All Of Monday’s Reasons - 24
24. Benson Anigboro
Map
I collected my bag, bought a bottle of water and checked the train times. The next train west was five hours away, so I got comfortable on my sleeping mat with Hemingway.
About half an hour later, a tall black man struggled up to me with his luggage: a leather hold-all and a briefcase. He put them down next to me.
“Hello.” He had a deep voice with a West African accent. He pointed to my bottle of water, “May I?”
“Do. Sure.”
He uncapped the bottle and lifted it high, quickly drinking almost half of it.
“Thank you, my friend.” He introduced himself as Benson Anigboro. He showed me the name on his passport. Benson A. Anigboro.
We shook hands and sat on the station floor.
After a while, he said, “Are you leaving today?”
“Yes, I need the West.” I wondered if he understood.
“I know this feeling.”
Two men slowly strolled up to us as they talked amongst themselves. Benson stood up and walked towards them. I followed. One was Nigerian and the other was from Uganda.
“Hello, you going to Belgrade?” Benson asked one of them.
“No brother, I’m waiting for some friends.”
“Oh, this city,” said the Nigerian.
“I cannot believe it,” added Benson.
“All the people they are crazy. The speak nothing but Turkish. What is this? Nobody speaks Turkish in the world. I ask them, but nobody speaks English. The information staff, tourist office, nobody.”
I wondered if a Turk with limited English would be able to understand Benson’s strong accent.
The Nigerian added, “All they can say is ‘You M’sieur! How much!’ This is a crazy country. They always want your money.”
Benson came to life. “This is a country of rooks! They take your money.”
“That’s the truth,” I said.
Benson continued: “All of them. Rooks! I leave my hotel for five minutes yesterday, they take my money.”
“Really?” I asked.
“All my money. Five hundred dollars, they take it.”
“Shit. All of it?”
“All my money! Five minutes, I say!” He held up five fingers.
“Did you go to the police?”
“My friend, the police in Turkey, they don’t want to know. They say ‘yes, yes, not now’.”
“They sent you away?”
“They send me away.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I meet this guy in Germany, he gave me twenty dollars. I try to finish my holiday, but it’s very difficult with no money.”
“Sure, I can imagine.”
I could see what was coming. It provoked an awkward silence. The two Africans said goodbye. I went to sit down against my bag. I spread out my sleeping mat and we both sat on it. He opened his briefcase and brought out his passport. He showed the dozen visas stamped on its pages.
“Do you travel a lot?” I asked him.
“No, never. What is your name?”
“I’m Cliff.”
“No, never, Cliff.”
“First time out of Nigeria?”
“First time.” He nodded. “First time and now this.” He was referring to the money.
“I know a man also from Nigeria,” he said, “he threw away his passport like a ticket.”
“Really?” I sort of laughed.
“He threw it away and has big problems.” He was serious and I felt guilty for laughing. “That’s really unfortunate,” I said seriously, to counteract.
He produced a small photograph album from his briefcase and handed it to me. Inside were photographs of him with his friends at university and a surprising amount of pictures of himself alone. There was a picture of a beautiful lady with two children probably aged four and six.
“Your wife?” I said, angling the photograph towards him.
“This is my wife. And my children.” His voice changed. He missed them.
Not being one to dwell on sentimentality, I turned the page. There was a photograph of a man, presumably Nigerian, in his early thirties.
“This is the man who threw away his passport,” said Benson.
“When?”
“Two days ago. He was travelling with me.”
“Where is he now?”
“I just come from the hotel. They tell me he is in prison. The police, they take him away.”
“Prison? Have you heard about Turkish prisons?”
“No.”
“Prisons in Turkey are the worst in Europe!” This worried me. “Benson, who else knows about this?”
“Just me. When I get some money, I will write to his family in Nigeria, but it is impossible now.”
“How are you getting back to Nigeria? This is a case for the embassy. It’s a diplomatic issue.”
“I will fly, but I need money, I must find work. And there is no Nigerian embassy in Turkey. It is in Belgrade.”
“Man, you should have kept your money on you. I do all the time. I sleep with it in Turkey.”
“My friend,” he said, “he who is a fool twice is a fool forever. I did not know this city. This country! It is full of rooks! They all rooks!”
He showed me something he had written it a notebook:
After rain comes sunshine. After darkness comes the glorious dawn. There is no sorrow without its alloy of joy. There is no joy without it a mixture of sorrow and behind the ugly terrible mask of misfortune lies the beautiful soothing countenance of prosperity, so tear the mask.
“Tear the mask,” I said, “I like that.”
“I wrote this this morning. I woke up and felt really very bad, so I write this.”
He walked off and came back five minutes later without the sun-glasses he had been wearing. He had just sold them to someone in a cafe for about two pounds. He took his walkman from his briefcase and walked back to the cafe, returned with some more money, but not much.
“Listen, you could use a beer. Are you hungry?”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
Benson took his wallet out of his briefcase and put it in his back pocket. He stood up.
“Bring your passport, too. Never leave it anywhere, OK? Especially not in Istanbul.”
“Passport, too? Really?”
“Yeah, and don’t put your wallet in your back pocket.”
He gave me a questioning look.
“Pickpockets.”
“Rooks! All of them!”
We walked down by the port to a bar which sold Efes Pilsen at thirty pence a half litre. We sat down and drank for a minute without saying anything. Benson caught the attention of someone lighting a cigarette and moved his hand towards the pack on the man’s table.
“Can I have one?” asked Benson.
The man hesitated and took a cigarette from the pack and gave it to him. Benson nodded a thank you. He turned back to me. The beers were now quarter litres.
“Tell you what,” I said, “I can lend you some money. Turkish lira are no good in Belgrade, but I can get you French francs.”
“My friend, thank you very much.”
I felt good helping this guy out. We swapped addresses and he said I could call him the day I get to Nigeria and stay at his house.
“We’ll write to each other and you must come and see me. Nigeria is beautiful.” He sounded enthusiastically insistent.
We finished the beers and I bought him two sesame bread rolls. He ate one on the way to the bank and kept the other one in the bag for later.
I cashed some traveller’s cheques at the currency booth and put the money in his hand.
“There you are: four hundred French francs. That’s about eighty dollars. You should have no trouble changing that anywhere.”
“Thank you.” He shook my hand. He graciously accepted the money, so I did my best to act like it was no great loss to me even though I could have eaten for a week on it. I had given him fourty pounds, which was nearly ten per cent of the £500 life savings I had set off with.
But it felt good to have helped this guy out. I gave him my address in the UK and we promised to keep in touch.
February 21st, 2007 at 11:32 am
Istanbul is full of ROOKS!
I hope you heard from him again.
February 21st, 2007 at 2:09 pm
I did - that comes later. Stay tuned!
February 21st, 2007 at 3:59 pm
And also full of rookies, by the sound of it.
You did a good thing.
February 21st, 2007 at 10:11 pm
I’m goin’ nowhere.