Sankofa(51)

No one knew where I was. No one needed to know, except Rose, and even then, she depended on me for nothing. My decisions were mine. Reckless or not, only I would bear the consequences. My British passport was zipped into a side compartment in my bag. It was my talisman. In the Name of Her Majesty, allow the bearer to pass freely.

“Would you like something to drink, madam?” The air hostess’s lipstick matched her skirt.

“Yes, please. Some water.”

Sule took the armchair at the back of the plane, while I sat behind the pilot’s closed door. Kofi lay on the sofa. If I looked back, I could see the soles of his feet. I was curious about him, as scientists are curious about new species they discover. I wanted to observe him in detail, to take notes on my findings. Once I had buckled my seat belt, the plane sped down the runway and rose into the sky. It was a cloudy day and the city was obscured.

I’d bought a magazine from the hotel shop. The woman on the front was larger and darker than your average European cover girl. She was not a model or, if she was, she was modeling to a standard I had never seen. Her pose was sassy, obvious almost, with the hand on the hip and the bold stare. I couldn’t tell her age, but she was older than Rose when she went for her first casting.

At fifteen a modeling agent had spotted her outside a McDonald’s, a hunter drawn to prey. She was almost as tall as Robert by then, with an erect, striding gait from lacrosse and netball. She wanted to do it. I was skeptical of a profession that depended solely on looks but Robert didn’t see the harm. Professional head shots were arranged, with her hair ironed flat and her eyes surly for the camera.

I went with her on castings and waited outside with other mothers of minors. She got to the final round for a big fashion house and came out of the casting in tears. One of the girls, a pale English rose who would eventually be booked and feature in Vogue three months later, had pointed out the muscles in Rose’s calves. “Her legs are nigger big,” she said. Rose quit modeling after that. Then a year later she quit food.

Were Robert and I to blame? All the advice we received said no. It was the culture and its harsh focus on female bodies, not parents who dieted or didn’t diet, not mothers who were strict or lax with food.

“But we let her go on that casting,” I said to Robert on one night of tearful recrimination. He replied that there were other girls in her year who had never been on a casting, yet they had also stopped eating. It was scant consolation.

The plane juddered and swung to the left. My glass rattled in its cup holder.

“Don’t be afraid. The winds are strong this time of year,” Kofi said.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“The flight is short. We’ll be landing soon.”

Our descent was rapid, and I felt the pressure in my ears. When we broke through the clouds, Kofi pointed out Gbadolite. It was cut out of the forest in the shape of a key. There were buildings scattered along the long central road. The plane circled twice before we landed.

“Welcome to Gbadolite,” the air hostess said over the PA system.



Kofi and I sat in a golf cart. He was driving. There were no cars in Gbadolite, or if there were, they were tucked away in an underground garage. Ours was not the only golf cart. There were families, couples, even some solo travelers who had come to see the theme park that Kofi had built in the middle of the forest. They could choose from museums, a television studio, a cinema, a zoo, a water park, and a cable car ride. We were driving to the zoo.

“Our collection of animals is one of the biggest in Africa. We have the only tiger in West Africa.”

“Is he happy?”

“A she. We’re trying to get her a mate from a zoo in Beijing. Of course, we could just mate her with one of the lions and create something called a liger.”

When passengers in the other golf carts spotted Kofi, they beeped and waved, a few bowed in their seats. There were camera flashes. He lifted one hand in acknowledgment; the other remained steady on the wheel. We did not stop until we reached the zoo. It was empty of visitors and the keepers were standing by the entrance in their overalls. The females curtsied. The males bowed.

Kofi was still a powerful man, that much was obvious, but he did not seem dangerous, as Adrian had warned. Kofi seemed like these animals in their cages: once wild, now domesticated.

We went to the giraffes first. Their necks rose into the air like industrial cranes. Fresh leaves were brought but they showed no interest in our offerings. A keeper ran a stick along the bars but they ignored the noise. Finally, the keeper jumped over the bars and herded them to us with stamping and clapping. Their tongues when they emerged were thick and black, a shock buried in their pretty heads.

“They’re beautiful,” I said.

The tiger sat alone under a tree, marooned in her sunken pen. She looked up briefly and then looked away. The hippos remained submerged. The flamingos had a pond to wade in, their legs sticking out of the water like pink straws.

“Do you want to watch the feeding of the crocodiles?” Kofi asked.

“What do they eat?”

“Chickens, mostly.”

“Alive?”

“Yes. They prefer a kill.”

“I don’t think I can watch.”

“It happens very fast.”

A water habitat had been built for them. They sunned themselves on the bank, merging into the brown of their background like curious rock formations. The chickens were lowered in a cage. A few feet from the ground, the cage floor slid open and the birds tumbled out, battery chickens, uniform white feathers, plump from animal feed. They strutted in a loose circle, flapping and pecking the ground. They seemed unaware of the predators close by. Their instincts had been deadened.