Borderlines

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

If you fly often, this may have happened to you. You’re stuck in Economy, folded awkwardly against a window, legs twined like pipe-cleaners, half awake. It’s dark outside, the window blind has been pulled down, and you’re where you hate being: five miles high, defying the laws of gravity and plain common sense. The slight ache in your feet, which have been pressing upwards into the bottom of the seat in front (someone, after all, has to do the hard work of keeping this machine aloft), confirms this fact. You are bitterly aware that the atmosphere inside the plane has turned into one troubled communal fart. And then, quite suddenly, it happens. With no real warning – perhaps a brief bumpiness you assume to be high-altitude turbulence – the plane makes impact. For a moment, you know that you are dying, because this mid-air collision, so high above the Earth, will leave no survivors, no body parts even. You convulse in your seat. You gasp aloud and your neighbour gives you a worried glance. And then your brain executes a massive feat of intellectual recalibration. You flick up the blind with a trembling hand. That’s the ground outside the window – zipping past you terrifyingly fast, it’s true, but in a controlled and orderly manner. This is a landing, you idiot. Sleeping, you missed the change in engine tone, the dipping of the nose, the minutes of what feel like freefall, the clunk of landing gear descending.

Landing in mid-air. A sobering exercise in shattered assumptions, the shock realisation of ludicrously false premises. When I look back on my time in Lira, it often seems like a version of that heart-stopping mid-flight experience, extended over the space of a year. Well, what can I say? Some people are just a bit slow to catch on.

1 (#ue0c2264a-f1aa-59c1-96be-dd33e121a479)

14 November 2005

By two a.m. the glare was really beginning to bother me. African airports don’t, on the whole, go in for soft lighting, and Lira International was no exception. I didn’t need a mirror to know what I looked like in the greenish-white light given off by the fluorescent strip running the length of the ceiling: baggy-eyed, sallow, prematurely old.

I lay on the stiff acrylic carpet, my bag under one ear as a makeshift pillow, hands between my knees, pretending to ignore my guard. He was actually in the next room, but the door had been propped open, and since most of the wall separating the two rooms was glass, he could see me without leaving his desk, where he sat reading a newspaper, occasionally sipping a glass of dark tea.

Earlier, I had gone through the outrage, shocked innocence and I-demand-an-explanation routine that seems de rigueur when a young white woman is suddenly, mysteriously, diverted from a path leading to a boarding gate, the trundle across the tarmac in the warm night air and then, aah, the microcosm of Western civilisation that is the modern aircraft, a little bubble of agreed conventions and soothing yogic rituals. I’d declaimed at considerable length on my key role in the Legal Office of the President. I’d dropped my boss’s name, demanded to speak to the presidential adviser and brandished my files, to emphasise how vital it was that I reach The Hague in time for the announcement of a historic ruling that would shape his country’s future.

Green Eyes, as I had mentally tagged him – like any good lawyer, I’d asked for his name but he’d only grunted – hadn’t turned a hair. The absence of reaction, in fact, was the most terrifying thing about the whole affair. An insincere apology, an attempt at intimidation, anything would have been better than the total lack of expression he’d shown as he had turned on me his light, limpid gaze – so disconcerting in this country of dark brown eyes – and said, ‘No flight for you tonight.’

He had taken me to identify my luggage so it could be removed from the pile. He had led me to Immigration to have my passport’s exit stamp crossed. He had walked me to the kiosk where I’d paid my airport tax to get the dollars returned. Each of these small transactions had been conducted in silence by the officials who had processed me twenty minutes earlier, this time without the friendly smiles. They knew now I was toxic, leprous. Then Green Eyes had brought me upstairs to this room, where the only furniture was a desk, pushed against the wall, and a plastic chair, and indicated I wait.

My first reaction had been to get out my mobile and start composing a text to Winston. I was just typing ‘detained at’ when Green Eyes held out his hand. I handed it over, unzipped my shoulder bag and took out my laptop as if to start it up. He held out his hand again, this time more brusquely, and I passed over my weathered Dell. ‘No computer. No mobile,’ said Green Eyes. ‘All is forbidden.’

Over the next hour and a half, I’d watched through the glass as the other passengers on the flight went through the routine I, too, had been planning: the pointless trawl of the airport shop in search of suitable presents (biography of Julius Nyerere, anyone? Copy of the Ministry of Health’s five-year plan?), a beer at the bar, cigarette on the terrace, the cluster at the boarding gate, a final cursory search before disappearing through the doors.

A few threw curious, embarrassed glances in my direction. Wasn’t that the deputy director of UNHCR, the UN refugee agency? I’d certainly met that blond young man – Norwegian Embassy? Danish? One of the Scandies, in any case – at some party. But I did not call out. ‘All is forbidden’ had somehow done its work. I was already aware of a film between me and my fellow expatriates, the gelatinous membrane that separates the innocent from the compromised. A strange shame held me back, the conviction that they would have walked on past me as I mouthed my silent appeal.

‘Come,’ said Green Eyes. I followed his beckoning finger out of the room, past the café-bar, now closing, and across to the terrace, which looked out over one of the least-used runways in Africa. Green Eyes pointed to where the Alitalia flight was turning on the tarmac, testing its flaps. I knew exactly what the atmosphere would be like on board. Some destinations specialise in jolly flights, others come tinged with relief, a few drenched in heartbreak. Flights from Lira always seemed infused with a certain grim pragmatism. No one aboard would be ending a wonderful holiday or laden with souvenirs. The airport was not the chosen port of departure for fleeing locals: too visible, too monitored. The expatriates, banking generous salaries for what was judged a hardship posting, would be heading off for briefings back at Headquarters, short breaks with semi-estranged wives and children parked at boarding-school. They would be back all too soon.

The plane hurtled past the terminal building. Heading out across the plateau, it wheeled until its nose pointed north-west. I could almost hear the clink of the mini-bar bottles as the air stewards handed out the required anaesthetics, tucking a few extras into seatbacks. A few minutes later, it was no more than a winking light in the careless splatter of stars that was the Lira night sky. Green Eyes savoured my expression, his point made. I was on my own.

‘Come,’ he said again. We walked back to my holding area, where my turquoise case crouched, like a giant scarab beetle. Funny how you can come to hate an inanimate object. In one of those side pockets nestled the passports, cash and academic certificates that I assumed lay at the root of this whole sorry affair. Someone, it was clear, had blabbed. I could guess who that might be.

For a while, I sat in the plastic chair. After an hour, buttocks numb, I moved to the floor, draping myself strategically over the case – a girl needs a pillow, no? I put my coat over my head to shield my eyes from the light and under that screen, my hands got working. At the very least, I needed to separate the money – an aromatic wodge of hundred-dollar bills – from the rest. I could claim personal ownership of the cash, even if that meant admitting to breaking currency regulations. The passports and certificates were another matter. Maybe there was somewhere in the airport I could dump the incriminating evidence. With infinite slowness, I opened the zipper into the bag’s side-pocket, closed my hands on the documents and slipped them up the sleeve of my sweater.

When I removed the coat from my head, Green Eyes was staring at me. Had he noticed the wriggling? ‘I need to go to the Ladies,’ I said.

‘Come.’

I followed him down the corridor. Three sinks, dripping taps, the smell of bleach, more bad lighting and a wall-to-wall mirror, which confirmed that, yes, I did indeed resemble a warmed-up corpse. Disconcertingly, Green Eyes did not make his excuses. I entered one of the cubicles, locked the door, sat down without dropping my trousers. Think! Where could I stow the documents? Down the drain? That would cause a flood. How about the cistern, Al Pacino-style? If Green Eyes had not followed me in, maybe. But he would certainly hear the scraping as I lifted the heavy porcelain lid. As for the Papillon solution, no orifice was going to accommodate two passports. I’d run out of ideas. I transferred the papers from my sleeve to my knickers and flushed the toilet. Then I walked past Green Eyes with my face set. Hollywood had failed me, as it tends to. If he wanted to find my cache, he would.

I resumed my previous position slouched over my bag. Green Eyes was playing it cool, so I would match him for insouciance. I would simply fall asleep from sheer boredom. But, of course, too many internal voices were clamouring to be heard. One was near-hysterical, something approaching a banshee shriek: ‘Oh, how could you? How could you – how could you do this to your parents? And what about Winston? After all he’s done? You stupid, stupid, stupid cunt.’

I began composing a speech, my last presentation. ‘I fully realise the mortifying position I have placed you in, and I can only apologise for that,’ it began. ‘Not only do I expect you to disassociate yourself from me, I demand it. I betrayed you personally and put the case at risk, both unforgivable acts. I have surrendered any claim to professionalism. No one else should pay the price for my rashness.’

The other voice was quieter, grimly realistic: ‘So, let’s think this through. To anticipate is to be strengthened. This is a pretty serious offence. Winston will fight for you, you know that, whatever you tell him. The embassy might try to help, but that could just make things worse. The one thing going for you is your skin colour. No government wants the Amnesty International press releases, the Human Rights Watch reports that go with torturing or executing people like you. Even this government. So we’re probably talking, if you’re lucky, a few years in a container on the coast. Can you handle that? Hottest place on earth. No privacy. Malaria. Cholera.’

A girding of the loins. And the answer that came back was a slight surprise: ‘Yes. Yes, I think I can.’

But then an image came to mind, of a rough sketch I’d spotted on Winston’s desk, drawn by a young man who had compensated for his limited artistic ability with a certain graphic brio. It showed someone lying on their stomach, back arched, knees bent, hands reaching behind to seize toes. In yoga, something similar is known as the Bow Pose, a good way of stretching the spine. In the enemy prisoner-of-war camp into which that youngster had had the misfortune to fall it was known as the ‘helicopter position’. The accompanying text, written by a doctor from the Red Cross, helpfully explained that the same technique was used in Iran, where it was called ‘the chicken kebab’, and in Latin America, where it was dubbed ‘the parrot’s perch’. It became intensely painful after a few minutes, the doctor wrote, and, if sustained, could cause deformed bones, deep sores and, in a few recorded cases, pulmonary embolism.

The doctor’s name, I remember, was Boronski. A Pole? I could remember the photos paper-clipped to the drawing, showing the welts and scars. The ugly Polaroids flashed across my mind’s eye, like lurid prompt cards. If the other side used that technique, you could be sure our boys did, too. And how about rape? Maybe I could handle it once, but repeatedly? Day in, day out? What would that be like? I remembered a newspaper article about a hospital in eastern Congo that treated male soldiers raped so often they’d had to use sanitary pads. But, hang on, this wasn’t Congo. What had Winston once said, explaining why it was important never to shout in the office? ‘This is a society where nothing is seen as more shaming than a loss of self-control.’ But now we were back to Winston again, and how he would react, my parents and their feelings, that tidal wave of mortification.

I briefly tried the line of argument that had powered me so effectively through the last few years. The one that ran: ‘Without Jake, there is nothing left to lose. There is nothing at stake.’ But despair no longer consoled. My anxiety scurried like a gerbil on a wheel. The passports had long ago shifted from pleasantly cool to clammily sticky against my skin. I tried some deep breathing, but my heart wouldn’t stop pounding, and my mouth was so dry that my lips kept sticking to my gums. At intervals, I lowered the coat off my face to ask Green Eyes for water, and once in a while, he ordered a colleague to fetch me a plastic beaker.

At a certain point, though, the adrenalin runs out. And then you find the peace of acceptance, the passivity of the internee. By the time I noticed that dawn was about to break, golden shards of light piercing the long grasses at the far end of the runway, I felt Valium-calm and as ancient as the landscape. There was nothing they could do to me now that would frighten or surprise me. I had done their work for them. I had dismantled myself.

There came a changing of the guard. The morning shift arrived, a shorter, older official taking over from Green Eyes, who gave me a knowing, strangely intimate look as he headed out the door. There was a woman with him, small and busty in a tightly fitting uniform, carefully made-up. ‘Hello, sister,’ she said coldly, and gestured to me to follow. And in this country where, as I had once explained in an email to my British friend Sarah, no one ever allowed you to carry anything (‘My arms are atrophying’), Whitey was this time left to lug her own bag. The new dispensation.

I knew what to expect now. I’d be led to a car so nondescript it could only belong to the secret police. I’d be taken to an equally anonymous room and there my luggage and clothing would finally be properly searched, the passports and cash immediately discovered. I would be professionally interrogated, my story picked over until, inevitably, it fell apart. And then I would be asked to sign something, and I would be taken to a real cell, with bars, cockroaches and an open toilet, not the soft-focus version of internment I’d been treated to up till now.

Instead, the two walked me out of the deserted airport to the taxi rank. I noticed a woman, swathed like a mummy in white cotton, sitting on the concrete kerb. A little boy lay across her lap, fast asleep, saliva crusting his lips. The female officer rapped on the window of the only cab waiting and what had looked like a bundle of linen stirred and straightened, morphing into a bleary old driver, who automatically pulled the seat forward and groped for his keys.

The male officer turned to me. ‘You will pick up your passport from the Ministry of Immigration, Room 805.’