“Bongo was the one who negotiated with Woja Beki before the soldiers’ visit,” Lusaka said, which was true, though he was there too, along with two elders. But he was right—I was the one who told Woja Beki that Kosawa’s future rested on his choosing a side and sticking with it: he could either choose his people or choose their enemies. He had chosen us, even if only for that afternoon. The soldiers had left, convinced that the Pexton men were not in our village. The battle was just beginning, but we were winning.
“Aren’t we winning?” Lusaka asked the assembly of men.
“We are,” they replied.
“Won’t we keep winning?”
“We will.”
“Yes, we will,” he said. “And we can thank Bongo for that.”
* * *
—
Every morning I ask the Spirit to grant me reasons to be grateful. I pray for protection upon my brother’s children. Juba has nightmares from which he wakes up sweating, and Thula, ever since I returned from Bézam empty-handed, doesn’t have much to say to me—I failed her father, I failed her. I long for the days when she was a little girl who would come into my bedroom at dawn, slip into my bed, and tuck her hands inside my shirt. Sometimes I’d tickle her just to hear her laugh. I loved watching her prominent, round eyes get wider. It was evident even then, by her heart-shaped lips, and her lengthy eyelashes, that she would grow up to be a beauty. She’s now on the cusp of that, though with her thin frame it’s unlikely hers will be the kind of body men in Kosawa will crave. The fact that she curls further into herself as she gets older, smiling at intervals but revealing nothing about her inner being, makes me worry she’ll grow up to be too mysterious and her wondrous face will go to waste. Her father was inscrutable too; they did not share much of a physical resemblance, but her mind was a replica of his. Numerous were the evenings they spent chatting and laughing on the veranda. Now that he’s gone, I worry she has closed herself off because she wants to share her thoughts with him and him only. She may not go around saying it, but she’s angry with all those who colluded to rob her of her father. Alas, what can she do about her anger? There are moments when she’s reading a schoolbook and she appears ordinary, but with every day added to the number of days Malabo has been gone, she speaks less and her anger reveals more of itself in the weakness of her smiles, which she’s more likely to give while she’s listening to her friends than when she’s sitting in a hut in which her father no longer lives.
If she were any other girl, I would merely wish that the Spirit mend her heart and free her of the agony she bears, but she’s my brother’s child. Without knowing the future—without knowing when I’ll finish this work Malabo started and turn my energy toward finding a wife to bear me children—she might be the closest I’ll have to a daughter for a while. That is why I want, desperately, as impossible as it seems, for her to grow up to be an unshackled woman, so that I may tell my brother, when we meet again, that though I’d failed at saving him from whoever felled him, I hadn’t failed in keeping his children safe by doing everything I could so they could grow up in a clean Kosawa.
* * *
THERE ARE TWO OTHER MEN with Lusaka in his hut when I arrive—my uncle Manga, and Pondo, who is married to Woja Beki’s only surviving sister. Lusaka has relied on the wisdom of the two elders since the captives came into his custody nine days ago, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t do so as well, having known them all my life to choose right over wrong often. The men avoid my eyes as I pull a stool to join their circle.
“He’s dying,” Lusaka says the moment I’m seated.
“Who?” I ask.
“The Sick One,” he tells me. “My wife just finished cleaning his vomit. He’s been vomiting all afternoon. You touch him, he’s hotter than a pot of boiling water.”
Manga and Pondo turn their eyes on me. Their look says: You’re the leader—lead us out of this situation.
“We need to make a new plan,” Manga says.
“I’ve tried everything, they won’t talk,” Lusaka says. “Last night I said to them: We don’t need a long list of names anymore, just give us five or six names. The Leader looked at me as if I were a bowl of rotten food. The others barely opened their eyes.”
“Maybe if we try beating them—” Pondo says.
“Beating them?” Manga says, sneering as if his age-mate has just uttered the unutterable. “One of them is dying and you want us to beat them—”