The finer points of diplomacy
Ilorin, 1950:
The house on Oyo Square had stood empty since Muhammadu Abacar’s fall from power. For more than a quarter-century, the floors had gathered dust, barricades of broken furniture had stood in front of the windows, and blood still stained the floor where Muhammadu had shot himself at the last. The air that had greeted Tiberio when he opened the door two months before had been stale and ghostly, and only now was the house starting to feel like home.
People still stopped Tiberio as he walked out the door and told him how good it was to have an Abacar in that house again. It wasn’t quite the same as in his grandfather’s day: once, the Malê had been the Abacar family’s people, and now they thought of the family as theirs. But people still wanted to shake his hand and touch him, tell him what a great man his grandfather had been, and ask him when he would run for parliament.
Never, if I have anything to say about it. Tiberio had no more interest in electoral politics in Ilorin than he had in Lagos, and he remembered his father’s words about Ilorin needing to free itself from their family. He was as much a politician as any businessman, but he hadn’t moved here to run for office as some believed; instead, at forty-four, he’d simply had enough of being a foreigner.
The square was full at this time of day: office workers from the government buildings were making their way to the trams, schoolchildren released from class were playing in the fountains, tourists in from the countryside were taking in the places where the nation’s fate had been decided and battles had been fought. There were the usual crowds of people around the Statue of the Founders – Usman dan Fodio, Paulo the Elder, the Nana Asma’u and Usman Abacar, all four of whom would have disapproved fiercely of their images being carved in stone – and the smell of suya and moin-moin came from a hundred stalls.
Tiberio escaped unnoticed into the crowd and bought a skewer of suya on his way to a side street. His route took him out of the center city, past the Portuguese Garden and along the banks of the Asa, through a district of Brazilian-style houses from the last century. They were colorful and well-kept, but most of them needed painting; he’d noticed that in Ilorin, everything needed repainting every three or four years. It was a city of boulevards and gardens, but it was also a city of factory smoke, and the upper stories of the office buildings sometimes disappeared into the haze.
Once upon a time, he’d been told, it was worse. The stone wall along the Asa was full of pipes and culverts where waste had once been dumped into the river. That had been illegal for twenty years, and the water no longer had the oily sheen it once had. Another law, a more recent one, required smoke and ash filters. But he wasn’t sure it was really better: chemicals still got into the ground and air, and found their way to the water by more subtle means. There were the beginnings of a response to this, too, but thus far it amounted to setting up waste dumps and piping water to villages where well water was unsafe; no one was quite sure how to stop the pollution without shutting down the factories.
At least they’re thinking about it. Tiberio had been in cities where no one did; after all, the people in industrial neighborhoods were usually poor. He’d been to others where environmental conservation was the province of those who had never been comfortable with industrial modernity in the first place. Thinking about how to
manage growth, how to enrich the country without poisoning it, was something they’d been doing here longer than most other places, and most political parties paid at least lip service to Imam Umaru’s declaration.
Which has its inconvenient aspects, Tiberio admitted as he turned onto a side street and saw the lot where he hoped to build an electronics plant. There were two hundred people gathered there, even more than he’d expected: people who lived in that neighborhood, and who would vote on his permit. The vote would be tomorrow, which meant that the assembly-field was today, and the citizens of this district, who’d lived cheek by jowl with industry for three generations, were even more Imam Umaru’s disciples than most.
He reached the lot along with a dozen other latecomers, and stepped onto the makeshift platform that had been laid at one end. People called friendly greetings – few here would treat an Abacar as an enemy, and Tiberio didn’t have his grandfather’s reluctance to trade on his family name. That was what having a home was, wasn’t it? Being known by one’s neighbors and being part of a deep-rooted family?
But friendly as it might be, the assembly was serious about its business. In other places, Tiberio might have begun the proceedings with a speech, but these were Malê, and here, the people spoke first. A woman in the crowd questioned him about whether he would use gas power rather than coal; a young man asked if he would plant trees; an older one asked what kind of waste containment systems he was planning. Much of this wasn’t required by law, but the neighborhood assemblies were well ahead of the parliament, and if they rejected his permit, he’d be tied up in appeals for years.
“I’m happy to answer your questions,” he said at last, the Sudanic sounding strange in his ears after so many years of German and Swahili and English, “and those of you who met with me while I was preparing my permit application know that I take them very seriously. I’ve asked my construction engineer to come – here he is now – and he’ll explain our environmental plan…”
Benares, 1951:
The sound of fiacre horns and fireworks was everywhere, and even from his sixth-floor office, Ujjal Singh could hear the chanting of jubilant Janata Dal supporters. People were calling out party slogans, and others were shouting “Svatantratā divasa” or “Bharat Mata ki jai” – this was not only election day but the thirtieth anniversary of the recognition of India’s independence, and the Janata Dal voters were none-too-subtly equating Sikandar Bakht Bahadur’s fall with that of the Raj. Ujjal could only imagine how the Mughal partisans were taking that – there were surely fights going on in the city, and he hoped there wasn’t anything worse.
“Did you vote for the Mughal?” asked the man in front of the desk. “I’d say no. You don’t look sad enough. A Janata Dal man?”
“I voted Congress, actually – I’m not sad, but not very happy.” Ujjal walked over to the window and looked out at the celebrating voters. “All I wanted from this election was for it not to be Hindu against Muslim, and I got that.”
“I remember. A couple of the Mahasabha people tried to make it that, with the Mughal being who he was, but there were too many Hindus in the Mughal list…”
“And too many Muslims in the other parties. I can hope we’ve buried all that, though I still get scared every time someone tries to dig it up.” Ujjal paced across the room one more time and sat down. “All right, Sangat, tell me why you’re here.”
“You do a lot of business in East Africa…”
“Yes.”
“Do you know anyone in Kismayo? I’m looking for land there.”
“Land? In Kismayo? I can get you all you want, if you don’t mind it being outside the city. But what for?”
“Kismayo’s ours now…”
“It’s a free city.”
“
Our free city. I’d like to get in at the beginning.”
“Fine. But why
land? I can get you a warehouse and offices, and I can set you up trading with the Somalis or Kenia, but you don’t need land of your own for that, and it’ll take twenty years of infrastructure-building before you’re ready to build a factory.”
Sangat Ram listened, but he was smiling. “Remember those rockets Russia used during the war? The ones that could go halfway across China?”
“Yes, but…”
“They’re working on one that can carry a fission bomb now. So are the French and Germans, and probably half a dozen others. Including India.”
“And we’ll build them in Kismayo?”
“Not
build them,
launch them. And not right away. We don’t need Kismayo for missiles. But the first thing the French futurists thought of when they saw the Russian rockets was putting men into space. That’s practically holy writ to them, given how Verne figures in their founding myth. And for that, you want a site close to the equator. Kismayo’s as close as it gets, and when
we start sending men to space twenty or thirty years from now, wouldn’t it be good if there’s a site ready to hand?”
“And of course they’ll build it on your land, rather than the thousands of other hectares of scrubland they can get for free.”
“Well, you said it would take twenty years to build infrastructure. If I built it ahead of time, then where do you think the government would put its launch site – and which contractor do you think they’ll hire to build the facilities?”
“Maybe,” Ujjal conceded. “In the meantime, it’ll be a money sink for twenty years, maybe even thirty.”
“But in twenty years, imagine the profits!”
“In twenty years I might be dead.”
“Nonsense. They say with all the medical miracles we’re seeing these days, everyone will live to ninety or a hundred.”
“They also say we’ll all go to work on flying buses.”
“Maybe, maybe. But even so, you’ve got the company, and you have children. You’re making a public stock offering in a couple of months – you can afford to burn a little money now for a fortune later. Especially if I can get the Germans to throw in on the infrastructure – Kismayo’s a lot closer than New Britain, and it’s more stable than Madagascar.”
“Yes, Sangat, I do have money. One of the
reasons I have money is that I try not to throw it away.” But Ujjal had risen from his chair and was looking out the window again. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy you the land – you won’t have to pay an anna for it – and I’ll handle the diplomacy with the Somalis and Germans. But for that, and nothing more, I get eight percent. And another five percent for the Somali partners I line up for you – trust me, you
don’t want them saying they were cut out of the deal.”
At least some of that five percent, Sangat knew, would find its way back to Akhtar & Singh, and Ujjal’s own commission was a high one, even with his local connections. But dusk was falling, and he had his eyes fixed on the stars, and given time, so would Ujjal.
“I have to take it back to my partners. But I think they’ll agree.”
Saint-Lunaire, 1953:
Funmilayo walked for seven miles along the shore, past the lighthouses and fishing villages. She’d taken to doing that every morning in good weather; it filled the extra hours in the day after her retirement from the
corps législatif, and it concentrated her mind now that she was writing again. That, and she’d lost fifteen kilos.
She turned onto the lane that led back to her house, and saw that Gilles Cariou was standing there. He and his wife lived across the way, and took care of the house when she wasn’t there, but she didn’t usually see them on her land unless she’d invited them for a meal.
“Demat deoc'h, Madame Touré,” he said. Such formality wasn’t common any more, even here in Brittany, but there were families the Red Twenty hadn’t touched.
“Trugarez,” she answered, with equal formality. “Demat deoc'h.”
Gilles smiled; he still did, even after all this time, when he heard her speak Breton. She’d become fluent these past few years. She divided her retirement between Paris, Dorset and Brittany, but she’d come to spend most of her time here; there was something about the Bretons’ independent streak that pleased her Malê soul.
Regional cultures are a right-wing cause these days, she reflected, not for the first time.
Maybe I’m becoming reactionary in my old age. Or maybe – again, not for the first time –
I wasn’t always right about what I called progressive.
“There’s someone in your yard,” Gilles said. “She came by about half an hour ago. I told her you weren’t there, but she said she’d wait.”
“Do you know who?”
“She said you’d know her.” It seemed Gilles knew more than he was telling, but Funmi was tired, and she let it pass. She’d find out in a minute, so she said “trugarez” again and walked the rest of the way up the lane.
She
did know the woman sitting in a chair behind the house. She hadn’t been expecting visitors, but to be fair, the other woman’s summer house wasn’t far away. Even if it wasn’t yet summer.
“Sit down. Don’t blame Monsieur Cariou; I swore him to secrecy. I brought a bottle of calvados from my Norman estate – I hope you don’t mind.”
Funmi didn’t; the days when she would have refused a drink were long in the past. The apple brandy was seven years old, and its warmth spread through her as she settled.
“You’ve lost weight,” the other woman said. “Could stand to drop another twenty, though.” It wasn’t an insult; it was the honest statement of an old friend, and she was right. Funmi was still over a hundred kilos, and would probably always be.
“I’ve been a mother eight times, Marianne, and I enjoy living well. Did you come here to scold me, or is there another reason?”
“We could talk about your novel.”
“The Igbo Women’s War one? Certainly. But after. I don’t care for small talk with business hanging overhead, even when I’m writing about the past and not the future.”
“Who says there’s… oh, never mind. I’d like you to go to Washington.”
“As part of the French delegation?” Funmi asked cautiously.
“No, not as an official member…”
“Who would I represent, after all?”
“… but I need a liaison between the official mission and the
other French delegations.”
If Marianne had expected Funmi to be surprised, she was disappointed. “The West Africans…”
“The Algerians too. The Corsicans, and the Bretons.”
“But not the Alsatians. And not the Occitans, at least not yet.” Funmi waited for the other woman’s nod; evidently, what she’d been hearing wasn’t wrong. “Do you expect them to seek autonomy there?”
“No. I expect them to seek it here, but they’ll lay the groundwork there and make their alliances. I’d like to know what they have in mind, and how they’re planning to get it. It’ll be the parliament’s decision, of course, but I expect I won’t be without influence. You know the politics there…”
“So do plenty of other people.”
“They’re partisan. You’re not, anymore.”
“Mostly.” Funmi held the cup in her hand and considered. “If you have influence, which way will you use it?”
“I’m… not certain,” Marianne admitted. “For Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire, the only thing I’m concerned with is that the people make a fair choice. But Corsica, even Algeria – there are so many conflicting claims. They want to be their own nation and part of ours too…”
She filled her cup again. “I’ve heard that the Jews are also sending their own delegates. A nation spread throughout the world. Tell me, Funmi, how does one serve that many masters?”
“I’ve managed.” But Funmi knew there was more to the question than that. She’d been able to keep her multiple nationalities through a fluke of French law – foreign titles were permissible, and her right to retain her rank in the nobility of Ife, and the Oyo and British Empire citizenship that accompanied it, had never been challenged – but most Frenchmen weren’t comfortable with such things, and Marianne shared that discomfort. “We’re going back to the Middle Ages in that way, Marianne, and there were rules for sorting out the obligations of vassals who served more than one lord. I expect we’ll work out something similar, where we haven’t already.”
“But if the Jews are a nation, and also citizens of where they live, what happens if France and Germany go to war? What side will the Jews be on?”
“Maybe they’ll be the ones who reach across and stop the war. You’re sending me to Washington because I stand between worlds, aren’t you? I think we all will, a hundred years from now, not just the Jews.”
“Touché. Maybe it’s like women wearing trousers – something I’ll have to get used to, even if it doesn’t seem natural. These things have a way of
becoming natural for the next generation.”
Funmilayo, who was wearing trousers, let that pass. “The Corsicans and the Bretons don’t want to serve two masters.”
“No, they don’t. But they want to change what France is, and that will affect all of us, not only them. Change can be for the better… but it has to be done carefully, and with a thought to the whole.”
“They know that.”
“
You know that. I’m not as sure about them. Which is why I want you there. You’re part of many worlds: make sure they plan their changes in a way that won’t shatter any of them…”
