Invasive Species (7 page)

Nouadhibou, Mauritania

THERE WAS NO
space on the dhow for Mariama.

She'd spent days with the Ndoye family, hiding from officials amid the donkey carts surrounding the marketplace and among the villagers mending fishing nets down near the beach. Waiting, just waiting, for someone to sell them transport out of the country.

The Ndoye family: an old father and mother, both of them thin, tired, and gray before they'd even left the shore. Their grown children and younger ones, too, along with some cousins, or maybe they were friends, or simply people they'd met along the way as they'd met Mariama. A dozen in their group at least, maybe more, including one girl, perhaps fourteen, who stood out for her quick smile, friendly manner, and unquenchable optimism.

The girl reminding Mariama of children she'd known in Mpack, children she doubted she'd ever see again.

None of them here expected ever to see again the places where they'd been born. All that mattered now was that they'd scraped together the thousands of francs needed to commission an old fishing boat and its captain. A boat like the dhow the Ndoyes got, so rusty in the fittings and wormholed around the hull you marveled that anyone would trust it beyond the ocean's blue edge.

Mariama wanted to warn them, to tell them to wait for a sturdier craft. But it would have been useless. You took what you could get, and if hunger and thirst and storms and those European Union patrols—ships from Portugal and planes from Italy and who knew what else—if they weren't going to stop you from trying, then a leaky old boat wouldn't, either.

If the Ndoyes hadn't taken the dhow, then the next group would have. The next group being Mariama and other men and women she'd met here in Nouadhibou. The next batch of the uncounted refugees who came here every year from Senegal and Morocco and Mauritania itself, all with a single goal in mind.

To reach the Canary Islands.

Islands that for some reason were part of Spain, even though they were located right off the western coast of Africa. Once you made it to the Canary Islands, the refugees had been told, it was easy to reach the real Europe, where there were jobs, food, a new life.

For most of them, this was their first trip from home. Not for Mariama, who had visited Paris, Johannesburg, and New York with her father. A few years earlier, when she still had a passport, she wouldn't have had to travel this way. She would be stepping aboard a comfortable jet at Senghor Airport.

Instead she'd come to this little port town, just another body hoping for passage out. Carrying with her nothing but a few pieces of clothing in a cloth satchel, extra money in a leather belt under her shirt, and just one memento from home: a locket containing a photo of her father, hanging on a tarnished silver chain around her neck.

*   *   *

MARIAMA ENDED UP
on the
Sophe
, a twenty-foot wooden boat that she thought seemed sturdy and strong enough. There were twenty-two of them on board, packed tightly against the rails and across the slippery wooden deck. Twenty-two plus the captain, who had a sharp face and quick eyes that didn't miss anything.

They departed from an unlighted dock on a pitch-black night speckled with cold rain. Staking a place by the rail near the back, Mariama helped an old man and a mother with a little daughter settle beside her.

Prayers rose and tears fell as they left shore, but Mariama stayed silent and dry-eyed.

*   *   *

DURING THE FIRST
two days, they saw three EU patrol boats and one spotter plane. None were close, and none noticed their little boat amid the waves.

On the third morning they came upon the old dhow carrying the Ndoye family. It had set off two days before them, but there it was, foundering in a patch of choppy ocean under a slate gray sky. They could hear the engine grinding, but it wasn't making any progress.

“It's taking on water,” someone said.

They could all tell that.

“What do we do?” someone else asked.

They were only a few hundred meters away. Some of the dhow's passengers had noticed them as well and had begun waving cloths and shirts to get their attention. Mariama thought she saw the teenage girl she'd met onshore.

“We must rescue them,” said the old man beside Mariama. “Otherwise they will all die.”

Their captain shrugged. “That is not our concern.” His canny eyes were cold. “Look at us,” he said. “Look at our boat. Can we take on more passengers? Even one more? No. We would just sink as well.”

Everybody looked. He was right: There was no space.

“We will make room for some,” the old man insisted. “We cannot leave them all.”

Already they could see that the captain was guiding their boat away from the dhow. “Which ones?” he said. “Which will we choose? No. They will all try to climb aboard, and we will all die.”

Behind them they heard a splash, another. Two of the young men had abandoned the dhow and were swimming toward the
Sophe
. But they were too far away, much too far, and how much strength did they have? If they were like Mariama, they had been eating little but rice and plantains for days—weeks—on their journeys.

The captain didn't look back, though Mariama saw his mouth tighten at the sound of the splashing. The old man's gaze caught Mariama's, but he did not speak again, and nor did anyone else.

Behind the swimmers, beyond their pumping arms and kicking legs, Mariama could see the ones that had stayed behind. Some were bailing, throwing water off the dhow's deck with their cupped hands. But others, the old and the children, were still waving, and some were just sitting there, staring at the departing
Sophe
.

It happened quickly. First the two swimmers gave up. One turned back, but the other, perhaps the victim of cramps or dizziness, began to splash around in circles. Soon he was thrashing in one place, and then, as they watched, he slipped below the surface, leaving behind only a tiny crease in the water, and then nothing at all.

The boat itself followed just a few moments later. Echoing over the water came a dull cracking sound, followed by a puff of black smoke that rose a little way into the air before being blown away by the wind. The front of the boat rose from the water, as if it were being pushed upward by a hand. It stood still for a moment, looking like the fin of some sea creature. Then it slid down and back, smoothly as a blade, and was gone.

Mariama had twisted around to see small forms leaping into the water before the dhow disappeared. Now she turned away and looked up at the captain.

But he stood straight, staring at the western horizon.

*   *   *

AS THE SUN
sank, the swells grew larger, the clouds thicker, the winds sharper. The boat labored forward against the confused currents. Even the ocean itself was fighting to keep them in Africa.

The old man beside Mariama had fallen into a kind of wordless trance after the sinking of the dhow. On her other side, the mother, a tough, wiry woman from Mauritania, tended to her daughter, who looked about six.

The girl seemed unwell. She'd spent most of the journey with her eyes closed, and her dark skin seemed underlain with gray.

“She does not like the motion of the boat,” the woman said. “She will be fine when we reach land.”

Mariama did not speak. She knew the truth, but there was no point in sharing it.

The woman said she was headed to London, where she had family. She shook her head as she said it: In this small boat, miles and miles from land, it was hard to imagine a place like London even existing.

“And you?” she asked Mariama.

“New York.”

“So far away. Why?”

Mariama hesitated for a moment before saying, “There is a man I need to find.”

“In that whole big city?” The woman laughed at her. “Good luck!”

It seemed impossible to Mariama as well.

*   *   *

ON THE AFTERNOON
of the fourth day, as they shared the last of their water, Mariama spotted a brown stripe on the horizon to the north. “Fuerteventura,” the captain said.

Their destination.

No. Their way station.

As the sun headed toward the horizon, the stripe grew larger, longer, became the coast of an island, a distant beach. Behind the beach they could see a jumble of houses painted in bright colors and, farther away, the gleaming white and pink towers of tourist hotels.

The captain pulled back on the engine, left it rumbling just strongly enough to keep the boat in place, bumping in the gentle swells flowing out from the island. “We will make land after dark,” he said.

So they waited, watching the sun sink and the big jet planes coasting into the airport.

Mariama sat with the mother and daughter. The little girl was worse. Though she seemed to be awake, and would nod or shake her head when asked questions, she rarely opened her eyes.

When the sun dipped below the horizon, the captain aimed the
Sophe
at the beach. The houses and hotels were lit like stars, constellations, and still the jets came in from Portugal and England and Italy. The same countries that supplied boats and planes to keep Africans out of the Canary Islands sent thousands of their own citizens to the same place.

The woman looked down at her daughter, then back up. “Will you help us get to shore?”

Mariama paused and then said, “Yes. Of course.”

The woman's smile reflected the light of the hotels, the silvery water. “Then we will finally be safe.”

Mariama thought, No.

No, we won't.

*   *   *

WHEN THEY WERE
perhaps fifty feet from the beach, the captain brought the boat to a halt. Over the subdued mutter of the idling engine, they could hear music. But the beach itself seemed deserted.

“The tide is low, and the water is shallow,” the captain said. “I cannot go in any farther.”

One by one, stiff on their feet, the men and women clambered over the side of the little fishing boat and splashed into the water. Some made little sounds of fear as they went, but none hesitated. They could see their goal just ahead.

No one said good-bye.

Soon just the three of them and the captain remained on board. “Hurry!” he said. “Or I will take you back with me.”

Mariama went over first, landing in warm, calm water that reached barely to her waist. The woman, struggling, lifted her daughter over the railing and into her arms. Getting a grip on the limp figure, Mariama felt the girl's rounded, swollen belly bump against her side.

She thought:
If I were truly brave, I would drop you now. I would swim away and let you drown.

It would be a blessing.

Instead she kept the girl's head above the surface as the mother splashed into the water. Then, together, they made their slow way through the placid ocean and up onto the beach.

*   *   *

TWO HOURS LATER
Mariama had showered and changed into a colorful print skirt and a dark blue blouse and was sitting in the living room of a small house in Fuerteventura. The house's residents—mother, father, and five daughters—perched on chairs and the sofa and stared at her.

They were making sure she was eating well, as they'd promised Mariama's father they would.

Seydou Honso might have been confined to Senegal, but he still had plenty of friends elsewhere, including here. People who owed him allegiance (or favors) and were willing to hide his refugee daughter from the authorities and make sure she was dressed and fed.

Especially if Seydou paid, which he had. Money needed no passport to travel.

Mariama was grateful, but impatient. She wanted to move on right away. The sick girl on the boat had shown her how much she needed to hurry.

But the family told her that her transport onward wouldn't be departing for three days. There was nothing they could do to speed it up. And anyway, as the mother pointed out, she would do no good if she died from exhaustion or starvation on the way.

So she stayed, and she rested, and she ate well. The fish-and-tomato stew they called tieboudienne, the baobab drink bouyi, and other Senegalese specialties that made her miss Mpack with an ache that filled her chest.

She spent most of her time thinking about the enormity of the task that lay ahead. Every once in a while, when no one was looking, she took the locket from around her neck and popped it open.

Just looking at it gave her strength.

*   *   *

LATE THE THIRD
night, she was woken by a knock on the door of her bedroom. She'd been dreaming of the boat, and even when she awoke, disoriented, she felt like her bed was rocking on treacherous swells.

One of the daughters leaned in through the doorway and said in an apologetic tone, “You asked to be called if there were any messages for you.”

Mariama said, “Of course. Thank you. I will be right there.”

After washing her face, she followed the girl into the kitchen. A computer sat on the table, its screen bright in the dimness. Without a word, the girl turned and left. They were willing to shelter her, these nice people, but they didn't want to know a thing about her plans.

She sat down in front of the computer, marveling. Just days ago, on the boat, she'd been dangling like a puppet over the very edge of the world. How easily she could have fallen off, sharing the fate of the people in the doomed dhow.

And yet here she was, all the miracles of the modern age at her fingertips.

It was absurd.

She bent over the screen. The name of the person who'd sent the message was unfamiliar, but the code she and her father had agreed on was there. The message was from him.

Only there was no message. Just a link. Compressing her lips, Mariama clicked on it.

At first it
still
didn't make any sense. It was just an article about the death of some American expatriate in Tanzania. Only when Mariama read through did she begin to understand what it meant and what its consequences might be.