Dirty Feet - Edem Awumey [38]
The man moved away from the fence and went off towards the metro on the Boulevard Saint-Michel.
Askia sat down on the curb. Had the man been referring to Olia? Had he possibly seen her leave? He stood up again. To run after the man and ask him if he had seen his friend. But he had second thoughts and sat back down. He had the letter. Opened it. His hands began to tremble again. He pulled out from the envelope a sheet of blue paper and recognized Olia’s script from the notes he had seen on the back of her photos. It was too dark to read. He moved over to the nearest street lamp in front of the park fence. The light shone down on the paper and Olia’s words.
44
THE STREET lamp illuminated the paper and the black jackets. Their steel rods gleamed as they advanced towards Askia. They walked swiftly, and Askia’s eyes were on the letter. From the shadow of a lone tree deep in the park came a melancholy birdsong. The first skinhead quickened his pace, and Askia knew he would not have time to finish the letter and at the same time that he could not accept what was happening without having read the letter.
The first skinhead was moving fast and Askia started to run. He clasped Olia’s message against his chest.
Askia,
This is not a letter but an admission of failure. I thought I would be able to stay, but it has taken hold of me again. Already in Sofia we were the Gypsies, the black-haired, dirty outsiders, with our scattered world and our destiny bartered to the gods of the caravan.
The skinheads were moving fast. Ahead, the street was long and straight. The three men laughed and blustered:
“Hey, boys, should we let him run for a bit?”
“The cops have been through this area. They won’t be back here for a while!”
“Keep running, nigger — that’s something you know how to do! Racing, like an Ethiopian marathon runner!”
“Go on, run! Hey, what does your letter say?”
When I grew up, I didn’t want to be the stranger with the dirty hair. I ran away. And I started taking photographs, putting together albums as a way to tie together my pictures, my dispersed lives, all those gobbled up by my Leica, as evidence of a failure. Apparently the striving endures, the desire endures — to create the connection, the bridge between the different shores of our lives, our wandering lives.
There were no bends in the street, no cross streets or alleys where Askia might hide long enough to finish reading the letter. Just this street that would not end, and if there were side streets, he was running too hard to notice. If he turned his head right or left, the leather jackets would catch up with him. They seemed to have decided not to let him keep running, and a thought occurred to him — Stop and negotiate: “Guys, I just need a little time to read the letter. Then you can go ahead . . .”
Not to check out without having seen what Olia had written.
The forms of my prints, my life, my mornings, my nights are breaking apart. They’re liquefying because they carry within them lines of conflict. My conflicts, my memory, shattered, lying in pieces along the roads of my escape.
And this endless asphalt that would not run out, this street that would not run its course but which began to narrow, to gradually turn into a corridor, and he told himself that if it became a bottleneck it would pressure them and they would put an end to the whole thing. His knees were about to give out. He felt it. It looked as if the black jackets were also beginning to tire. The front-runner complained, “Hey! Marathon man! We didn’t learn to run in the Kenyan mountains! We don’t have specially baked feet! Stop so we can finish