And he says, ‘I’m taking a semester off. Practical experience.’ This is his life, starting; he can feel it.
He learns early on not to use his cellphone camera. Three times in the first few weeks a woman touches the camera and the thing goes dead. He buys a boxful of cheap digital cameras from a truck in Alaba Market but he knows he’s not going to make the kind of money he wants – the kind of money he knows is out there – from footage he can take in Lagos. He reads internet forums discussing what’s happening in Pakistan, in Somalia, in Russia. He can feel the excitement tingling up his spine. This is it. His war, his revolution, his history. Right here, hanging off the tree for anyone to pick. Charles and Joseph call him up to see if he wants to go to a party on Friday night, and he laughs and says, ‘I’ve got bigger plans, man.’ He buys a plane ticket.
He arrives in Riyadh on the night of the first great riot. This is his luck; if he’d turned up three weeks before he might have run out of money or enthusiasm too early. He’d’ve got the same footage as everyone else: women wearing the batula practising their sparks on each other, giggling shyly. More likely, he would have got nothing – those shots were mostly filmed by women. To be a man, filming here, he needed to arrive on the night that they swarmed through the city.
It had been sparked by the death of two girls, about twelve years old. An uncle had found them practising their devilry together; a religious man, he had summoned his friends, and the girls had struggled against their punishment and somehow they had both ended up beaten to death. And the neighbours saw and heard. And – who can say why these things happen on Thursday, when the same events might have gone unremarked on Tuesday? – they fought back. A dozen women turned into a hundred. A hundred into a thousand. The police retreated. The women shouted; some made placards. They understood their strength, all at once.
When Tunde arrives at the airport the security officers at the doors tell him it’s not safe to leave, that foreign visitors should stay here in the terminal and take the first flight home. He has to bribe three separate men to sneak out. He pays a cab driver double to take him where the women are gathering, shouting and marching. It is the middle of the day and the man is frightened.
‘Go home,’ he says as Tunde jumps from the cab, and Tunde cannot tell whether he’s saying what he’s about to do or giving advice.
Three streets away, he spots the tail of the crowd. He has a feeling something will happen here today, something he has not seen before. He is too excited to be afraid. He is going to be the one to record this thing.
He follows behind them, holding his camera close to his body so it won’t be too obvious what he’s doing. But still, a couple of the women notice him. They shout at him, first in Arabic and then in English.
‘News? CNN? BBC?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘CNN.’
They start to laugh, and for a moment he is afraid, but it passes like a wisp of cloud when they shout to one another, ‘CNN! CNN!’ and more women come, holding their thumbs up and smiling into the camera.
‘You cannot walk with us, CNN,’ says one of them, her English a little better than the others’. ‘There will be no men with us today.’
‘Oh, but’ – Tunde smiles his broad and winning smile – ‘I’m harmless. You wouldn’t hurt me.’
The women say, ‘No. No men, no.’
‘What do I have to do to convince you to trust me?’ says Tunde. ‘Look, here’s my CNN badge. I’m not carrying any weapons.’ He opens up his jacket, takes it off slowly, swirls it in the air to show both sides.
The women are watching him. The one whose English is better says, ‘You could be carrying anything.’
‘What’s your name?’ he says. ‘You know mine already. I’m at a disadvantage.’
‘Noor,’ she says. ‘It means the light. We are the ones who bring the light. Now, tell us, what if you have a gun in a holster on your back, or a taser strapped to your calf?’
He looks at her, raises an eyebrow. She has dark, laughing eyes. She’s laughing at him.
‘Really?’ he says.
She nods, smiling.
He unbuttons his shirt slowly. Peels it off his back. There are sparks flying between their fingertips, but he is not afraid.
‘No gun taped to my back.’
‘I see that,’ she says. ‘Calf?’
There are maybe thirty women watching this now. Any one of them could kill him with a single blow. In for a penny.
He undoes his jeans. Slips them down. There’s a little intake of breath around the crowd of women. He turns in a slow circle.
‘No taser,’ says Tunde, ‘on my calf.’
Noor smiles. Licks her top lip.
‘Then you should come with us, CNN. Put your clothes back on and follow.’
He pulls his clothes on hastily and stumbles behind them. She reaches for him and takes his left hand.
‘In our country, it is forbidden for a man and a woman to hold hands in the street. In our country, a woman is not allowed to drive a car. Women are no good with cars.’
She squeezes his hand more tightly. He can feel the crackle of power across her shoulders, like the feeling in the air before a storm. She does not hurt him; not even a flicker of it leaks into him. She pulls him across the empty road to a shopping mall. Outside the entrance, dozens of cars are parked in orderly rows, marked out by red and green and blue flags.
In the upper floors of the mall, Tunde sees some men and women watching. The young women around him laugh and point at them and make a crackle pass between their fingertips. The men flinch. The women stare hungrily. Their eyes are parched for the sight of it.
Noor laughs as she makes Tunde stand well back from the bonnet of a black jeep parked right outside the entrance. Her smile is wide and confident.
‘Are you recording?’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘They do not let us drive a car here,’ she says, ‘but watch what we can do.’
She puts her palm flat on the bonnet. There is a click and it flicks open.
She grins at him. She places her hand just so upon the engine, next to the battery.