Dirty Feet - Edem Awumey [31]
Zak whistled. “Shit! See you later, friend. Be careful, the Cell is looking for us!” At this point he punched Askia in the face. The light grew stronger. Zak fled, vanishing into the shadows behind Askia. Into the night. Askia heard footsteps on the grass. He sat up and shifted backwards on his rear end. He raised his elbow, trying to shield his eyes against the beam of the flashlight. The policeman questioned him. He had been cruising when he saw quick flashes of light in the wood. His partner ran up behind him. Askia explained that a thief had mugged him and tried to kill him. He had picked him up thinking he was an ordinary fare. The policeman with the flashlight held out his hand. He clasped it and hoisted himself to his feet. The officer told him he’d been lucky. Probably his number hadn’t come up. Once he had lodged a complaint, Askia could go to the hospital to have them take care of the bump over his right eye. He would have to follow them to the station in his cab. The one who had found him shone the light on his face again. He wanted to make sure he was not too badly beaten. But Askia wasn’t listening. He was far away. Isolated in a cell. Inside the walls of the past.
35
THE CELL WAS a murky organization. Unofficial intelligence body, militia specialized in kidnapping, torture, and murder. The standard mission statement. Askia was a member and his role was to keep things under control. To keep the populace quiet. He had volunteered for this work, which involved total engagement in what was, what is a program of purges. He was to observe and report, and in the course of many nights on the job he had become a ripper, whose weapons were his efficiency, his hands, a revolver, a belt of explosives, a taxi called “The Passage,” a steadfast will, ironclad insensitivity, and indifference.
He had joined on an October night in 1984 because the money was good. Just what was needed to avoid relying on his student bursary, which came as often as rain in the desert. Just what was needed to fatten up that all too paltry purse. Just what was needed to pay for the operation on a sick mother, exhausted by housework in other people’s homes in the real city perched high above their slum. But in the lower part of town the mother breathed her last, and the son’s ultimate efforts to raise the money for an operation were left hanging.
The Cell. He was to be a cab driver like any other. Pick up fares and ask them harmless questions. And if they turned out to be rebels who found fault with the government, eliminate them, silence the stinking mouths whose words were fouling the atmosphere. Tarnishing the country’s name and image. People incapable of truly loving the country because they had no country. Troublemakers. Vermin. Schemers, enemies, envious of the nation’s accomplishments — that is what the Powers said of them. And how could they not be envious, since they had no nation. He was to eliminate all the political adventurers. With the night and the darkness as accomplices. He had his badge and he moved like a cat among the shadows. Or rather, he had to make the night his element and make a career of hunting down idle, irresponsible globetrotters. His job: drive the rebels far outside the city, where the downtown lights were no longer visible, where his passengers could not be seen, strap the explosive belt onto them, and, sitting in his taxicab, push the button.
His past. A deserted night, an empty lot, a vehicle in the night, the driver holding a box, a red button, a finger — more specifically, the thumb — on the button, the thumb pressing down on the button and the adventurer’s belly exploding just a stone’s throw from the taxi. A death dirge to decorate the silence of the streets and the ghosts’ laments.
Because that was what he was — a maker of ghosts and death works. The suspect passengers, the ones he made disappear, had to be dispossessed of the thickness of the living. They became a mirage of the living. Nonentities.