“We know you,” Diti said. Luyu and Binta both grunted in agreement. “In the last two weeks we’ve seen twice as much of you.”
“We aren’t stupid,” Binta said, biting into an egg sandwich she’d brought out of her satchel. It had been smashed between her books and looked very thin.
“So what happened?” Luyu said, as she rubbed her forehead.
I shrugged.
“Do your parents disapprove?” Binta asked. They crept in closer.
“Just leave the subject be,” I snapped.
“Did you give him your virginity?” Luyu asked.
“Luyu!” I exclaimed.
“Just asking.”
“Has your belly chain turned green?” Binta asked. She sounded almost desperate. “I hear that that’s what happens if you have intercourse after your Eleventh Rite.”
“I strongly doubt she had intercourse with him,” Diti said, coolly.
Before going to bed, I sat down on the floor to meditate. It took great effort to calm myself. When I finished, my face was wet with sweat and tears. Whenever I meditated, not only did I sweat profusely (which was odd because normally I sweat very little), but I also always cried. Mwita said it was because I was so used to being under constant stress that when I let it all go, I literally cried with relief. I took a shower and said good night to my parents.
Once in bed, I fell asleep and dreamed of soothing sand. Dry, soft, untouched, and warm. I was wind rolling over its dunes. Then I moved across packed cracked lands. The leaves of stubborn trees and dry bushes sang as I passed. And then a dirt road, more roads, paved and dusty with sand, full of people traveling with heavy packs, scooters, camels, horses. The roads were black and smooth and shined as if they were sweating. The people walking on the roads carried little. They weren’t travelers. They were near home. Along the road were shops and large buildings.
In Jwahir, people didn’t Hold Conversation beside roads or in markets. And there were only a tiny handful of people who were light-skinned—none of them were Nurus. The wind had taken me far.
Most of the people here were Nuru. I tried to get a closer look. The more I tried, the more out of focus they became. All but one. His back was turned. I could hear him laughing from miles away. He was very tall, standing in the center of a group of Nuru men. He passionately spoke words I couldn’t quite hear. His laugh vibrated in my head. He wore a blue caftan. He was turning to me … all I could see were his eyes. They were red with searing white undulating centers. They merged into one giant eye. Terror shot through my mind like poison. I perfectly understood the words I heard next.
Stop breathing, he growled. STOP BREATHING!
I jolted awake, unable to breathe. I threw off my covers, wheezing. I grasped my aching neck as I sat up. Each time I blinked, I could see that red eye behind my eyes. I wheezed harder and bent forward. Black spots clouded my vision. I admit, a part of me was relieved. Death was better than living in fear of that thing. As the seconds passed, my chest loosened. My throat let in puffs of air. I coughed. I waited, rubbing my aching throat. It was morning. Someone was in the kitchen frying breakfast.
Then the dream came back to me, every detail. I jumped up on shaky legs. I was halfway down the hallway when I stopped. I went right back to my room and stood at the mirror, staring at the angry bruises on my neck. I sat on the floor and held my head in my hands. The red oval eye belonged to a rapist, my biological father. And he’d just tried to throttle me in my sleep.
IF THE MAD PHOTOGRAPHER HADN’T ARRIVED, I’d have stayed in bed that whole day, too afraid to go outside. My mother came home that afternoon talking about him. She couldn’t seem to sit down. “He was all dirty and windblown,” she said. “He came to the market straight from the desert. Didn’t even try to clean up first!”
She said he might have been in his twenties, but it was hard to tell because of all the matted hair on his face. Most of his teeth had fallen out, his eyes were yellow, and his sun-blackened skin was ashy from malnutrition and dirt. Who knows how he was able to survive traveling so far in his state of mind.
But what he bore was enough to cause all of Jwahir to panic. His digital photo album. He’d lost his camera long ago but he’d stored his photos on the palm-sized gadget. Photos from the West of dead, charred, mutilated Okeke people. Okeke women being raped. Okeke children with missing limbs and bloated bellies. Okeke men hanging from buildings or rotted to near-dust in the desert. Smashed-in babies’ heads. Slashed bellies. Castrated men. Women whose breasts had been cut off.
“He’s coming,” the photographer had ranted, spittle flying from his cracked lips, as he let people look at his album. “He’ll bring ten thousand men. None of you are safe. Pack your bags, flee, fly, fly you fools!”
One by one, group by group, he allowed people to click through his album. My mother went through the photos twice. She’d wept the entire time. People vomited, cried, screamed; nobody disputed what they saw. Eventually he was arrested. From what I heard, after giving him a large meal, a bath and haircut and supplies, he was politely asked to leave Jwahir. In any event, people were talking, news was spreading. He’d caused so much distress that a Ndiichie, Jwahir’s most urgent type of public meeting, was called for that evening.
As soon Papa came home, the three of us left together.
“Are you okay?” he asked, kissing my mother and taking her hand.
“I’ll live,” she said.
“Ok. Let’s go. Quickly,” he said, picking up his pace. “Ndiichis rarely last more than five minutes.”
The town square was already packed. A stage was set up and there were four seats on it. Minutes later, four people ascended the stairs. The crowd quieted. Only the babies in the audience continued conversing. I stood on my toes, excited to finally get a look at the Osugbo Elders I’d heard so much about. When I saw them, I realized I’d already met two of them. One wore a blue rapa with a matching top.
“That’s Nana the Wise,” Papa said into my ear. I just nodded. I didn’t want to bring up my Eleventh Year Rite.
She slowly walked onstage and took her seat. After her came an old blind man using a wooden cane. He had to be helped up the stairs. Once seated, he looked over the crowd as if he could see us all for what we really were. Papa told me he was Dika the Seer. Then came Aro the Worker. I frowned deeply. How I disliked this man who denied me so much, who denied me. Apparently few knew he was a sorcerer because Papa described him as the one who structured the government.
“That man has created the fairest system Jwahir has ever had,” he whispered.
The fourth was Oyo the Ponderer. He was short and thin with white puffs of hair on the sides of his head. His mustache was bushy and his salt-and-pepper beard long. Papa said he was known for his skepticism. If an idea got past Oyo, then it would work.
“Jwahir, kwenu!” all of the elders said, punching their fists in the air.
“Yah!” the crowd responded. Papa elbowed my mother and me to do the same.
“Jwahir, kwenu!”
“Yah!”
“Jwahir, kwenu!”
“Yah!”
“Good evening, Jwahir,” Nana the Wise said standing up. “The photographer’s name is Ababuo. He came from Gadi, one of the Seven Rivers cities. He has worked and