When the sun goes down

And the sand grains slip out of my hand

I’ll flip a coin of my fate to decide

Where I run away, Where I die.

It was a monstrous night in New York, the wind wailing through the lonesome streets. Most people stayed indoors on such nights, cozy in the comfort of their favorite couches. New York is a city of strangers, where millions come with dreams and destinies. It’s a pilgrim site for men all over the world to bury their past lives and start afresh.

Didier Olonga was just another stranger – to the city, in the city. He was standing outside JFK, trying to figure out a way to hail a cab. He waved his hand frantically in the hope that someone would see him and stop. It was getting colder and just as he was about to give up hope of finding a taxi, a yellow four-wheeled savior rode up to him.

“Where to, chief?” the taxi driver asked. His name was Luigi Buffon, a first-generation Italian. He’d come to New York a decade back, his pockets overflowing with dreams. Time and hope played their part and the dreams were soon lost in the crowded streets of New York. He now lived merely to survive.

“Take me to a cheap hotel. Any cheap hotel. Someplace far from the airport.” Didier replied in accent-laden English.

“Hop right in chief, and we’ll go to this great place I know.” Luigi smiled. He liked picking up people from the airport. They reminded him of his first few happy days in New York. Didier though, reminded him of a rainy Sunday morning in Seattle—melancholy and numb.

“What’s your name chief?” Luigi asked him.

“Didier. And what is your name?”

“Luigi. Where you from? You don’t look like you’re from New York.” Luigi liked it when his passengers talked to him. He hated passengers who wore cheap pinstripe suites and simply sat in the back and read the Wall Street Journal while sipping Starbucks coffee, trying to look important.

“How can you tell? Do I not look American?”

“Ah chief, you can be American and still not be from New York. And you can be from New York and still not be American. You know what I’m sayin’? So again, where you from?”

“I am from Sierra Leone.”

“Sierra what?”

“Leone…Sierra Leone. It is in Africa. The ‘Diamond Country,’ if you know.”

“Oh yeah. I remember now. They had a piece about it the paper yesterday. Just a little clipping tucked away in the corner. So how is Diamond country, eh?” He looked in the rearview mirror and saw Didier twitch. He waited for a reply but didn’t receive one.

“What’s the matter chief? Don’t wanna talk me bout your country? Eh? That bad? Ah, I’ll tell you I’ve seen a lotta guys who don’t wanna tell me bout anythin’—bout their families, bout their homes, bout their kids. I’ve had young girls bleeding from their mouths, sitting on the same dirty old seat as you, too scared to talk; old men in expensive suits with briefcases full of money catching the evening plane to somewhere in South America. This is New York, chief! Some come here to live, others to die. What do you come for?”

“To live. I’ve seen plenty of death already to wish for more.”

“Really? I tell you, it can’t get worse than New York. But what the hell! You tell me your story chief. A little bit of talk ain’t done nobody no harm.”

Didier looked out of the cab window, watching the various hues of New York whiz by. Back home he would drive every day to work. He was among the few in the capital city of Freetown who could actually afford a car. He looked back at Luigi, and then thought about Kumi, his beloved Kumi. She would like Luigi, he thought. She always liked people, especially people who could talk a lot. He touched his left coat pocket, felt the little glass piece on his fingertips, and sat back, assured.

“I was the personal assistant to the Defense Secretary of my country. A very powerful man,” Didier said, leaning on the driver’s seat.

“That’s good chief. It’s always good to be in the government. My second cousin you know, he’s a page in the White House. Awesome job. But anyways, then what?”

“The government in my country is very corrupt. The politicians take a lot of money from rich companies and let them take our resources. But sometimes, people revolt. They do not like somebody coming into their country and taking their wealth, while they live in poverty.”

“Ah chief, politicians the same everywhere. But Sierra Le…whatever…is the ‘Diamond Country’ right? Then why is it so poor? Don’t the diamonds pay a lot?”

“That is because the rich people take all the money. The diamond mine workers are in fact, the poorest. The Government sells the diamonds to buy tanks and guns and wage wars. The people do not like that. Some of them form groups and fight. The Government—the military—captures and kills them. Anybody who doesn’t agree with what the Government says is captured, locked up, beaten, his eyes taken out and arms cut. He is finally killed after days of torture, shot by a firing squad. People in my country sometimes disappear, my friend. And then they never come back.” Didier’s voice was beginning to shake now. All the memories he’d locked away in some corner of his mind were being opened carefully. He couldn’t run from his past, or forget it.

Luigi was silent. He turned around and looked at his passenger, intrigued, and a bit scared, yet curious to know more.

“And the Defense Secretary,” Didier continued, “carried out these orders. I was his assistant. I knew everything. But I keep quiet. I was scared. I could’ve run away but most people who think of running away never even get the chance. They are captured, killed; their women raped in front of their eyes, their children beaten to death. I was not afraid of death. I was afraid for Kumi. I could not see anything happen to her. But then I had to do something. I could not see everything happen in front of me and sit still.”

Didier stopped talking, leaned back, and looked out of the window at the world racing past him. Lost men often look for a meaning in the drifting scenery from a moving car. Memories of the past few days kept whirring in his head, moving faster and faster. He thought his head would explode. He closed his eyes and put his hand into his coat pocket, the fingers feeling the touch of that little glass container. He held it tight, and felt a warm current surging through each nerve of his body. “It’s all right,” He heard Kumi’s voice in his head—calm, relaxed, assured.

Luigi took one look at his silent, prostrate passenger, and thought he saw a tear drop in his eye. He at once knew everything about Kumi. He had carried many men throughout New York in his cab: crying men, laughing men, shouting men, silent men. Some, he hated; others, he liked. Didier was someone he thought he could surely like.

“Then one day,” Didier opened his eyes, his hand still inside his coat pocket, “I told Kumi that I had a plan. We would come to America, as refugees, I said. We had enough money saved up to live a happy life there. I had made all the arrangements. We were to run away two weeks from that day. We made love and lay in each others arms all through the night, afraid but happy. In the morning, I kissed her on the neck and held her tight. I felt her smile. Then she stood up, took out a little glass container from her closet, kissed it, and gave it to me.” He took out that glass container from his pocket, and gave it to Luigi.

Luigi held it against the dying sunlight and studied it. A tiny little rice grain with something engraved on it in an unrecognizable script was floating inside it in a clear liquid. “What does it say?” he asked, turning it round in his hand.

“‘Didier and Kumi.’ She made it herself.”

Luigi rolled it around in his hand and smiled. He’d seen diamonds and rubies, but this little glass cylinder seemed more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen before. “Didier and Kumi,” he spoke loud, and smiled again. He rolled his fingers over it, keeping one eye on the road, the other on the simple innocence oozing out of that tiny grain of rice rolling around in the glass container.

He stopped smiling suddenly and asked “Then what happened, chief?” He did not want to hear the story any further. He knew that most love stories have tragic endings. Yet he had to ask, for the sake of asking.

“That next week never came. They somehow found out that we were running away. They...” Didier’s voice trailed off, like a train slowly departing a lonely station. Memories echoed in his mind, speaking a thousand different languages, swimming to and fro in maniacal frenzy.

The taxi slowed down, coming to a halt outside an old, Victorian style building.

“We’re at the hotel, chief.” Luigi said grimly, stopping the car.

Didier got out of the cab and slowly took out his luggage.

“What happened then?” Luigi asked, handing him the glass cylinder. Neither man smiled.

Didier took it from Luigi’s hand and carefully placed it in his shirt pocket, close to his heart. “They came to our house the next morning and shot her while I was at work. I could not even hold her in my arms as she died. That night was the last time I held her close to me. They bulldozed my house and destroyed everything in it. This little piece of glass and memories are the only things that remain.” He patted his chest pocket, felt his world stop for a moment. He looked Luigi straight in the eye. Both men nodded, and Luigi drove off into the horizon.