… from the shadowlands

M

OCUBA | His twitch was either Tourettes or fear. He had weathered clothes, dirty hands and hungry eyes set in a well-fed face. He’d gone bush. And in this part of Mozambique the bush was everywhere. So was water, new swamp, broken trees, drowned crops and countless hungry people.

His twitch seemed like he was signalling others to “come with me” but, like most Frenchmen, action had to be well-oiled with words. He was in charge of relief efforts in northern Mozambique following the hurricanes and flooding. For 25 years he’d roamed the world, hugging hurt and catastrophe so tightly that now he fit in nowhere except in chaos.

Before he got into the misery game, he’d been a taxi driver in Paris…