Stringer by Anjan Sundaram Page B

effort—the passengers had wedged me tight. “I’ve changed my mind. I’ll get off here.”
    â€œTranquille.” The driver pushed me back with a firm hand. The backseat men pinned down my shoulders.
    The man to my left plunged his hand into his pants. Oh, f——.
    He fumbled with a black revolver whose handle was misshapen. Deftly he ejected the magazine. “See?” It was full, stacked with shiny bronze bullets. He reloaded the gun, cocked it with a click and pressed the barrel against my temple. His eyes were like two bulging onions. His arms were thick and venous.
    I screamed. He pressed his fingernails into my throat. I gasped. I screamed louder, without thinking. His nails cut into my skin; it made a piercing pain. “Shut up or I’ll shoot,” he hissed.
    â€œDon’t do this. I’m a friend of the Opposition Debout. Ask Anderson!”
    â€œWho?” The driver’s stained lips made thin red lines like arteries. My vision went blurry. I felt disconnected from the world.It felt as if there had never been a connection. I was completely betrayed. I closed my eyes. I squirmed as I felt their hands move up the insides of my legs and down the small of my back, over the lining of my underwear and in every crack and crevice they could find. Their rough hands, sandy, coarse. They pushed me open, pulled me apart. Their fingers were powerful. I was immobile, helpless. I gave in, only wanting them to stop.
    They dumped me near the river, in a wealthy neighborhood. I fell on the ground and rolled to the side. The door banged shut. The hatchback, speeding away, didn’t have a license plate.
    It screeched around the corner. All around me the walls were high. Alerted by the noise, two guards came to a peephole in a gate. The people here would not help. They were people who lived in big houses with big cars and big money. You should have robbed them ! The words screamed in my mind. Why me?
    And I’d lost the deposit money—thinking the cash would be unsafe in the house I had taken nearly all of it; and now it was gone.
    â€œPolice! Where do I find the police?” I shouted, stretching my arms down the street in either direction. The guards shut their peephole. A finger rose above the gate. That way.
    In that moment I felt the need for pity, and my frustration came out in this terrible way. My body lurched forward instead of walking; enervated, I wanted to fall. At the Boulevard the beggars were waiting. I heard them first. Moneymoneymoney. Young, old, hunchbacked, stunted, hairy, bald, they ambushed, grabbed. I turned to run but they had made a ring and converged. Suddenly surging I pushed away their heads, shoulders, muscular chests; my hands felt the dirt on their bodies and I started to slap them, jolt them, hit them hard. They scattered: behind cars and buildings; in the shadows of doorways. I was alone, and it was like after a sudden storm. Cars honked and rushed past. The breeze flapped my shirt.
    As I traversed the long Boulevard the Congolese faces blurredinto one another. At every corner I became apprehensive; all the figures seemed to resemble the robbers. And on the narrower roads I felt watched. I became conscious of the strange sight I made: the walking foreigner. I kept my distance, careful not to brush against the pedestrians. Physical separation was my small way of escape; but it was ineffective. In my alarmed state I stared at each person, scrutinizing the face; they returned my stares; and I felt angrier, but shorn, small.
    The roads had no sidewalks so I had to compete with the traffic for the uneven graveled street edges, ditched and crammed with equipment: generators, barrows, pumps, piping; the taxi-buses I used to travel in now nearly hit me, careening, honking drumbeats, preventing me from crossing streets. The wayside shops were grouped together by type: on one street were automobile spare-parts garages and on the other only furniture