Jennifer Riggan

Bill Gates Wants To Take You To America

Teacher Kiflom walked across the school compound, the dust raising clouds around his feet but never settling on his glistening shoes. As he arrived at the 10C classroom, the electricity went off. Ceiling fans clattered to a halt, and students climbed over each other to throw open the shutters. Wind, blinding sunlight, and the sound of waves breaking beyond the school wall erupted into the dark room. As soon as Kiflom entered the room, the students moved into formation. Standing at attention, three to a desk, they chorused, “Good morning teacher!” 

Kiflom gestured for them to sit, then spent forty minutes writing up notes for them. His chalk tapped the board, each tap emitting a white puff. 

At the end of class, Kiflom faced his students. The wind whooshed and a wave crashed in the distance. A crow cawed. He read the assignment he had written on the board: “Bill Gates wants to take one of you to America. You have to convince him to take you. Oral presentation. Due next week. Ten points.”  

Murmurs bubbled to the surface of the quiet room. The electricity came back on, and the ceiling fans rotated into life. Teacher Kiflom had to yell over the students’ voices, “Be ready! Will Bill Gates choose you?” 

At the end of the morning, Kiflom climbed the hill to his home for lunch, the road sleepy in the midday heat. As he neared the round-about at the top, he saw the familiar statue of a dove that looked like a seagull, its head poking out over the one-story buildings around it. The two soldiers who were there every day sat in front of it. 

Kiflom called out, “Salam!” 

They nodded at Kiflom’s back as he descended into the maze of sandy pathways that led to his house.

His wife was sitting on a low stool next to a kerosene stove stirring a pot of shiro. The injera was already spread out. She began to scoop the shiro onto it as Kiflom swept up his daughter, Rahel. 

He danced into the living room with her, tossing her up in the air, careful to avoid the ceiling fan’s blades. His wife followed, the platter in one hand, her stool in the other. Kiflom sat on the small sofa and fed bites to his daughter, blowing on the food before placing it in her upturned mouth. 

“Salam! Salam!” Kiflom’s brother called as he walked through the door. He pinched his niece’s cheek. 

“Sit. Eat.” Kiflom swept his hand towards the food. 

Habtom retrieved a plastic bowl and pitcher from the corner and washed his hands with a small stream of water. Last year, Habtom graduated from Teacher Training College. In the new teacher placement lottery, he drew a posting in the much-coveted Central Zone. But Kiflom worried about Habtom being alone there and convinced his brother that he would be better off in Assab. It was better to be close to family. 

Habtom and Kiflom alternated feeding the child and feeding themselves, but Habtom only picked at the injera and shiro. 

 “Don’t be shy,” Kiflom implored. 

Habtom held up his palm and shook his head. 

Kiflom asked, “How is teaching?” 

Habtom hunched over and looked off into the corner. “I haven’t been teaching for a few days.” 

 “You could get fired.” 

Kiflom’s brother swallowed. “They are sending me to the desert.”

“What?” Kiflom said. “What have you done?” 

Habtom answered, raising his hands as if in surrender. Sending teachers to the villages in the desert was known to be a punishment for not being on time, upsetting a supervisor, or being outspoken. “They say they need teachers in Afambo.” 

Kiflom felt his scalp prickle as it did when he got anxious. “We will fix this.” 

“I was supposed to leave two days ago,” his brother said. “I might cross the border. To Sudan. Or Ethiopia.” 

“Do you know how dangerous that is?” Kiflom’s voice was louder than he intended.

They stared at the same crack in the wall. The hollow sound of water running over a metal platter echoed from the kitchen. Family members of those who left the country would be harassed and could be fined or imprisoned, but that wasn’t what Kiflom worried about. People who fled the country ran out of water in the desert and wandered in circles until their bodies dropped to the sand. They were found by soldiers and sent to underground prisons in buried shipping containers. They were kidnapped by gangs in Egypt or Sudan or Libya and tortured to extort ransom from relatives forced to listen to their screams on a cell phone. They drowned in the Mediterranean. 

 “We will fix this today,” Kiflom said, knowing he’d be able to take care of this. He saw calm on his brother’s face and was certain he felt relief in the long embrace his brother gave him when he said goodbye. 

*

That afternoon Kiflom made his way to the Ministry of Education offices. A cluster of people waited for a communal taxi at the intersection of the asphalt roads. As Kiflom approached, the blue and yellow minivan clattered toward them. He caught the eye of one of the other passengers and raised his hand so they would wait for him. He jogged, looking down so as not to lose his footing. When he looked up he saw a man with pale skin, brown hair pasted on his forehead and wide glasses that made his eyes look like an owl’s. He shook his head and asked himself, Is that a white man? A ferenje? Since the war, there had been no white people in the town. The man was waving at him. By the time Kiflom arrived at the taxi, there was no sign of any ferenje. 

As Kiflom pressed into the cluster of bodies pushing into the taxi, a voice called out, “Teacher!” Tedi, an albino wearing glasses and a dark hat pulled down over his forehead to protect him from the sun, greeted him. 

“Tedi!” Kiflom said watching the albino disappear into the front seat of the taxi. Everyone in the town knew Tedi. Kiflom laughed out loud as he sat on the middle bench of the mini-van. The heat of other bodies pressed on his. He wondered how he could mistake Tedi for Bill Gates. He laughed to himself again.

“Can you share the joke?” A high-pitched voice said. Out of the corner of his eye, he recognized the man who spoke, but could not place him. His breath was hot on Kiflom’s back in the crowded taxi. “You were laughing. What’s the joke?” 

Kiflom craned his neck around further and noticed the man’s sloping, lazy eye. Kiflom then remembered he was a manager at the telecommunications office. Having no relatives abroad to call, Kiflom seldom visited the telecom. 

 “From a distance I mistook Tedi, the albino, for a ferenje. How silly of me. There have been no ferenje here since the war.” 

“Maybe you’ve got Bill Gates on your brain.” The man from telecom laughed. The man’s grin without one eye looked like a grimace.

Kiflom felt his face grow cold. “Are you spying on me?” He tried to make it sound like a joke. 

“Well, we wouldn’t want Bill Gates to steal you away.” The man continued to grimace-smile.

Kiflom was relieved that his stop was next.

He arrived at the gate of the Ministry of Education office just as it opened at four in the afternoon. He climbed the stairs slowly. From the upper floors Kiflom looked out at the port in the distance and the islands in the Red Sea beyond. 

A long table stretched the length of the Head’s office. He sat at one end behind a towering stack of papers. Kiflom stood at the other end, waiting to be beckoned forward. “Yes?” the head said without looking up or asking Kiflom to sit down. 

Speaking louder than he would like, Kiflom explained that his brother was young and needed to be near family. “I worry about him if you send him to the desert,” Kiflom concluded, not mentioning that his brother was thinking of leaving the country. 

Without looking up the head stated, “We need him in Afambo. He should have left already.”

Kiflom’s pulse pounded in his temple and his fists tightened. “I told him to come here. I have taught here for ten years. Perhaps you do not need my skills either.” 

The head looked directly at Kiflom for several seconds more than he found comfortable before speaking. “Quitting your job is your right. Theoretically one of the other ministries, or perhaps a private company, could hire you. But could you get permission to take that job?”

Kiflom recoiled from the threat. He had heard of this happening before. He would need a release letter from the Ministry of Education to get any other job. Clearly he would not get one. 

“Please.” He switched his tone. “This is my brother.” 

“We all have brothers. Some of us no longer have them. You are lucky to still have a brother.”

Kiflom’s feet were like stones as he descended the steps. The Red Sea on the horizon disintegrated into the bright haze of sun. Lost in the sight of it, he almost slipped and caught himself on the banister. 

The realization that his brother had already known what the Regional Head would say hit him suddenly. His urgent need to talk to Habtom quickened his pace. Sweat ran down his back and the hot wind pushed his damp dress shirt against his skin where it chilled him despite the heat. 

The wide street stretched endlessly in front of him. The white, yellow, and blue stucco houses and store fronts that lined it were blinding in the sun. The green dome of the Orthodox church loomed against the blue sky. His brother’s dormitory was across the street from the church. 

Each doorway in the dormitory led to a small, windowless room where three or four junior teachers lived. It was unfortunate that teachers had to live in these conditions while doing national service. How could they be expected to be professionals while living in this place? When Kiflom started teaching as a university graduate, he had his own room with regular electricity and could afford to hire someone to cook for him and wash his clothes while he saved money to get married. 

One of the teachers was shirtless and squatted at one end of the porch making tea over a charcoal stove. He fanned the coals and waved, “Hey Kiflom!” 

“Is my brother home?”

“We haven’t seen him today,” he answered. “Why don’t you stay for tea?”

“I can’t. Thank you, but if you see him, tell him to come see me right away.” It was odd that he was not in the dormitory, but nothing to be alarmed about. Kiflom smiled as he left, aware that his cheeks were strained from the effort. 

Across the road an old man and several women with young children walked towards the church. A gust of wind stirred up a wave of dust. Women held their netselas in front of their faces and a child burrowed into his mother’s leg as the dust hit him. One man walked through the dust unfazed. He was white. Kiflom was sure of it. His eyes were not playing tricks on him. The dust reached Kiflom and he turned his back to it and covered his eyes. When the dust passed and he turned around, the man was gone. 

Kiflom’s scalp prickled. He was disturbed and agitated by the sighting of the white man possibly for the second time today. What was he doing here? He walked toward the church, pulled open the heavy door, and stepped inside where it was cool. The shift from sunlight to dark blinded him, heightening other sensations: the earthy air on his face, the incense and candles, the wail of priests’ chanting syncopated by drum beat and tambourine claps. As his vision returned he saw women sitting on the carpeted floor and men leaning on wood sticks, everyone rocking back and forth whispering prayers. Kiflom looked around to see if the man who looked like Bill Gates was there, but he only saw people absorbed in prayer. 

He turned and walked towards the door. The priest standing there looked and asked if he wanted a blessing. Kiflom nodded and the priest flung a palmful of holy water from the cistern into Kiflom’s face. Blinking, Kiflom made his way back out into the blinding sun. The drying water itched along his hairline like a suture. 

There was no sign of Habtom that evening. Kiflom could not taste his dinner. He woke up shivering under the sheet and cursed as he got up to close the window and turn off the fan. 

*

In the morning, sweet tea cleared his head, and his steps were buoyant as he walked to school. His classes went well. His students were making good progress on their presentations. During the mid-morning break, he walked to the teashop to join his colleagues. As he walked towards them, he could see one of them beckon for a cigarette as the waitress placed cups of tea and bottles of Coca-Cola on the low table. Kiflom raised his arm to wave at them, but the sight of a white arm disappearing into the bushes behind their table made him pause. 

This is too much, Kiflom thought, his throat constricting. Instead of joining his friends, he strode towards the bushes and, checking to make sure no one was watching, ducked under the low hanging palm fronds. Bill Gates hunched in a low tent of leaves in front of him. At first, they just stared at each other as if unsure of whether the other was real.

“What are you doing here?” Kiflom finally asked. 

“You summoned me,” Bill said.

“I did not,” Kiflom said with irritation.

“You set the exercise.” Bill was matter of fact, almost mechanical.

“For fun! For motivation. You weren’t supposed to show up. That makes it real.”

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t already real.” Bill turned and walked away, leaving Kiflom wondering what was real—the students’ desire to leave the country or Bill’s presence.

Kiflom emerged and brushed leaves from his hair. One of his colleagues called out, “Kiflom! What are you doing?”

“I was meeting someone.” Kiflom said. 

“He’s just pissing,” another colleague yelled. They all laughed. 

“Was it that guy from the telecom?”  

“Be careful Kiflom. The ears are everywhere.” 

“Actually, I was meeting Bill Gates.”

They all looked down and took sips of tea. 

“You summoned him.” 

“I’ve heard of that happening before.” 

“Dolly Parton visited my wife. We sent her away.” 

“I heard a rumor that Bill Clinton visited my neighbor.” 

“What do these icons want?” Kiflom asked. 

“They are trying to lure us into the desert.”

“Or across the sea.”

“They want us to think that life there is better than ours.” 

“Nothing is sweeter than living in your own country and coming home every day to your family,” Kiflom said. He meant it, but his words sounded flat. Students played soccer at the other end of the field, but their color was off. They were tinted, yellow and hazy as if the channel they were being broadcast on was getting bad reception. 

When he walked home for lunch, he greeted the soldiers stationed under the fat dove, but as he passed them they called him back. “Menkesakesee,” they demanded. 

Kiflom pulled out his school ID and handed it to the soldier. 

“Lela,” they barked. 

“This is the only ID card I have,” Kiflom stammered. “You know me. I am an English teacher in the high school.” 

One of them slung his gun over his shoulder while the other put his hands in his pockets and kicked a used tomato paste can in the sand. “We need a demobilization ID.” 

 “It’s at home,” Kiflom said.

“Then you need to come with us.” 

Kiflom felt his voice rise in frustration. “You see me every day. You know we were demobilized after the war ended.” 

“We don’t know you.” 

“These are orders.” 

He had the sensation that his scalp might detach from his skull. He looked down at the earth and said a silent prayer noting the dust on his shoes. He said, “It is in my house. I will bring it to you.” 

The soldiers said, “We’ll come with you.”

They walked on either side of him, filling the narrow alleyway. Neighbors peered at them through the wood slats. A door slammed. Someone changed a radio station and turned the volume up, blaring patriotic songs. 

The soldiers waited outside while he pulled a cardboard box from under the bed, a place where he could grab it if they ever needed to evacuate again. He flicked past his daughter’s birth certificate, his diploma from Asmara University, and his wife’s nursing certificate. 

He handed the plastic ID card to the soldiers, they shrugged and handed it back. Kiflom stood outside his house until his heart beat slowed down and the top of his head started to feel like it belonged to him again. 

 “Kiflom! Lunch is ready,” his wife, Sarah, called from inside the house. 

Habtom was missing again at lunch. Kiflom’s family ate in silence. When Rahel tried to climb into Kiflom’s lap, he accidentally pushed her away so that she fell on the floor, breaking out into a wail that brought Sarah running in from the kitchen.

*

Every morning, Kiflom woke up to Rahel and Sarah’s cheerful laughter. Sometimes they were singing. He’d smell onions cooking and wonder if Habtom would join them for lunch. Then he remembered that he hadn’t seen his brother in days and became silent for the rest of the day.

Every afternoon after school, the hill seemed steeper. He took to carrying his demobilization ID with him every day to satisfy the soldiers. He didn’t like doing this. If he lost the ID he would have no proof that he had done his military service and they could arrest him for avoiding service. 

He went to Habtom’s dormitory almost every day, but his roommates shook their heads and did not offer tea. He went to the Ministry of Education once or twice and thought about going in, but as stood outside the gate, he knew that would only make things worse.

A week after his brother’s disappearance, Kiflom arrived at work to find a white Ministry of Education vehicle parked in front of the school. He was summoned into the director’s small air-conditioned office. He stood while the Regional Head and school director remained seated. 

The Regional Head’s eyes bored into his. “Your brother is missing. Do you know anything?” 

“He told me he was supposed to go to Afambo. Then he disappeared.” 

“If you know anything about where your brother is, what his plans were, it is essential that you tell us,” the Regional Head said with no kindness. 

The school director cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable. “The Ministry of Education has also heard about your Bill Gates activity.” 

“You must stop that activity,” the Regional Head said. 

“As you know, leaving the country is a crime,” the director said. “None of this looks good.” 

“Of course,” Kiflom said. “I was just trying to motivate the students. I will cancel the assignment.”

Kiflom went to class, shaking slightly. But then a student ran up to him outside his classroom and asked, “Teacher, do you think this is good?” He showed Kiflom his exercise book where he had a paragraph written in polished English with several strong arguments. Kifom was impressed with the work and excited by the gleam in the student’s eye. In class, several more students had questions about the assignment. 

“It seems that you are all working very hard,” Kiflom told his class. “Let’s delay the due date for one week.”  Kiflom couldn’t help adding, “Who knows? Maybe Bill himself will show up.” 

After the warning from the Regional Head, Kiflom saw the man from the telecom everywhere. In taxis, in shops, and at the beach where he took Rahel swimming every Sunday. Bill no longer approached, but Kiflom also saw him frequently, disappearing into a crowd, climbing into a distant taxi, and bobbing in the sea. 

Kiflom’s thoughts were heavy. His scalp always prickled. He constantly thought about his brother. He worried he’d forget his ID. He feared that the man from telecom or the Regional Head would hear that he had not cancelled the assignment. He feared that Bill would become bolder and get him in trouble. But Kiflom couldn’t bring himself to cancel it. Whenever he planned to, a giddy student would assault him with questions. How could he disappoint them? It was one of the few things that still gave Kiflom joy. 

He began to wander the streets at night, called by the wild dogs barking on the outskirts of town. He walked the path behind his house, illuminated by the glow of neighbors’ televisions shining through open doorways. He descended through the network of houses on the hill to a place where the light of TVs disappeared and the earth flattened and there were no real houses, only the occasional shack battered by the wind. Each night his wanderings took him farther until he found himself in a place where there were no buildings and the stars were thick and his feet sank into deep pockets of sandy earth. The desert at night bathed in pale light. He walked further each night, finding beauty in the way the shapes stretched and shrunk in the shadows. When he heard the dogs growling, he knew he’d gone too far and thought of the pleasant smell of onions frying, his wife singing and his daughter laughing. Then he’d turn and walk back towards the town.

*

Two weeks after Habtom’s disappearance, Kiflom sat at an outdoor bar with colleagues. His fourth gin and tonic had not quelled the worry that always consumed him. Then he saw the man from telecom walking towards their table. 

“Gin. What are we celebrating? Someone must be supporting you from abroad.” The man forced a laugh.

They shook their heads. The man’s drooping eye searched Kiflom’s face. Kiflom looked beyond the man and caught eyes with Bill. The man from telecom left them and chatted with Bill on his way out. 

I’m going to put a stop to this, Kiflom thought. All his troubles had started the day Bill arrived. As Kiflom strode towards Bill’s table, he found himself thinking that all the trouble started the day Bill arrived. If he left, maybe Habtom would return, the soldiers would stop harassing him, and the man from Telecom would follow someone else. 

Kiflom glared at Bill. “You need to leave me alone.”

“You’re going to win the essay contest,” Bill announced

“I didn’t write an essay. The essay is an exercise to teach English. It isn’t real.” 

“You’ve won the prize. I’m taking you to America.”

“I won’t leave.” 

“I won’t give up on you.” Bill extended his hand. Kiflom refused to shake it and walked away. 

*

Kiflom woke up feeling as if he were hovering above himself. Today, he decided, is the day my students do their presentations. He smiled through breakfast, but had no awareness he was doing so and did not remember his walk to school. 

In class, Kiflom’s students took turns standing in front of the class to present their essays. 

 “Bill Gates should take me because here we don’t choose what to study or our jobs or where we live.” 

“Bill Gates should take me because we have no cell phones and not enough computers and if he takes me, I can bring Eritrea into the 21st century.” 

Kiflom was pleased with their work, but he couldn’t focus or sit still. Their words merged into each other.

“Bill Gates should take me because we go into military training before we leave school….”

“…because we never get out of the military even though there is no longer a war…”

“…because this is not a democracy.”

“…because we are forbidden from leaving the country.”

“…because they shoot at us if we try to leave and put us in prison if they catch us.”

Kiflom paced and ran his hand along the back wall of the classroom. A tall, soft spoken girl made her way to the front of the classroom. 

“Dear Mr. Gates, I do not think you should take me because there are problems here. We are a developing country. Of course, there are problems. You, Mr. Gates, are not concerned with our problems. I love my country. Dear Mr. Gates, you should take me because I am the top student and because we are the best at math and at science. We will write new codes and cure diseases if we have the right opportunity. You should not take me because you should help me. You should take me because I can make you richer.” 

The class hung on her every word. When she finished, they erupted in cheers, some celebratory and some angry. 

Sensing a presence, Kiflom spun around too quickly. Bill leaned into the classroom through the open window. The heat and the blood shifted in his head making the room spin. Bill gave the students a thumbs up. Some of them waved.

As the students fanned out in the compound after class, Kiflom saw Bill duck into the bushes and followed him, almost running. 

“How dare you?” Kiflom said as the palm leaves rustled behind him. “How dare you show up here with your empty promises luring young people away? Can you imagine the trouble you’ve gotten us all into?”

“You were in trouble before I showed up. Anyway, we don’t have time to argue,” Bill said. “You need to leave. Now. I’ll help.” 

To this Kiflom could say nothing. He was furious. He’d had a good life until Bill arrived. He ducked under the thick mop of palm branches and hoped he’d never lay eyes on Bill again.

As he began the hot walk home and up the hill, he began to realize what he had done. He should not have had his students make their presentations. Word would certainly get back to the Ministry of Education and beyond. He almost did not make it up the hill on leaden legs. He considered stopping to sit by the side of the road to rest. At the top of the hill, he was surprised that there were no soldiers. The threat of their sudden absence terrified him more than their daily presence. 

He walked faster. As he approached his house, he heard his daughter laughing, louder than she had laughed since his brother disappeared. His daughter laughed again. Was it possible that Habtom came back? Kiflom rushed to the door of the living room. 

But the voices that he heard making his daughter laugh did not belong there. They were familiar but out of place. They were voices that were meant to order and threaten not befriend and tease. They belonged at the roundabout in the shadow of the misshapen dove. Before they saw him, Kiflom slid to the side, out of view, so that the men waiting for him in his living room would not know he ever came home. 

Without saying goodbye, he slipped out of his compound and kept walking past the house along the path that had become familiar through his nighttime wanderings. He walked through the alleyways. As he left the houses behind, sweat drenched him. His shoes were covered in dust. His legs churned, pushing against the soft earth that sucked his feet in and slowed him down. At night, in the moonlight the lines around the scattered huts, the rocks, and the mountains in the distance were clear and sharp. Now they blurred into a haze. He could see the outlines of the dogs sprawled across the desert floor. They were as still as dead bodies in the heat. 

He walked further than he ever had, until the empty earth turned to fields of black volcanic rock, crumbling and clawing at his shoes. His throat was dry. 

At one point, Kiflom thought he heard soldiers behind him. He ran a few steps, stumbled and fell. The rock tore a hole in his trousers, bloodying his knee underneath. 

He continued walking through the pain until the sun neared the horizon. A figure appeared and disappeared in the distance, blurred by the shimmering waves of heat. Was that Bill? 

Kiflom knew that more deserts and a sea and an ocean and several continents lay beyond this desert. These were the dangerous spaces that Kiflom had cautioned Habtom not to enter. He knew that he might never see his family again. He might not even live. The promise at the end of the long journey, he had said many times, was not worth the risk. But Kiflom had no choice but to keep walking, while Bill moved towards the horizon and remained constantly, forever, just out of reach.