Zoo City (7 page)

   It also turned out that his name wasn't Elias. Elias was just the guy he filled in for when Elias was sick. The rest of the time, Benoît hustled. Odd jobs, man-on-the-sideof-the-road stuff, bouncer, labourer, fixer, entrepreneur, as long as it was legal, or mostly legal. Seducer of women was not part of his résumé, he claimed, until he met me.

   In fact, I was the one who kissed him.

   "I didn't expect you to be so forward," he said, surprised.

   "Better than being backward," I said. The texture of his burns under my palm was like cellophane.

   "Must be nice to wear your scars on the outside," I said.

   "I'm not the only one," he said, touching the ruin of my left ear where the bullet had caught me. But he only told me about his wife and kids in January, four and a half months after we'd first started sleeping together.

   We were perusing the wares on a food stand downstairs, when he dropped the bomb that his wife's mother used to have a fruit stand in Walakase.

   "Wife present tense?"

   "Possibly. I don't know."

   "You failed to mention a wife." I thought I was speaking at an appropriate volume, but I was loud enough to perk up all the hawkers on the corner. Even the upstanding young drug-dealer on the corner with the unnaturally wide-eyed Bushbaby craned his neck to see what was happening. Sloth ducked his head. He hates it when I make a scene. "Maybe you should have told me about your wife, Benoît."

   "You didn't ask," Benoît said calmly, picking up a mango from the fruit stand, turning it over in his hands. He squeezed it gently. Ripeness check, aisle three.

   "I thought those were the rules we were going with. Former Life out of bounds. No questions."

   "Why?"

   "Because it's none of my business. I didn't want to know."

   "And now you do. And this is my fault?" He swapped the mango for another candidate and handed it over to me, while the fruitseller pretended not to gawp. "What do you think of this one?"

   "I think it's soft in the head."

   "Would it have mattered to you, if you knew, cherie na ngayi?" I knew the textbook answer. The manual of morality dictates that I should have said "of course" or "how can you even ask that?" but I've never been a dependable liar. Or a good person.

   "That's what I thought," he said. "It doesn't change anything, Zinzi." He moved to kiss me, but as I tilted my head up, he pressed the mango against my lips instead.

   "Idiot," I said, wiping my mouth, mainly to hide my smile.

   "Adulterer," he grinned.

   "Unwitting accomplice!"

   "You weren't so unwitting last night. And besides polygamie is legal in Congo."

   "Did I call you an idiot already?"

   "Only as much as I deserve." This time he did kiss me.

I handed over twelve bucks for the mango and tucked myself under his arm, forcing Sloth to shuffle over begrudgingly.

   "Are we a terrible cliché?"

   "Isn't everybody?" he said.

   The full story only came out later, and then only in snapshots, images caught in a strobe. The last time he saw his family, they were running into the forest, like ghosts between the trees. Then the FDLR beat him to the ground with their rifle butts, poured paraffin over him and set him alight.

   That was over five years ago. He'd sent messages to his extended family, friends, aid organisations, refugee camps, scoured the community websites, the cryptic refugee Facebook groups that use nicknames and birth orders and job descriptions as clues – never any photographs of faces – to help families find each other without cueing in their persecutors. No dice. His wife and his three little children had vanished. Presumed dead. Lost forever.

   The reason I didn't sense any of this? The reason I thought he was safe and sane and well-adjusted? His shavi is dampening other people's. He's the static to our ambient noise, the fuzzy snow that cancels out other frequencies, but only in how it affects him. A natural resistance to magic. Don't let that get out. If there was a way to synthesise his mashavi, gangsters and governments would both be after him. He lied to the Home Affairs officers on his refugee application, listing his talent as "charm" – and he was charming enough to get away with it.

   I thought it didn't matter. But now that his wife is no longer a theoretical construct of a tragic past, it suddenly does. That's the thing about ghosts from Former Lives – they come back to claim you.

   In the shopping arcade, the brittle ack-ack of gunfire has cut off, replaced by the wail of multiple sirens. People start venturing out, some newly supplied with pungentsmelling meat pasties from Mr Pie. Who says violent crime is bad for business? I'm tempted to get one myself, but I'm held up by the signage in Go-Go-Go Travel, or more specifically the list of specials.

   The place names are a list of well-worn exotica: Zanzibar. Paris. Bali. Amazing deals! Airport taxes not included.

   These are places that do not feature: Harare. Yamoussoukro. Kinshasa. These are places that require alternative travel arrangements.

   Border official bribes not included.

I'm woken by a scritching at the door. I don't know what time it is, barely remember falling asleep reading a threemonth-old You magazine, with its gleefully scandalised headlines about minor league South African celebrities and moral degeneration in general. It's been doing the rounds on this floor for a particularly torrid piece on "Forbidden Love! My Zoo Story Romance", about some corporate banker and her reformed gangster lover – complete with Silver-backed Jackal. Sample quote: "The biggest challenge, after my parents, was getting over my allergies!" Tabloid journalism at its finest.

   The lights are still blazing, which is no good for my generator. I make a note on my mental shopping list to get more petrol (along with food, any description), and stumble, cursing, to open the door.

   The Mongoose is sitting to attention on the spot where my doormat used to be. Add another item to the shopping list. That's the third one in six months. Maybe this time I'll get one with an anti-theft charm woven in. There's a tailor in the flat opposite who has a real talent for it, as opposed to the placebos they sell at Park Station.

   The Mongoose gets to his paws and pads off down the corridor towards the fire-escape. He pauses and looks back expectantly over his shoulder.

   "Really?" I say. I'm wearing a t-shirt, panties and a pair of socks, and it's freaking cold out there.

   The Mongoose sits down again and waits.

   "Okay, hang on. For fuck's sake." I close the door and yank on my yellow leather coat with the ripped lining. Sloth mumbles sleepily.

   "S'okay, buddy. I think I can handle Operation Retrieve Drunken Idiot Boyfriend on my own." Sloth makes approving chewing noises and goes back to sleep.

   I button up the coat, deciding on impulse to forgo jeans. The coat only comes down to my thighs, but it covers the objectionable bits. I will come to regret this. Also not putting on shoes. Because Benoît is not just down the hall, he's all the way at the bottom of the stairs, lolling against them like a drunken cowboy, his pageboy cap tilted rakishly over his eyes, and necking a zamalek. The burst vessels in his eyes when he looks up to see me suggest he hasn't let up since this afternoon.

   "Lost y'r shoes?" he slurs mournfully.

   "It happens," I say. It's not worth explaining.

   "I think they're st'len. Everythin' gets st'len h're."

   "I think you're drunk. Want me to get you to bed?"

"Y'r bed."

   "You really up to facing the sunrise bouncing off Ponte tomorrow morning at 6 am?"

   "Sh'ld knock it down."

   "Or get curtains. Come on, big guy." I wrestle him to his feet, using the railing for leverage. And then we start making our way, very carefully, up six flights of stairs, the Mongoose scampering ahead.

   As soon as I open the door, the Mongoose scoots inside and heads for the warmth of my laptop. I let him get away with it, this time, mainly because I'm preoccupied with shuffling Benoît inside one lurching step at a time.

   I try to get him onto the bed, and realise it's going to be easier to drag the mattress onto the floor and just tip him onto it.

   "Want'd t' talk," he says, sprawling onto his back, narrowly avoiding concussing himself on the wall as he goes down.

   "Plenty of time," I say, pouring some bottled water into a tin cup, because the landlord has shut off the water again. I tilt it into his mouth and he gulps it down. I tuck him in and position a wastebin next to his side of the bed for ease of puking, then peel off my filthy socks and climb in next to him.

   "Y'r feet are fr'zin," he complains.

   "At least they're not stolen."

   It's at that moment that the generator splutters and gasps and runs out of gas, plunging us into darkness, and saving me from getting back up to turn off the light.

Get Real: The Online Documentary Database

THE WARLORD & THE PENGUIN

The Untold Story of Dehqan Baiyat (2003)

User Rating: 7/10 (17,264 votes)

Directors: Jan Stephen Samara Khaja

Writers: Jan Stephen (narrator) Nikolai Wood

Interviews: Dehqan Baiyat Gul Agha Baiyat General Rashid "The Wrestler" Dostum Lt. Corp. Al Stuart Matthias Weems Brigadier Jon Chafe

[MORE]

Runtime: 180 minutes

Language: English / Dari / Pashto with subtitles

Company: League Pictures, London

Country: United Kingdom

Certification: Mature / Unrated

Genre: Politics / Culture / History

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Sound Mix: Dolby SR

Filming locations: Afghanistan, Pakistan, New York, London, Guantánamo

Release date: 9 October 2002 (UK) on BBC1

14 March 2003 (US/Worldwide)

Awards: Academy Award Best Documentary 2004 Sundance Film Festival 2003 International Documentary Association 2003 BAFTA 2004 Genie 2004 Golden Gate Award 2004

[MORE]

Synopsis: Warlord. Icon. Patient Zero? The life and death of Dehqan Baiyat.

Full Summary: (SPOILERS) Dehqan Baiyat was a New York film student turned machine gun-toting, motorcycleriding Afghan warlord who became notorious in the late '90s, not for his opium trafficking or his brutal tactics in fighting both the Taliban and NATO troops – but for the penguin always at his side.

   After rumours began circulating among British troops of a warlord accompanied incongruously by an Antarctic bird in a flak jacket, investigative journalist Jan Stephen tracked Baiyat down to the opium fields of the Helmand province and spent two years with him in desert and mountain hideouts, trying to uncover the mystery of the man and the bird.

   This documentary tracks the life and death of Dehqan Baiyat. Descended from an Iranian clan that once fought against Genghis Khan, he became known, incorrectly, as Patient Zero for what was then called the Zoo Plague and, later, AAF or Acquired Aposymbiotic Familiarism.

   Baiyat was filmed on several occasions at public

gatherings feeding his penguin strips of meat he claimed was the flesh of his enemies. It was said that he could torture a man without touching him. The rumours intensified: it was claimed to be black magic, genetic modification, Hollywood special effects. Or all of the above.

After the assassination of his penguin in a Taliban

ambush, his very public death by the "black cloud" (or Siah Chal in Persian) was televised internationally. It was the first time the event had been captured on camera, and it caused widespread panic, leading to the establishment of quarantine camps in many countries and executions in others.

   Unfairly compared to Gaëtan Dugas, the Canadian flight attendant alleged to have been at the centre of the spread of HIV in the US, Baiyat was, in reality, simply the most high-profile case in an epidemic that had nothing to do with disease.

   Initially suspected to be the eccentric quirk of a charismatic and self-indulgent sociopath, other theories postulated that the outbreak of the animal phenomenon in Afghanistan was a result of the fallout of Pakistan's nuclear tests in the neighbouring Chagai Hills in 1998.

   Now, it's believed that cases of the animalled may date back to as early as the mid-'80s, based on anthropological reports coming out of New Guinea, Mali and the Philippines. The earliest recorded case, uncovered in retrospect, was that of notorious Australian thug Kevin Warren, who was gunned down by police during an aborted bank heist in Brisbane with his 'pet' wallaby in 1986. Coming out of the animalled closet twelve years later, Baiyat was not so much the start of it all, as the poster boy.

   But who was Baiyat really?

   The film interrogates not only the mythos that sprang up around Baiyat in the turmoil and chaos of Taliban-led Afghanistan, but also everything we understand about the animalled and the ontological Shift that happened around him.

   Featuring interviews with embedded journalists, mujahidin leaders, British troops, Taliban fighters and the Baiyat family, the film is an unflinching portrait of a man at the public centre of the Shift.

QUOTES:

"Why did I come back from film school in America? [Laughs] Because my father asked me to. Because this is my country. Because here I am a rock star. I have 18,000 men under my command. People respect me. Whole villages come to pay tribute. Because here I can fuck or kill whoever I like." – Dehqan Baiyat

"Think of it as my mascot. Let's say you have your lucky rabbit's foot. I have my Penguin. You keep your rabbit's

foot safe in your pocket. I keep my Penguin safe in

customised body armour."

– Dehqan Baiyat

"This romantic idea you have of some, I don't know, playboy magician warlord is all wrong. He's a drug dealer, a rapist, a killer and a spoilt little shit with his own private army and a bunch of tribal hocus-pocus pulled out of his arse." – Lt. Corp. Al Stuart

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20 March 2010

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