy. She summons a Ghanaian
cobbler, who reinforces the seams for me as I sit, glues the edges. In seconds
all is ready. She looks at me with some compassion. “What about
something for the woman you love?” I start to protest—no.
No—I
am
not into this love thing. Ahh. Compassion deepens. But the women’s
clothes! I see a purple top with a purple fur collar. A hand-embroidered
skirt and top of white cotton. It is clear to me that my two sisters will
never be the same again if they have clothes like this.

I get two outfits for each of them.

I can’t believe how cheap the clothes are. Now my nieces—what
about Christmas presents for them? And my brother Jim? And my
nephews. And what about Jim’s wife? These women in my life—they will be as gracious and powerful as this madam in pink lace, cool in the
heat. Queens, princesses. Matriarchs. Mama Benzes. Sexy. I spend four
hours in her stall, and spend nearly two hundred dollars.

On the way from the center of Lomé, I see an old sign by the side of
the road. Whatever it was previously advertising has rusted away.

Somebody has painted on it, in huge letters: TOGO
3
– CONGO
0
.

We head for Hubert’s home. The beach runs alongside a highway,
and hundreds of scooter taxis chug past us with 5:00 p.m. clients, mostly
women, who seem very comfortable.

Hubert’s eldest brother has spent the day lying under a tree. He
had a nasty motorcycle accident months ago, and his leg is in a cast. He
is a mechanic and has his own workshop. His wife lives here too, and his
two sisters. We shake hands and he backs away. There are metal rods
thrust into the cast. He must be in pain. The evening is cool, and the
earthen compound is large and freshly swept. It is a large old house.
This is an upper-middle-class family. Hubert tells me he is uncertain.
His father is from the north, and after Eyadéma died, he is not sure
how safe his mother is in the capital, which is in the south.

Hubert’s mother and sisters are happy to see him home, and have
cooked a special sauce with meat and baobab leaves and chili. Hubert’s
mother, a retired nurse, is a widow. Hubert is the last born, and it is clear
he is the favorite of his sisters. The rooms at the front of the house open
to the garden, where some of the cooking takes place to take advantage
of the cool.

We all stand around the kitchen. Clearly Hubert and his brother
do not get along, but what is most curious is the family setup. His
mother is the head of the household. His father is dead. His brother—a
good ten years older than Hubert—behaves
like a boy in his presence.

Talking about money with Hubert has been tricky. He agreed to
come with me, but said we would come to an agreement about money
later. He has made it clear he will be happy with anything reasonable I
can afford. He is not doing this because he is desperate for the money.
He seems comfortable with the arrangement I offered—and
is happy to
do things, trusting my good faith, and giving his. He does not eat much. As an athlete, he is very finicky about what he eats. His mother does not
complain. I dig into the sauce. It’s hot. Awkwardly, I make him an offer.

I find out I am to sleep in his room.

It is very neat. There is a fan, which does not work. There is a computer,
which does not work. There are faded posters of soccer players.
There are two gimmicky-looking
pens arranged in crisp symmetry on
the table, both dead. There is a cassette player plugged in and ready to be
switched on, but I can see no tapes. There is no electricity—I
am using
a paraffin lamp. The bedroom is all aspiration. I wonder, before I go to
sleep, what his brother’s bedroom looks like.

In the morning, I try to make the bed. I lift the mattress and see, on
the corner, a heavy gray pistol, as calm and satisfied as a slug.

It is 2006. Winter. I have finally become acceptable to a respectable institution.
For the past few months, I have been teaching creative writing
and literature at Union College in Schenectady, in upstate New York.

All my life, my body has been a soft and comfortable beanbag,
nicely worn into the right shape for my mind to wiggle around, to lean
back, sigh and dream. No longer. Something happenened. This winter
my body has been causing havoc. It has become one of those American
chairs—fat
and cushy, with numerous moving parts and levers that can
chew your fingers; chairs that have gears and buttons and heart monitors,
chairs that, at a push of a button, start vibrating maniacally.

I have lost a lot of weight and I wake up several times a night to the
sight of a million dripping icicles of confectionary outside my window.
I am so hungry I am faint. Only crunchy crystals of sugar will do. Or
oozy sugar. Or any sugar. My throat went and got all imperialist on me.
It wants to drink the whole Hudson River. It is sure it can drink it all. It
must be something wrong with the heating, and winter energy cravings.
What do I know about this new American weather, these old upstate
houses? Every night, I eat, drink, piss madly, then turn into a late-night
cheerleader on amphetamines. I race out of the house with doughnut
fuzz on my lips and I jump on my bicycle. The cold means nothing; the
dark means nothing. I pedal furiously, all the way down to the Stockade,
and ride along the river, and between the old Dutch houses, and climb
back up the hill to my house, soaked with sweat and full of energy, my
body burning from inside, cold on the outside.

It is Friday. I wake up at 2:00 a.m. and eat three frozen chocolate croissants
and drink a liter of water. I clean the house, which is filthy. The
previous owner left behind more cleaning chemicals than I have ever
seen. I spray and wipe, spray and wipe, and I am dizzy with chemical
haze. One of the kitchen cleaning sprays says it kills the HIV virus, which must surely lurk inside loose coffee grounds in the sink. I am still
restless and find random things to drop into that wonderful whirring
metal chewing machine inside this American sink that has twin power
jets. No dribbles here.

After taking a shower, pissing, drinking more water, I get on my
laptop and start browsing randomly, to kill time.

We are a year and a bit away from the presidential and parliamentary
elections in Kenya, and Kenyans are already arguing on the
blogosphere—this
time it is not about water, power, or the constitution.
All of a sudden, Kenyans, usually skeptical, are becoming unusually
fierce in defending leaders who share their ethnicity. For Gikuyus,
Kibaki is the most wonderful person ever. For Luos, Raila was manufactured
in heaven. For Kalenjins Ruto is the next king, Koitalel arap
Samoei reincarnated. Our usual irony about all politicians seems to
have vanished. Any attempt to be nuanced means being accused of being
a traitor, a communist, mixed up.

Next year promises drama. We do not know if our democracy
is strong enough for the incumbent, President Kibaki—Gikuyu—
to be peacefully removed from power by a strong candidate, Raila
Odinga—Luo.

Things are getting hot in Togo too as we get closer to the World Cup.
The Togolese soccer federation is run by Rock Gnassingbé, brother of
the president and son of the late Eyadéma.

Now, soccer itself is not a negotiable object. Democracy is, treasuries
are, French government loans and grants, the lives of all citizens, the
wombs of all women—all
these things can bend comfortably to the will
of the first family, but the fates of the national soccer team belong to the
people. Nobody has ever successfully banned the playing of soccer in
Africa.

It is easy to see why: soccer is a skill one can cultivate to the highest
levels with nothing but plastic and string and will.

Arjukumar K Patel is online early in the morning, somewhere in an
anxious Gujarati-speaking
Kenya. On a Canadian Immigration Web
site, he has this to say:

I grab an apple and carry my laptop to the living room, and put on
the television. Somebody is selling a TOTAL solution to WEIGHT
LOSS. I change the channel. Goodness. The teeth of Americans are
truly wondrous. Look at Lionel Richie’s teeth, as he zigzags across the
stage in sequins and shoulder pads singing in broken Kiswahili presented
in a bad Jamaican accent. “Jambo nipe centi moja, oooh Jambo
Jambo.”

Hallo, hallo, give me one cent, hallo, hallo.

Tension is high, and next year’s election is going to be close. We
hoped to have a new constitution in place before the election. This will
not happen. Now that the main players are so divided, and Kenyans too,
we agree on nothing. We had one referendum for Kibaki’s constitution,
and he lost. Kibaki lost the trust of non-Gikuyus. Our doddering colonial
constitution gives the presidency the powers of a medieval king. It
is very difficult, under the present constitution, to remove an incumbent
president from power. Kenyatta and Moi made sure of that. We have
to trust that Kibaki will behave with grace and allow a relatively level
playing ground.