And why shouldn’t we do it? she went on. We’d lost husbands and children and our youth. We spent all day caring for family members who couldn’t reciprocate. We were powerless against forces that considered us unworthy of being caressed again—what evil would we commit by indulging in one of the last avenues of rapture at our disposal? Why not celebrate our battered bodies, massage and stroke and tenderly release whatever desire was left in them? If we wanted men and there were none available for us, why shouldn’t we do it for ourselves? Because we had no right to? Because the women who came before us and the men who lived among us said we dared not? Don’t you think, she said to me, that the time has come for you to start living by your own rules?
* * *
THE PEOPLE FROM THE RESTORATION Movement promised me that they wouldn’t stop asking questions till they found out the truth about what happened to Malabo, and where Bongo is buried. The Sweet One and the Cute One said it the first time they sat down with me, the same way they sat with everyone who had lost a child or a husband in Kosawa, going from hut to hut in those first months to compile the names and ages of those who’d been killed for the sake of oil. In a letter sent to us from America, which the Cute One read aloud, the Restoration Movement people told us that when they saw the pictures of the massacre they knew that ours had to become one of the villages around the world whose dignity they fought every day to restore. They would be the spear of Kosawa, they said.
Their full name, we learned, was the Movement for the Restoration of the Dignity of Subjugated Peoples. According to the Cute One, after Austin’s first story appeared in the newspaper in Great City, the Restoration Movement people had held a meeting in their office to talk about the report; they’d long harbored suspicions about Pexton and its deeds in places where no outside eyes were upon them and no laws existed to compel them to do what was just. Austin’s story had proved them right.
On the same day the story became public, the Restoration Movement people called the Pexton office and asked them for the truth: Did Pexton know what its oil exploration was doing to the village of Kosawa? Was Pexton doing anything to help the villagers affected by their spills and toxics wastes? The people at the Pexton office had stammered—they couldn’t figure out how our story, so inconsequential, had ended up in an American newspaper. Pexton must have been very angry, because, from what we gathered, by the next morning the Pexton people in Bézam were meeting with His Excellency’s men. There must have been quarrels and blames at that meeting. In the end, everyone likely calmed down and agreed that they had to find out as soon as they could why Kosawa was spreading lies about Pexton and, in the process, hurting His Excellency’s image. I imagine it was at this conversation that the decision was made for soldiers to be sent to Kosawa—someone had to be held responsible for the smear.
* * *
—
I was at the back of the group that day as we crossed the small river. The death and burial of the man the children called the Sick One had so drained us that the warmth of the soft sun in our faces after a rainy morning did nothing to uplift us. Bongo was in front of me with Austin, who seemed in danger of falling from the weight of his shock and grief; it was clear to us all how much he yearned to escape whatever he’d walked into.
Everything in Bézam had gone far better than planned, Bongo would tell me months later, when I visited him in prison. Even before they left the city, Austin had sent the first story to his newspaper in America. When they arrived in Kosawa, Austin would take pictures and question as many people as he could, in order to write a second, longer story. But while Austin was in Kosawa, every care would be taken to ensure that he knew nothing about his uncle’s presence in the village. Bongo, Lusaka, and Tunis had debated this, how to tell the newspaperman not only that they had his uncle in their custody, but that the last time they saw his uncle the man was sick, after having slept on a bare floor for days. How much honesty did they owe Austin, considering the good he was about to do for Kosawa? If they told him, would he understand why they had to do what they did? What if he decided to write a story about it? Then the people in America would think of us not as a feeble lot throwing a desperate punch at their captors—simply doing what they must—but as people as unscrupulous as the ones against whom they were fighting.
No, they couldn’t tell Austin anything.
All Austin would know was that his uncle had passed through Kosawa. Yes, that would be sufficient information. As soon as Austin did what he needed to do and left Kosawa, the Pexton men and their driver would be rushed to Jakani and Sakani’s hut, where their memories would be erased, after which the village would bid them farewell. They would get in their car, Austin would take the bus, and uncle and nephew would not meet again until they were safely back in Bézam. If Austin, upon visiting his uncle, as he was likely to do soon after that, mentioned the letter his uncle had sent through Bongo, his uncle would have no remembrance of having written it. Because Bongo would keep the letter, Austin would have nothing to show his uncle as evidence that his uncle had indeed written a letter asking for help for Kosawa. Austin wouldn’t understand why his uncle couldn’t remember, but that would not be our concern. The next time we met or heard from the Pexton men again, they would be telling us not about what Pexton couldn’t do for us, but about the date when Pexton would start making changes that would benefit us.