As he pushes the tshkudu onto the flat ground he keeps his head down but his eyes flick back and forth taking in little details, gauging the atmosphere. It’s ten o’clock and the market is busy, people have been cut off by the FDLR troops for months and have come in from the bush to stock up on food and consumer items. He will have to move fast to find a pitch and set out his wares. All his money is invested in his stock and he has got to get it out in front of his customers quickly before they spend the tiny reserves of cash they have.
A crowd of a couple of hundred people are milling around in a grassy area in the middle of the village, women in their brightly patterned pagne and men in an assortment of jackets and tee shirts, cast-offs from the West. Around the edge of the area women squat behind their goods, carefully laid out on banana leaves on the ground: piles of bush fruits, mangoes, blood oranges, cassava tubers, chickens tied up by the legs and silently awaiting their fate, lumps of bush meat covered in fur and some monkey flesh with little black hands sticking out. Protein is scarce as all the cattle and goats have been killed or driven off by the FDLR. People pick over the goods and pay for it warily with filthy Congolese franc notes.
Gabriel is worried, his eyes and ears taking in danger signals. The scene is unusually quiet, there is none of the usual chatter of a market and there are no children around – normally a village is teeming with them. People’s body language is tense and fearful; no one makes eye contact with each other. Heads constantly flick about looking for trouble, shooting sullen glances at the soldiers. The FDLR may have been driven off but the government FARDC troops are no better. The soldiers swagger around in groups with their rifles, occasionally taking some goods without paying and eyeing up women. The people live in patches like this between outbursts of fighting and flights into the forest. They are angry about their lives but powerless. The atmosphere is one of suppressed violence, like petrol vapour hanging in the air.
Gabriel scans the crowd; the grey sacks hang off his tshkudu, bulging with wares. A pair of soldiers stand at the side of the market with their rifle butts resting on their hips, heads flicking around in a predatory manner.
He is looking for an empty patch of ground to set up his stall. He spent a lot of time making a lightweight folding table from bamboo that he can display his goods on, rather than having them on the ground. He is sure this will draw the customers in.
As he scans around he accidentally catches the eye of one of the soldiers. He ducks his head immediately but the man has seen him and thrusts his jaw forwards aggressively, drawing his finger across his throat in a slitting gesture. Gabriel turns his head and moves away towards the other side of the market.
The soldier follows him and shouts, ‘Hey you! Where is your permit to trade?’
Gabriel freezes, turns and hurriedly goes into his most placatory mode, ducking his head into his shoulders and keeping his eyes averted. ‘Pardon, Monsieur Le Directeur, would you be interested in this small box of cigarettes?’ He holds out the packet.
This is bad; people are turning round and looking at them.
‘I said, where is your permit to trade? Are you deaf?’
The soldier snatches the cigarettes and stuffs them in the front of his combat jacket, his eyes dancing greedily over Gabriel’s sacks.
‘Ah, Monsieur Le Directeur …’
‘Hey, you sound Hunde! Are you Hunde?’
‘Err, no, I …’
‘Hey, he’s Hunde!’ the man calls to the other soldiers in the market and they start moving towards them. A crowd is forming around them, a sea of angry faces straining for an outlet for their misery.
The soldier is right up close to him – he’s big and his face is dark with anger. He shoves Gabriel in the chest. ‘You are Hunde and you come into my market with no permit to trade!’
The crowd gives an angry growl; they are mainly Shi people like the soldier.
‘We are confiscating your property!’ He grabs the handlebars of the tshkudu.
‘Hey! That’s mine!’ This can’t be happening, it’s all his worldly wealth.
The crowd closes around Gabriel, sensing his weakness. A hand shoots out and grabs a sack.
‘Hey, get off, that’s mine!’
Gabriel’s face is contorted in desperation and fear. He is surrounded; he tries to pull the handlebars back from the soldier and pushes a woman grabbing at his goods at the same time. She shrieks and slaps him across the face.
The petrol vapour ignites in a flashover.
The crowd roars and a frenzy breaks out. The soldier brings up the butt of his rifle and smashes it into his face. His nose breaks and blood gushes down his front. He falls backwards and the crowd punch and kick him.
His scooter falls over and there is a mad scramble as people yank open sacks and clamber on top of each other to get at the goods on the ground, shouting, screaming and clawing. Combs, batteries, cigarettes, condoms scatter everywhere. His bamboo display table is smashed to pieces.
Gabriel curls up in a ball on the ground, his arms over his head. He’s in the middle of a tornado, a mad whirl of screaming, kicking, spitting mayhem. Blows rain down on his arms, head, back and legs. Every part of his body is being battered.
Through it all the pain is still mind-shattering, it feels like his face has been smashed into the back of his head.
This is it … I’m going to die.
And then it stops.
The fire burns out as quickly as it started. The mob vent their anger, tear him down to their level of misery and then just as quickly lose interest in him and drift back to looking at the piles of bananas and tomatoes.
One of soldiers puts his heavy black boot on the side of his head and presses it down into the earth. He tastes the mud in his mouth mixed with the metallic tang of his own blood.
‘That will teach you to come into an authorised area without a permit from the Person Responsible! You have learned your lesson today!’
The soldiers pick over the remains of his stock but everything has either been stolen or smashed – someone has even wheeled the tshkudu away. The troops look at Gabriel’s inert body lying in the mud, laugh and wander off, lighting up some of his cigarettes.
He lies still for ten minutes, dazed and winded with broken fingers, busted lips, cracked ribs and a broken nose. People walk past him and carry on chatting. He doesn’t exist. They don’t see weakness: after decades of fighting and lawlessness there is no pity left in Kivu.
Slowly he pulls his hands away from his head and looks out. One eye is closed from a kick and his whole face is swelling from the rifle butt. He sits up, sways and looks around. Painfully, he eases himself up onto one hand and then gets his legs underneath him and creaks upright, his back bent from a kick in the kidneys.
He keeps his eyes down on the ground and shuffles away from Pangi market towards the trail he came in on, his clothes ripped and covered in blood and dirt. It is going to be a long and painful walk back to the refugee camp.
What will he say to Eve when he gets there? He has lost everything. What will she think of him now?
As he shuffles past the soldiers sitting on the log one of them is trying to make his transistor radio work but it has been trodden on. He gives up, throws it on the ground, smashes the casing with the butt of his rifle, pulls the batteries out and pockets them.
They don’t even look at him as he staggers past.
Chapter Five
‘You stink of piss.’
Eve’s older sister, Beatrice,