MALI: The Beginning (The Puppets of Washington Book 3)

Chapter 7

Chapter 7The aircraft landed at Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport in the middle of the night. Talya had not been there in many years. What she remembered of Dakar’s airport—formerly known as Yoff’s Airport—had nothing to do with what she saw when she alighted from the plane. The terminal building was modern, well organized and very well lit. A bus came to fetch the passengers from the aircraft and carried them two hundred yards to the entrance marked ‘arrivals’.

She walked in with the herd toward the immigration desks. She filled out the forms and after fifteen minutes of waiting in line, she presented her passport to a man in khaki uniform. He stamped the first blank page available, asked her where she was staying and waved her to move on. Abdul Rasheed had told her that he (or someone) would meet her in the arrivals’ lounge. She doubted she could rely on that promise. She was right. There was a handful of people waiting for passengers and holding pieces of cardboard with the name of their party on it. None remotely resembled hers.

Coming out of the immigration enclosure, Talya was assailed by porters; they wanted to take everything she carried and help her through the baggage check and customs’ formalities. She did not want any help. She knew that accepting any assistance would lead these boys to ask for tips—not merely asking—but demanding more than a hand-out. She took her time, making tracks out of the sweat-smelling crowd, pushing, shoving, and grabbing her suitcase from the carrousel without too many hassles. She even got a trolley, which wasn’t leashed onto a porter, and in a few moments, she had her luggage examined, tagged by a burly customs’ officer, and was out of the airport.

The next hurdle was to find a taxi that would carry her belongings and her safely to the hotel. Usually, in almost every country in the world, this is a very simple task; not in Africa, and certainly not in Dakar. She took a cursory glance at the series of wrecks lined-up near the curb and shook her head. None of them appeared to be able to travel any distance safely, let alone make a twenty-mile journey to town. The taxi-men beckoned and shouted. Since there are always men but almost never any woman coming off a flight wanting a car at this time of night, Talya became the perfect prey.

“Which hotel, ma’am?”

“How much you pay me?”

“We go to the service station then we go to the hotel, yes?”

“I take French money, d’you have any?”

Among the yellow heaps, closer to the sidewalk, Talya picked one, which she hoped would hold together long enough to take her to town. She called out to the driver. “How much to the Terranga?”

“For you, ma’am, 20,000CFA.” he demanded.

$40 to be carted around in that wreck! “I don’t think so.” Talya said mockingly. “I’ll give you 3,000CFA and a thousand more if you get me there in a half-an-hour.”

As the cabby shrugged his shoulders and turned away, she saw another chauffeur approach. Sadly, he looked hungry enough to take her offer. His vehicle resembled something rescued from the wrecking yard, but the man had a face she wanted to trust.

“Let’s go, ma’am.” said the old man.

Talya climbed in the back seat, a cloud of dust puffing around her as she sat down.

After bouncing at trotting speed along the highway for nearly an hour, they arrived at the hotel safe-and-sound. She paid the driver the promised fare and gave him the extra thousand CFA for his honesty. As she walked up the steps leading to the entrance, a porter came out and offered to carry her luggage.

“Thank you” Talya said when he picked up her suitcase as if it were a mere shopping bag. When you’re over six feet tall and weigh about three-hundred pounds, you can do that sort of thing.

As she entered the air-conditioned lobby, the cool air enveloped her with a balm of freshness, which only served to remind her how tired she was. She walked to the desk, stood by the counter and was rightfully ignored. She was a woman travelling alone in a Muslim country; consequently, she had to assert her presence by waiting her turn stoically and refrain from speaking until spoken to. In so doing, and in due time, she would be noticed as a discreet person to whom respect should be granted without reserve. She waited.

By the front desk, which was an elaborate affair stretching at least fifteen feet from one end to the other, a few men, dressed in the traditional thawbs or djellabas (ankle length close-fitting or loose garments), seemed just to hang-around even at this late hour. Across from the desk, some people were sitting in couches and chairs drinking tea, while others appeared to be involved in agitated palavers. Beyond these mini-salons there were half-dozen shops and boutiques, a souvenir shop and a travel agency among them. Tucked in a corner, there was a small ‘Business Office’, which appeared to be fully equipped with the latest computers and communication tools. Another two shops, a bookshop and a Salon de Beauté ended the row farther along a hallway, leading somewhere outdoors to the gardens or perhaps the swimming pool.

As expected, and finally, the clerk turned to her and began the registration process. When he asked how long Talya intended to stay, “Will it be for the night or the weekend?” she had no idea, since no one had been at the airport to meet her.

“One night only.” she replied.

“Very well, Madame, and welcome to the Terranga. We wish you a pleasant stay.”

Key in hand she made her way to the elevator and let the porter carry her bags upstairs to the room.

Even then, in darkness, the view of the ocean from the balcony promised to be exquisite at sunrise.

Talya felt good to have made the decision to stay in Dakar for a while. It might have been for the one night only, yet, it was a welcome break before reaching the impending problems in Bamako.

She unpacked a change of clothes, took a shower and slipped into her nightshirt. She was numb. Having left Vancouver so quickly and already being in Africa felt unreal somehow. She lay down, intending to read a few pages of a book she had picked up at the airport before leaving, but she could not concentrate and soon fell asleep.

In the morning, she woke up facing magnificent scenery. The ocean glistening under the morning sun, colours of turquoise and emeralds, was simply altogether peaceful and awesome. Straddling the swells or coursing the rolling waves, there were fishermen precariously standing in their pirogues throwing nets out and dragging-in others laden with the early catches. One could see the schools of fish lacing the teal sea with huge dark patches.

Somehow, the fishers knew where to throw the nets ahead of the next rush.

After a shower and devouring a light breakfast on the terrace, Talya felt very much restored and ready to phone Monsieur Hjamal to see if they could meet before the end of the day. If possible, she wanted to take the evening flight to Bamako. However, this was Saturday and no one answered the office phone.

At his home, a woman answered. She did not speak French or English—only Waloff, the local dialect. Talya had never learned to speak any of the regional languages but she could understand a few words or the meaning of some expressions. In this case, she was told that Monsieur Hjamal was not in (or was it “not in town”?) and she was asked, told grudgingly rather, to ring his cousin. His cousin? What am I supposed to say to his cousin? Nevertheless, Talya took down the number the woman gave her and dialled it as soon as she hung up. Again, a woman answered.

“No, Ahmed not here. Please phone later.”

What is this? Frustration began to settle on her thoughts. Hjamal must have been informed of my arrival, or had he? If he was aware that she was in town, he had no excuse to behave like this. After all, he was the one asking for help, not Talya.

What am I supposed to do now? She needed to leave Dakar. She loved its intrinsic beauty but she could not afford the time to enjoy it. There were a few hours to spare before going back to the airport, so Talya decided to go to the artisans’ market and perhaps purchase a few souvenirs. She was never big on souvenirs. She just liked the atmosphere of the place. It brought back memories, some ugly, some fond.

The crowds, the brouhaha of the narrow lanes, the booths-like cages in the jewellers’ row, even the abattoirs, as horrible as they were, in the middle of the food stalls and the stench of life and death permeated her every pore. Talya was a girl of fourteen then. They were all teenagers of different colours but of one heart, and amid the misery of it all, each afternoon spent at the market had provided a pleasant break from the harshness of her childhood. Together with her schoolmates, they would buy peanuts and cornballs from squatting women in the lanes or go behind the jewellers’ stands, where the old men were melting gold and copper in small crucibles over charcoal cradles. The patience of these people always fascinated Talya. It took hours to tat the gold threads. In the end, filigreed pendants, rings, bracelets, necklaces were on display in modest makeshift cases for everyone to admire and to buy. In those days, European tourists would come in numbers to purchase the jewellers’ pieces at a fraction of the price of what they were in their country. Today, only a few people browse but do not buy.

It was early afternoon when the cab dropped Talya off at her destination. Immediately, a swarm of wretched boys rushed the car, begging for alms. Pennies would satisfy them, but if she gave a cent to one, a hundred more beggars would come out of the recesses of the slums nearby. As painful as it were to see such deprived children around her, imploring for smidgens of life, she had learned not to give anything to anyone.

Between two houses and under a small archway, Talya found the entrance of the market she knew well. She ambled along the meandering aisles and frayed her way through a busload of very tall, and very white, Dutch people. While browsing along the jewellers’ row, her gaze rested on a collection of stones shimmering from one of the display cases in a booth set apart from the others. As she was about to ask him, the young man behind the counter quickly assured her that every stone was genuine. Observing the disbelief that must have been written across Talya’s face, he explained that the stones were imported from Eastern or South Africa. Yet, she was sceptical and thought she would leave the mere boy to his treasures. She would not find out the significance of this little discovery until much later.

She walked on, visited other booths, other jewellers, and other artisans, and stopped at a little stall where a woman sold her a bissap juice, a delicious fruit-leaf tea, and some qatayif crepes filled with cheese and nuts.

Talya was taking pleasure in this walk down the market lanes of her memories, but soon came time for her to go back to the hotel, pick-up her suitcase and make her way to the airport in time for the next flight to Bamako.

She left the old woman perched on a stool in front of her minute bar and waved good-bye. She rushed out of the labyrinth and hailed a kerbside taxi.

Maybe there was a message from Hjamal or Rasheed that could keep her in Dakar a while longer? If truth were told, she was hoping to stay in Senegal somehow, just long enough to appease the premonition of evil that roamed her mind. However, the phone-message light was not blinking as she came in the room, neither man had left a word, and as hard as she tried to find an excuse to hang around, there was none.

When she reached the airport, she discovered the plane would be late arriving from Paris and, of course, it would be late leaving Dakar. The first hour went by easily enough. She ate a few sandwiches from the bar in the airline’s lounge, sat in one of the chairs, read several more pages of her book, and leafed through some of the magazines piled on a table nearby. The second hour was long and boring.

After six hours of uncomfortable sleep on a couch, the loudspeaker calling the passengers to the aircraft “now ready for boarding” awoke Talya rudely.