the local culture and don’t speak the language. The ultimate aim of the Western staff – you, me, Sharmila and the interns – should be to put ourselves out of a job.’
‘You’d better talk me through the case.’
‘We’re going to need to raise our blood sugar for that.’ Winston made a vague gesture, and two slabs of vanilla ice-cream were placed before us. Vanilla ice-cream, I was to discover, was the only dessert that ever passed his lips. He would become agitated if any attempt was made – an oozing gash of raspberry ripple, a dollop of puréed fruit – to ‘jazz it up’. ‘It’s perfect,’ he claimed. ‘Never tamper with perfection.’ Carving cat-tongues from his magnolia ingot with a teaspoon, he laid it all out.
Most of us have watched so many police thrillers and legal dramas, we have a pretty accurate grasp of what form a criminal court case takes. International arbitration is different. It usually happens in private. It can take any form the parties decide. In this case, the two presidents had agreed to a two-stage process. First, the course of the contested border would be established by an independent Border Commission made up of lawyers and academics with pedigrees in international dispute settlement. Each government’s legal team would plead its case before those veterans, who were both judge and jury. Once the border had been decided, the issue of who bore responsibility for starting such a wasteful scrap – jus ad bellum, as it was technically known – would be decided by a panel of inquiry to be set up in Addis Ababa by the African Union, which was keen to demonstrate its readiness to police the continent.
I was arriving late to the party. Both sides had already filed Memorials, opening salvoes in a contest that would climax with a ruling dubbed ‘final and binding’. It was the experience of drafting the ‘granddaddy of Memorials’, as Winston referred to it, that had finally persuaded him he needed help. The Memorials summarised each side’s arguments and were bursting with pertinent facts, set in historical context and backed up by legal argument and precedent. Winston had clearly found the task near overwhelming.
‘It’s a damn good piece of work, if I say so myself,’ he said, scooping up his ice-cream with surprising speed. ‘But, then, their side’s isn’t too bad either, as you’ll see. I’d recommend that’s all you do for the first few days here, just sit down and read the two Memorials. You’re going to end up knowing them as well as a pulpit-thumping preacher knows his Bible. We have six weeks to prepare our counter-Memorials, demonstrating what fools and liars they’ve been. Then both sides swap those and prepare for the final showdown, the hearing.’
‘What are we arguing?’
‘We’re going for a multi-strand approach. Hopefully each strand of the argument complements the others to form a nice thick rope of validation. First,’ he said, ticking one stubby finger, ‘we’ll use nineteenth-century colonial treaties and the beautiful, beautiful maps that go with them.’ Briefly he looked quite dreamy. Then his expression changed. ‘Did you know that a map, without a treaty attached, carries almost no legal weight?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Any fool can draw an outline on a sheet of paper and claim it represents this stretch of land, that area of sea. Before aerial surveys and satellite photographs, maps were little more than explorers’ imaginings. But maps have an emotional impact that all the written text running alongside them – which is what really matters in court – just can’t match. Humans are very visual creatures. You can almost hear arbitrators heave a sigh of relief when they’re presented with a map, however suspect: “Oh, now I understand.”’
The prettier the map, he claimed, the greater the impact. ‘I’ve built up a wonderful collection, which I’ll probably end up donating to Lira’s National Museum, once it exists. All thanks to our volunteers. We’ve got two youngsters sifting through the British National Archives in Kew, while Francesca de Mello, an Italian PhD student, is checking the Foreign Ministry’s records in Rome. One of your duties, by the way, is to liaise with Francesca – sweet woman but needy, very needy. They’ve been sending me the treaties drawn up by Italian and British cartographers in the 1880s and 1890s, when the European powers were divvying up the region, anxious to avoid misunderstandings with the Negus of Darrar. A shame we didn’t learn more from their example,’ he said, pushing his empty bowl away.
‘I thought the colonial powers were rather sloppy in that regard. The cuttings I read,’ in the nick of time I stopped myself saying ‘this morning’, ‘kept referring to “poorly delineated” colonial borders.’
‘Well, imperial powers are like one’s parents, aren’t they? The satisfaction of criticising them just never wears off. It’s true they don’t go into quite as much detail as we would like. And there are some developments the colonial masters couldn’t foresee. They used promontories, rivers and trees as reference points, and over a century rivers change course, trees die, coastlines dance around with shifting wind patterns. So it’s difficult to build a case on treaties and maps alone, though I intend to have a damn good try.’
‘What else, then, if you’re worried that won’t be enough?’
‘Basically, a track record of administration, or “subsequent conduct of the party in question”, as it’s called. The other side, you see, is arguing that supposed “facts on the ground” made a mockery of cartography that was little more than colonial wishful thinking. Whatever the maps showed, Sanasa and other contested border areas were actually run by their officials, inhabitants voted in their elections, local businesses paid taxes to their capital. Just like the law, a treaty, especially one drawn up by foreigners who didn’t speak the lingo, can be an ass, flying in the face of how residents actually behave. Or so the other side claims. We have to prove the opposite.’
I was suddenly aware of a strange sense of floating, the table seemed to be heaving. Jet-lag was kicking in. I frowned, forcing myself to focus. ‘Presumably we also need to be planning Phase Two, the question of who started it.’
‘Yes, and the outcome of that will pack enormous emotional and political punch. Just think of a teacher pulling apart two scrapping children. The first thing the kids shout is “He started it!”’
‘But the teacher’s response to that is always “I don’t care. I just want some peace and quiet.”’
‘That’s never true, though, is it? The kid that gets its bottom smacked is always the one fingered as the aggressor. An obsession with justice is a human universal, or you and I would be out of a job. And the issue of who initiated a fight is particularly important in macho societies where loss of face is seen as unacceptable.’
‘They, presumably, are claiming North Darrar went first.’
‘Went first and then deliberately escalated the conflict, rolling a column of tanks into their territory in an uncalled-for act of belligerence.’
‘That rings a bell.’
‘CNN ran the images of those T-55s pounding away on the eastern and central fronts for weeks. Which doesn’t exactly help our case. There was a good tactical reason for that move, by the way. You can’t defend an area by keeping your troops down on the plains. You need to take the high ground. That’s what our army did.’
I registered that ‘our’. ‘So the African Union inquiry is key.’
‘The international community’s not very good at shades of grey. The press, the diplomats, the aid industry and foreign investors will expect the AU to tell them which country is a testosterone-charged bully, which one a blameless victim. The reverberations of that ruling will echo through the decades.’
I could see it all ahead: the nights in the office, the Styrofoam cups of cold coffee, the documents edited and re-edited until the English language seemed to lose its meaning.
Winston saw my expression and gave me an impish smile. ‘Courage, my girl! Did you think you were coming