These Dreams of You

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On her second day in Addis Ababa, after the long flight from Heathrow, Viv still isn’t clear about her course of action. She’s rejected any idea of going to the authorities. If the sensory bombardment of a new place hasn’t so much dispelled her depression and sense of crisis as distracted from it, as well there’s a new apprehension that she herself has trouble gauging in terms of what’s real and what’s paranoia.

The words of the last email from the investigative journalist whom she hired to find Sheba’s mother— . . suspicions of child-trafficking. . possibility that Zema was sold to you…difficult to be certain how seriously they take this. . — have gone through her head since she read them. Passing through customs at the airport, she braced herself. Checking into the hotel, again she waited for some polite invitation to a backroom from which she would never emerge. Once in her own small hotel room, she expected a knock at the door; opening her bags, she stared long and hard at the contents trying to remember exactly how she packed everything, if there’s a sign of anything out of place. She goes back and forth in her mind whether it’s best to keep out of sight or to keep in plain sight, and when she’s in plain sight, like the lounge or bar, she pays attention to whose sight she’s in, who lingers as long as she does, who leaves when she leaves.

The balcony of her room overlooks to one direction the other more upscale hotel in the distance. Its figure-eight drive circles two lush roundabouts before spilling out into a city impaled on a monumental broadcasting tower, time’s antenna; around a pool in the other direction, cabana umbrellas erupt like pale blue mushrooms. They’re nearly a color — a shade not quite green enough — to match Viv’s hair. Contrary to western impressions of Africa as hot, Addis is misty and cool. A mile and a half up, it’s closer to the sky than almost any city on earth, called by some of the locals Eucalyptopolis for the trees. Big thunderstorms roll in nightly, the clouds’ percussion to the chanting that Viv hears from the mosques.

Walking through the Tukul Bar, Viv is surrounded by a hubbub of languages. Transactions are made on all sides of her, some more dubious but no less explicit than others. Her first night, an arms dealer tries to pick her up; like genies, hosts and waiters appear and retrieve wishes and disappear.