AT THE END OF THE workday, Dawson went to the CID garage to get his assigned Toyota Corolla and put away his motorbike in a secure spot. Before he went home, he had two stops to make. The first was to his brother, Cairo, who lived with Papa in Osu, a south-central district of Accra.
Once robust and naturally athletic, Cairo had been a paraplegic now for twenty-five years. Whenever he thought about it, Dawson experienced an eerie moment of unreality. He could still barely believe it. The accident had happened in Accra three months after the trip to Ketanu.
Mama sent Cairo to the corner kiosk to buy a tin of sardines. He was starting across the street when she remembered something. “Get some bread too!” she called out through the window. He turned at her voice, walking backward and sideways at the same time.
“What did you say, Mama?”
She screamed as she saw what Cairo never did. The oncoming car hit him hard. He went up over the roof of the car and down the back.
Within seconds, Cairo was paralyzed from the waist down. Yesterday the master of his own body, today immobile and dependent on the care of others. Mentally the anguish was immeasurable, and if anyone suffered as much as or even more than Cairo, it was Mama. Her guilt was a living torment.
Two years after Cairo’s accident, she took a trip to Ketanu and never came back. She disappeared into thin air. Perhaps she could not bear ever to look Cairo in the eye again, but perhaps that was not it either. To this day, no one knew, and Dawson wondered about it over and again.
Jacob, Dawson’s father, was in his early sixties now, and he was Cairo’s sole caretaker except for the occasional member of the extended family who took over when Papa had to go out. Cairo made a little bit of money carving wood face masks-the kind popular with tourists. Dawson always felt guilty about how little he contributed to Cairo’s everyday needs. The one rule he kept firm to the point of superstition was he never left town without first stopping by to see his brother. In any case, as if sensing Dawson’s imminent departure, Cairo had called him on his mobile that afternoon to ask if he was going to drop in.
The house really wasn’t far from CID Headquarters, traffic just made it seem so. Dawson made his slow way down Ring Road to Danquah Circle, where policemen were directing the flow. He got around the circle to the segment of Cantonments Road aptly nicknamed Oxford Street for its density of shops, Internet cafés, glitzy stores and banks, and restaurants serving anything from sushi to pizza. Once he got past Oxford, things lightened up a bit and he arrived at Papa’s house and parked the car.
Cairo was in his wheelchair repairing a hole in the wood fence at the back of the house. He looked up and smiled.
“I thought you didn’t love me anymore,” he joked as they hugged.
“I do love you,” Dawson said sheepishly. “I’m sorry. I have no excuse and I’m not going to make one up. How are you? You’re looking good today.”
In fact, with inactivity, Cairo had become overweight, and bouts of infection had taken their toll. It was often painful for Dawson to visit him, especially when Cairo was having a rough time. It left Dawson with a lump in his chest and moisture in his eyes. His mother gone, his brother maimed-these things still hurt.
Dawson was glad to help Cairo repair the fence. Doing something active with him made the visit easier and more cheerful. They chatted happily. As adults they were intellectually equal and compatible, but Dawson always regarded Cairo as his older, wiser brother and he was comfortable with that.
“Listen,” Dawson said at length, “I have to go to Ketanu tomorrow.”
“What’s going on up there?” Cairo asked.
“Someone’s been murdered.” Dawson handed him a nail. “Lartey wants me to find out who did it.”
“Just like that, eh?”
They laughed.
“So, back to Ketanu after all these years,” Cairo said.
“The way it’s grown, I probably won’t recognize the place.”
Leaning forward in his chair, Cairo deftly drove the nail home. “You might even need directions to Auntie Osewa’s house.”
“You know what I feel sorry about?” Dawson said.
“What?”
“That we’ve never visited her again over all these years. I mean, she was very good about writing every once in a while, sending us photos of the family, and so on. But after all that, it’s not her invitations to visit that’s taking me back there, it’s official business.”
Cairo shrugged. “Why should you or I want to return there? Ketanu took Mama away from us. At least, that’s the way I look at it.”
“I’d never thought of it quite like that,” Dawson said. Cairo had a way of seeing things differently.
Papa emerged from the house into the yard. He acknowledged Dawson without actually saying hello, and true to form he was short on conversation. He had always been that way, and Dawson could not remember him ever hugging them as children. For sure there had been lots of sharp, angry cuffs to the sides of their heads. Apparently that was the physical contact he had been most comfortable with. After all these years, Dawson didn’t understand his father or like him much.
Papa watched while they got the fence patched up.
“Much better,” Cairo said, beaming at the finished product.
They talked awhile longer, until it was dusk and the mosquitoes began to attack like dive-bombers.
“I’d better get going,” Dawson said, slapping his forearm where he felt a mosquito attempting to steal his blood. “I’ll need to get ready for tomorrow.”
“Good luck up there, Darko. Be careful, eh?”
He hugged Cairo, but for Papa it was the usual handshake.
It was now fully dark, and Dawson headed for Nima, one of Accra’s zongos. Nima Road was a vibrant thoroughfare, with Oxford Street’s energy but none of its riches. The pedestrians who tramped the dusty roadside crossed the street willy-nilly, weaving in and out of stop-and-go traffic. With long stretches without streetlights, a visitor might find it unnerving, but Nima people knew how to make it work, even if with the narrowest of close shaves.
Dawson parked the Corolla beside a gutter filled with trash. He locked up and then walked several meters along a twisted, uneven walkway to a dense cluster of ramshackle houses. It became pitch-black as he got farther away from the lights of the main road. Good thing he had come armed with his small flashlight. He hopped over a pungent, dark-colored effluent trickling along the ground.
The man he was looking for lived in the back of one of the decrepit dwellings. The door was coming off the hinges, and Dawson didn’t knock for fear that it would fall off completely.
“Daramani!” he called.
“Who dey?”
“Dawson.”
“Ei! Dawson!”
The door went through several readjustments before Daramani could get it open.
“Hey, chaley! How you be?”
Dawson came in, and Daramani gave him a hearty handshake, ending with the customary mutual snap of thumb and third finger.
The room was tiny and cluttered. The single dangling, dim light-bulb was very likely using electricity siphoned off from someone else. In the gloom, Daramani was blacker than charcoal. When he grinned, his white teeth were blinding. He was thin and straight as a bamboo stick, but he could consume more food than two grown men put together. He was from Ghana’s Upper East Region, and his mother tongue was Hausa, which Dawson didn’t speak. Daramani in turn spoke Ga badly and Ewe not at all, so the two men had fallen into the habit of communicating in Ghanaian-English street slang.
Daramani had been a petty thief with a violent streak. Dawson had taken him down one night three years ago. His room had been full of stolen and contraband items that he had not yet sold, as well as a bountiful stash of weed. Dawson hadn’t been able to resist and had pocketed some of it.
Marijuana was Dawson’s Achilles’ heel. He loved the stuff.
At his hearing, Daramani had stared at Dawson across the stuffy courtroom with a small, knowing smile on his face: I saw you take the weed. And Dawson had stared back: And so what?
The so-called justice system moving at the snail’s pace that it did, Daramani had already served most of his prison time when he was finally sentenced. When he got out, it could hardly be said he was rehabilitated. Once a thief, always a thief. Dawson had picked him up again one night hanging around Makola Market. Daramani had acted quickly to avoid seeing the inside of a jail cell again.
“Dawson, I know people,” he’d said. “Make I he’p you, you he’p me.”
Half an hour later, Daramani was spilling the beans about a serial burglar working in the affluent airport residential area. As Dawson thanked him, Daramani slipped him some marijuana. It was just a little bit, but the quality was excellent.
“How much?” Dawson asked, avoiding Daramani’s eye.
“No, I dey make give you.”
Dawson became an ordinary citizen for a few seconds and stuffed some cedi bills in Daramani’s pocket despite his flimsy objections. Now it didn’t feel so much like bribery and corruption. What a joke. It was illegal any way you sliced it.
Now Daramani opened a large portmanteau on the floor and pulled out a green bottle.
“You wan’ schnapps, my brodda?”
“You wan’ waste my ear or what?”
Daramani grinned. “Yah, I know. Okay, I dey get dat ting wey you like am.”
Daramani produced a small paper bag and held it to Dawson’s nose. He nodded. Very good.
“Make same price?” Dawson asked.
“Dis one be too good for ol’ price, my brodda.”
“Den how much you dey make am?”
When Daramani told him, Dawson laughed and handed the weed back. “You craze.”
“How much you pay?”
“Same like before.”
“Chaley you dey touch?” He was asking, Are you insane? “No fo’ dis one. No you fo’ do me like dat.”
“Den forget.”
“Okay, take am. Reglah price. I dey like you, dass why.”
Dawson paid him. He took a couple of steps to the portmanteau and yanked the lid open.
“Wey ting?” Daramani said, surprised.
With the vision of a hawk, Dawson had caught a glimpse of something glittery in there. He reached in through the mess of plates, shoes, and other junk, and pulled out a gold watch. He held it up.
“Where you get am, dis watch?”
Daramani looked at him straight and steady in the eye. Too steady. “My friend gimme to make keep am fo’ him.”
Dawson felt Daramani’s voice vibrate like a taut rubber band. “You lie.”
“Oh, no, my brodda, I no lie.”
Dawson flipped the watch over. It was engraved with someone’s name and the inscription “M.D.”
Dawson put the watch in his trouser pocket. “I dey make you one more chance. Where you steal am?”
“I tell you I no steal it, brodda.”
Dawson kicked a stool out of the way as he closed in on Daramani so quickly the man barely had time to shriek and recoil. Dawson’s long fingers encircled his neck, and he slammed Daramani up against the wall.
“Where you steal am?”
Dawson shook him like a doll and rattled his head against the wall.
Daramani screamed. “Abeg, abeg! Dawson, stop, please.”
“Tell me now or you go for jail.”
“Den where you go get good weed from?” Daramani said, eyes dancing and flashing with mischief. “Deh best weed, remember? And who go tell you where all dese bleddy fockin’ criminal dey for Accra?”
Daramani grinned even as Dawson increased the grip on his throat. A smile crept to Dawson’s face, and Daramani giggled.
“Steal anything more, I go kill you,” Dawson said. “Understand?”
“Oh, chaley, no can kill me. You love me toooo much.”
“I no love you, I dey love your weed.”
He tried to keep a straight face, but at the very moment Daramani snorted, Dawson burst out laughing. He released Daramani from his grip.
“I go find dat person wey you dey steal dis watch and give am back,” Dawson said, patting his pocket.
Daramani, chastened, was rubbing his neck. “Okay, my brodda. Sorry. I swear, never again. Ei, you break my neck, Dawson.”
“Next time I go take your head with it.”
Daramani began to giggle again.