“If we don’t get any information out of them, then what was the point of taking them prisoner? Wouldn’t everything we’ve put ourselves through have been in vain?”
“Nothing’s going to be in vain,” I say.
“So we’re going to keep them here till they die?” Pondo asks. “Is that the new plan? Sooner or later more soldiers will come looking for them. They’ll ask more questions. Only the Spirit knows what they’ll do to us when they find out.”
“They’ll never find out if we don’t let them find out.”
“You think Pexton is just going to accept that its men are missing?”
“Bongo, what should we do?” Lusaka says. He’s whispering. We’re all speaking in low voices, though we’re keeping no secrets from the rest of the village.
My resolve weakens. I’d feared that one thing or another might not go as well as we’d planned, but I hadn’t considered the possibility of any of the men dying on us.
* * *
—
Our plan, the plan the men of Kosawa have agreed on, is simple: keep the captives until they give us the names of men in Bézam who can help us. We want nothing else from them. Just names. After which we’ll set them free. That was the plan we made after we stepped out of the twins’ hut the morning following the village meeting. We’ll never know why Konga didn’t show up to join us that night as we assembled with our spears and machetes, ready to die for Kosawa, nor will we ever know what the twins did to us, but we have no doubt that whatever they did is what led us to the revelation that this battle would be fought not weapon against weapon, but weapon against wisdom.
Upon getting the names of our potential benefactors, a delegation will travel to Bézam with gifts of smoked bushmeat and dried spices and yams, bottles of palm oil, and eggs from our fattest hens. We’ll offer these gifts to the men. We’ll speak openly to them, since the captives have attested to us that they’re men of power, yes, but also men of conviction and good hearts. Once we enter their offices, we’ll go down on our knees and sing their praises before pleading with them to come with us to our village: Come see it for yourselves, the desolation of our children. We’ll offer them Woja Beki’s house while they’re with us. We’ll repaint the house; our women will clean it and fill it with roses and sunflowers—it will have a scent befitting our esteemed guests. The house may be far from Bézam, but it will look and smell like what we imagine the finest houses in Bézam look and smell like, a conjecture we’ll come upon based on pictures of houses in America from the children’s schoolbooks. Woja Beki will stay in the house with them—we’ll spread his family across our huts, asking our women to swallow their bile. We’ll tell the big men that our wives and mothers and sisters will cook for them only the things they desire to eat. We’ll assure them that Woja Beki will treat them as the honored guests that they are, and that will be the truth—when we had presented this idea to Woja Beki as part of the condition of his release, told him that we would need to do with his house as we deemed necessary for the sake of accomplishing this mission, he had agreed; we’d suspected he would delight in the privilege of entertaining powerful men from Bézam.
We’re not beggars, but we’ll travel to Bézam and lie prostrate before these men, kiss their feet no matter how dusty their shoes, because we need their help if we’re to grow old on our land. We’ll make several trips to Bézam if need be; we’ll continue traveling and pleading and gifting until we succeed in bringing at least one big man from the government and one powerful man from Pexton to Kosawa. When they arrive, we’ll make a feast to welcome them and present them with parcels of land. After that we’ll lay our sick children at their feet, beg them to protect these helpless ones. We may be proud, but our pain has abased us, and we will do this and more for the sake of our descendants.
* * *
—
The responsibility for mining the crucial information from the Pexton men fell upon Lusaka. We believed that if the men could come to see him not as a foe but as someone bent on ensuring their freedom, they would be more willing to talk to him. If there was indeed anybody the men could trust in Kosawa, it had to be Lusaka—Lusaka was after all the one who, once we brought the captives to his hut on the night of the village meeting, had asked Konga if Konga could kindly hand over the car key. Konga had tossed the key to Lusaka as he walked out of the hut, not to be seen again since then. Before joining us in front of the twins’ hut, Lusaka had led three men to the school compound to search for the Pexton driver. They had found the driver walking around in the darkness, searching for the key. Lusaka had shown him the key and told him to come along; the driver put up no resistance as he was escorted to join the other captives.