Naturally she knew the mission had to do with returning a gorilla to its original habitat. This was all Luk was going to know as well. It was all that either one of them needed to know. Anything more than that they would have rejected anyway. Why it was so all-fired important to return a gorilla to Africa was just not going to be discussed nohow. It was an act of cosmic symbolic importance, so forget it.
Ishmael made his getaway from the Fairfield Building at three o’clock Sunday morning. I wasn’t involved in that.
Art and Ishmael were obviously uneasy about disclosing his immediate destination to me, but in the end there was just no way around it. Naturally they had to preface the information with some history. The years Art spent playing at being a naturalist in the bush provided him with a way of supporting himself during his years at school in Brussels and America. He worked as an animal handler at menageries, zoos, and circuses, and gained a reputation as the man to call in on problem cases—animals that couldn’t settle down to life behind bars, animals that wouldn’t eat, animals that were unusually hostile or that developed strange, self-destructive habits like opening up wounds in their skin and perversely keeping them open. When he returned to America at the end of 1989, he had his pick of jobs, and he took one with the Darryl Hicks Carnival, then wintering in Florida. As it turned out, Hicks was experiencing some health problems and had been planning to lighten his load by liquidating the menagerie attached to the carnival. Instead, he sold it to Art, who was not by any means destitute. He’d made some shrewd investments while in America and had left them in the hands of a friend he knew he could trust—Rachel Sokolow. Within a year Hicks was ready to get out of the business entirely and offered Art a deal on the whole carnival. Art had enough capital to take it off his hands, though he couldn’t buy it outright. It was during the second half of 1990 that he got to know Rachel really well—along with Ishmael, at long last. In January 1991 Rachel tested HIV-positive. Evidently she’d been infected during an operation to correct a heart problem of some kind. Rachel, Art, and Ishmael soon began to formulate the plans that were now involving me.
On leaving the Fairfield Building, Ishmael would be moved to a cage in the menagerie of the Darryl Hicks Carnival during its weeklong gig in our town. From that point on, till the Zaire transfer was arranged, Ishmael would go where the carnival went. Naturally I had some questions, like, Why a cage, for God’s sake? Because there’d be a panic if anyone caught sight of a gorilla that wasn’t behind bars; the local law would be down on them in a flash, bristling with weapons. And, If they could afford all this other stuff, why not leave him at the Fairfield Building until it was time to put him on a plane? Because the carnival had all the various licenses, permits, and connections that were ultimately going to be needed to put him on a plane—and Ishmael not only didn’t have them, he couldn’t get them.
“You’re going to have to trust us on this, Julie,” Ishmael said. “None of this is perfect, but it’s the best that can be done under the circumstances.” I had to settle for that. But the first time I went to the carnival, set up on an empty lot at the edge of town, and saw Ishmael in his cage, it nearly broke my heart. Though I had to eventually, I couldn’t face him that way yet. I was embarrassed—not for him, for me. Even knowing it was irrational, I felt personally guilty for his being there.
A lot had to be done—that’s an understatement. The plan was that I would leave at the crack of dawn on Monday, October 29, and (all going miraculously well) get back around midnight on Friday, November 2. This meant I was going to miss a week of school, and the school had to be cooled out on this. This departure date gave us time to:
Organize plane reservations;
Get passport photos;
Get passport;
Get visa application;
Get shots—tetanus-diphtheria booster, hepatitis-A immune globulin, yellow fever, cholera (not all on the same day!);
Begin taking antimalaria tablets (two weeks before leaving);
Get medical and dental checkups;
Get tickets and travel insurance (including medical);
Get international health certificate;
Get French phrase book;
Get medical supplies: aspirin, antihistamine, antibiotics, stomach aids, diarrhea medicine, salt tablets, calamine lotion, sunscreen, Band-Aids, bandages, scissors, antiseptic, mosquito repellent, water purification tablets, lip balm, facecloth and hand towel, moist-towelette packs, Swiss army knife with scissors, tweezers, and nail file;
Get a backpack and a tummy pack to put it all in.
Now if you happen to have lost your mind and are planning to vacation in Zaire this year, you can follow the above list right down the line, except that now you’ll need a currency declaration form (which was eliminated in 1980 and reinstated in Kinshasa in 1992).
I needed an eight-day transit visa, but they wouldn’t issue one by mail to someone my age. I’d have to visit the Zairean embassy in Washington when I was actually on the way.
More important than all the stuff I needed to get and get done, were all the instructions I received from Art, repeated almost daily for three weeks.
“You’ll be met at the gate at the end of every flight. Stay put till your escort arrives. Don’t wander off. Stand out in the middle of the gate area in plain sight.”
“You’ll be taken care of at every destination from the time you arrive till the time you leave, so you don’t need to take a lot of money.”
“Travel as light as possible.”
“In the air, sleep whenever you can, as much as you can. When you arrive in Zurich, it’ll feel like the middle of the night to you, but it’ll be the beginning of the workday for them. When you arrive in Kinshasa, you’ll just be getting ready to face the day, and they’ll be getting ready for dinner and bed. In the short amount of time you have, there’s nothing you can do about this except sleep as much as possible.”
“Don’t get involved with the people you meet on the airplane. Be polite but have a book with you that you’re interested in.”
“Go into Kinshasa knowing it’s probably the most criminally dangerous city in the world. People are routinely robbed and killed in the street in broad daylight—especially foreigners. You won’t be, because you’ll be heavily protected, but you have to understand why you need that protection. Don’t get cute. Don’t play games.” (This aspect of the journey is one we hadn’t stressed to my mother, needless to say.)
“There’ll be no signs at the airport, no announcements on an intercom. Follow the crowd toward the terminal, but my brother Luk should meet you before you get there. Remember that you’ll be met by Luk and no one else. He doesn’t look like me (we had different fathers). In fact, we hardly look like brothers at all. He’s tall and gawky and wears thick glasses. If you have any doubt that it’s him, make him tell you your name and his brother’s name, and if he can’t do that, it isn’t Luk and you shouldn’t talk to him or have anything to do with him. Stay with the crowd from the airplane and talk to no one but Luk.”
“Luk will have two people with him—a bodyguard, who’ll be armed to the teeth, and a driver, who’ll stay with the car (otherwise it’d be stripped or stolen). The bodyguard will stay with you while Luk takes your bags and passport through customs.”
“Don’t wear sunglasses. They signal ‘big shot’—a target. Don’t carry a purse or wear jewelry—they’ll be ripped right off of you, bodyguard or no bodyguard. And don’t stuff pockets to bulging—someone with a razor will open them right up and be gone with their contents before you can even open your mouth. Compared to Kinshasa, Times Square in New York City is as safe as a Sunday-school picnic.”
“Have copies of all your documents and keep them with you at all times in a traveler’s belt under your shirt.”
“Don’t expect the police to protect you—even in the airport. There’s nothing like airport security. Nobody is making this place safe for tourists. Roaming bands of kids and beggars will grab whatever they can and ta
ke off with it.”
“People who flash police IDs are not necessarily police. Even if they are police, they’re not necessarily your friends. They’ll detain you for any minor infraction—or for no reason at all—until a bribe is paid.”
“Don’t bring a camera—taking photos of the wrong things can land you in jail. Don’t expect your tender age to protect you. No one in Kinshasa will think you’re too young to be a criminal—or a whore. You should be aware that a lot of Africans, especially under Muslim influence, think all American girls are more or less whores.”
“While you’re waiting for Luk to get finished, a stranger could walk up and stick a package or a sack in your hand and walk away without a word. He’s hoping you’ll carry it through customs and no one will notice. Believe it or not, people do this all the time. They’re so stunned that they actually carry the contraband through customs for him. Afterward, of course, he walks over and relieves them of it.”
“Obviously none of this applies to the people I’m sending you to. Anyone Luk introduces you to is someone you can trust completely, and they’ll be very flattered if you’re as friendly to them as you are to me?”
“A good way to catch a case of worms is through the soles of your feet, so don’t walk around barefoot anywhere. Don’t go swimming. Wash your hands often. Drink only beer or purified water. Drink more water than you think you need—but only purified water. And don’t let anyone put ice in your drinks, unless it’s made with purified water. Use only purified water for brushing your teeth. If someone offers you ice cream as a special treat, you’ll have to say no to that also.”
“When you get to Bolamba, be prepared to eat with your fingers. This is perfectly respectable and well mannered. Also be prepared to eat strange food. People may offer you Zairean delicacies, especially out in the bush—fried grubs or termites. Shut your eyes if you have to and pretend to like them. The termites are crunchy and taste like popcorn. I promise you it won’t kill you to eat these things.”
“Don’t draw attention to yourself. And be respectful to everybody!”
I especially liked that last one!
En Route
Damned if the very first minder didn’t fail to show up at the Atlanta airport to help me connect to Washington. I hung around till I had only fifteen minutes to make the next flight—leaving from another concourse, naturally!—then I took off, following the signs downstairs to some kind of goddamned train station. It’s my experience of trains that you’re not at liberty to get off of them once they get started. Was I going to get on one here at this juncture of my life and maybe wake up three days later somewhere in Montana? No, I definitely wasn’t.
I ran. I’m no connoisseur, God knows, but it’s my opinion that whoever designed that airport had to be someone with a deep-seated grudge against travelers. Maybe my way wasn’t the most elegant way, but I got there.
I hoped this wasn’t going to be the pattern for the whole trip, but I needn’t have worried. At Dulles Airport my minder was right there waiting for me at the gate, a competent-looking woman in her forties, dressed like a lawyer in a movie. I felt like an orphan in my jeans and T-shirt (but then I was going to Zaire and she wasn’t). We got a cab, and on the way I asked her if she was a friend of Art Owens. She smiled at that—but in a friendly way. She explained that she was a professional escort; this is what she did for a living, meeting people at trains and airports and getting them wherever they needed to be. She explained that in other cities escorts spend most of their time shepherding authors on book tours. In Washington they’re expected to serve as bureaucratic pathfinders and trailblazers as well.
At the Zairean embassy they had no record of my visa application or of the letter they’d written saying they’d hand over my visa as soon as I proved I wasn’t indigent. I hauled out all my papers plus the copy of their letter plus my wad of traveler’s checks totaling the required $500 and waved them at the clerk. He agreed it was all in order and invited me to fill out another application and come back in two days. At that point my escort stepped in and very politely explained that if they didn’t stop horsing around, she was basically just going to rip out their lungs and sell them for dog food. She didn’t put it in exactly those terms, but that was the general idea. They stopped horsing around, and fifteen minutes later I walked out with my visa. On the basis of this experience, I added “professional escort” to my list of attractive future career choices.
Between there and Kinshasa it was just air travel and plenty of it, with boredom, movies, sleep, snacks, and boredom. Kinshasa from the air surprised me. I was expecting a smoking, postapocalyptic ruin. Instead, it was just an ordinary-looking big city, with office buildings, skyscrapers, and everything. There was even sunshine.
Njili Airport at six P.M. was hot and muggy and did not come equipped with nice air-conditioned passenger-loading bridges moved up to the door. We didn’t have to wait to go outside to know what Kinshasa smelled like, because as soon as they cracked the door, Kinshasa came right in and gave us a sample, and it wasn’t pleasant.
We climbed down to the tarmac and shuffled off toward the terminal building. An aging hippie with a gray ponytail and beard stepped forward with a smile and said, “Julie?” I ignored him and kept shuffling. Puzzled, he scanned the crowd again, looking for other twelve-year-olds to accost. Finding no others to choose from, he said again, “Julie?”
I told him firmly, “I’m here to meet Lukombo Owona and no one else, and if you’re not him, I’d appreciate it if you’d get away from me.”
He cackled with laughter. “You’re gonna have a long wait, kiddo. Luk Owona’s five hundred miles away in Bolamba.”
I just kept shuffling forward as I tried to work this out. Not a single thing had been made clearer than that I was to accept no substitute for Lukombo Owona. Luk was it—Luk and absolutely no one but Luk. This guy had done his looking around. I now did mine, looking for a tall, gawky black guy that might be Art Owens’s half brother. Standing by the doorway of the terminal was a black guy who was a sort of bigger, meatier version of Art—neither tall nor gawky, but definitely interested in me. I went up to him and said, “Luk?”
He frowned and turned to the hippie, and the two of them exchanged some words in French. When they were finished, the hippie looked down at me and said, “I explained to Mafuta here that you were expecting to meet Luk Owona at the airport, and Mafuta said, ‘Luk Owona is the prime minister of Mabili. He doesn’t meet people at the airport.’ Which is the way it is, Julie. He sends people to meet people. He sent Mafuta and he sent me, and I’m afraid you’re just gonna have to live with that. Either that or turn around and go home.”
So, there went one prime directive down the drain.
Mafuta went to get my stuff through customs while the aging hippie stood guard over me in a waiting room that was like a bus station from hell, with people sitting on the floor, propped against the wall, sleeping, looking bored, tired, and resigned as they waited for flights that would arrive sometime, someday, or maybe never. The hippie was Glen, or rather Just Glen, as he was known. As a pilot in Vietnam, he abandoned his last name in exchange for the helicopter that was sitting out on the tarmac waiting to take us to Bolamba—in other words, he deserted in a stolen helicopter full of spare parts and fuel, spent the next few years running guns and contraband wherever there was money to be made, and finally settled down to a semirespectable life in Zaire.
As Glen talked, just killing time till Mafuta managed to distribute all the necessary bribes, I began to conceive a hope that we would fly directly to Bolamba and not have to spend a night in Kinshasa as planned. But this was not to be. Air travel in Africa, he explained, was not to be confused with air travel in the U.S. In the U.S. you can track your position constantly, day or night, by loran—long-range navigation by way of a network of ground radio stations—and you always know what weather you’re flying into. In Africa you fly by sight and by guesstimate, and heading out to cross five hundred miles of wildern
ess after dark is strictly an enterprise for heroes and lunatics.
Half an hour later we were outside and piling into a car of a make I’d never seen, certainly not American. Mafuta sat in front, beside the driver, a carbine propped up conspicuously inboard of his left knee. This, Glen explained, let all the riffraff know that we would not take kindly to being messed with. In case of actual trouble, Mafuta would be much more likely to use a handgun.
We set out on a long drive through La Cité, the vast slum where two-thirds of the city’s population lives—block after block of low hovels with lean- to kitchens, where meals were being cooked over open fires. It didn’t take me long to realize that this was the wellhead of the ghastly smell that had greeted us at the airport. When I asked Glen what caused it, he asked if I’d ever visited a big garbage dump. I had to admit that this was a treat I’d missed so far.
“Well, to put it simply,” he said, “garbage burns.”
“So?”
“In La Cité garbage is cooking fuel. A whole lotta people cooking food over burning garbage makes a stench that stays with you a long time.”
I had nothing to say to that—I was concentrating on swallowing.
Oddly enough, there were tons of bars and nightclubs in La Cité—many of them operating in open air and almost all of them throbbing with live music that, to my ears, sounded like the very hottest hot salsa. I wondered how people living in such soul-crushing squalor could produce music that is just purely wild, exciting fun—then I decided maybe the music is their antidote to soul-crushing squalor. Seeing that I was taking it in, Glen noted (with a touch of irony, I thought) that Kinshasa is the live-music capital of Africa. I wasn’t tempted to pause for a closer look and listen.
After driving half an hour we were still nowhere near the city center, where the government buildings, museums, and European-style shops are, but were in a better class of slum, which is where Glen lived and where I’d spend the night. He and his girl, Kitoko, had an apartment in a house dating from the colonial era, once elegant but now pretty bedraggled. Even here, there were people scattered around cooking over open fires, and we had to climb over some to get to the outside staircase that led to Glen’s apartment on the second floor.