Eritrea: Asmara/Massawa
Mike's tendency towards conspiracy
theories - his unfounded belief that there were people who were out
to get him - was, I surmise, shaped by a traumatic event that
occurred when he was a young boy. At the time Eritrea was occupied by
Ethiopia. The indigenous population were in the midst of fighting
what would turn out to be a 30 year guerilla war for independence.
Mike lived on Massawa Island in a cafe
that was owned by his parents. One day some soldiers entered the
premises and took his father away. Nobody ever saw him again.
A lot of Eritreans disappeared in this
manner. While it is highly probable that the victims of these
abductions were executed, in many cases the circumstances surrounding
their deaths remains a mystery.
When I first met Mike, he was living
with his mother in a small apartment above the cafe. The business had
passed into the hands of a new owner. Maybe out of kindness, the
proprietor had allowed the old woman to remain on the property. Their
living quarters consisted of a small room and an enclosed balcony.
The latter was partitioned by hanging blankets and served as a
bedroom, kitchen and living area. The pair bickered constantly in
Tigrinya, which is the native language of Eritrea.
The extreme daytime temperatures and
oppressive coastal humidity of Massawa Island make it a difficult
place to do anything other than slump languidly in a chair, with a
drink of some description, and engage in laconic conservation. Mike
was amiable company and I enjoyed spending time with him. We were
quite similar in many ways: A pair of rudderless men who had never
found our true place in the world. Like me he had never married and
had few friends.
I learned about his past in a piecemeal
fashion over the course of our many rambling discussions:
After his father's disappearance his
mother had worked as a maid for the family of an American diplomat.
When the time came for them to return to the U.S. they had offered to
adopt Mike. His mother had refused their offer and this had become a
festering source of resentment.
He once told me that he had fathered a
son with a woman who he had met in the army, but that the child had
fallen ill and had died a few weeks after it was born.
He had back problems, which I came to
believe were psychosomatic, as the symptoms were vague and seemed to
come and go. He was constantly badgering me to obtain western
medicinal drugs on his behalf from my doctor. I tried to explain to
him that, in England, doctors prescribe medication according to the
needs of the patient in front of them.
“It's not like the pharmacists you
have here. I can't go to my doctor and say 'oh by the way, my
friend's got a bad back. Can you give him something for it?'”
“But you can pretend it's for you.”
“No I can't. The medicine is paid for
partly by the state. The doctor has to make a diagnosis and then he
has a duty to treat the problem and keep a record of what he's given
to a patient... Look, it's not going to happen, so let's just let it
go.”
“Ask anyway,” he replied
dogmatically.
We went round and round on this point,
with Mike utterly intransigent in his belief that I could acquire
medication for him from my GP and then send it to him via airmail. I
had noticed in the past that, once he had an idea fixed in his head,
it was very difficult to dispel it, or change his mind.
He would often tell anecdotes whose
common theme was the misfortunes suffered by people he knew who had
left Eritrea to pursue opportunities elsewhere in the world. The
living subjects of these cautionary parables would invariably pay the
price for their wanderlust with madness and penury.
One afternoon we were sitting on
plastic chairs outside one of the cafes. Mike was drinking coffee. I
had a glass bottle of Fanta that I was diluting with water to make it
last longer. He pointed out a shabbily dressed figure who was
shuffling along by the old railway line, on the opposite side of the
road, near to where the mini-bus taxis pick up passengers for
Gurgussum.
“Do you know him?”
“He went to work in Germany as an
electrician.”
“What happened? I take it that things
didn't go too well.”
“He went mad. Now he has nothing. Do
you know the song by Phil Collins: Think twice, it's another day for
you in paradise?”
“Uh huh.”
“He didn't think twice.”
~
It had been over a decade since Eritrea
had regained its independence from Ethiopia. The unfettered optimism
that followed in the wake of this improbable triumph was now on the
wane.
The government had ruled effectively
during the long occupation, promoting the merits of education, sexual
equality and religious tolerance, in pursuit of the greater good of
national autonomy. In peacetime they had been unable to break out of
the isolationist mindset which had been forced upon them during the
war, when there was little international support for their cause. The
momentum and goodwill that had been bought by their victory had been
squandered as the economy began to founder and then stagnate, and the
previously upbeat mood of population began to regress towards
despondency and disillusionment.
In the space of a decade Eritrea had
alienated neighbouring countries and driven out vital investment. The
only visible foreign business presence in the country belonged to
those corporations who were more interested in brand presence and
market domination than they were in short-term profit. Coca Cola was
ubiquitous and had an enviable distribution network, with the
apparent ability to penetrate anywhere humans might have scraped out
an existence, regardless of how remote it might be. As I was gearing
up to leave the country, the first mobile phone licences were being
granted to civilians. Foreigners had been given access to the network
roughly six months in advance. When I had arrived on what was to be
my last visit to the country, the customs officer who checked my bags
expressed incredulity that I didn't have a mobile.
More ominous than Eritrea's precarious
economic situation were the flashes of paranoia being exhibited by
those in power. The incumbent administration saw dissidents lurking
in every shadow. There were rumours of extremist groups operating in
the north and this part of the country was barred to tourists. Down
south, in the more habitable regions, arrests were being made and it
was hard to tell whether these were a response to a genuine threat,
or the early indicators of a government losing its grip and lashing
out, seemingly at random. Christian groups unaffiliated with the
powerful Catholic and Orthodox churches were a prominent target. Some
individuals who I spoke to in private muttered darkly of secret
prisons in the desert.
This climate of suspicion sent Mike's
own paranoia into overdrive. In the cafe bars of Massawa he would
often point out men on adjacent tables who he identified as
government informers. I found it hard to know how seriously to take
these claims.
The situation was made worse by Sharif
– a half Tanzanian/half Yemeni man, with nebulous business
interests, who had employed Mike in some capacity. Sharif would get
drunk early in the day and then speak in conspirational whispers
across the table of “dangerous men in England.” All of this was
overheard by Mike and it probably played some part in what was to
happen later.
“Sharif, there is absolutely no point
in you telling me this...” I would reply, completely exasperated.
“...What am I supposed to do with
this information? You tell me a place in the world where there aren't
dangerous men.”
Sharif always had plenty of money and
was generous with it to the point of recklessness. Where this stream
of disposable income originated was beyond my understanding. He had
started a company in Eritrea but I never saw any evidence of him
doing anything that resembled work. There was mention of a cargo boat
sailing from Saudi Arabia, although it was never made clear what was
on it, where it was going, or how Sharif would profit from the
voyage.
Whenever we were together in Asmara we
would eat out, in what were, for Eritrea, some pretty decent high-end
restaurants. Usually our party would consist of myself, Sharif, Mike
and another man called Tekel. Sharif would always pick up the tab. In
the beginning I made attempts to pay for my share however this proved
problematic. Sharif who would act as if I had gravely insulted him
and would become quite physical in making me put my money away. After
a while I gave up offering.
One evening, in one of the more trendy
bars, Sharif paid for a round of four drinks with a large
denomination bill. The waiter took the money but never returned with
any change. Sharif was too drunk to realise what had happened. I
spoke to a few of the staff about it and was eventually assured that
somebody would “bring the change soon.” They never did.
It was a few hours earlier on that same
day that Sharif had recounted an incident that had occurred on the
western coast of Yemen, in which he claimed to have shot a man in the
leg in a dispute over a stolen fishing boat.
I felt like I had been drawn into a
world where everyone I knew (including myself) was either crazy,
drunk, or paranoid, or some combination of the three. In an attempt
to gain perspective and perhaps have a normal conversation I went to
see Sharif's business partner, Sami, at the hotel where he was
staying. This turned out to be the same hotel that I had stayed in on
my first night in the country, having fetched up at the reception
desk in the small hours of the morning.
Sami was a model of Islamic sobriety.
He lived modestly and attended prayers at the mosque. He never came
out on the town with us, although he would sometimes join us for tea
during the day. He spent long periods of time in his hotel room and
had started to furnish it to his liking. We sat on the floor and
drank tea together.
“The other night Sharif told me that
he shot a man in the leg.”
“Yes.”
“So this actually happened... Because
Sharif is a lovely man but drinks a lot and I don't know whether I
should take his stories seriously.”
“It happened.”
“Were you there when it happened?”
“No.. This man. He attacked Sharif
with a knife.”
~
A few days before I was due to travel
back to the UK, I returned to Massawa for the last time. As a parting
gesture of thanks, I took Mike out to dinner.
“Tomorrow I'm getting on the bus back
to Asmara...” I told him.
“...Then, on Thursday, I'm flying
home to England and I'm never coming back here again because this
whole country has gone completely fucking mad. So this is goodbye,
because after tonight, we're not going to see each other again.”
The following day I was surprised to
find Mike waiting for me at the bus station. He told me that he would
be travelling to Asmara too.
“Great,” I said.
When we arrived in town, he went off to
his sister's house. I checked in at the Salem Hotel, which is next
door to the British Embassy.
When I met Mike again, later that
afternoon, he told me that Sharif had gone back to Tanzania for a
couple of weeks.
We had a drink in a cafe. Afterwards he
seemed reluctant to part company and we ended up wandering aimlessly
around the capital, which is an extremely small city, and in any other more populated country would be regarded as a town. Eventually we
reached an area that was relatively deserted and sat down on a bench.
“I think there is something
you want to tell me,” he said.
“Only what I said to you in Massawa.
Thank you for your help and for your company over these past months.
And you know... Take care of yourself and your mother...”
“Maybe there is something else that
you want to say to me in private.”
“If there's something on your mind
then you're going to have to tell me, because I don't know what it is
that you want me to say.”
“Maybe when you go back to England I
can help you with information.”
In that moment the penny dropped and I
suddenly understood the reasoning behind a lot of Mike's recent odd
behaviour.
“I see what you're driving at. I know
we talk a lot about this country and the politics. That's only
because I'm interested in what's happening here. That's all there is to
it. There's nothing else going on.”
Mike seemed put out by my response.
“Maybe you don't trust me.”
“I do trust you. I think that you've
got an idea about me that isn't real. If I've said or done anything
to make you think that, then I'm sorry.”
“We can talk about this another time.
Maybe you have to speak to someone first.”
No. Look I don't have to speak to
anyone. We're not going to talk about this any more. Okay”
The following day I met Mike again,
this time at an outdoor cafe, in what was described as a park,
although there was more concrete and paving than there was foliage.
Here we shared a conversation that was almost identical to the one we
had the previous day. By now my amusement at Mike's misinterpretation
of the facts was wearing off, and I was beginning to get a bit
concerned.
“Look Mike. You need to stop talking
like this because if the wrong people hear what you're saying you
could get us both into serious trouble. We could both go to prison
and it would be for nothing.”
Undeterred he went on to explore the
possibilities of his proposed information-sharing relationship, as
if attempting to gain purchase on an opportunity that didn't exist.
I pleaded with him: “You've got to
stop talking like this. Please just stop it. Why can't we just have a
normal conversation?”
The next day – the day before I was
due to fly home - I got a phone call in my hotel room. It was Mike.
He said that he wanted to meet up with me and talk.
“I don't think that's a good idea.
I've got a lot to do before I go. When I get back to England I'll
write to you.”
I put the phone down. It rang again a
minute later but I didn't answer. It continued to ring throughout the
afternoon. In the evening when I came down for dinner Mike was
waiting for me in the lobby.
“I can't talk to you,” I said, as I
brushed past him.
He followed me out in the street.
“You're acting like a crazy man,” I
said. “Your behaviour is going to get us both locked up.”
“THIS IS BULLSHIT!” he shouted as I
walked away.
As I headed towards Harnet Avenue I was
vaguely aware that Mike was behind me, dogging my footsteps. He
finally caught up with me alongside a large compound that had
formerly been the Presidential Palace, although it was no longer used
for that purpose. I was on the side of the street across the
road from the curtain wall that surrounded the extensive grounds.
“I can't have a normal conversation
with you. Just leave me alone.”
“I want to talk to you.”
"We have talked and you won't listen to
what I'm saying. You're going to get us into trouble. Just go...”
We stood facing each other, then I said
something that broke the stalemate:
“...You know Mike, if you're not
careful you're going to end up like your father.”
A split second later I was staggering
backwards. I could taste blood in my mouth.
We exchanged a flurry of punches. I
don't think either one of us was holding anything back.
The building to our left was evidently
some kind of guard house or garrison because suddenly soldiers began
pouring out of the doorway and onto the street. As the seriousness of
our situation became apparent we both backed away from each other.
“What is going on here? Why are you
fighting?” asked one of the men.
“It's finished...” I said. “...I'm
going to go this way and he's going to go that way.”
As I turned and walked away I half
expected to be arrested.
~
When I came downstairs the following
morning, Mike was waiting for me. He looked suitably remorseful. I
hope that I did too. I apologised to him for my part in what had
happened.
We made our way over to the cafe in the
park where we had met the previous day. As we sat down, a pair of
children approached us and apparently asked Mike if he wanted
anything from the kiosk down the road. He gave them some money for
cigarettes and the pair ran off to get them.
Our usually free-form conversation was
stymied by a new-found awkwardness, as we attempted to work out how
best to repair our damaged friendship.
“We couldn't have picked a worse
place to have fist fight,” I said, ruefully attempting to break the
ice.
“Those soldiers.”
“I thought we were going to end up in
jail.”
The conversation quickly petered out. I
rummaged around in my head for a neutral topic that would fill the
silence; one that was unconnected with the madness of the past few
months.
“You know it's been ten minutes. I
don't think those children are coming back with your cigarettes.”
Mike turned around and scanned the
near-empty park, as if he was confirming their absence.
“It's comforting to know that it's
not just the tourists who get ripped off.”
We ate lunch at a Muslim restaurant
near the big Mosque. Mike knew the owner and introduced him to me.
After our meal we shook hands on the pavement outside.
“I'll stay in touch,” I said.
A couple of weeks after I returned to
England I received a postcard from Mike. A few months later he sent a
letter. I never replied to any of his correspondence.
