It is a week before the refugee realises that the money won’t be enough.
He’s taken his beer from Miki’s dimly lit bar and is leaning wearily against a shack, gazing up at the vast, starry night sky. He puts the fairly cold bottle against his forehead. That can’t be right, he thinks. He earns well, very well in fact, and he works hard. And yet it seems as if his goal is growing ever more remote. He rubs his eyes. They feel sticky, as if they won’t open or close properly. They began early, those Germans, and they worked the whole day. Today he was out collecting firewood with them. Because Malaika isn’t just a gorgeous woman.
To begin with he thought she was just gorgeous and he wondered what a beautiful woman like her was doing in such an ugly camp. That’s why he started by taking her to the infirmary. The angel would have probably made her way there without him, but it was the only place he reckoned was sufficiently clean for such a gorgeous angel. An angel, moreover, whose own car wasn’t clean enough for her. He himself had heard that the angel wanted a white car.
Thinking back on it now, it’s as if he met two angels in one that day. He recalls driving to the infirmary with the angel in the angelmobile. The angel was talking or incessantly tapping on her white-gold glittery angelphone to communicate with the angelworld. Only at the very last moment, when they pulled up at the infirmary, did the angel say something that sounded like the end of a conversation. Then he got out and the angel said they’d have to do it all over again, because she thought it would look better if he came out through a different door. The angel had a real look of concern, as if she had to inform someone that the entire infirmary had burned to the ground.
And then there was the other angel. The one who calmly sat down beside the girl who had escaped. Who listened to stories that no angel ought ever to hear. The angel who came out of the infirmary.
Who said nothing save for a single sentence, which she first kept repeating in German. Who turned to him, her hand on his forearm, and then said in a voice that no longer sounded anything like the voice of an angel, “This must different go. Total. I swear.”
That was a week ago. Since then she hasn’t visited another building; she’d rather walk about with people. She fetches water with them. She tries to cook with what people have here and she’s collected firewood with Munira. This way of working must be highly unusual for Germans, he could see how her colleagues became impatient. If they’d had their way, after ten minutes on foot they’d have all got back into the clean car with its zebra stripes. Because in a region where almost nothing grows and two million people are out looking for firewood every day, you don’t find wood ten minutes walk from the camp perimeter. But the angel didn’t want to get into her car. She wanted to go with Munira, and if Munira had to walk for two or three hours to find something to burn, the angel was set on doing the same.
“She go three hours?” she asked him again. “Real?”
“It’s true, Malaika.”
The angel’s helpers protested.
At which the angel let the full fury of heaven thunder from her mouth.
He’d never seen someone crush five men using their voice alone. Let alone a woman. But that’s what happened. The angel simply fetched a different, no doubt more comfortable pair of shoes from the car, and from that point on it was clear that they’d be walking the whole way. Which nobody regretted more than Munira; she’d have loved a ride in the angelmobile.
This is precisely how the refugee had imagined a German angel to be. Not merely good, but good through and through. She didn’t just carry a bit of wood for the camera; the angel carried as much wood as Munira herself. He’d have bet anything that the angel would give up after a hundred paces, but she lugged the wood just as Jesus the Christian did his cross. Twice she vomited into the dust with exhaustion, but she never gave up.
And the Germans are just as thorough about the money.
He sips his beer. Little Saba approaches him. “Mtu?” she says. This is the name the children have given him. Everyone’s been giving him a name recently. The Germans call him “Lionel”; he’d rather not ask why as he doesn’t want to be complicated. The children say “Mtu” from Mtu kwa malaika – the man with the angel. Saba puts on her cutest smile, but if he gives in now he’ll have every last child in the camp around his neck. He shoos her away, wearily, kindly, yet firmly. He tells her that he’s already given Saba’s mother a bit of help. Now he needs some peace, he needs to think. On his own. There are some things you can’t talk about with anyone. Not even with Mahmoud.
These Germans are so thorough.
They put an astonishingly large sum of money on the table, it’s true, but they won’t be fleeced. The middle-aged woman they call Grande pays him daily. They never string him along, never fob him off; at the end of the day he always has the agreed sum in his hand in cash. But there’s no advance either. And that’s the snag. His money would be enough for a smuggler if he got it all in one go. But it’s virtually impossible to save money.
Money isn’t a problem if you have as little of it as everyone else. Nor is it a problem to have more money than others, so long as you can keep quiet about it. But if you can’t keep it quiet, like him, Mtu kwa malaika, “the man with the angel”, then you have to give the others a cut. Because you’re the one who’s making money out of the camp and other people’s lives. And if you don’t give them a cut, they won’t let you do it anymore.
So he pays for the beers at Miki’s. He gives Mahmoud and a few others little jobs. Finding stories. And he gives Mojo the Blue his share. In theory. He offered it to Mojo and Mojo was surprised. But then told the refugee to keep the money, they’d come up with a good solution soon. It won’t be like this for long, though.
He could take money from other refugees for having brought the angel to them, of course. But if the Germans found out they’d give him the chop. And if they didn’t, if he could actually earn more money, Mojo would muscle in and he’d have to set up his own gang to protect himself from Mojo. That costs time and money, and he has no desire to become a gang boss. What good would that do anyway? Mojo the Blue has been doing it since childhood; he’d last two days at most, and then someone would find him with his head down the latrine.
In any case his time to earn money is limited, because sooner or later Mojo the Blue will muscle in. He’s just waiting to see how carefully the Germans are monitoring what goes on. But once he’s checked it all out, Mojo will politely take him aside and tell him that all future meetings with the angel can only take place for a fee. And with Mojo’s agreement, of course. Mojo will let him know what these meetings will cost. Or, better put, how much he’ll have to give to Mojo.
And if that gets out the Germans will give him the sack.
Or he’ll refuse and Mojo will have him killed.
Terrific.
He pushes the tip of his index finger into the neck of the bottle and gently flips it out. Pop. No, it is what it is. Even though he has the best-paid job in the entire camp, he’s in exactly the same financial position as before.
And one day Malaika will leave. And he’ll grow old here and die. Unless . . . she takes him with her. But that money-dragon Grande ruled this out on day one.
“This isn’t a ticket to Germany – understood?”
Why should she, anyway?
Maybe out of friendship?
But the likelihood is low. The Internet isn’t exactly pulsing with stories of German camera crews taking home the subjects of their reports from Africa. The only possibility would be for a health issue. Someone with an illness, ideally a little girl who can only be operated on in Germany.
Unfortunately he’s in rude health.
There must be another excuse, that . . . that his life is threatened. By . . . Mojo the Blue, of course.
That might work. It’s actually a really good story. Why is he in this situation? Because the Germans and the angel came here. Because they got him into trouble. Because they put him in this delicate position, caught between money and violence and Mojo. And now they have to help him out of it. Him and maybe Mahmoud too.
The risk with this story is that it might wake some sleeping dogs which would better be left to lie. If Malaika finds out that deals like this are being done here in the camp she’s bound to ask if he’s been working for Mojo the whole time. But it’s worth the risk. He just mustn’t talk to her too soon.
“Mtu!” Sabu says, sitting on the ground beside him. Her talent for being able to look even cuter is highly impressive. She looks cute from the start, but she holds plenty in reserve, which means she can keep turning it on. There’s no smarter child here. Should he be helping out someone like her?
“You can have my beer.”
“Really?”
“The bottle, I mean. When I’ve finished.”
Saba waves dismissively. “What am I going to do with a stupid bottle?”
He drains it and puts it in front of her.
“Take it to the Germans.”
“And then?”
“They might give you some money. I’ve heard the Germans give money for bottles.”
“They give money for empty bottles?”
“So I’ve heard.”
He can see that she has her doubts about this.
“How much?”
“No idea.”
“Tell me!”
“I don’t know. A bit. Less than a beer would cost, of course. Otherwise everyone would bring them unopened bottles.”
Saba lifts up the bottle. “So I bring them this empty bottle and they’ll pay for it? You’re crazy.”
“Try it,” he said kindly. “It’s worth a shot.”
“Why would they want the bottle?” Saba persists. “What are they going to do with it?”
“I don’t know. German things. Maybe they’ll just fill it up with beer again. Maybe Germans have too much beer and not enough bottles.”
Saba looks sceptical.
“The bottles go onto a big ship, the ship sails to Germany and all the Germans are happy,” he says. “Then they dance their German dance.”
“How does the German dance go?”
He gets to his feet and leaps around a little, slapping his thighs. It looks like an elephant trying to move like a heron. “That’s how it goes. Like at the Oktoberfest.”
“It’s a silly dance.”
“Yes,” he says, dropping beside Saba. “You can’t choose your dances. Everyone has to dance like their parents. Everywhere in the world. Your parents’ dance determines how your feet move. You dance like your parents too.”
This makes sense to Saba.
“But why hasn’t anyone taken their bottles to the Germans before? Everyone throws them away. It’s really stupid!”
“Because nobody here knows the Germans very well. It’s worth a shot, no more than that. I can’t guarantee anything. You need to try it yourself.”
Saba gets up, bottle in hand. “O.K. . . .” she says hesitantly, sticking her thumb into the neck of the bottle. It goes pop.
“Can I do my own dance for them?”
He pictures Saba going to the Germans with the bottle and dancing. Then he says, “Do the German dance. And say something in German. Do you know any German?”
“Hatzgebanbanban?”
“What’s that supposed to be?”
“A German song. Everyone’s singing it now.”
“O.K., if everyone’s singing that, then say something else.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“You want them to remember you, don’t you? Say: Oktoberfest!”
“Ottobafes?”
“Exactly. Do it!”
Saba leaps around clumsily, a little elephant on a heron’s legs, slapping her legs at random. Then she presents the bottle and says “Ottobafes” as a fanfare. He nods. Perhaps it’s not so far-fetched after all.
The Germans might just find it cute.