THEN SHE WAS BORN
CRISTIANO GENTILI
=================
Translated by Lori Hetherington
Copyright © 2015 by Cristiano Gentili
Translation Copyright © 2016 by Lori Hetherington
All rights reserved.
Distributed by Smashwords
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This novel was originally published in Italian as Ombra Bianca by Ota Benga Editore.
This is a work of fiction based on true events.
A girl named Adimu, the protagonist of this novel, does not exist. Both Adimu and the succession of events narrated in the story are fruit of the author’s imagination. However, every individual among the thousands of individuals with albinism living in sub-Saharan Africa—and this is a fact—has experienced at least some of the episodes the character Adimu faces. In this sense, and only in this sense, are the events in this novel absolutely and incredibly true.
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THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO INVISIBLE PEOPLE
I fear you because you are different.
I hunt you because I fear you.
You are different, you are few, you are unearthly.
Suspended between two worlds, you are out of my control, and, just like the gods, you may be our blackest disgrace or the gold of our fortune.
And yet you cry and laugh as I do.
Are you, or are you not, human?
This is what I want to know. But…who am I to ask?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
PART TWO
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
PART THREE
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
PART FOUR
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PART ONE
1.
The mother’s body broke open to make way for the baby’s entry into the world. Wild cries traveled beyond the sheet-metal door of the mud hut and into the crowded courtyard on Tanzania’s flat scrap of an island. Ukerewe was a jubilant explosion of greens—from apple to emerald—framed by the rich blue of Lake Victoria.
Sefu—the father of the newborn—looked beyond the virile, though softening, sun. He considered the great bounty, the brawny progeny it had produced. That sun, too, would rest for the night. He imagined his son being born before the Spirits’ sun sunk into the vast water. He thought of how everything was as it should be. It was almost sunset, and the cool air soaked in reddish light from the day’s final rays. Soon, too, our golden crown will shine, our own sliver of the starry canopy, thought Sefu as he waited outside the hut.
More time had passed and the sheet-metal door remained firmly shut. It was the beginning of the rainy season so the weather was unstable and capricious. Sefu smelled the unmistakable scent of rain. He sensed that the darkness of night’s first hours, assisted by monsoon winds, would coax heavy clusters of cloud that had been formed from the Indian Ocean. Water will be dumped onto the land by the rise of the next sun, he thought.
At last, the door to the hut opened. A woman gestured to Sefu. He could now enter. The courtyard grew quiet. He crossed the threshold, and the smile he’d worn since hearing the child’s birth cries vanished.
He saw his newborn asleep on a bundle of rags in the corner of the room. His eyes opened wide, and he grabbed his hair with both hands. This cannot be, he told himself. His body stiffened as the tiny creature hypnotized him. He attempted to summon his finger to touch its belly, hoping this thing before him was but a figment of his imagination. Then, with its subhuman powers, it turned him to stone. She was a curse, a judgment. He repeated to himself the name of what she was, denying it at the same time.
The air in the hut was drenched in deadly silence. Only Sefu’s breathing could be heard, and its rasp increased as rage filled him.
How could I have begot such a thing? he asked himself. He wondered if evil spirits possessed him while he had coupled with Juma. Or maybe this demonic being is the fruit of another man’s seed? That must be it, he affirmed to himself. His wife had to have betrayed him and unleashed a curse by the Spirits of the Lake. His body could not have made that.
“It has to die,” declared Sefu. Without so much as a glance at Juma, the mother of the phantom, he turned and left the hut.
Lying on her pallet, covered in brilliant-colored fabrics, her howls numbed by the murmurs of surrounding women, Juma registered this birth and her death as one and the same. She thought of how, in past seasons, she had miscarried two times, followed by boundless hemorrhaging that seemed to drain her soul and body. When she was with child this time, in her mind’s eye, Juma had seen the fetus gripping her womb with its tiny fingers, stubborn and determined.
She remembered when news of the conception had spread across the island like wildfire over dry grass. She saw the streams and lake rejoicing and swelling beyond their banks. The trees had generated hearty sprouts, giving shape to longer shadows. The sun’s light was clear and golden across the crimson earth. As her belly burgeoned, she trod the grass that grew greener and de
nser. She’d heard birds sing and caw louder than ever. The rain fell with the violence of gunshots. All of nature rejoiced with her, celebrating her baby’s tenacity and perseverance. Her child would live. Juma knew that this time she would hold a crying infant in her aching arms.
And so she had. Though as she looked at what her body produced, she felt only scorn and disgust.
Juma was unable to explain what had gone wrong. She had diligently followed every directive given to her by the women of the clan. To ingratiate herself with the Spirits of the Lake, she had avoided arguments and malicious gossip. She had refrained from having relations with her husband during the last months of the pregnancy. She had avoided carrying water from the spring so that her child would not be born with water on its brain. And she had been faithful to Sefu—in body and spirit—a loving and devoted wife.
Yet she had borne this monstrosity.
If Juma had not felt it emerge from her own body—seen with her own eyes—she would have believed it came from another woman, from another clan, a wicked woman who deserved such a thing.
She seized the newborn with both hands and held it out to the midwife to calm its cries. The older woman shook her head; she would not touch this cursed nobody. Juma squinted at Nkamba—her mother-in-law, more ancient than even the midwife and shaped as a crooked shrub. She saw Nkamba’s fear, and Juma wanted even more to annihilate the voice of that which came from her own flesh. In a fit of fury, she pressed the end of the swaddling cloth against its face. No one would blame her. She felt silent support from the ring of women encircling her and her offspring. However, the maternal instinct was stronger than Juma and—even though reason prodded her and she did want the child gone—she felt the cloth slip from her grip. She could not kill her own, however wretched it was. She drew the child to her left breast and felt it latch on and suckle with vigor. She recognized the lusty will of the thing that had inhabited her womb. Juma winced at the contact. From the corner of her eye, she scrutinized the tiny creature on her nipple, its pale skin against the dark flesh of her breast. It has happened again, she thought. I’ve given birth to death. A white thing. If it lives, my husband will leave me.
Juma pried the infant from her breast and set it on a bundle of rags in the corner of the room, farthest from the bed. A sweet scent radiated from the child, and it bayed like a homely pup. Overcome by fatigue and pain, Juma collapsed onto her palm-leaf bed, embraced by despair. Finally, she burst into a convulsive cry, clutching the bedding in her fists. That distant corner of the room was, for her, the forest where it, the nobody, would evanesce. The women surrounded her as Nkamba moved closer to the newborn, and one of them cradled Juma’s clutched hands, murmuring soothing words as a woman had when she had miscarried.
Then Yunis, her dearest friend and cousin of Sefu said, “Juma, it is time to bring in your husband.”
Out of the stillness that followed Sefu’s pronouncement and departure, Nkamba watched a stream of women trickle into the hut. Their voices trampled each other, echoing like the squawks of hungry crows in the cramped space.
“It’ll have red eyes like the devil.”
“It’s a zeru zeru[1] with witchy, magical powers.”
“Disaster will move into our village.”
“Contagious hardship will follow in its wake.”
“Listen: Before it’s too late, leave it in the forest.”
Juma, in a stupor, stared at the emptiness in front of her as the baby bellowed by the mud wall.
Nkamba observed the scene and her forsaken mjukuu[2]. From the moment she helped deliver her granddaughter, she had closed herself inside a remnant of silence, hypnotized with awe by the baby’s indomitable spirit. Little by little, nevertheless, the comments of the women wormed their way into her heart like black mamba venom, reawakening a poisonous memory from tens of rainy seasons before. Nkamba’s vision blurred; she lost her balance and dropped onto a stool.
Two women noticed her collapse and hastened to help her, flapping the hems of their skirts to yield a breeze on her brow, to give her much-needed air. When Nkamba revived, she went straight to her granddaughter and nestled her against her bosom. The others watched in shocked silence.
Nkamba understood what the clanswomen wanted her to do, expected her to do. She stared at the infant whose face softened and cheeks puffed as she rocked her to the rhythm of her heart. She thought of what had happened so long ago when she was a woman as young as Juma, and Nkamba decided the exact opposite would be this baby’s destiny. She was disappointed by her son’s cruelty toward one so helpless. She wondered how he would have treated his older sister. Nkamba slowly wrapped her mjukuu in a soft rag, which had been submerged in sweet grass to protect the baby’s delicate skin.
Sefu hadn’t yet been born when the event occurred that would change Nkamba’s life forever; thus, he was unaware of her secret. And he was unaware of her oath to the Spirits when her only daughter was taken from her. One of her callous hands covered her belly; a rush of shame surged, and, immediately thereafter, an incredible strength purified her mind and heart. The Spirits of the Lake were bestowing Nkamba with the courage she needed to ask her son to spare the child. Or, at least, to convince him to call on the herd to spare her. With the tiny thing pressed to her chest, protected by a soft cloth, she left the hut under the gaze of the women, their necks craning to follow her movements.
A birth is an event that brings together the entire community. Villagers, clan members, and strangers alike congregated singly and in clusters around the edges of the giant baobab, not far from Sefu’s hut. A thick layer of cloud cover shrouded any hint of star or moonlight, and a deep, dead cavernous darkness hid the agitation that spread across the community from the affliction that had been brought into their sphere.
Nkamba spotted Sefu speaking with Kondo, the village chief, who had been Nkamba’s friend from when she was a girl and belonged to the same clan as her husband, Kheri. If only Kheri had been home at the birth of their daughter, Nkamba’s life would have been different. All of their lives would have been very different, she was certain, and Sefu would have an unshakable love for his newborn. Zuberi, the shaman or, rather, the witch doctor, with his darting teeny eyes, sidled up to Sefu and Kondo, adding a poisonous word, Nkamba was sure. He seemed to be always collecting information that he might store in sundry glass jars with acrid solutions or in wooden boxes. With her head held high, the old woman—baby soundly asleep and hidden from curious and hateful eyes—foisted herself near the triumvirate. Behind her son’s shoulder, she touched his arm as she would have, so long ago, when she had been taller than he who was now such a colossal figure.
“Turn to face me, Sefu,” she said.
Her son spun around, embarrassed by her public boldness.
“Give her one chance,” said the old woman in a stoic whisper. “If you are the man who Kheri and I raised, the man who lovingly lowered his father into the earth and led him to his afterlife, you will not abandon this innocent baby girl in the forest.” Nkamba felt the Spirits rise up her spine as she spoke.
Sefu was silent, examining his mother’s tired yet animated face.
“Follow the example of our neighbors, the Masai,” she continued, holding his gaze. “Tomorrow, at dawn, place the baby on the ground in front of the gate where the community herd is kept. Let the beasts decide her fate. If the cattle trample her to death as they leave their pen, that is her destiny; if she survives, I will raise her.”
Sefu took his eyes off his mother. He let them travel toward the treetops. Then they veered down to Kondo and Zuberi, who were silent during Nkamba’s appeal. Finally, he gazed into the crowd that had gathered and were meandering all the way from the hut to the sprawling tree. Sefu looked to the elders of the clan—Kondo and Zuberi—as though for a solution. Kondo’s placid expression was one quite familiar to Nkamba, while Zuberi appeared anything but serene. The deep crease between Zuberi’s eyes twitched as though, Nkamba thought, in his mind he was concocting a muddy po
tion from the chaos of the situation.
Finally Sefu spoke: “This evil spirit cannot be my daughter.” He turned his back to his mother and continued his conversation with the elders of the clan.
“But she is.” Nkamba held up the child in front of him, forcing him to look at her. The baby hiccupped, inhaling too much air. “First she is the daughter of God and the Spirits of the Lake. Like every child is. And after that, she is your daughter.”
The elderly woman had doubts about allowing a herd of cattle to decide the fate of the newborn, but that custom was her granddaughter’s only alternative to imminent death in the forest, so Nkamba grabbed it. Like everyone in her tribe, she believed in the Spirits of the Lake. Those Spirits asserted that a zeru zeru be left to perish in the heart of the forest. She also believed, though, in the words of Father Andrew who, during Sunday Mass, spoke of a God who loved all living things indiscriminately. Nkamba saw God’s love flow through this angelic soul that she cradled in her arms, and Father Andrew’s God wanted the baby to live.
“I will consider it,” concluded Sefu.
A murmur of incredulity snaked its way among the villagers. Each of them had something to say, and soon voices rose, not in conversation but as individual threads that wove into the voice of the land.
“The birth of a white shadow is a bad sign,” declared a young fisherman on the fringes of the crowd.
“Zeru zerus must be left in the forest from the moment of birth as an offering to the Spirits.”
“That is how it has always been. She has to die alone, far from the community.”
“The entire population benefits when she is sacrificed to the Spirits—wealth and riches,” added an elderly man, waving his staff in the air.
“Why is she so different?” asked a boy whose legs were so long and thin he looked like a gazelle. He was in that in-between age when childhood gives way to adolescence.
Then She Was Born Page 1