On an oppressive day in the dry season, a man stepped off a bus and crossed the main street of the border town of Wologizi. He approached a young man who was bending over a cistern filled with water. The youth had been gazing for quite some time at his own reflection, and the face that greeted him in the clear water wore a beatific smile. Though the stranger walked with a limp, over the years he had learned to conceal his handicap cleverly by strutting, so that the youth who heard his footsteps and turned fully to face him assumed he was arrogant. In fact, the youth was less fascinated by his suitcase or tailored, three-piece suit than by his manner of walking. It was the assertive gait of a man well aware of the effect his appearance had on people.

The stranger sat down on a bench under a leafy tree not far from the youth, and he heaved a deep sigh that betrayed his contentment. Wologizi fulfilled his expectations, for as he glanced across the dusty street, he could see several old men: two of them were stretched out in hammocks, and the others were lying on mats, whiling away the stifling hours in the shade of a breadfruit tree. The border town was asleep, in the thrall of the heat. While travelling to the town, the stranger had toyed with the idea of yielding, like those old men did, to the lethargic spell of the heat without a care in the world. And as if to confirm that thought, a gentle breeze started from his right, from the direction of the youth, and drifted peacefully towards him. He closed his eyes to savour it to the full.

'Come here,' he called to the young man.

The stranger watched him cover the short distance between them, his gestures languid, his gait remarkably feline, but not until the youth stood before him did he notice the fear in his eyes.

'Can you show me the way to the mansion?' This was how the house was called in that part of the country, the mansion, and the stranger knew this. The youth raised a slender hand and pointed to a house in the far distance. The hand, the stranger noticed, was pocked with burn marks, which did not appear to be ritualistic, but he stood up, choosing to ignore them. Beyond an ochre hill through which the main road had been carved, the stranger could see the mansion perched proudly on another hilltop.

'Who lives there?' he asked.

The youth did not answer.

'Tell me who lives there?' he insisted.

Although the identity of the occupant of the mansion was common knowledge, the youth remained silent.

'Come on, don't be afraid. Tell me.'

The stranger's tone was reassuring, even appealing, but the young man continued staring at the ground. Perhaps, the stranger thought, the young man's reluctance was due to his timidity.

'Why are you so silent?'

It was at this point that he reached out to pat the young man on the shoulder, a gesture he immediately regretted, for it triggered a reaction that baffled him. The youth recoiled, broke into a run, and never looked back until he disappeared behind a curtain of dust.

The incident still disturbed the stranger even after he had traded the pleasant shade for the terrible heat, and when he turned to the old men he saw that they had not stirred from their positions.

The road he took to the mansion was punctuated by dust-swathed houses, from which an occasional voice could be heard, subdued to an almost sensual whisper by the noonday heat. On reaching the town centre proper, he saw a Lebanese man, one of many who traded in that country, standing before his shop and munching a loaf of bread with the avarice of a child. On his right, he saw several youngsters gathered around a poster, in front of a cinema, discussing the film – its heroes and heroines and the murderous tactics of its villains. It reminded him of his own childhood. The stranger passed a gas station where some men were playing checkers beneath its rusty roof. Incited by a handful of spectators, the two main players were slandering and insulting each other, cursing and swearing in the most exaggerated tones, as if locked in a duel of death. The first threatened to defeat the second, warning that he would forfeit his wife and property to the winner and never play checkers again. The stranger ignored them, but could still feel their eyes boring a hole in his back, even after he'd rounded a bend. On turning around, certain he would face one of them, he saw nothing but a cloud of dust rapidly heading his way.

Soon, he arrived at a junction with divergent paths which went on to enclose collections of thatched huts and mud and brick houses. Instead of taking the road to the mansion, he opted for the main one that led up a mountain and down a valley. He wanted to see the river that formed the border between his country and the other, and how the border was manned. However, the ascent was difficult, the heat unbearable, and soon he was sweating profusely. The stranger loathed the smell of his own sweat, which was acrid now despite the fragrance that he wore, and more than once he had to stop to dab his face with a handkerchief.

It took him nearly an hour to reach the river which lay at the foot of the mountain. Long before he could see it he could hear it gurgling softly, as though it was whispering a secret. Contrary to his expectation, there was no building on either side of the river to indicate where one boundary ended and the other began, no custom officers, in fact no sign of life at all but an occasional call of a lone bird or an animal. Even the river was carelessly bridged. Some logs had been thrown across it, which were now old and worn out. Beside the bridge, tied to the trunk of one giant tree and extended across the river to another, were strings of woven ropes, a phenomenon known in that part of the country as the monkey-bridge, a bridge used only during rainy season when the river overflowed and covered the main bridge. What manner of a border town was it without clear-cut borders?

The stranger turned back and headed for the mansion. Long before he could reach it, the house rose before him, majestic and imposing, overlooking Wologizi with evident pomposity. The three-story building was cut off from all sides – from the valley at its rear and the town sprawled below it – by walls of cement bricks topped with shards of bottles. The first thing that caught his attention was the radio antenna which towered over the house. Then he saw a warning boldly written on the gate which read: BEWARE OF MY PRESENCE. He reasoned that perhaps it referred to a ferocious canine trained to pounce on intruders like him, so he shouted to lure it out but got no response.

On drawing closer to the legend, he noticed that unlike the rest of the walls it had been repainted recently. The gate stood open, and he entered with some reluctance. On his right was the one room-radio station which he approached, listening for any sign of movement. It had no door and its windows were broken. The stranger entered and discovered that the radio which connected Wologizi with the outside world was out of order. All of a sudden he had a distinct feeling that someone was spying on him, and he left the radio station as if in a daze.

Climbing the stairs up to the first floor of the house, he emerged into a spacious living room with a high ceiling, stained at the corners as a result of leakages. Everything was covered with dust: the once beautiful chairs and tables with the flag and seal of the country carved with precision in them, the wooden cupboards...