“It’s good, but it’s not perfect.”
“What is missing, then?”
“You, feeding me.”

My forced laughter sounds just as easy as my real laughter.

“Feeding you? Like a baby? You need help to eat?” I tease.
“Yes, like your baby,” he replies with intonation. But I refuse to understand. I shift nothing in my energy and continue to laugh at him. As if the idea of grown humans feeding each other was a foreign concept to me. As if I don’t pick up on the flirt.

I met Salim on the road. He turned around on his motorcycle and stopped to greet as I was panting and sweating uphill. He told me he had lived in Russia and I was happy to exchange numbers, hoping for cultural recognition and a host in Labé. When I arrived a week later I texted him. He met me in the city, no longer easy and joking but now with something restless in his eyes.

He arranged a room for me at a clinic where his friend is a doctor; a little building in the back yard shaded by an avocado tree, its leaves rustling in the breeze and small lizards running along the walls. Plastic water kettles in different colors lined up under the tree, refilled by the nurses and used mostly for ablutions. The room was perfect: a mattress of the floor, a fridge, a hotplate and scrubs hanging on the walls. Sometimes the nurses would come in to change or heat their food, but I got my own key and the freedom to come and go as I pleased, my bike leaning on the wall in the corner.

A perfect situation, except that having Salim as my host started to annoy me pretty soon.

He liked to talk and not to listen, eager to tell me “how things are” here in Africa. Every time I’d question or counter his rants, he’d reply by grumpy silence and would then change the topic.

He had endured more than enjoyed his few months in Russia, and as a revenge he liked to complain about Westerners.
“Western women are so jealous! Here a man can have several wives. The women in the West would not tolerate it,” he said once when we were sitting behind the clinic, a sly smile directed at me.
“Oh, but not at all,” I said absent-mindedly, tracing the contours of the leaves on the avocado tree with my gaze. “In Europe there are many people who have an open marriage. There, if a woman wants, she can have several men.”
“What?!” Salim’s jaw froze in an open position.
“Yea,” I said. “The man can have many women and the woman can have many men. Many people do that.” I walked up to the tree to examine the bark with my fingers.
“That’s not normal!” he finally said. I shrugged and let him retreat into his silence, secretly reveling in immense pleasure of having shut him up.

He loved to mention that he worked for the military. He drove his motorcycle faster than necessary; his was bigger and shinier than the shabby mototaxis filling the streets. He brought me everywhere; to the market, to street restos, an abandoned perfume factory, to the big mosque. He brought me to his house and introduced me to his parents, his sisters, his children and wife. He showed me his new baby and invited me to eat the food his wife had cooked, herself not present in the room but only coming to serve us when he called. Discomfort crept in me at her expressionless gaze, her ducking out from the room and not staying to chat. Later that evening I wondered why Salim would spend his free days away from his family, his new baby, to entertain me. What was he hoping for?

His flirting was subtle in the beginning, easy to dodge with grace and spare us both the embarrassment of blatant rejection; I smiled a brief and friendly smile at his lingering gazes, kept my handshakes firm and thanked flatly whenever he called me beautiful, quickly directing attention to something outside of us. How come the gasoline sold by the road here is red? In Guinea-Bissau it was always yellow! If he called me “princess” I would reply by calling him “grandpa’”.

But instead of backing down, he insisted. We sat late into the night outside my room, me yawning through his monologues and wishing him to get the hint and leave. So also this night, after our visit to the street resto where he had asked to be fed. After a final, jaw-shattering yawn I interrupted him.
“Hey, listen, I really need to sleep now,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, OK?” I got up and rummaged around for my toothbrush and toothpaste to show that this was final. He looked at me.
“So that’s it?” he asked. “You want me to leave?”
“Yes,” I said, frank and flat. He kept looking at me as I wet the toothbrush with one of the water cans.
“You know, sometimes I come to sleep in this room. Sometimes when I want to get a break.”
“Oh really,” I said without looking at him. “How kind of you then to let me stay here.”

I brushed, spat and rinsed, washed the toothbrush and dried it on the fabric around my waist. The night was chilly and the back yard of the hospital dark, with the only light coming from my room. The streetlights from the other side of the house backlit the small clinic into a big, black beast hanging over us. Salim stood by the door, the sharp light reaching his shoulder but not his face. He made no effort to move aside as I passed.
“So,” I said while I put away my toothbrush and turned to him.
“See you tomorrow then.” He stayed put and looked at me. Then he scoffed, smiled and shook his head.
“You’re really something,” he said, waiting for me to understand what he wasn’t saying.
“Yep, sure,” I replied, refusing.
“Don’t I get a hug?” he asked. I went from the light of the room to lean over the threshold into the dark, reached up my arms to quickly tap his shoulders, made to retreat but he held on to my elbows and turned then, his face toward me, to press his lips to my cheek, the forced, disgusting body-heat too close, too hot, too moist the breath against my face, the sharp little hairs growing out. I pushed him away and stepped back; swift, calm, eyebrows knit in cold anger.
“There is no need for that,” I said and wiped my cheek. His lip curved into a smile.
“What, princess?” His voice matter-of-fact.

But I was calm; in a way, I had won. His blatant move had brought us out of the hinting-game; had given me all the rights to reject him just as blatantly.

I felt no shame as I closed the iron door and locked the hatch in his face, let metal grind and echo, my anger drawing out straight and solid boundaries between us; black decisive lines. I took the chance to act out, so tired of all his gazes, grazes and hints from the past few days. I turned off the light and listened to his steps go away.

If only this was the only time I’ve had to dodge the whims and caprices of men.

If only it wasn’t such a common part of traveling alone as a woman.

Then again, had it been my first time dealing with a petty man, I would probably have felt more agitated and upset. As soon as he was gone I turned on the light again, played music, surfed on my phone and journalled into the small hours, ate snacks and made an effort to enjoy my stay despite the price.

…

(This story told in pictures.)