Blood Diamonds by Greg Campbell Page B

in terms of the peace and tranquility of our hideout. Whatever it lacked in ambiance—rooms at the Solar are painted swimming-pool blue and all seem to have sustained massive water damage if the stains on the walls and ceilings were any indication—it more than made up for in personality. The desk manager is descended from former Connecticut slaves and likes Americans, allowing free access to the Internet on the hotel’s one functional telephone and looking the other way when we ran up several days’ worth of beer tabs at the bar. The bar itself is nothing less than an oasis; hidden in the trees, it’s far from the main road and therefore less susceptible to invasion by the tightly wrapped and beglittered hookers who, anywhere else in Aberdeen, will literally assault you for your attention.
    The first conflict-gem salesman Kahn ferreted to Room E-2 was a Kamajor, a Mende fighter who relied as much on superstition for protection in battle as shotguns and rocket-propelled grenades. Charmed amulets, ancient tribal prayers, and animist rituals were meant to make Kamajors invisible to enemies, impenetrable to bullets and fragmentation grenades, and unconquerable in battle. To have one of these men standing in your hotel room is unnerving,
especially one with thousands of dollars in rough stones stolen from an overtaken RUF mine coming out of his burlap pocket, along with a professional jeweler’s loupe.
    More unnerving still is the moment when you tell him that you’re not interested in buying the stones, just looking at them for journalistic reasons. The smile turns into a blank stare, not understanding because we didn’t even make an offer. Then he turns to Kahn, who’s smiling at the wall, perhaps thinking that we’re being shrewd in our negotiations. Deciding that must be the case, he hustles the baffled Kamajor out of the room with promises to return.
    And return he does, time and again, dragging with him one bush fighter after another, whether Kamajor or their RUF enemies. Not one of them believed that we were journalists. Even if they did, they certainly didn’t believe that we weren’t in the market for goods. It seemed everyone else was, and as far as they were concerned there was no reason we shouldn’t have been, too. It got to the point where we dreaded hearing a knock at the door, sure that we’d open it to find Kahn presenting us with a malarial RUF captain clutching a leather bag filled with diamonds, or a Sierra Leone Army soldier eager for the chance to sell diamonds he’d stolen from the RUF during a raid two years ago.
    Things climaxed when Kahn called my mobile phone that day, telling me of the RUF colonel sitting in his passenger seat who had millions in diamonds that he wanted to unload quickly. The man was nervous about being in a city filled with his victims, refugees, and amputees who had fled RUF guns and blades from the provinces to hide in camps like the one operated by Médecins Sans Frontières in Freetown.
    After the call, we too were on the run and, as a matter of fact, wound up across the street from the MSF camp, at a vagrants’ flophouse called the Cockle Bay Guest House and Relaxation Center.
There were no locking fences, guards, or any other filter on the local color, which it featured in abundance. The 10-by-12-foot reception area was dominated by an early 1980s–style boom box, the type that’s the size of a footlocker, thundering some sort of religious rap music. Despite the din, four or five people snoozed on the furniture and the woman at the desk eyed us like we would be seeing her later, after she’d knocked on the door wondering if we were interested in a “massage.” The rooms were only $7 a night, but that was probably because the locks could be breached simply by leaning on the door.
    Outside the main entrance, the city’s urban wildlife came right up to the curb.
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