Easter

A market scene

From my hut on the outskirts of town to the market was a few miles along a red laterite road lined with teak trees. On Sunday mornings I would cycle along that road, past the churches busy with worshippers in their best clothes. Don’t imagine venerable stone edifices with spires and gargoyles; these were mud huts like my own, mostly funded by American outfits. In a land of extreme poverty, these churches had grasped the elemental rule of successful evangelism: free gifts. For a few shirts and tins of dried milk, you could fill the congregation, then the aura of success would attract others, buying sufficient time to sell them the promise of salvation and paradise. The problem with shallow roots, however, is that they are easily washed away. Congregations could suddenly disappear, led astray by a shiny new kettle or a bar of soap from a different denomination. Islam made no headway. It was tainted by association with Khartoum and the Arab north, it gave away no free gifts, and it’s afterlife seemed significantly less attractive than the present. Who would want beer that didn’t get you roaring drunk, or sex with perpetually inexperienced virgins?

I never liked the pastors, shifty-eyed charlatans in my opinion, but I enjoyed the hymn singing that buoyed me along that red road towards the market, the wheels of the Chinese bicycle clicking away under me.

In one corner of the market, under a huge kapok tree, was a bundle of sticks tied together with rags. Inside this nest lived a naked old man who could only shuffle around on all fours, belly to the sky. His only means of survival appeared to be to scavenge food that was dropped in the market. Everyone called him ‘the crab’ and said he had been there for years and was totally insane. He had obviously been a tall man which made me think he was from one of Sudan’s Nilotic tribes. Living outside without clothes or shelter on a minimal diet of scraps had left his long, lean body twisted and deformed. Some said he had committed an unspeakable crime and was condemned to live like that as punishment.

The crab man, it was true, could be aggressive towards children, but only when they threw things at him. Quite often he would be asleep on the ground, sometimes talking to himself. Then people would sneak up and try to catch what he was saying, but they all said the language was unintelligible. If he woke up, he would roar in anger and try to chase. He was quick and powerful, but he could not stand and he never strayed far from the kapok tree. “Don’t get too close,” people would say, “He is a cannibal. He eats people.” Others said he was a dangerous sorceror.

I got in the habit of slipping him food when I left the market, just a piece of bread or a couple of bananas. He would eat everything immediately, saying nothing. If I tried to talk to him, he would scuttle back to his nest of sticks, or pretend to be asleep. But slowly, over months, he began to relax a bit. I’d say, “Here, have these peanuts.” And he would grunt or grin, even say a few words in that incomprehensible language.

My favourite spot in the market was Khalid’s shop. He was one of a small number of Arab traders who kept a basic shack made of corrugated iron and filled with desirable products: kettles, soap, shirts and tins of powdered milk. Scattered among these essentials were some luxury goods that were never bought: nail clippers, skin whiteners and perfumes. Customers would handle them covetously, then replace them. Over the years they lost the lustre of newness and became old, but they remained in place.

Sexylla perfume was one such luxury item. The battered box featured a suggestive womanly figure and inside was a large promotional leaflet that one Sunday I read out loud to Rudolf, the Arabic teacher at the secondary school. “Sexylla’s unique blend of secret ingredients is designed to excite deep passions in the loins of a beautiful woman. Any man wearing this scent will become the irresistible object of sexual desire.” Then it gave an exhaustive list of herbs, spices, oils and minerals. At the bottom was a disclaimer. “Physical demands will be made on the wearer of this fragrance for which the manufacturer can take no responsibility. BEWARE.”

Rudolf was staring into space, transported to a garden of earthly delights somewhere beyond the mango trees, a place far better than anything offered by any religion. But he dragged himself back to reality in order to demand the price. Khalid told him. Rudolf groaned. “What would my wife say? I can’t.”

But Khalid was a trader. He took the bottle and held it close to Rudolf’s throat. “One squirt is one pound.”

I instantly slapped the money down, but Rudolf leaned away. He was having second thoughts. Maybe the story of King Midas had occurred to him. He looked around the market. “What if it’s true,” he said, eyeing up a pair of ladies from the Dinka tribe, tall and ebony-skinned, their foreheads scarred with lines to suggest the horns of a magnificent bull. “What if they all jump on me? I’m not sure. How will I manage?”

“Don’t be a fool,” I said, feeling like Satan facing the as-yet unknown Jesus of Nazareth in the deserts of Palestine, “Now is your chance.”

“My wife will visit the market this morning after church,” said Rudolf, “What if she is finds out…?”

“What if she smells it,” I suggested, “And is entranced?”

Rudolf shuddered.

I leaned across Khalid’s counter and retrieved my pound. “Okay, deal off.”

That worked. Rudolf grabbed the note. “One squirt. Let’s go.”

Khalid gently pushed up the sleeve of his pristine white jellabiya, and held the bottle at arm’s length, as though it were a deadly poison.

I said he had to walk across the market and back.

Rudolf grunted and bared his neck. His eyes were on the ample form of a Zairean lady. She was buying peanuts from the farmers who occupied the ground between the shops, little suspecting her life was about to change forever. She was wearing a brilliantly colourful dress, the traditional pagne, decorated with the face of Mama Bobi, wife of the Zairean dictator, Mobutu. In these parts she was no less notorious than her husband, famous for her legendary demands, particularly for shopping expeditions to Paris on Concorde.

Khalid pressed the button and a fine spray wetted Rudolf’s neck. Simultaneously we all breathed in. There were ripples of cloves and cinnamon across deep throbbing undercurrents of ambergris and sandalwood. There were penetrating tangs of orange and peach. I frowned: maybe even a hint of dung?

Khalid covered his face with a scarf, “Astaghfirullah!” (A phrase that my ancient Arabic primer translated, rather imaginatively, as ‘I seek refuge from the Horned Devil.’)

Rudolf was off. He walked, I have to say, a little like he had had an unfortunate accident: legs slightly stiff and apart, arms held out like a gunslinger. His head was up, nostrils flared like a male lion sniffing for signs of females in heat. We watched him stalk up to the Zairean lady who had moved on to potatoes. He passed slowly behind her.

There was no visible reaction. She had her shopping bag held across her ample bosom and was chatting amiably with the spud-seller, an aged Azande farmer who was sat on a scrap of blue tarpaulin next to his produce. Rudolf paused behind her, snaked his neck in a little closer. Khalid whispered again, “Astaghfirullah.”

Now Rudolf strutted around the pair, his eyes permanently fixed on the Zairean lady who had noticed his strange behaviour. Her conversation with the potato man petered out. We could see she was mystified, and then a bit annoyed. She was a respectable housewife out shopping. Rudolf came behind her again and must have brushed against her because she visibly jumped. Rudolf, emboldened, straightened up with a peculiar grin on his face and pushed his throat towards her nose. Now the woman had to be filling her lungs with the irresistible musk of Sexylla. He arms fell to her sides. Her lips parted. Next to me on the wooden bench, Khalid had stopped breathing. Even the weaver birds in the mango trees seemed to be silent. The whole world stood on the brink of something magical. The woman swung her handbag behind her, then whipped it around in a vicious arc, striking Rudolf a savage blow to the shoulder.

Rudolf staggered backwards, clutching his arm, then hurried back to the shop. He was breathless, a bit wild. “Did you see that? I thought she was going to rip my clothes off right there. Did any others look at me?”

I was very happy to lead him on. “Plenty. The looks you were getting… amazing.”

Another friend, Bullen, arrived on his bicycle, the back-rack laden with a jerry can filled with honey. Bullen’s business was buying honey in Zaire and pedalling it back to Sudan, selling it in the market at a handsome profit. I often accompanied him on these expeditions, discovering remote country markets where you could buy river gold, chimpanzee meat and snake hides. Not that I ever did buy anything. The stacks of dried chimpanzee hands evoked only horror, their fingernails and fingerprints were too much like those of a human.

After saying hello, Bullen went and propped his bicycle against the crab man’s tree, then poured honey into a collection of bottles to make his display. Rudolf and I watched from the shop. I noticed that Bullen appeared to be chatting with the crab man. Did Rudolf know anything about that poor individual?

“He is a cannibal.”

In the area, tales of cannibalism were rife. I had often wondered about how the Christian rites were interpreted when it came to moment when the pastors handed out ‘the host’ with the words, ‘this is my body.’

“It’s true. He ate his own daughter.”

“I don’t believe it. Let’s go and see what they are talking about.”

The crab man was sprawled in the dust, his body almost white with it. Bullen was flicking flies and wasps away from his honey tub. “He is Shilluk,” he said, when I asked how they communicated. “I know a bit of their talking. He cannot walk and has no family. No one to help him.”

Bullen explained that, many years ago, the crab man had been travelling on a lorry that hit a land mine and crashed. Everyone died, except him. He was injured and trapped for many days.

Does he know that people say he is a cannibal? Bullen put this to the crab man who began to cry, making runnels in the dirt on his cheeks.

Bullen said, “It’s true that people say that about him. He was trapped under a lorry next to the body of his daughter and people say he ate some parts of her.”

The crab man sobbed out a few words.

“It was hyenas, “ said Bullen. “He tried to drive them away, but he was trapped. It was the hyenas who ate her.”

Bullen gave the crab man a bit of banana leaf smeared with honey and said something that seemed to cheer him up.

The crab man leaned towards Rudolf and sniffed, then muttered something.

Bullen translated. “He says you smell nice.”