the prostitute of abidjan

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Written by chad m.
Monday, 05 May 2008

The Prostitute of Abidjan.

She called on him from a dark alley; a narrow passage within the forsaken labyrinth of urban architecture. She was like a princess, giving light to darkness. She stood, beneath the glow of worldly desires, and sang the sweet song of the abandoned. It was as if she was crying for what has been lost. No, what has been taken away. All this was told with a seductive glare. She was a whore. And she illuminated the most humanity he had ever encountered.

*****************************

It was a blurry night. A night where the muggy air smothers you into a warm mumble of inaudible sounds; a cacophony blended into a subliminal symphony, composed by the senses you hold for granted. These were the nights Diego had often lost sleep. These were also the nights where he felt the most at ease, though he often did not realize it until later.

He sat on the bed, staring out the window. This hotel was a gem; an ostentatious island in a sea of depravity. Diego fancied these places because they gave him a sense of entitlement that he could never achieve back home. In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king. This was the land of blind poverty, and his small income, he figured, made him king.

The room had begun to make him drowsy. There was a staleness; that of an air-conditioner never used and now turned on. Diego needed some fresh air, and he stepped outside to the back porch to watch the movement of the skyline. Within the beautiful decay of what was once great, life here seemed to be non-existent. It was like a giant dream to him. "Hell," he mumbled to himself, "all skylines can do that to you."

Diego flipped through the tour book his company manager had given him back in New York, before he left. "For a nice break from Ghana, come to the Ivory Coast! It's a lively metropolis that's considered the Paris of Africa!"

"Lively my ass", he cursed. This city was dead. It was true though, he had to get away from his work in Ghana. He was tired of trying to teach all of them about "development". But business was business, and he was assigned to stay there for quite a while.

As he stared off in the distance, memories from back home began to slip into his mind. He imagined his girl, as he often did. She was back home, lying in the davenport where they would often lie. Her smooth black hair flowed over her pale, impeccable skin. And then he saw her face, and she began to smile. But then the vision twisted, as it often did, and he saw her smiling at another man. His gut turned sour. "Bitch", he thought, and grabbed for his liquor. It was empty. He'd been drinking more these days. His friends had even noticed, but Diego always told them to mind their own business. He got up to go down the bar.

As he was lifting himself out of the chair on the back porch, his eyes were once again magnetized toward the distance. He watched the serene current of red tail-lights swimming across a bridge that led out of the city. Diego told his girl once that he enjoyed landscapes because they made the complexities of the world seem simple. From a distance, he would claim, you can't see the dirt and the grime and the hustlers that await you; you just see peace. Diego's mind got a hold of itself. He forced himself to be indignant about those who were yet to betray him, and feeling bitter, he turned away from the balcony and headed toward the stairs that led to the bar.

Even the vagabond needs a rest.

And as he headed toward the stairs, something caught his attention, something from off in the distance where he was just standing, at the balcony. He turned back to toward the balcony. She called on him.

He heard it; the gradual stride of desire. A coordinated clack of high heels and a rusted umbrella tip. Clack, clack, clack. It manifested into a slow, pulsating rhythm of a three-three timing that spoke the universal vernacular of passion. One, two, three, one, two, three. From the distance the rhythm was accompanied by only a silhouette: a black shadow in the middle of black shadows, each struggling to outdo each other's darkness. But her stride! It was the stride of a General confidently inspecting his infantry. Her infantry: the worn-out bricks crumbling out of the dilapidated alley-way.

As she got closer, she became more visible. Diego had begun to make out her image. She was dressed in a tight black dress that had barely covered what was lying beneath. Her red lipstick looked as if it was plastered on unceremoniously, resembling a circus clown. And her flawlessly straight neck paved the way for her terribly graceful posture, leading from her disheveled hair down to her dilapidated shoes. If Michelangelo had been brave enough to leave home, this would have been his masterpiece. But this masterpiece had not made it to the Louvre. It stayed home.

Diego stared like a child unabashedly stares at strangers on the bus. And she could sense his stare, he was quite sure of that. She looked up and smiled. "Shit, she's coming here..." Diego sighed to himself. But he was too mystified to care.

She was not just coming, she was rushing; attempting to be smooth enough to look erotic, yet quick enough to catch what might be her only chance of employment of the night. When she got just below his balcony she flashed a smile so bright it woke him from his dream. He remembered that she was a whore, and she wanted his money. He tried looking the other way but she was already there.

She inquired some things in French, giving Diego the convenient excuse to avoid further persistence.

"Hey, I don't speak French. Ok? So get the hell out of here. I am not giving you anything, and you are not giving me anything," Diego glared.

"Oh, then you speak English? Good! Can I go to your room? I see it is 512. I'll be right there!" She has been here so many times that she could tell the room numbers simply by a quick glance.

"No, no, that's ok. Thank you though." Diego was taken aback from her fluent English, and softened his tone. He attempted to sound sympathetic, but of course sympathy is a hard thing to fake.

"Come on...we can have some fun!" There was a sense of urgency in her voice, as if she was running from something. Or hiding. Or both. Her eyes flashed a forlorn appeal. Eyes never lie, but lipstick can. Her voice spoke romantically, but her face spoke "please, please, please."

"Look, lady. I said no. I'm sorry, I am not that kind of person," Diego offered his well-polished apologetic refusal. He had gotten better at it the more he traveled.

Diego had enough and headed back through his room. He flicked off the lights and headed downstairs to the hotel bar. It was empty. Even the bartender was missing. Diego figured he would come, as they always do, so he pulled out a chair and slouched down into it. He stared mindlessly at the television. No clear images, just a concoction of colors and shapes. No words, just a bunch of noise. "Do I really look like that kind of guy? One who would do that stuff? Bitch..." his mind could not clear. He could feel his pulse rise, as it has been these days. "Where the hell is the bartender? This is ridiculous," Diego grumbled.

Diego finally caught a glimpse of the bartender in the distance, mindlessly reorganizing the dusty liquor cabinet. He called his attention, and ordered a whisky and coke. As he sipped his drink, his mind began to relax. He sat back and glanced at the TV again. The images had cleared, showing a French sitcom. "Decolonization? Hm", Diego smirked to himself and took another drink.

Diego had convinced himself to feel at home again; a few drinks could do that to him wherever he was. He noticed a black Mercedes pull up outside. A pudgy, pink-faced man emerged. His eyes subconsciously followed him into the hotel lobby, where the hotel staff quickly lined up to greet him. Yes, he was the boss. The hotel's solitude made escape impossible, and soon enough the stumpy little man had joined Diego's table. White seems to always be attracted by white, especially when it is surrounded by darkness.

"Bonjour," his voice was nasally, squeaky.

"Bonjour," Diego replied, nearly in unison.

The short man's following remark outdid Diego's limited comprehension of French. Noticing Diego's obvious lack of understanding, the short man, somewhat taken aback, asked, "Oh, English?"

"American," Diego replied tersely.

"Ah, very good!" the man's eyebrows lifted, squeezing his already squished forehead into a giant wrinkle of pink flesh. "My niece lives in Georgia, you know there?"

"I know there, yes, but I've never been there. I'm from New York," Diego replied.

"Ah, New York..." the man's eyes stared off away from the table. He had somewhat of an irritable demeanor to him. It was as if somebody around him was always doing something wrong.

An awkward silence had emerged, partly from the language barrier and partly because they both had nothing to say. Something about short, pudgy people had always bothered Diego. Their presence would at times disgust him, or at least disturb him. As for this man in particular, it wasn't just his shortened appearance that bothered him. It was something else. And he could not quite think of it. Diego knew it wasn't because the man was obviously here to exploit and to give himself a life of luxury he could never have back home; in fact Diego somewhat admired him for that. Diego looked up from the bottom of his drink to get one more glance at this loathsome fellow, who had by now turned his head away to lecture a few other employees about something. Diego couldn't quite figure out why, but he hated this man.

Hunger suddenly hit Diego. It struck his gut with such fierceness that more drinks could not subdue it. "I can't eat here," Diego thought, "I've given this chump enough of my money".

Diego had remembered a café outside of the hotel lobby, just around the corner and down an alley. He rose slowly and excused himself from the pudgy man, who at this point was completely turned around and yelling at the bartender. Diego stared at the man's twisted neck, where folds of fat shined in their own sweat. He really hated people who looked like this.

*****************************

Waiting outside on the steps of the hotel was the prostitute.

"Hey there, where are you going?" she seduced. She had be waiting.

"Nowhere with you. Just getting a little food," Diego responded concisely as he rushed by, trying not to glance over.

"Do you mind if I come along?" she asked. "French is not my language, and I am tired of speaking it. I am Liberian."

Damn it, Diego thought. The whore was becoming a human being and it had repulsed him. He hated her for that, and his first impulse was to strike her. From the start he had tried to keep her at a distance; to keep her as part of the skyline. But she had not allowed him. Diego felt as if she had defeated him in their battle, and Diego hated losing.

"No...I said no. Don't you understand that?" Diego showed his irritation. He had no reason to hide it.

"Don't worry," she assured, "I really do just want to hang out." She knew. He knew. They both knew. There would be no more customers tonight. This once-booming city had died, and so did her business.

Diego's conscious kicked in. And it kicked him in the chest. He was educated enough to know that compassion should not guide your decisions. "Compassion leads to irrational behavior", he remembered hearing his lecturer assert back at Princeton. But it was too late: his compassion had been painted on his face, and the implicit understanding between both of them was that they were already on their way together. Diego's frustration of his own weakness manifested into stern reservation, and he just kept quiet and walked.

They turned the corner and headed down the alleyway. In the distance a blurry light from the café sent a fading glow down the dark and empty passage. From behind, the silhouette of the two figures was distorted; elongated and tilted by the erosion of a single street light above. The shape of the silhouette had become more and more lifelike and clear as they headed closer to the café, where the lively light from the inside spilled out toward their direction, lighting their figure. They did not say anything to each other the entire walk.

Diego took the lead and entered the café first. As he opened the door and stepped in, everybody seemed to stop what they were doing and stare. They did not stare because Diego was white, but because white people did not come to places like this. And it was not the stare of hostility, but of incredulousness. As he stepped in further and prepared to sit down, the prostitute entered. A wave of coldness flowed around the room. They all knew her and what she did. They were locals, and so was she. Diego realized this may not have been a good idea. He knew that he was now just another cliché: a white man picking up a whore, their whore. Ever since he had landed in this part of the world Diego had found himself subconsciously swimming against the tide of public opinion. Years and years of historical wrongdoing by his people had forced him work hard to prove himself. His behavior was always scrutinized. He thought of himself as a diplomat, not representing his country, but his generation, his lifestyle, himself. Indeed, his entire existence in Africa had been about gaining legitimacy. And by bringing her here, it had all vanished.

Diego ordered some bread and tea, and ate in silence. But the silence, like the silence in the hotel, was bothering him. "So you are from Liberia?" he asked.

"Yeah. Work here was good. The war back home was awful, so I came here. I figured I could make some money to send back home, ya know? But now that I'm here...well, I'm here," her voice trailed off.

"Yeah I can understand that. Now that I'm here, I'm here too," Diego stared out the window as he spoke. He watched a security guard leaning back against the wall. He couldn't tell whether the guard was asleep or not. It was too dark.

He turned his attention back into the room and toward his guest. "Hm, just the luck," he thought to himself, "to flee one country at war and come to sell herself out in a different country that would itself soon be at war."

Diego then realized that he had been too rude to ask if she wanted something to eat as well. "Oh, no thank you. I'm good," she smiled in a way that embodied years of training in proper lifestyle.

Diego's eyes were attracted to directly behind her. On a television in the corner of the café, images of the fighting that was going on around the country were rapidly flashing. Diego watched intently. He wondered what it would be like to put yourself into uniform, leave home, and be forced to fight for your freedom; to commit acts that were once unspeakable to you in your previous life. A battle, he conceded, that he would most likely never have to face. "You have to respect those soldiers," he murmured to himself, "in a sense they are like warriors."

"What was that you said?" the woman interrupted.

Diego's eyes shifted focus from the images on the television to the woman in front of him. For a second the two had blurred together, making him a bit dizzy.

"Oh, nothing. I was saying we should go," Diego replied morosely.

*****************************

The walk back to the hotel was quiet, but the pace was a bit more leisurely than before. By now it was late, and Diego was too tired to be worried. But he had also convinced himself to feel at home again. A slight smile confidentially crept up on his face. He had temporarily vanquished his unease.

When they got back to the door of the hotel, the woman tapped Diego's arm. He felt a shrill flow down his spine. He could feel a metamorphous; a transformation from warmth to coldness. A touch from friend to foe. And he was afraid to look up.

"So anyway...what are you doing tonight? You still wanna have some fun?" the prostitute winked at him.

"I told you no! Whore..." Diego rushed into the hotel lobby, comforted and feeling reassured to see his pudgy, pink-faced friend shoo her away.