Accra Noir Page 10

  Fortunately, the petrol ran out near a station. Abraham, along with a taxi driver who had stopped to offer his help, pushed the vehicle the few meters. As the attendant filled the tank, Abraham received a call and walked away from the vehicle to speak privately. Owusu leaned against the car and observed him. Abraham had the tall, well-muscled build of a bodyguard. He seemed like the sort of person who remained cool under pressure but could easily turn wild and threatening if he needed to. He was definitely the sort of person you’d want on your side in a bad situation.

  “Is everything all right?” Owusu asked when Abraham returned. They both got back into the car. “Was that your wife?”

  Abraham laughed. He explained that the call was from his boss, the owner of the vehicle. “These Accra women,” he said with a chuckle. “They are too much. But I am sure that soon, God willing, I will meet the right one. His time is the best.”

  Owusu wasn’t sure what to say. Amen did not seem like an appropriate response. He had forgotten how religious Ghanaians were, or at least pretended to be. Abrebrese used to scoff at the idea of Ghana as a nation of God-fearing people. “More like a nation of churchgoers,” he’d say.

  Life on the Accra streets and as a refugee in both Africa and Europe had taught Owusu a lot about the limits of Christian compassion and Muslim tolerance. He decided it was best to stay quiet. He started sipping the complimentary beverage that Abraham had offered him before they drove out of the airport car park. The driver had said it was the latest craze in town. It was good, but Owusu didn’t see why the drink would generate any excitement. It tasted like the same sobolo he had grown up drinking. He’d even learned to make it himself in Germany. It was simply two parts hibiscus tea to one part fresh ginger juice and three mint leaves.

  Nevertheless, he made a mental note to surprise Abraham with a considerable tip for his kindness. It also occurred to him to make an arrangement with Abraham to be picked up early in the morning from the hotel and taken to the bus station at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle. It was where everyone went to board buses headed to the northern cities, like Kumasi, Tamale, and Bolgatanga. Taxi drivers in Accra were notoriously unreliable, but this one seemed like a hardworking, trustworthy man, someone Owusu could even befriend.

  Abraham reminded him of the guys he’d trekked through the Sahara with and, at times, thought he’d die with. The six of them had somehow managed to cheat death. They’d made it to Tangier, where they begged on the streets for two years until they raised enough money to purchase space on a boat headed to Spain. During that time, three of his mates were caught and detained by the Moroccan authorities; he never saw them again. He guessed that they’d been deported and returned to Ghana or, worse, killed.

  Another of his mates had accepted an offer from an expat to come and stay with him as a houseboy. They’d each received such offers, and they’d understood that it was a sort of coded invitation to become a full-time servant and part-time boy toy. He and Mensah had refused, still hopeful that they could make it to Europe. Adama had refused several such offers but then, weary from life on the streets, finally accepted one.

  “This way,” Adama had rationalized, “I can eat and have shelter and still save for a space on the boat.” Mensah and Owusu spotted him a few times in the medina, sporting a djellaba and a beard. Each time they’d called out to him, but Adama pretended not to hear them and immediately turned a corner and disappeared down one of the many small alleyways.

  Owusu often thought about his band of brothers and how fate had separated them, given each his own destiny. He wanted to tell Abraham about them, about the journey they’d made, completely on foot, from the shores of Accra to the shores of Tangier. He tried to open his mouth to speak, but his lips felt too heavy to part. The last thing he remembered was Abraham’s smiling face looking down at him as he surrendered to the darkness all around him.

  * * *

  The baby on Angel’s back was asleep when they arrived home. At two years, little Kukua could sleep through an orchestra, once she was well fed. During the bus ride home, Angel had fed her Cerelac, and it had done the trick. Now, as she rushed to start preparing their evening meal, she could do it in peace. This child was indeed a blessing.

  Angel and Joojo had endured a great deal in their marriage. When by the fifth year they still had no children, the couple visited several hospitals and churches and even the shrines of medicine men in hopes of a solution, yet none yielded the desired results. After Angel and her husband underwent a number of medical tests, the doctors finally offered a diagnosis: Joojo was sterile. The couple was devastated. What crushed Angel’s spirit even more was going to church and overhearing the worshippers gossiping about her, referring to her as a barren woman and wondering when Joojo would leave her for a new wife. She eventually stopped going to church and withdrew into herself. Joojo, distraught watching his beautiful wife wasting away over something that was his fault, decided to find a solution, no matter the cost.

  One day Joojo brought home a newborn girl. Angel was both terrified and overjoyed. Joojo assured her that the baby had been abandoned. He said that one of his friends, who knew of their predicament, had found her. Angel wondered what her husband had to give this man in return, but he assured her there were no strings attached. She readily agreed to raise the baby as their own. How she wished she could share the good news with her brother, Susu. When they were children, they’d often imagined their futures. Susu was sure he could walk in Abrebrese’s footsteps and become an equally successful farmer. Angel would become a teacher, study to become a nurse. She would marry a doctor and have several children. She and Susu always envisioned themselves living on the same compound, their children being raised more like siblings than cousins. What a terrible blow their father’s death had been. To lose him was bad enough; to then lose their home and their financial security was quite painful. Never did she think she would lose her brother as well.

  Angel felt a gentle tug of sorrow in her heart and, just then, Kukua started crying. It was a reminder to not take for granted all that was hers now. She had the best man in the world for a husband, and he had given her a daughter to call her own.

  * * *

  When Owusu regained consciousness, he was naked, lying on a bed in a dimly lit room. His hands and legs were bound with twine. His first thought was to bite the twine off his wrists, but there was a gag in his mouth that had been taped firmly in place. He was still groggy but knew he had been kidnapped. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him, not in his own country. He willed himself to remember. His mind was racing. What signs had he missed? Was the driver his captor, or had he also been kidnapped? What did they want, ransom? If it was about money, he had some in his bank accounts and all he would need was his Visa card, which they obviously had. He would happily give them his bank access code; his life was all that mattered. Suddenly, the silence of the night was broken by a voice heavy with terror.

  “I beg you in the name of God, please don’t kill me,” a man sobbed. “My people will give you anything you want. Please, spare my life.”

  He wasn’t alone. There was another prisoner. Could it be the driver? Owusu held his breath as he listened intently, praying. A bloodcurdling scream, like that of an animal being slaughtered, broke whatever hope he had of negotiating with his captors, and he began to weep like a baby. He had to escape. He calmed down and listened. Silence. He rolled himself off the bed onto the hard floor. He screamed from the pain but the gag did its job and muffled the noise.

  Owusu proceeded to roll in the direction of the door. When he reached the end of the room, he propped himself against the wall and stood upright. He then hopped close to a window and, without pausing, drove both fists into the louver blades, cutting himself in the process and making a crashing noise that was amplified in the still of the night.

  Footsteps outside the room rushed toward where he was. He did not waste a minute. He held his wrists to the jagged edge of the broken louver and cut through the twin
e. He untied his legs and braced himself to face his captors. It would only be a matter of seconds. Suddenly, bam, the lights went off. The room and entire compound were thrown into total darkness.

  Dumsor! For years, Ghana had been suffering a debilitating power crisis. As it became increasingly industrialized and citizens continued developing the appetite of a new middle-income country, power became a crucial yet scarce commodity. All the air conditioners, microwaves, hot-water heaters, televisions, laptops, mobile phones, and other devices guzzled electricity faster than it could be generated. The systems were outdated. As a means of addressing the issue, the government introduced “load shedding,” a power-rationing program.

  The outages were scheduled so each region in the nation would bear its share of weight and citizens would suffer only the slightest inconvenience. Unfortunately, outages also occurred at unscheduled times. This unreliability of power, derisively termed dumsor, was the bane of every Ghanaian’s existence, especially those who lived in urban areas. When the lights went out it was dum—“shut off”—and when they came back, it was sor—“turn on.”

  The captors undoubtedly knew this, but dumsor was well after Owusu’s time. He assumed the lights had been switched off to disorient him and facilitate his capture. Owusu heard his abductors slow down, their steps now hesitant, uncertain. He heard the door to the room he was in open. In the absence of visibility, his other senses were heightened. He stood still, ready to spring on cue. In the pitch darkness, he could sense one of them, to his left, inching toward him. He knew this was his opportunity. He ran as he had many times before as a hungry thief in Accra, as a refugee and beggar on the streets of foreign lands. He ran knowing that his life depended on it, that it was either escape or death. He collided with one of the bodies standing close to the doorway. They both fell. Owusu quickly picked himself up and continued running until he was out of the yard and into the chilly night.

  He saw no one. The area, secluded, seemed to hold no other houses. The moon was absent and there were no stars, uncharacteristic for an Accra sky. Without a thought about where he was headed, Owusu ran for over half an hour without slowing down, powered by the sheer force of fear. In his blind flight, he’d turned eastward, rather than westward, which would have led him straight to the Weija-Kasoa highway.

  As it was, he ran crashing through tall bushes, and his path led him right to the banks of the Weija lagoon. Only then did Owusu pause to catch his breath. The cacophonous, insistent cries of the frogs and crickets seemed to be warning that the danger was not over. But he could not move. He now felt the intense burning from his steep fall onto the concrete floor, the cuts to his hands, lower torso, and soles, the pain magnified by the wetness of the marshy land he’d stumbled upon. Shivering, he slowly retraced his steps to higher ground. He mustered up the strength to half walk, half run, until he saw ahead of him a small house with what appeared to be light from a lantern flickering inside.

  Thank you, God, he breathed a quick prayer of gratitude, and knocked at the door. A woman with an infant child on her back opened the door. Was he delirious? She bore a resemblance to his sister, Ama. He squinted, then opened his eyes as wide as possible to look at her again.

  She screamed when she saw him, this grizzly-looking man, completely naked, before her. When he opened his eyes wide until the balls were almost rolling out of their sockets, as though he’d been possessed, she right away shut the door in his face and slid all bolts securely in place.

  Owusu was desperate. He begged her to open the door and save him. There were some killers after him, he explained. He pleaded. He could feel himself getting weaker but used what little strength he had to plead some more.

  As incredible as the man’s story sounded, Angel believed he was telling the truth. She couldn’t put a finger on it, but there was something familiar about his voice. Something inside of her trusted it. She opened the door to his shock but utter relief, and profuse gratitude. He quickly entered before she could have a chance to change her mind.

  Angel immediately went to find a pair of trousers and a shirt belonging to Joojo and gave them to the man to wear. She explained that her husband had gone to work and would be returning soon. She served him food, which he devoured before falling into a deep and exhausted slumber on the couch. Not long after this the lights came back on.

  * * *

  Joojo bent down to take a closer look at the man on their couch. Now he knew exactly who he was. At least he thought he did. Joojo just had to put on a believable show for his wife. As he was leaning over, a wallet slipped out of Joojo’s breast pocket and fell on the floor. Angel bent down to pick it up, as well as the ID and cards that had fallen out. She looked at the ID and saw that the picture was of the man on their couch. Her eyes then scanned the name: John Owusu Teku.

  Angel gasped. It was her brother, Susu. Only she had called him that, a corruption of Owusu, a name she’d found difficult to pronounce as a young child.

  Angel’s eyes widened as all the pieces started falling into place: the long hours, random gifts, sudden influx of cash, the baby—oh God, the baby—the naked man, his voice, that sweet familiar voice, her brother, dead. He was dead.

  When the truth finally hit her, Angel gasped again. She looked at her husband’s expressionless face in horror. She could see no remorse, no sorrow, no guilt. In fact, she couldn’t read him at all. Angel screamed. She screamed even louder as Joojo approached her, and then she collapsed.

  The Situation

  by Patrick Smith

  Labone

  Scene I

  Bad News, Terrible News

  It was in that drab light just before dawn when Ato heard an insistent rattling at the front gate. His instinct was to ignore it in the hope that it would go away, especially because his paramour, Ewura Abena, had just let herself in and crawled into bed beside him. The muggy heat was beginning to rise from the red earth surrounding the house. A cock crowed so languidly, Ato suspected it had raided his liquor cabinet.

  It must have been around half past five.

  Ato had made it to bed less than an hour earlier, his head full of ideas and akpeteshie, after a session with his friends, known self-mockingly as the Labone Choirboys.

  In their twenties and thirties, they had cut their moorings amid the mayhem in Accra. Some were university dropouts, others had lost their government jobs. For them it was about the hustle, finding a connection that would make millions or a way out. Inflated contracts, drug dealing, and trading scams—that’s what kept the Choirboys going.

  Other plans had been derailed following a dawn announcement by military officers after they had seized the state broadcasting corporation. The government was bankrupt.

  It was March 1984 and Accra was set in aspic. Driving across this once wondrous city in a rust-bucket taxi, you’d see the Independence Arch marking a public square second only to Tiananmen, multilane highways holding few cars, factories standing idle, an empty port, and an international airport once meant to be the world’s gateway to Africa.

  All were monuments to a splurge of energy in the wake of independence just three decades earlier. Now that ambition had fizzled; politics, business, music, journalism, fun had been suspended . . . everything except funerals. Death was a way of life.

  Six feet five in his tsalewᴐtee sandals, Ato carried his two hundred pounds with a beaming confidence. In the Accra courts as a young advocate, he could pinpoint the strengths in any case. And he could also marshal the arguments against it. Juggling politics, drinking, and dancing, Ato was sure he was heading for the big time but was determined to have fun en route.

  The rattling at the front gate continued. Ato released a sigh of surrender. Whoever or whatever was demanding his attention had won.

  “Where are you going?” Ewura Abena mumbled as Ato tried to slide out from her grasp without waking her. She’d wrapped one arm around his torso in a half embrace, and rested her hand directly over his heart, as though she’d been checking for the thu
mp thump of his heartbeat.

  “Shhhh.” He placed a finger to his mouth. He could smell the akpeteshie on his own breath. “Go back to sleep, my darling. I’ll be right back, just a moment.” Ewura Abena’s arrivals and departures were sporadic, based on her husband’s schedule. He was a “big man” at State Security. Their marriage was enviable in appearance but loveless in reality. Ato, on the other hand, loved Ewura Abena, despite or even because of her serial infidelities.

  Ato’s house, the Choirboys’ de facto headquarters, was on Ndabaningi Sithole Road, the main artery of Labone. It was a rambling whitewashed building set back from the road, partly hidden behind a parade of royal palms. Paint was peeling off in places, some of the cracked window louvers were hanging like jagged teeth. The guttering was linked to a network of pipes leading to an eccentric water-storage system. At the front, a wide veranda was crowded with cane chairs, batik cushions, and enough wine and whiskey bottles, strewn across the glass-topped table, to supply the bar of the Ambassador Hotel. Most of the business of the house was done there.

  A glance at the place suggested the owner had once lived in considerable style but had fallen on hard times. Like the country itself.

  From the other side of the house, Ato could now hear this voice shouting, almost screaming. And an ever more insistent rattling of the front gate. “Mr. Adjei, Mr. Adjei!”

  “Oooooh, you too,” Ato growled, shaking his head. “Exercise patience.” He quickened his pace.

  “Mr. Adjei . . . Mr. Adjei, I have bad news, terrible news . . .”

  Through the akpeteshie-perfumed haze, Ato could make out the words. The last thing he wanted was bad, let alone terrible, news.

  “Mr. Adjei . . . Mr. Adjei,” the voice said once more. Ato was now able to place it. It belonged to Kwame Owusu, Thierry’s driver.