The Devil Is a Black Dog (7 page)

The street had been blocked off by a military truck, and we wouldn’t be able go around it without attracting their attention. Mustafa spat on the ground and turned off the engine, then leaned against the handlebars. “We’ll wait,” he said. “The restaurant isn’t going anywhere.” He was my fixer, a Muslim. He had arranged my stay in the city.

We’d wanted to spend my last day in Chad quietly. He had decided to treat me to some local cuisine. The restaurants were on the city’s main street. We traveled on his motorcycle, as usual. Because of the truck, however, we would have to wait. From where I sat behind Mustafa, I watched the scene as it unfolded.

Without a word the three men stood by the wall; only their skin had become a bit paler and sweat beaded through their shirts. The woman began to shout. The man in the red cap kicked her legs out from under her. As she fell her shirt burst open, her breasts spilling out like two black water pouches. The other soldiers got a kick out of this and let loose with boisterous laughter. A smile broke out on the commander’s lips, flashing snow-white teeth.

“What language are they speaking?” I asked Mustafa.

“Zaghawa, I think.”

The conscripts slapped their knees as they laughed, pointing at the woman lying in the dirt. The woman began kissing the commander’s black boots. The man enjoyed this for a bit, but when the woman wouldn’t quit, he bent down and picked her up in his arms. The woman stood without protest. Her face was gleaming with tears. The commander said something to her.

“What’s he saying?”

“I don’t know.”

The man extended his arm and pointed toward a car. With her head hung, the woman began toward it. She took a few uncertain steps, then stopped and looked back. The commander held his pose and mumbled something. The woman picked up
her pace to the gate, pushed it open, and fled. The conscripts laughed loudly, and clicked their tongues to make their pleasure known. The man grinned widely. The other three prisoners stood silently by the wall.

The commander said a few words to the conscripts leaning against the truck. They took their rifles from their shoulders. These were Chinese-made Kalashnikov knock-offs, their wooden stocks oily from regular use. They cocked their weapons; we could well hear the click of the piston. They were taking their time. When they carried out these maneuvers they casually held their rifles under their arms. The commander fished his cigarettes from the pocket of his fatigues. He took one from the Fine Rouge pack, and then passed out cigarettes to the eager soldiers. The man lit up, then turned toward the prisoners. He said something and offered them cigarettes as well.

He stepped over to the detainees, smiled, and gave each one a smoke. They smiled and began to relax. The commander wiped his brow. As he walked back toward the conscripts he unsnapped the leather holster of his gun.

He held his pistol in front of him and examined it, perhaps to make sure it was loaded. Halfway toward the conscripts, he turned, extended his arm, and fired.

The sound of the shot echoed off the wall of the palace, and the birds burst from the trees. The commander had outstanding aim. The first prisoner was hit from ten yards, shot in the head, the bullet finding the forehead, passing through the skull, then caught by the wall behind. He died with a lit cigarette in his mouth. The other two men stared in shock. Then their instincts kicked in and they began to run.

They didn’t reach the paved road alive. The commander sent a bullet into each of them. They were brought down by a shot in the back. On the ground their legs still kicked.

The commander reholstered his weapon, went to the truck, and got in. He noticed us and smiled, then signaled to the soldier next to him to drive. The motor kicked to life and in under a minute all we saw was the vehicle’s disappearing outlines.

The remaining soldiers opened the gate and dragged the corpses away by their hands, heads bumping against the red dirt. In minutes the street was empty. The onlookers returned to chewing their betel, only that now the air was a bit sweet with the smell of fresh blood.

Mustafa kickstarted the motorcycle and we took off. We left the presidential palace behind, riding past tin huts and shops. It was already the dry season; the sky was an otherworldly blue. The wind caught our shirts as we rode, and I felt a little faint.

“We’ll have fish, that’s what I feel like eating,” Mustafa said and turned from the main road toward Lake Chad. The air smelled of mud.

We came to a stop in front of a white adobe house, got off the bike, and went into the courtyard. White plastic seats and tables were set out on the beaten ground. There were no other customers. A Muslim woman in a flower-print scarf came to take our order. Mustafa chose for us fish with rice and a spicy tomato-pepper stew. He took out a cigarette, lit up, and offered me one. We smoked one each in silence.

“Are you still thinking about them?” asked Mustafa. “You look pale.”

“Yeah. Who were they?”

“I don’t know. They had the forehead scars of the Sara tribe.”

“And that’s why they killed them?”

“Perhaps.”

“Why did they let the woman go?”

“I don’t know.”

“For fun?”

“Perhaps.”

“They must have had a reason to kill them.”

“We’ll never know. It’s useless to think about. Look at it this way: though they’re dead, we are about to eat very well.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Especially because you are off to the frontier soon.”

We went quiet. The woman came out and set plastic plates of food in front of us. Mustafa rolled up his sleeves, tore off a piece of bread, and used it to pinch up a piece of fish, which he dipped in the spicy stew.

“Aren’t you eating?”

“I lost my appetite.”

“Because of the execution?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll get used to this. And you will forget this. Now eat.”

I ate. Then I left for Darfur, and from there went back to Europe, then to the Gaza Strip, Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, and beyond. It took six years. He was right, I got used to it, though I never forgot that execution. You never forget your first.

T
he roof terrace, sir?” asked the hotel doorman. He was in the regulation red uniform with gold-colored buttons and a little black hat.

“Yes,” I said. My smartphone buzzed in my pocket. I involuntarily checked to see what it was. Some girl commenting on Facebook; nothing interesting. But the device was useful in that it allowed me to cut short any further small talk with the receptionist. I didn’t want him to ask how I was, what I did for a living, or why I was in the country. I didn’t want to see him smile insincerely as he asked what I needed, then linger until I forked up a few coins as
baksheesh.

A couple was also waiting for the elevator. I knew they were tourists, because they were in shorts, and only tourists wear shorts in Cairo. That’s because everything gets coated by the dust and dirt kicked up from the street. And due to the unfathomable standards of Arab formality, nobody takes a person in shorts seriously, even in the city center. I’ve never liked tourists.

The elevator arrived quietly. Its door opened and we got in. My jacket felt tight around my arms; my muscles were sore after a two-hour workout at Gold’s Gym. I looked in the elevator mirror and was pleased with what I saw. I was muscular but not overly buff. I was pressing two hundred pounds these days.

The doorman pushed the button for the fourteenth floor and the doors closed. As the piano version of “My Heart Will Go On” trickled quietly from the speakers, I reflected on whose decision it was to choose the music that plays in five-star hotel elevators. Why Vivaldi in the Four Seasons, Clayderman in the Hilton, but Celine Dion in the Marriot? Whose job was it to select the music that distracts a person’s attention from the fact that they are racing up and down in a metal coffin at high speeds?

The doors opened at my floor. The terrace was bathed in afternoon light and the sound of gurgling water traveled down the leather-chair-lined corridor that led to the pool. The light wind blowing over the Nile brought with it the smell of mud.

Blue-and-white-striped patio umbrellas fluttered in the breeze. Just a few people sat at the bamboo tables beneath them, mostly Saudis. I cut across the pool area and headed for the bar. There stood a waiter named Omar, his shirt unbuttoned to his chest. He smiled broadly when he saw me. Omar and I were tight. I had been paying my respects at the bar for almost half a year now.

Omar was once an activist with the April 6th Movement. During the revolution he would talk about true democracy and the democratic transition.

After the army outlawed the April 6th Movement, he stopped talking about politics and took to drink. I knew this because his skin had begun to yellow, like that of all Arab drinkers. Their systems simply can’t process alcohol properly.

“Whisky or daiquiri?”

“Daiquiri.”

Omar nodded and took a bottle of Havana rum from the shelf. He poured a jigger into the blender, added ice cubes, and ground three limes onto a metal juicer that skillfully extracted the seeds. He shook the drink, poured it into a goblet, and then added sugarcane syrup.

“How was Sinai?” he asked, setting the glass in front of me.

“Good.”

“It wasn’t too hot?”

“It was. In Rafah it was up around 115 degrees.”

“Did you see any tanks?”

“Yes. A few. There was fighting in El Arish.”

“What kind?”

“The Bedouins kept the police building under fire for around eight hours.”

“Damned Bedouins. I can’t stand them.”

“So the army came to restore order.”

“Indeed, if the army showed up, order will follow.”

My smartphone buzzed.

“Sorry,” I said. Omar nodded and went to do some washing up.

The bank had sent a text. Two thousand dollars had arrived in my account; a pay transfer from the newspaper I worked for. I disconnected from both the mobile network and the Internet. I didn’t want to hear from anybody. I looked at the cocktail in front of me, the condensation clinging to its side, and reflected that this had been my twelfth mission. I’d gotten it done, just like always. Not everybody could say the same. The fleeting image of Harvey Dabbs came to mind. In the Tibesti Hotel, in Benghazi, he was holding forth on the importance of prayer. We were drinking Johnny Walker, which they sold under the bar. The whole place was sloshed on it.

“You know, this is my fifteenth war,” said Dabbs. “I’m in with God. I even have my own prayer. In this profession, you
have to pray. ‘Our father who art in heaven / hallowed be thy name / thy kingdom come/ thy will be done/ In war we earn our daily bread/ just don’t shoot us with your “50s” / vests or not those buggers leave us dead.’”

“Amen,” said everybody and applauded loudly.

A few days later, the Gadhafi loyalists began to shell Misrata, and Harvey Dabbs was killed. It was a stupid death, like every death in war. A car bomb had exploded next to him while he was photographing the rebels’ advance. Three of us went to identify his corpse in the garage they were using as a morgue. Only his upper torso remained; the rest was lost to the explosion or stray dogs.

I pondered whether I should raise my glass to God’s sense of humor or another stupid death. “To a stupid death,” I said, and drank. I’d drink to a pointless idiotic death because, unlike God, it’s something I have seen with my own eyes. The daiquiri went down well. I like to drink. It’s good to drink after a war, during a war, before a war. It is good to drink with friends, to the death of friends, to childbirth, children’s deaths, engagements and broken engagements, betrayal, quitting smoking, love. It’s always good to drink. I signaled Omar to make me another. I looked up, gazed at the patio umbrellas rippling in the wind, the sand-colored Cairo rooftops, and laundry hung from the windows.

The second cocktail finally washed the taste of the desert from my mouth. I took out my smartphone and loaded the game
Sid Meier’s Pirates!
I thought I should keep busy even if I had no real work. I had downloaded the game for free from the company’s site; I got it as a bonus when I reached five gigabites of downloads the previous month, 200 dollars’ worth.

I had begun to play the game the night before, to fill the six-hour trip from El Arish to Cairo. In the game you are a pirate captain. The goal is to retire with the most points by battling other pirates and marrying into aristocracy.

We got caught in a sandstorm on our way back through the desert. When this happens you can’t see anything of the road, because the air is full of dark whirling sand. Nobody was in the mood to talk, so I just played. I began the game as an English buccaneer. It was going well for a few hours, but I kept getting stuck when I tried to take Trinidad. Four frigates from my flotilla with four hundred trained pirates waited in vain to attack, unable to overcome the tricky winds the game threw at us. I tried everything I could with the touchscreen, but my ships could only bob futilely in the sea as the city’s red fortress showered them with fire.

I had to take Trinidad at all costs if I wanted to end the game with maximum points. In Trinidad there was money, Spanish silver, the governor’s daughter. Everything you need to win. It bothered me that I couldn’t find a solution, because I wanted to make the game’s Hall of Champions.

I hate when I can’t finish what I start. It saddens me to think I let an opportunity pass me by.

The menu came up on the screen and I killed the sound. I loaded my saved settings and began to direct the fleet, but again the wind worked against me. My entire fleet was sunk twice. I wondered if the problem was the weight, as there must be some reason the game notes just how much freight the boats carry.

Instead of frigates I need some lighter boats
, I thought.
Lighter boats, which maneuver quickly, even in bad wind.

“I think somebody’s looking for you,” said Omar, taking my empty glass. I turned. By the pool stood Alistair Bleakly, the
Independent
’s newly hired correspondent. He didn’t look good. He was wearing the same clothing he had on yesterday in the desert. He hadn’t shaved and his leather jacket sparkled with sand. I waved him over.