‘Are you all right?’ Elena asked me.
‘Er, yes … why?’
‘I don’t know. For a second, you looked sick.’
I smiled. ‘I’m not yet fully recovered.’
‘Oh, you know, everything gets back to normal in the end.’
‘The quicker, the better, as far as I’m concerned.’
She cast a professional eye over me then, reassured, told me that all good people deserved food and suggested we go and eat. But before that, she took a little camera from her pocket and took a photograph of me. Without asking for my permission. Not that I could have resisted her anyway.
The canteen was a small oblong room between the kitchens and the wash house. Four doctors and a pastor were sitting at a table in the corner, listening to a young black man with his arm in plaster telling anecdotes that had them doubled up with laughter. Elena waved to them as we passed. We collected the trays from a round table, served ourselves at the counter, and sat down next to a window whose twill blinds filtered the dusty light from outside. ‘Your colleagues are in a good mood,’ I whispered in Elena’s ear. ‘In Africa laughter is second nature, Kurt,’ she said. Her ‘Kurt’ touched me deep inside. She apologised for the frugality of the meals, and explained that as the roads weren’t safe and the supply convoys were regularly attacked and hijacked by outlaws, the authorities were forced to supply the camp by air. As there was only one freighter aircraft to serve all the camps, it was rotated in a random way, and sometimes they lacked basic foodstuffs for weeks, which was why the director insisted on a severely restricted diet. I assured her that after the disgusting stuff the pirates had given me out of rotten cans, it would be ridiculous of me to turn my nose up. Her hand came to rest on mine. ‘Oh, I can imagine,’ she sighed. The touch of her fingers and the musky smell of her skin were strangely comforting, and I hoped deep in my heart that she would not take her hand away immediately.
After the meal, Elena showed me around the camp. Then we walked to the other side of the fence and looked around a huge building site some hundreds of metres away. Elena told me that this was a pilot village intended for refugees who had been forced to leave their lands. A broad avenue cut the site in two. On either side, buildings were going up, some still at the foundation stage, others almost finished. Woodwork and roofs were still missing, but the work seemed to be advancing, given the dozens of workers bustling about and the profusion of wheelbarrows and hacksaws.
‘The refugees don’t only need food and medical care,’ Elena said. ‘They need to regain their dignity, too. They’re building this village themselves. Of course, architects and supervisors came from Europe to get things going, but the refugees are doing the actual construction. They’re happy to have the work and plans for the future. A little further south, we’ve built farms and laid out orchards. The farms are run by widows so that they can provide for their families. The orchards have been entrusted to shepherds who’ve turned into farmers. And they seem to like it. Soon, the first houses will be ready and this village will be born. Initially, we’ll be able to house forty-three families. By the end of the year, we’ll have room for another sixty-five. Isn’t that wonderful? When we set up the camp two years ago, there wasn’t a single hut left within a radius of a hundred kilometres. It was like the valley of shadows. And now look what we’re doing. I’m so proud.’
‘So you should be, it’s quite an achievement. Congratulations.’
‘The village will be called Hodna City. In Arabic, it means something like “reassurance”.’
‘It’s a pretty name. It sounds good.’
Elena was delighted. She was full of an almost childlike enthusiasm, and her shining eyes danced with light.
‘Over there, we have a school. Three classes of forty pupils each, and six native teachers, all survivors of atrocities. Plus a football pitch, with wooden goalposts. You’ll see, after classes all the kids rush to watch the match … We’re trying to give these people a normal life. And they’re ready for it. They’ve already forgiven.’
She paused here for a moment or two before resuming as volubly as before. She told me there was also going to be a big assembly hall, a library, perhaps a cinema, a traditional market in the square, stalls and cafés in the avenue, and lots of other facilities.
‘Do you have a barber anywhere around here?’ I asked. ‘I have to get rid of this fleece on my face.’
‘Yes, we do. A really good one.’
Twenty minutes later, I found myself sitting on a stool in the open air, a towel around my neck and foam on my face, at the mercy of Lotta Pedersen’s razor and scissors. The Scandinavian gynaecologist was magnificent in her role as an occasional hairdresser. And as she rehabilitated my image, a swarm of kids stood around us and laughed uproariously at the sight of a woman shaving a man.
A gaudy turban around his head, Bruno sat twiddling his thumbs in the doorway of the administrative block. He had washed and spruced himself up, made friends among the storekeepers — which explained the brand-new kamis and Saharan flip-flops that he was wearing — but he hadn’t touched a hair of his Rasputin-like beard. With prayer beads around his finger and kohl on his eyelids, he looked like a sheikh about to address the masses. But he wasn’t happy: he was grim-faced and his nostrils were quivering. He had tried several times to get through to Djibouti by phone, and each time he had heard ringing at the other end, the line had been cut off. Bruno suspected the switchboard operator of stopping him from contacting the outside world. It was quite likely, he said, that the director of the camp had received instructions from the government to keep our situation secret. How else to account for the fact that neither the French nor the German embassy had reacted to the fax they had been sent early that morning?
Pfer assured us that the fax had indeed reached its destination and that his supervisors in Khartoum were making the necessary arrangements with the relevant authorities.
The next day, there was still no news from Khartoum. Bruno and I spent the whole morning in Pfer’s office, waiting for the fax to screech or the phone to ring. About midday, the switchboard operator managed to make contact with Djibouti and Bruno burst into sobs on recognising his partner’s voice at the end of the line. Then his laughter burst out through his tears. I didn’t understand what he was saying in Arabic, but it was clear that the line was vibrating with the overflow of emotion. Bruno wiped himself with his turban, hiccuped, grinned, struck his forehead with the palm of his hand, jumped up and down on his seat, and every now and again let out shrill cries. His partner passed the phone, one by one, to family members, neighbours, the shopkeeper opposite, an old friend, whoever, and I imagined all these people hearing the news, stopping whatever they were doing and rushing to the phone to say how happy they were to learn that their dear Frenchman was still alive and how they couldn’t wait to see him again in the flesh. The conversations went on. Sometimes, Bruno was forced to wait while the next speaker was fetched from the other end of the street or a bedridden old acquaintance who absolutely had to talk to him was helped from his bed and dragged to the phone. Silences were followed by euphoric yells, and again tears and laughter mingled. By the time he hung up, Bruno was transformed. He was in seventh heaven, and his eyes sparkled. He gave me a big hug, then grabbed Pfer and danced like an orphan who’d been given his family back.