We reached Bézam in the early mornings. No matter how tired we were upon our arrival at the prison, the sight of our men, and the realization that they were still alive, strengthened us. We slept on the bus ride back to the village, exhausted in every way.
* * *
THE LAST TIME I SAW Bongo, he wasn’t feeling well.
Just a cold, he said, but his eyes told a different story. He ate little of his food. Please, eat more, I said; otherwise, I’ll worry, and I’ll tell Yaya and she’ll worry too. He forced a smile, knowing I wouldn’t ever add to Yaya’s suffering by telling her of his condition. I pleaded with him, scooped it up for him, but he wouldn’t eat. Beside us, Lusaka listened to his wife telling him a story. Lusaka’s daughter tried to make conversation with Bongo, asking him how he had slept, but Bongo avoided her eyes, which surprised me, Bongo never having been one to be shy around girls. Farther down the bench, Gono took notes while Woja Beki spoke between coughs. We had heard that Gono was running a separate endeavor to free his father—in addition to the one the Restoration Movement was running—but we had no way of knowing if it was true, or if it was true that Gono had angrily quit his job at Pexton after Pexton told him that they couldn’t do anything to help him get his father out of prison. We also heard that Gono and his mother were no longer speaking to his two other brothers who worked for the government, because the brothers had refused to quit their jobs to show solidarity with their father. The brothers had supposedly said that they had families to feed, and Woja Beki had neither reprimanded nor frowned on his sons for their choice: everything he’d done was for his family too. We believed these rumors, though we had no way of confirming them—Jofi, Woja Beki’s third wife, who had been our source of intelligence about that family, had fled Kosawa with her children the day after the massacre.
* * *
—
“Yaya will never survive if anything happens to you,” I said to Bongo.
He held my hand and promised me nothing would happen to him. In that brief moment, I heard Malabo saying those same words. “I’ll be all right,” Bongo said, and Cocody, sitting next to me, nodded. Things were moving well, he reminded me; the Cute One had said that His Excellency had promised to set a date for the trial as soon as possible. He wiped his eyes and forced another smile. Tell Yaya not to worry, he said.
On the day the Sweet One and the Cute One told us that a trial date had been set, we rejoiced. We prayed the Four would get sagacious judges before whom they would prove their innocence. If any of them had committed a crime, then all of Kosawa had committed a crime, and we would pay for our crime as one people. We would never allow our own to suffer singularly for our collective deeds.
The elders decided to send a delegation to the trial, to serve as witnesses for the Four and argue that we had all seized the Pexton men, and we had all held them captive, and we had all killed the Sick One, and we had all stood by and watched as Jakani and Sakani thrust spears into the four soldiers. We would accept any sentence. We would ask only that it be fair, that the crimes of those who had pushed us into our transgressions be considered first if those who judged us were to call themselves just.
* * *
THE TRIAL DATE WAS SET almost a year to the day after the massacre. We took this as an omen from the Spirit that this cycle of dry months and rainy months in which we’d nearly run out of tears would soon be over. We’d had other years of suffering more than we thought ourselves capable of bearing, and we knew more tough years lay ahead, but this year that had almost made us believe we were objects masquerading as humans—how desperately we wanted it gone. Despite comporting ourselves for decades, despite never resorting to beastly deeds, we hadn’t succeeded in persuading our tormentors that we were people deserving of the privilege of living our lives as we wished. But the trial—it could give us a major chance to convince them to rethink us, get to know us for who we are, and in the process find us worthy of reclaiming the pleasure of quiet existence we’d lost.
We woke up that morning and put on our best clothes.
On the way to Bézam, we beseeched the Spirit for mercy, and thanked the Spirit for promising us justice in unspoken ways. Thula came with me—I wanted never to forget the moment when she and Bongo walked out of that prison, hand in hand, smiling.
When we got to the courthouse, a guard met us in front. He led us through a corridor and showed us an empty room in which to sit.
He left the room and shut the door.
We sat there in silence: Thula and I; Lusaka’s wife, two of his daughters, and his sole surviving son; Gono and Woja Beki’s two remaining wives and four of his younger children; five elders to speak for Kosawa. The guard hadn’t permitted the Sweet One to enter the courthouse, saying that for circumstances like this only one representative was allowed to come inside the building. The Sweet One had wanted to protest, but the Cute One told him to go back to the office and to report to Great City what was going on.