Djibouti Read Online Free

and smart, that’s a combination made in heaven.”
    â€œHelene’s funny?”
    â€œHelene’s the goods.”
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    D ARA TOLD X AVIER SHE wanted to have dinner out of the hotel. She’d looked up the Blue Nile on rue d’Éthiopie, a five-star restaurant and it sounded just right.
    Xavier said, “Who gave it the five stars, the owner? You want to have a girl wash your right hand? Pours water over your fingers and catches it in a bowl? Then you take a towel off her arm? What if you left-handed?”
    â€œWe’re going,” Dara said.
    â€œYou want the girl shovin some kind of stew on your Ethiopian flatbread? They call it injera, so you know what the girl’s tellin you. Or maybe you go for the sega wat, the diced lamb all cut up. These fine women make a show of servin us. Say no to the Queen of Sheba salad. We don’t eat salad in Djibouti. Or get out of the Blue Nile in less than three hours. We be finishin off three different wines at one-fifty a bottle, and that’s house wine.”
    â€œWe’re not going,” Dara said.
    They went out for the evening with no plan other than meet Billy and Helene later at a club, Dara planning to shoot Djibouti nightlife. Prowl around with her hand on the camera in her bag. Billy had asked them to dinner, but Dara said they’d be working most of the evening. See you later on. He’d toldXavier the name of the club. She would love to find out what he was up to, the generous rich guy interested in her work; once in a while with a hint of East Texas country boy looking for Saudi crude. After a few glasses of wine she might ask him, “Billy, what are you up to out here in your sailboat? What’s your game?” He’d laugh at her and she wouldn’t have time to get him to talk. This evening she was sneak-shooting Djibouti. She wouldn’t mind using it as the title of her documentary. Djibouti. She loved saying it.
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    X AVIER TOOK HER TO the Chez Chalumeau restaurant on the rue de Paris. They sat down at the table and Dara put on her sunglasses wondering why it was so bright in here. Xavier said, “So you can see what they put in front of you. They cook French mostly. The side dishes could be Arab, but good here. Go with the lamb, you won’t get in trouble.”
    Dara said to her menu, “Which one’s fish?”
    â€œTheir tuna they call a Somali name. They got shark, the fin, octopus they fix in its ink, oysters. The crabs are good if they fresh. Or they can fry up some squid’s tasty.” Xavier said, “Remember, we gonna be eatin fish all the next month.”
    They ordered lamb, no salad, and a bottle of red. Xavier ordered another bottle as the floor show came on: four Somali girls shaking their bums to a drum and a guy singing or making sounds, the four dressed in long pink pongee gowns with panels, scarves they swished around their hips as they kept their bums rolling, spinning, bumping…Dara said, “The Blue Nile doesn’t have cooch dancers, does it?”
    â€œI don’t believe they have.”
    â€œI want to know how they do it.”
    â€œPractice,” Xavier said. “We get out on the boat, I’ll beat on something and you try and get your ass up to Somali speed.”
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    T HEY FOLLOWED THE RUE de Paris to the Place Ménélik to sit at a street café. “Have a cup of coffee and watch Djibouti nightlife,” Xavier said. “Cup of coffee and sip some cognac. Watch the tourists cuttin up. Off a cruise ship come down through the Suez. They sayin, ‘Ain’t Africa fun ?’ They could be in Marseilles doin the same thing.” Dara busy working her camcorder over Ménélik Square. “You gettin the Foreign Legionnaires. French boys never seen anything like these slim black chicks givin ’em eyes. Got epaulets on their shoulders, with fringe, and a sash around their waist. Man, this is where to get