The Man Behind the Curtain

In 2026, Lamin was still the man people called when the microphone failed, and never the man they called onto the stage. At a wedding near Serrekunda, his old employer introduced a younger technician as the genius behind their company. Lamin, forty, stood behind a curtain holding a cable together with tape. His telephone contained a rejected loan application and a message from his younger brother: do not send money this month if you cannot. That kindness hurt worse than a demand.

He fell asleep in a hired chair and woke with Fatu kicking its leg. "Your king will miss his own funeral," she said. Lamin remembered that joke. He remembered the yellow dress she wore, the missing button on his shirt, the calendar advertising January 2016. He was thirty again. His brother was still studying, and their mother was still complaining that he called only when he needed to borrow a cooking pot. He laughed so suddenly that Fatu stopped kicking. Then he cried, which she considered a less satisfactory explanation.

The future returned in pieces: a football season nobody believed; an election and the anxious weeks afterward; customers canceling expensive plans while ordinary people still needed weddings, lessons and ways to hear each other. In his first life, he had sold sound one evening at a time. Years later, other people had made fortunes selling the whole occasion, then the recordings, the staging and the equipment hire. He had known how every part worked. He had never believed he was allowed to own any of it.

Fatu, thirty-one, ran a fabric stall with the confidence of a minister and the credit of a street vendor. Lamin asked her to help put on a properly licensed football screening. She asked whether he had finally lost his mind. He answered that he had merely misplaced ten years. Fatu pinned the missing button back onto his shirt with brisk fingers, then smoothed the cloth more slowly than necessary. "Bring me figures," she said. "I have already seen your face. It is not sufficient security."

He had fourteen thousand dalasi in savings. He bought a used projector, hired a suitable viewing space, arranged the necessary commercial viewing permission and rented a backup power unit rather than trusting luck. Binta, a twenty-eight-year-old electrician, examined the cables. She told him his first layout would turn somebody's ankle into a public incident. While she taped the cables down correctly, she invited him to dinner if the evening succeeded. "And if it fails?" he asked. "Then you cook. I will already have suffered enough."

Ndey came to interview him for a small radio segment. At twenty-seven, she could make a foolish question sound friendly and a friendly question sound dangerous. "Why should anybody buy a ticket from you?" she asked, leaning across the table in a blue blouse that smelled faintly of orange blossom. Lamin said the picture would be clear and the sound would work. Ndey smiled. "A businessman whose wildest claim is competence. I may fall in love out of sheer surprise."

Two hundred customers paid forty dalasi each. Eight thousand came in; five thousand one hundred went out in that evening's operating costs, including the viewing fee, venue, power, staff and supplies. The projector was a separate startup purchase. Two thousand nine hundred remained. Lamin held the notes and felt something inside him straighten. He took Binta to dinner. She arrived wearing red earrings, inspected his shoes, and informed him that success apparently had not yet reached his wardrobe. He promised to introduce them at the earliest opportunity.

His remembered football miracle became his second test. Months before Leicester secured the English title, he wrote their name and the deciding date in an envelope, then asked Fatu to keep it. She accused him of a cheap trick. On 2 May, after the result in London made Leicester champions, she opened it. The room went quiet. Lamin said he had a feeling. Fatu slid the paper into her handbag. "Then have a feeling about next month's rent," she said, but her hand trembled when she touched his.