The Girl in the Road Page 23

  I drop the big reveal. “They tried to kill me.”

  Fatima throws her head back and laughs, which I did not expect. “All Indians think all Ethiopians are trying to kill them.” She cocks her head at me, assessing, such a good scene partner. “Semena Werk is the kernel of an Amharic poem. We revere the poetic form, as do your people. So whatever you are looking for in Semena Werk, you have to look deeper. What you first see only reflects your prejudice.”

  I have no lines after that, so I remain silent. A beeping noise comes from the console. Rahel climbs into the dinghy and disappears under the tarp.

  “So you’ve never been to Ethiopia,” says Fatima.

  “No,” I say. “But I plan to go. After I make it to Djibouti.”

  “Why aren’t you going with your parents?”

  “Because they’re dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  A moment passes.

  “Died in India?”

  “No, in Ethiopia.”

  Now it’s come. Dear Fatima has to deal with the fact that some beloved comrade of hers murdered my parents.

  “Were your parents A. R. Gabriel and Meenakshi Mehta?”

  The camera zooms to my stunned face.

  “So you’re the baby.”

  The heroine cannot form words.

  Fatima twists around.

  OROMIFA: Rahel! Guess who we got here.

  A voice comes from the darkness under the tarp.

  OROMIFA: Who?

  OROMIFA: Election Baby.

  OROMIFA: What are you talking about?

  OROMIFA: The 2040 election when those two doctors were killed.

  Rahel’s face emerges from shadow. “You’re the baby?” she says.

  The heroine finds her voice. “Am I a celebrity or something?”

  “You’re known,” says Fatima.

  “I remember when that happened,” says Rahel. “I was in Nairobi, remember, Fatima?—and saw it on the Internet. Terrible.”

  “The Indian media jumped on it,” says Fatima. “A good story of Indian nurses saving Indian blood in the face of Ethiopian savagery.”

  “The story also says that the Ethiopian police didn’t bother to chase the killer because they hated Indians,” I say.

  “Do you believe that?”

  I shrug, fall back. “I don’t know enough to believe it or not.”

  “She probably went to Djibouti,” says Rahel. “Do you intend to go looking for her?”

  I try to look heroic for the camera. “Yes.”

  Fatima stands again. I can tell she’s looking at me even though I’m not looking at her.

  “What she did, she didn’t do in the name of ARAP,” she says. “She was already unhinged. She wasn’t even Ethiopian. She came from somewhere in West Africa.”

  Something in me dissolves. I laugh. “I didn’t know that.”

  I look to the southwest, where the Trail heads. The wind is dead today and the sea is flat. “Which West African country? I need to know who to hate now.”

  Fatima shifts her weight and spits into the ocean like Clint Eastwood. “Just pick one.”

  I nod. The Wise African is wise.

  “You should be on your way,” she says. “But be careful. We were raided three nights ago.”

  “Is that why you trained guns on me?”

  “We thought you might be the thief, but you’re much bigger than she was.”

  “She?”

  “We could tell that much.”

  “Maybe it was Bloody Mary.”

  Fatima’s eyes change. I imagine the camera lenses are telescoping for a close-up. “What do you know about Bloody Mary?”

  “Rumors.”

  “They might not be. Bloody Mary might be our thief. No one mystical, just a parasite.”

  “What did she steal?”

  “Dried mango rings.”

  “I could go for some of those.”

  “Got anything to barter?”

  “A tongue scraper.”

  We all have a good laugh. We make the trade. And the camera pans up to film me from overhead, and the infinite ribbon of the Trail ahead of me. We don’t see its end before the scene changes.

  The Narrows

  I’m at 2,020 kilometers. I don’t have a map but I remember that the Trail enters the barrel of the Gulf of Aden at some point. Not close enough for me to see Yemen to the north or Somalia to the south. But the way gets narrower.

  I pick up our conversation where we last left it. Mohini, I was being followed by a barefoot girl, yes. But the hallucination or spirit or whatever it was went away. She didn’t follow me onto the Trail.

  That’s because you told her to go away. You banished her.

  Huh. I don’t remember it.

  What about the body you saw on the Trail? she asks.

  What about it? It wasn’t following me.

  Didn’t you wonder who she was?

  She was wearing a golden sari.

  Why didn’t you look at her face?

  Seemed disrespectful.

  Why didn’t you bury her at sea?

  She wasn’t mine to bury.

  What did you think her story might be?

  I don’t know. Maybe she was a refugee from another seastead nearby. Or maybe this was a cruel and unusual death sentence. Not by a court, but by, I don’t know, the woman’s spouse. Drove her out here in a boat, blindfolded, and then left her here with no supplies.

  India is far away.

  There are lots of Indians in Oman and Yemen. Shit, there are lots of Indians in Africa. They could have come from Djibouti and said, “Walk home, bitch.”

  I’ve never been to Djibouti. It looks like a nice place.

  Yeah. I’m excited about it. And not just because it’ll be the first land I see in four months but because, I don’t know. Because for most of my life I hated Africa because of my parents getting killed, but now recently I love it because I want to get to the root of everything, and Djibouti becomes this sparkling magical place, but it’s only the antechamber, the doorstep to Ethiopia, which will be even more magical.

  Magical how?

  It’s the last chamber. The ultimate chamber. I can go to the physical place where my parents were murdered, and look at it, and be okay, and keep going. Life will continue.

  It didn’t for the woman in the golden sari.

  I get that.

  (You say nothing.)

  You know, Mohini, she looked just like you.

  (You say nothing.)

  She looked like you right when I left, and you weren’t responding to me. You were just limp, and your head was falling off the bed. And your eyes were barely open, like you were tired.

  You say nothing, but you don’t have to because, just then, I come across another body on the Trail, and it’s the same one. It’s yours.

  Sensory deprivation again: what I see in my head manifests. I step over it and keep going. Chambers are chambers.

  Team Fourteen

  The five wounds in my chest still haven’t healed. But it’s not because I haven’t taken medicine. It’s because I’ve started to worry them. Their cultivation has become a comfort, something I sow and reap on a daily basis. I pick them, they bleed, I apply dressing, I go to sleep. When I wake up they’re scabbed over again. A self-perpetuating recreational activity.

  At sunset I see a boat coming up from the south. They’re on an intercept course. This doesn’t feel like a film set. This has the ring of a dream.

  A beautiful bare-chested man at the bow waves to me. I return the wave. The boat slows down as it approaches the Trail and I see it contains two other people, a woman and a man. They make a radiant trinity. The woman has planted her foot on the starboard railing and her long hair ripples in the wind. The other man is carrying two palm cameras and turns both his hands gently back and forth like he’s waving in a beauty pageant.

  The first man says,

  ENGLISH: Do you speak English? Or French?
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br />   “You can speak whatever you want,” I say in English. “I have a glotti.”

  TAHITIAN: Oh, thank goodness. I only have to use a tenth the brainpower. Greetings to you, traveler! Could you use coconut milk? We just restocked at Soqotra.

  Yes, I think, this is not quite real somehow. But it’s another chamber, like the pirate radio station. I have to pass through it.

  “Sure,” I say. “My kiln can’t program that.”

  The boat sidles up to the Trail and the two men moor it with a magnetic anchor. Then the woman hands me a cup of coconut milk and I drink it. They stare at me as I drink.

  TAHITIAN: Look how big her eyes are.

  TAHITIAN: Idiot! She can understand you.

  “My eyes are big?”

  “You look like you have too little flesh for your frame,” says the muscled goddess.

  “I’ve been walking a long time.”

  “All the way from Mumbai?”

  “Yep.”

  “Smashing! May we join you for a rest?”

  “Sure.”

  Their faces light up and they scramble onto the Trail. All of them are adept at balancing. I sit down cross-legged on the Trail and the three of them sit down across from me, the same way, the woman in the middle. I feel like I’m sitting across from three life-sized action figures.

  “I’m Milton,” says the first man.

  “I’m Aish,” says the woman.

  “I’m Greg,” says the second man.

  “Durga,” I say.

  “May we film you?” asks Greg, the one with the two palm cameras.

  “What for?”

  “We’re making a documentary about our quest.”

  “Wow. First tell me what your quest is.”

  Aish nods to Greg and Greg turns off his palm cameras and folds his hands in his lap.

  “We’re watching for the wave,” says Aish.

  I wait for more words that don’t come. “Just one?”

  “The signs are very clear. The tipping point is near. A time bomb could go off any day: the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The collapse of La Palma. An earthquake anywhere in the world, which will trigger a tsunami of unimaginable proportions.”

  “And you want to see it happen.”

  “We don’t just want to see it happen. We want to surf it.”

  Milton offers his hand to me. “Nordi Team Number Fourteen, Arabian Sea. Pleased to meet you.”

  The dream gets a dash of reality, now that they mention something as concrete as Nordi, the Norwegian bottled-water brand. These days they add ingredients that make your whole gastrointestinal tract feel icy, then warm. Mohini couldn’t drink it because it gave her a rash.

  “You’re all going to surf it?”

  “No,” says Aish, “Just Milton. Greg is our cameraman. I’m the captain of Team Fourteen. There are other teams scattered all over the world.”

  “North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, West Indian, East Indian, Mediterranean,” says Greg. “And the poor shivering bastards patrolling Antarctica.”

  “Though they may well be the victors,” says Milton solemnly.

  “If the glacier goes? You bet,” says Aish.

  “Imagine it,” says Milton, gripping my forearm, a gesture that seems too familiar for our acquaintance. “First you hear a peal of thunder that never ends. It just grows, getting louder and louder. Then you feel a trembling in the waters and the surface begins to vibrate even though there’s no rain or wind. Then the thunder dies away and the vibrations settle and you hear and feel nothing. And then the wave appears.”

  Greg has started filming again. “That’s beautiful, beautiful,” he says, interweaving his hands.

  “Don’t point those things at me,” I say.

  “No, of course not,” he murmurs, not looking at me.

  “How do you know when and where it’ll be?” I say.

  “We don’t,” says Aish, who is now drinking her own cup of coconut milk. Where did it come from? It seems like I have gaps in my memory. “But we have access to the earthquake warning grid on the seafloor. Certain predictive factors can tell us when and where a major quake is about to happen. Then we model where the water’s going to well up, and speed like hell to intersect it.”

  Milton stands, feet braced, gazing west. We all look up at him. Greg positions his hands so that he looks like a medieval shepherd worshipping the Baby Jesus of Milton’s ass.

  “I saw it in a dream,” says Milton. “The epicenter off the coast of Kerala, the sea bed thrusting up beneath the subcontinent, the displacement of new water up, up, up into a wall a thousand meters high, and we gun our noble little craft right into the swell, and Aish runs the tow rope with superhuman agility, and I let go and then I surf down, down, down the face of the great wave, riding over sea and reef alike, entire islands drowning beneath my feet, one long ride at the speed of sound, until at long last I surf ashore in Karachi or Mogadishu or whatever port dare remain in the face of this wave.”

  Aish is wiping tears from her eyes. Greg would be too, except he’s still angling his palm cameras and can’t spare a hand. “Beautiful,” he says. “That’s beautiful, Milt.”

  “Beautiful?” I say. “With so many people drowning? You sound like an asshole.”

  It’s as if I started waving a gun. All three of them jump back in an exaggerated but coordinated way.

  “How could you say that?” says Greg.

  “Our mission is pure,” says Aish.

  “Wave is destiny,” says Milton, who seems the most wounded.

  “If it’s what you want, good luck,” I say.

  Milton straightens and brushes off his bare chest as if brushing out wrinkles. “I thank you for that,” he says briskly. And then the three of them jump back in the boat and detach the magnetic anchors, and steer away without a backward glance. It’s then that I realize I didn’t even see a surfboard.

  Performance art, maybe, says Mohini in her golden sari.

  Mariama

  You Are Wonderful

  I became Gabriel’s guide in Ethiopia. But not in the sense that he paid or patronized me. Once he offered to pay for a meal as a way of saying thanks, but I didn’t want to feel indebted to him, so I forbade him to. I was with him because I chose to be, because I liked him and liked that he liked me. So he put his money away.

  Once I asked him, Do your friends care how much time you’re spending with an Ethiopian woman?

  The question seemed to agitate him, and he searched the sky looking like he was about to deliver an answer that would take several days, but I watched his face, and after a minute all of his thoughts collapsed in his head so that all he said to me was: Mariama, if they do, I don’t care.

  And so I left it alone.

  Soon after the listening party, we made a holiday of seeing Dinkenesh. As we made our way down Entoto Avenue from the university, the National Museum was on our right, set back from the road. There was a stately green courtyard and hyacinth trees blooming in rows. A woman in blue fatigues scanned us in. Gabriel gaped at the first exhibit, meant to impress, right as we walked in the door: a glorious golden throne draped with a cape and a crown. But I took his hand and led him down a flight of stairs into the darkened basement. Here, the exhibits were more modest to look at, but so much more important: fragments of bones and skulls, like the relics of saints. We were silent, reading each caption, then moving on to the next. There was no one else there.

  I didn’t rush him. In fact, Yemaya, it felt like the day you and I spent wandering the Royal Enclosure in Gonder. We didn’t have to say anything. We just wandered, happy, in a garden of stone.

  When we finally entered the room where Dinkenesh was, walking toward us, always in mid-stride, Gabriel pressed his palms together and bowed to her, saying Namaste, Amma.

  Then we stood side by side looking at her.

  I could feel the thrumming of the power generators below our feet. I felt I could go to sleep in this room. I coul
d curl up on this floor with Gabriel, this strange man who felt so familiar, and hold his hand beneath Dinkenesh’s shadow.

  Then an Ethiopian man came into the room. He was wearing a name tag that said ADAM and his face resembled a goat skull. He said, May I help you? Do you need a guide? Can I tell you about Dinkenesh?

  I said no, thank you. I could see Gabriel also felt that way, but didn’t want to be rude to an Ethiopian man.

  But how will you know what you’re seeing? he said. I can tell you what you’re seeing. Only a hundred birr for a guide.

  I felt anger swelling in my body. I didn’t need anyone to tell me what I was seeing. I said with the voice of the kreen: No, thank you.

  He flinched as if I were about to hit him. He backed away. He was halfway out the door when he flung his arm toward Dinkenesh and said, That’s not really her, you know. It’s a replica. They made it out of plaster.

  He paused, then added, But you could be forgiven for thinking it’s her.

  Then he left us alone.

  The Golden Meaning

  One day, I instructed Gabriel to meet me at Delhi Café on Taitu Street, a magnet for expat Indians that he was sure to know. It was another cloudless, dry evening in Addis, and the sky had turned lilac to match the hyacinth trees. We set off from the café and climbed a steep, winding hill until we reached an asphalt plateau, upon which stood a vast villa in the Italian style, flanked by stately rows of flags.

  The Sheraton? he said, with amusement.

  I said yes, with a note of reproach that hushed him.

  You see, Yemaya, the Sheraton was another one of my sacred spots. It was the place I’d stayed when I won the poetry contest. I had had a roommate named Tigist, and we were both required to write thank-you cards to the Chinese corporations that had sponsored our trips. But it was the first time I really, truly glimpsed the future. I saw how the rest of the modern world lived. There was no television like the one I knew from the orphanage; instead, at the command of my voice, the entire wall became a living screen. The first night of our trip, Tigist and I stayed up until four o’clock in the morning with our backs against the headboards of our beds, watching shows from all over the world, having arranged our pillows into separate “houses,” and only communicating by opening a pillow “window” and speaking through it.