“Can you stay till tomorrow evening?” he asks.
He wants to write the story soonest, send it to his people, and make himself available in the event they want to publish it immediately and need him to do more work on it. Then he’d like to come with us to see Kosawa. He’ll bring his camera and take as many pictures as he can, because with pictures he’ll be able to write a second, more in-depth story. He wishes he had a place for us to sleep tonight, but he lives with a friend in a small space. I tell him not to worry. We’ll sleep at the bus stop and be here to meet him tomorrow. We’ll sleep on a pile of garbage if we must, for a chance to reclaim our land.
The Children
WE DIDN’T KNOW HE WAS dying. Never would we have called him the Sick One if we’d been aware of how infirm he was—half dead, in fact. We’d been sick, we’d seen our brothers and sisters and friends get sick; nothing about it was worth mocking. We only gave him that name because we could think of no better name for a man whose body offered us passing chances at superiority, and we needed it, as a salve for our heartache.
We were playing in our compounds when we heard that a meeting of the men needed to take place immediately. Our mothers looked at our fathers, seeking an explanation for the urgency, but they got nothing. After our fathers had left for the square, we tried to ask our mothers what they thought might be going on, but they scolded us to hurry along and start our evening chores. We were sleeping by the time our fathers returned home. The next morning, on our way to school, was when we learned from our older siblings, who were discussing it with each other, that the Sick One was sick and Lusaka and Bongo and Tunis had gone to Bézam to look for medicine for him.
We had no jokes to make about the Sick One that day—we wished on him every bit of health within the grasp of men. We would even give him some of our health, we agreed, if he promised to return it. All day in class, we daydreamed that Sakani had made a potion for the Sick One, and that it was flowing in his veins, crushing his disease. When we returned home, though, we overheard the women saying that Sakani had refused to go to Woja Beki’s house to treat the Sick One.
Why would Sakani refuse to treat a sick man? He was our healer and deliverer from all physical manifestations of malicious spirits; he may have failed in saving our departed friends and brothers and sisters, but with those of us still living he had succeeded. He had lowered our fevers and made ointment for our rashes, given us cough remedies squeezed from leaves, cleaned out poison that had accumulated and was causing pain in our ears. He healed children from villages where the medicine men were mere mortals claiming to be something more—men born in single births, on ordinary days, after routine labors, nothing about them notable. Sakani could heal any sick person except those who the Spirit told him had run out of their allotted time, and even for these dying ones, he offered relief from what might have been an excruciating exit—he gave them a potion that allowed them to go softly and tenderly, unaware they were bidding farewell to this world.
From what we overheard, our men had stood outside Sakani’s hut and called for him to come help the captive. He’d appeared at the door and, in as few words as he was willing to waste, told them that he wouldn’t do it. We couldn’t understand his decision, much as we pondered. Was it because his duty was to heal us, not our enemies? Was that the direction the Spirit gave him when he received his powers at birth? Like his brother, he never explained himself—his ways were not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts.
Visiting each other before dinner that evening, we discussed a new detail we’d learned: when young men had arrived at Woja Beki’s house with the Sick One on the back of one of them, Woja Beki had a bowl of soup ready for the invalid. We heard Woja Beki had assisted the young men in placing the Sick One on his sofa. He’d taken off the Sick One’s socks so his toes might breathe, and unbuttoned his shirt so that air could flow into his chest. One of us mentioned that she’d heard from her sister, whose best friend was a cousin of one of Woja Beki’s daughters, that Woja Beki had spent all night at the Sick One’s side, rejecting his wives’ pleas that he take a rest while they kept watch.
* * *
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We felt for Woja Beki the more we learned about how well he took care of the Sick One: holding a bucket under his mouth for every vomit, wiping him down with a cold cloth when his temperature rose. We knew he was diligent not because he had any experience caring for a sick man—none of our fathers knew how to care for their sick selves, never mind the sick selves of others—but because he understood what would happen to Kosawa if the Sick One were to die our hostage. We heard the women whispering about it, that Woja Beki could have escaped Kosawa if he wanted to, that if he’d sat down with his family to plot their freedom, they could have found a way to get one of his sons to run to Gardens—surely, there had to be a moment in the deepest hour of night when all the eyes set to monitor them were shut. Once he got to Gardens, the son would have been able to send a message to officials in Lokunja or to Bézam. The government would have sent soldiers to rescue the Pexton men and return Woja Beki to his rightful place.