Juma heard her husband’s and Yunis’s words as though they came from afar. She lay curled up on the earth, her knees tight between her arms, tears chilling her face. The orange moon in the sky was vanishing behind a massive cloud front.
Juma finally stood up and dried her tears. She thought she would spit out Nkamba’s secret, scorching Sefu with the truth that he was not only a father but also a brother of a zeru zeru. Unbeknownst to her, the hem of her dress caught in the bushes, and when she stepped out of the shrubbery without taking care, the fabric gave way and tore. She opened the door of Sefu’s hut.
As soon as he saw Juma, Sefu raised his right hand, as if to keep her from entering with the sole force of his open palm, as though she were an evil spirit or a zeru zeru. Nothing of the initial impetus that had propelled her to go to her husband remained. A paralyzing fear grabbed hold of her shoulders. From the doorway, Juma did not see her friend’s husband hidden in the room’s darkness. She shifted her eyes from Sefu to Yunis, their faces illuminated by the light of the flickering fire. She sensed an intimacy between them that she had not been aware of. A flash of jealousy rose in her throat, and heat emanated from her skin.
“Why do you believe her and not me? After what she’s done, is she more deserving of your forgiveness?” shouted Juma. Her voice splintered the silence like a glass vase shattering into a thousand pieces on a tile floor.
Sefu shifted on his chair. “Go home, Juma. This business will be resolved within my clan.”
Juma was struck dumb. Inside his clan. She realized with a chill that she was no longer part of his life. Juma said nothing to her husband. She had lost the will to speak to him of his dead sister. She focused her eyes on Yunis, the sister who had betrayed her, who was now forever dead to her. Juma turned on her heels and disappeared into the night without closing the door. Her husband’s avowal weighed on her like a hundred bundles of wood tied to her back. She continued on her way, shuffling her feet along the ground, occasionally stepping on the ragged piece of torn fabric that dragged on the earth, her shoulders curved by the heavy weight of disdain. The village was asleep, and she was alone.
16.
The following morning, Nkamba was in front of her hut, beating grain to make chapati[10]. She had spent the night wandering the forest, searching for her granddaughter. At sunrise, when her body felt as though she had plowed a field as large as the entire village, she went home and sat silently on a mat outside the door, watching the darkness dissipate. If necessary, she would walk the island to find her mjukuu, she told herself, and she turned her energy to preparing food to take with her as she continued her search. She’d never forgive herself for allowing the child to vanish. As she passed her arm across her forehead to whisk away sweat, she squinted to focus her vision. Strangers were coming. A white couple walking with Jackob, the woman holding a child in her arms. Her child!
“Adimu!” she shouted. Dropping the glass bottle she’d been using to roll out the wheat dough, her hands still white with flour, she rushed forward. She touched the baby’s cheeks and pulled her away from the woman, leaving a long streak of powder on Sarah’s tanned forearm. The two women glared at each other, eye to eye, though Sarah was so much taller than the wizened elder. Without uttering a word, Nkamba turned and ran inside the house with the baby, slamming the door behind her.
Sarah hesitated, bewildered by the woman’s reaction and especially by her ancient appearance. “Charles, is that the mother? She’s not the woman who brought us the baby.”
“Local women look older than they are,” he replied.
Jackob jumped in. “Nkamba is the child’s family,” he told them. Then he suggested he accompany them to Zuberi’s home to guarantee the baby’s safety.
“Who’s Zuberi?” asked Sarah.
“He interceded with the child’s family and has taken her under his protection,” said Jackob. “He is our most famous healer and the spiritual leader of Ukerewe.”
“It’s for the child’s well-being, my dear,” interjected her husband. “We need to be certain that she is safe, and that must be done through Zuberi.”
Sarah’s own happiness hinged on the baby’s welfare. Her initial response to this man, this “Zuberi,” was negative. She imagined that if he hadn’t gotten involved, Charles may have been convinced to adopt the baby. Charles would have warmed to the idea eventually, Sarah thought. Sarah’s aversion to all types of superstitions was on high alert. Nevertheless, despite her irritation with the old woman who snatched the baby without even a thank-you and the “spiritual leader” who was supposedly looking out for the child’s best interests (then how did someone kidnap her?), she conceded that she was being selfish, and it was best for the baby to grow up among her own people. She had to put the child’s well-being before her maternal instincts. As for Charles, after he recovered from his initial—and despicable—shock at being given a strange baby, his concern for the child had endeared him to her.
“All right, let’s go see him,” she exhaled, linking her hand in her husband’s. “For the baby’s sake.”
The healer’s legs were trembling. He was so excited. He knew who Charles was: the famous mine owner and one of the richest men in the region. Zuberi had never entertained a white visitor and sensed his destiny as preeminent shaman to be so close he could lick it.
He took Charles’s hand and observed the woman. He tilted his head forward to study her better. Her curly blond hair framed her tan face, and a glow of health and confidence flowed from her. A rivulet in which swims much life, thought Zuberi. I must be careful with this one. He had heard that European women reign over the men.
Charles he knew how to handle.
“While my daughter prepares some tea, it would be an honor to show you where I do my work,” the witch doctor said. “Serve it in our best clay cups,” he muttered to his teenage girl.
“Yes, Baba,” she replied before scurrying away.
Zuberi’s daughter opened the door of her father’s private area for the guests to enter. Sarah stiffened as she crossed the threshold of Zuberi’s workroom. A row of cock feet hung from a string on the wall, and a great quantity of dried bird, rodent, and other animal heads were stacked on a table. A series of ceramic, glass, and plastic jars containing a variety of teeth, dried unidentifiable animals, and roots and leaves lined a long, rough-hewn shelf.
“I’ll wait here,” said Sarah, paralyzed on the doorstep, battling a wave of nausea. A putrid, dusty odor hung in the air, and in the faint light of the workroom, Zuberi’s wrinkled face and mangy thinning hair made him appear demonic.
“The lady prefers to stay outside?” Zuberi asked, looking to Charles for an explanation of his wife’s reticence.
“Oh, no,” Charles responded in a hurry. “She’s simply not feeling well.”
Sarah attempted a weak smile to confirm her husband’s excuse.
“The tea is ready, father.” Zuberi’s daughter set the tray on a table in the sitting room, then stood demurely to one side, her hands clasped in front of her.
To Sarah’s great relief, the men moved into the adjacent sitting room, not the workroom with the desiccated animals.
Zuberi invited Charles and Sarah to sit down for tea.
“Thank you, but we really don’t want to disturb you.” Charles shook his head as he tried to refuse courteously. “We’ve only come to thank you for your help and to be sure the child will be taken care of.”
“Please, sit down. I insist.” Zuberi brushed off several chairs while his daughter poured the infusion into chipped cups and stood until the guests sat.
Jackob, who stayed close to Charles, eyed him. Charles was aware that it would be a grave offense to refuse the invitation. He felt his wife’s hand squeeze his, and he sat at the table and sipped the infusion. Sarah and Jackob followed and, as he was the host, Zuberi took his seat last.
“You, sir, are a king accompanied by noble spirits. They are invisible to your eyes, but I see that they protect you. I sense y
ou would like to ask me something,” he added, taking Charles’s hand and holding it between his own hardened palms. Zuberi lowered his eyelids and inhaled. “In your future, I see wealth that is greater than that which you already possess. I see gold nuggets mingled with the soil on which you tread. You are a successful man, and I feel your success,” he declared, continuing to hold onto Charles.
Charles was captivated. He recognized that the shaman was reaching into his soul. He thought of the business endeavor—the one his wife was unaware of—that he was in the midst of winding up. Zuberi was predicting his victorious destiny.
Several weeks prior, two government officials responsible for organizing an auction for a tract of land came to Charles’s office to propose “a facilitated purchase.” They would sell him the mining license before publically announcing the auction. They told him that many other businessmen had expressed considerable interest. In exchange, they’d want a small personal compensation.
“The minister of mining said you are the only one with sufficient means who is in the position to consider this proposal,” one of them had said.
Charles leaned forward as the officials pressed on with the sales pitch. The land parcel was adjacent to his most productive mine, and, for a while, ironically, he had been reflecting on how he might purchase it. The necessary soil analyses had not yet been performed, and he wondered if there was enough ore on that tract to bear building another mine. Still, his mine was lucrative, so why wouldn’t this other one be? he had asked himself. When he had originally mentioned the idea to his wife—before the officials approached him—she expressed her disapproval. “We’re rich enough. More gold and more work. I’d rather we spend time together. Travel. Involve ourselves in conservation work. In philanthropy. Is another gold mine really what we want? Yours is already the most productive in Tanzania,” she’d said.
“I need time to consider your proposal,” Charles had told the officials.
He stayed awake all night, planning what he might do if he had more money, how just a smidgen extra would forever banish the fear that at any moment he might lose everything—Sarah, White House, his very freedom. He had to decide in a hurry. It was the last mining license that would ever be available in the district, at least for the coming decade. And if he refused the offer, the functionaries would propose the deal to one of his rivals. He knew his interlopers well. They were always looking to outdo him. And they, not he, would get the goodies.
It had been as easy to corrupt officers of the government as to buy off a mother able to feed her children only every other day. The men might purchase a new car or a house made of bricks. A good deed for everyone involved, he had told himself. As for Sarah, once the new mine began to bear fruit, he’d let her know it was theirs—maybe by way of buying her a precious diamond-studded bracelet. His wife might pout for a while, but he knew how to make peace. The bracelet and a nice trip, one deserving of the bride of a king. He contemplated a destination and was surprised he hadn’t thought of it before. More than once Sarah had expressed the desire—a silly one in his opinion—to swim with dolphins in the open sea. Well, he would satisfy her, even if he had to go to the trouble of having two or three of them trained to lift her into the air and do flips above her while she floated on her back. Yes, during a sleepless night, Charles decided he would follow his infallible instinct, and with self-constructed wings, he would fly toward the sun. High and ever higher still.
The following morning, he had concluded the deal and was awaiting the ownership and extraction license deeds from the ministry.
“We are here to make certain that the child is safe with her parents,” said Sarah to Zuberi.
“The zeru zeru lives with the grandmother. Though how can harm come to it if it is under my protection?” he said with a big smile that revealed his blackish gums and several gaps where he was missing teeth.
Sarah was annoyed by the way the man referred to the baby as if she were an object, an “it.”
“So the woman who took the child is not her mother?” inquired Sarah, speaking to Charles. Something in that creepy man’s voice made her shiver. She hoped her husband would intervene, but, instead, he shrugged his shoulders and turned up his palms, almost as though he was under the healer’s power and the two men were combining their energy to subdue her.
“The grandmother asked to care for the granddaughter,” said Jackob. “The baby is in good hands.”
“If the parents permitted the grandmother to take her, it means they don’t want her,” insisted Sarah, although she perceived the baby was adored by its guardian and that the elder must be dedicating her remaining days to the baby’s care.
Charles drummed his fingers on his thigh. “My dear, is it so strange that in Africa a child lives with its grandparent? It happens all the time in Europe.”
“Listen to your husband,” said the shaman. “A man who is chosen—as is your husband—is immune from errors.”
“Chosen?” A flash of interest appeared on Charles’s face.
Sarah noticed it immediately. So now this psychopath thinks my marriage was arranged and Charles was selected for me? she wondered.
“Yes…chosen for success,” confirmed Zuberi.
Sarah wanted to scream. She despised the unctuous man like a poisonous snake—he’s worse even than Jackob—and she detested her husband in that moment as well. How can he listen to such stupidity? What insecurities lurk inside Charles that he attracts sycophants? she wondered. She stood up brusquely, rocking the wobbly plastic table as well as her half-full cup of tea.
“We’re going. Come along, Charles,” she said, barely controlling her irritation.
On the way back to White House, Sarah was silent, looking out the car window at the chaotic lushness of the landscape. The bumpy road rocked the vehicle, increasing the nausea that lingered from that Zuberi’s reeking lair. As Charles drove, he turned, from time to time, to look at his wife as though he was trying to get a bead on her.
“I hope the words of that imposter have not emboldened you to go forward with your crazy idea of buying a second mine,” she said in a flat voice.
“Of course not, dear.” Charles chuckled. “I don’t need fortune-tellers to know I’m doing the right thing.” Although Sarah heard the veiled confession that he had already purchased the mine, she slipped into denial.
She looked directly at her husband. “We’ve given back what we really need, the child, and we have way too much of the rest. Please stay away from that risky prospect. It will turn sour. I know it, darling.”
“Ahhh, don’t say that! You’ll bring bad luck!” Charles’s expression darkened. He braked the car on the roadside and quickly opened the door.
“What are you doing?” She saw her husband thrust his hand in his pocket.
“I’m looking for wood to knock on,” he said with forced lightness. “To counter your unlucky words,” he teased, grabbing a dry branch that was lying by the side of the road.
“You always want to joke.” Sarah sighed and turned her head.
Charles got back in the car and kissed his wife on the lips. “Stop pouting,” he whispered, hugging her.
Sarah mumbled and wrinkled up her face. “You know these things bother me,” she said, freeing herself from her husband’s arms.
“What things?”
“Silly superstitions.”
Charles pretended to give no importance to what Sarah said. He started the car and drove off quickly. “Let’s take the boat and have lunch on the lake,” he suggested. “Would you like that?”
A hen darted across the road.
“Look out!” shouted Sarah.
Charles ignored his wife, keeping the car on its path, and hit the animal. A split-second later, around a curve of the road, a child on a bicycle appeared, coming in the opposite direction.
Charles slammed on the brakes. The car stopped, wrapped in a cloud of yellowish dust.
“Are you all right?” Charles turned to his wife.
“Oh, Charles,” Sarah gasped, “if you’d listened to me, you would have hit that child.” She hugged him, sobbing.
Her husband pulled her close and smoothed her hair. “Never avoid an animal on the road if it means going into the other lane,” he instructed, like an elementary school teacher. “Especially not in Africa!” Charles shook his head.
She continued to sob, clinging to her husband.
He lifted Sarah’s face and dried her cheeks with the cuff of his shirt. “Dearest, why all these tears? It was only a hen.”
Sarah couldn’t stop thinking about the baby that the old woman had ripped from her arms. Sarah was the one—not the baby—who was starving for love, for motherhood. It was time to look reality in the face: she felt alone and abandoned. She felt empty inside, as though an enormous desert with heat, phantasms, and skeletons suffused her inner-landscape. Could she have insisted that she and Charles keep the baby? Let the grandmother visit whenever? No, her husband had a hard part that couldn’t be mined; he wouldn’t have given in. And then there were the superstitions. How could he abide by them? He pretended not to, but—
It dawned on Sarah at that moment that she was adhering to a life that wasn’t hers, ruled by laws she didn’t know. She was in Africa. And although she had been living under its sun and stars for six years, she was a foreigner. She was the other. That horrid man, the witch doctor, had been right. She needed to trust her husband who was thoroughly a part of the uncanny continent that she was beginning to cherish. The episode with the hen was proof. If she had been driving, she would have saved the chicken and killed the boy. Another wave of tears threatened to surge, but she managed to hold them back. She looked at her husband. “I’m sorry, dear, I was afraid. I’m better now. Let’s stop at the house to freshen up and then go out on the boat.”
Then She Was Born Page 7