Then She Was Born

by Cristiano Gentili

  Although Charles was enthusiastic about the sleeping remedy, he avoided taking it again. The only tranquillizer that interested him was money. If the arm of an albino was the solution to finding his gold, he would procure an arm without killing anyone. There’s always a solution, even for the most difficult problem, he said to himself. Combing his mind for it, though, produced continued sleeplessness. A person can live without an arm. How much money is one arm worth? His next thought caused him to sit up in bed.

  So I need the arm of an albino? Fine. No one has to be mutilated on my behalf. Simple, he said to himself, and he smiled for having used Zuberi’s expression. Maybe he was becoming a great shaman himself. If the limb comes from a cadaver…it no longer is needed, he thought and laughed. The perfect solution. Charles’s conscience would be clean, and he’d regain his financial stability.

  “No tricks. The zeru zeru must be a cadaver…from the start,” he said when he explained his idea to Jackob. “The price is irrelevant so long as my conditions are met.”

  29.

  Adimu asked her bibi if Mr. Fielding was her real father. Had she been abandoned by the mzungu? If she were the daughter of Sefu and the woman called Juma, why were they one color and she another? And why hadn’t they raised her?

  Nkamba answered: “These things are difficult to understand.” The old woman felt her husband by her side, trying to help her explain it to their granddaughter.

  It was sunset and Adimu, passing near the baobab at the center of the village, saw a crowd of people waiting in the clearing. During the previous days, she had overheard pieces of conversations between adults and had seen posters announcing the arrival of an important person. Curious, she joined the gathering.

  Musamaali Nangoli had been born under a mango tree in Uganda on a rainy day during the time of the coffee harvest. When he had lived for eleven rainy seasons, after he had called for the knife[15], he began asking many questions, too many for the white men who had taken over the land of his ancestors. They told him his God was wrong, as were his clothes and his primitive ways. They sent him to a missionary school, forced him to become Christian and to abandon his name: Musamaali Busima Gidagui Nawodya Nangoli. He was baptized as Peter. He grew up convinced he was a British citizen, but soon, when the first hairs under his arms and on his face appeared, he understood that he was born, and would die, African. He began traveling far and wide, searching for the lost history of Africa, and he had much to say to the people of his land. Africans in many countries knew him. The islanders considered his visit to Ukerewe a great honor.

  Adimu held her hand above her eyes like a visor; she had never seen so many people. They were everywhere—on the roofs of houses, on top of the few cars, on the yellow dirt, even in the trees. Besides the inhabitants of Murutanga, everyone on the entire island had come to hear the African brother.

  After a long wait, Nangoli arrived among a jubilation of shouts and applause. He arrived, standing in the back of a pickup, surrounded by his collaborators who were chanting his name. The truck was followed by droves of young people who were dancing and cheering. Nangoli walked toward the stage, men clearing a way through the horde for him. Villagers pushed through the crush of bodies to touch him or shake his hand. He walked with his head high and a bearing that suggested he was carrying heavy bags of grain in his big hands. In response to the exultant cries, he raised his hands over his head and clasped them together, making eye contact with as many people as he could.

  “Africa for Africans!” he shouted from the stage while the euphoric crowd cheered and applauded. If only he would use the microphone to announce that I’m normal and they don’t need to fear me! thought Adimu.

  “Our African culture is in danger of extinction for the fault of the mzungu,” he said to a new explosion of cheers.

  Adimu lurched. Did he really say that? She was white, too, and people sometimes called her mzungu. Her instinct told her to run, that danger lurked, but she was caught in the crowd, and it pressed against her from every angle.

  “Culture is the language spoken by people in a place. It is the way individuals behave, relate to one another, dress, pray to God, take care of each other. No culture is superior to another. Some cultures may appear strange or unusual to the people who do not belong to them, but if they are observed in their context, they are not strange at all. This was the error made by the white visitors when they arrived in Africa. They judged what they saw with their criteria, which are different from ours. They looked at us from a European point of view, and the habits and customs they did not understand were labeled primitive and were destroyed. Current problems in Africa can be traced to the forced introduction of white culture.”

  The crowd jostled, cheered, murmured, and moved as one giant pulsating body. Even their eyes seemed fused into one single gaze. The man on the podium fascinated everyone.

  Adimu wanted to be transparent, to be a true zeru zeru. She crouched as low as she could, close to the dusty ground, and continued to listen to the words of the African stranger ride the wind.

  “White culture and African civilization are opposites. Unfortunately, more often it is hell that the white man has brought to our land. You, white man, can take a man out of Africa, but you cannot take Africa out of the man!”

  Adimu’s embarrassment grew. Had people like her, men with her same color, caused all the bad things in the world? She looked at her bare arms and legs. She pulled on the hem of her dress, trying to cover as much of her skin as possible, tucking it under her feet so the wind wouldn’t lift it up. She bent her head forward, hiding it between her knees.

  “Before whites came, we did not pay taxes, there was no crime, no inflation, no unemployment. Men did not hit their wives; they did not divorce. Then whites came and said they would improve us, and our past flew away. Our ancient African societies were organized and sophisticated. Transgressors were rehabilitated and there was forgiveness. Sharing was important and practiced at every level of society. No one ate if there was not enough food for all. The needs of the individual were the needs of the entire community. An offense to the single was considered an offense against the collective. Marriages between members of various tribes were encouraged as a way to create strong ties. Every parent acted as mother and father for all the children of the village. The well-being of the community was the priority until that wretched day when whites arrived.” [16]

  Adimu was overcome by guilt. Her people had done bad things to Africans, and now she had to pay for their bad deeds.

  She thought of a film she’d secretly seen some months before at the traveling cinema. She hadn’t had money for a ticket, so she hid in the bushes. It told the story of an African man who lived in a country with many whites. There were lots of yellow cars and tall buildings made of glass and iron. The audience had whistled when the young black man was mistreated and taunted by the wazungu. Finally, she thought, as she watched the movie, a black person was insulted in the same way she had been by her neighbors! She felt a certain satisfaction in seeing her fellow villagers disapprove of the way the black man was treated by the white man. However, it was a movie, and her grandmother had told her that movies were invented stories. The important man before her, who was talking to the crowd, was real.

  She crept backward until she found cover in some bushes. From there she ran home as fast as she could, glancing fearfully over her shoulder.

  Her grandmother was sitting outside the door in a rare moment of repose. As soon as Adimu caught her breath, she told her bibi what had happened. Nkamba listened with a sad face. What could she do with this child who was always looking for answers. She felt ignorant for not being able to comfort Adimu, for her inability to explain the reason for diversity. “Don’t worry. The whites he was speaking about are from outside. You were born here, even if you have their same color.”

  30.

  Zuberi called for each of them to come into his workshop, one at a time. He had to act with great care so as not to raise suspic
ions. Soon he would be crowned the savior of his community. His time had come; the legend of Zuberi was beginning.

  “Simple. Nothing is simpler. If you have malaria, you drink a potion prepared from these herbs and those roots. If you have a curse—this particular type of curse—you need an embulamaro. That is the only solution. With a white shadow, your problem is resolved; without one, there is little I can do.”

  He omitted divulging, however, that his mercenaries would hunt down a dead zeru zeru—a minor detail he would mention later, if necessary. For now, he needed to build trust among his clients and concentrate on how to distribute the embulamaro.

  “For you, fishermen—the hair, legs, and one arm to weave into your nets to attract big fish; some fish will even have gold in their bellies. And I will make amulets from limbs to be worn around the neck or waist.”

  Speaking with Yunis’s husband, he explained, “Your wife needs a potion made from the genitals and breasts of the nobody[17].”

  An isope was very expensive, as the villagers knew. “How much will it cost?” asked the fishermen. Zuberi had been waiting for that question. He had prepared his answer the night before. Now that the white man was involved, he could propose a number and arrangement that would suit everyone, especially Zuberi.

  “I ask only for a symbolic amount, not market value. In addition to your personal contributions—as recognition of the value of my work—you will donate a small part of your catch. And, as our people are great storytellers, and the Spirits of the Lake value our stories, tell those in your clan of how my magic healed your sorrows and bettered our community.” Finally, Zuberi would get the recognition he craved.

  “Why should we pay for something we already have in our village? We could use the limbs of our zeru zeru, and it would cost us nothing,” said one of the older men, turning his head toward Nkamba’s house.

  “Do you not remember? The Spirits of the Lake chose life for our mzungu. She has another purpose. We must respect the Spirits’ wishes.”

  Zuberi had to honor the agreement he’d made years before with the head of the village: Only when necessary and in common accord could he and Kondo decide a different fate for Adimu. And there was the promise he’d made to Mr. Fielding too—a cadaver, he had said. How could he disappoint the white man who was paying for the lion’s share of the hunt?

  Ramadani had not wanted to visit that loathsome shaman, but he eventually relented to appease his father. Now he and Kondo sat in Zuberi’s dusty laboratory.

  “The remedy—the only one that works—is contact between the two sexes,” Zuberi declared, looking at Kondo.

  “Why an embulamaro?” the young man asked.

  Ignoring the question, Zuberi continued; his eyes still on Kondo. “Ramadani, when I am sure of the hunters’ trustworthiness, you can join the group. As the future village chief, you mustn’t take unnecessary risks.”

  Zuberi had to conceal from Kondo that his zeru zeru headhunters were after a cadaver. For the young man’s problem, he would devise another solution—perhaps that will be how we’ll use our zeru zeru, Zuberi considered. Kondo had demanded that Ramadani participate in the embulamaro hunt as a way of making certain the nobody was female. And, Zuberi imagined, Kondo wanted his son to be whispered about as being vigorous, bold, and courageous. At any rate, Zuberi managed to stave off the cadaver problem for the time being.

  The silhouette of the body that was drawn on the scroll was covered with red pencil marks. Only Zuberi could make sense of the intricate lines and Xs that connected anatomical parts to the name of the client who needed it. Occasionally he modified his notes, depending on if an illness lessened or worsened. Erasing and rewriting, and talking to himself. Jane watched him, bored, and though she tried to get his attention by taking the pencil from his hand, Zuberi was too focused to shoo her away. The zeru zeru represented his passport to prominence, in addition to being the solution to the village’s problems. This was one of the rare occasions when a white man, like Charles, was useful in Africa. Ten thousand U.S. dollars. And for a corpse. “The isope,” he said to Jane, “will return part of what his ancestors took from us.”

  Once all the zeru zeru’s body parts were assigned to various villagers, Zuberi traveled to the border of the mainland, near Congo, where his brother managed illegal trafficking of goods and people destined for the country’s markets.

  Asani received Zuberi with the splendor worthy of a clan leader. It had been some years since they had last seen each other, and it was pleasant sharing their plans for the future. Asani was younger than Zuberi, and his fourth child had recently been born. Fortunately he had married a woman from an influential clan, and his business was growing more profitable by the day. There was always someone with cash ready to pay a good price for rare and illegal goods, not only for a zeru zeru, the price of which had risen dramatically in recent years. “Demand has increased, and the government calls for strict penalties. There just aren’t that many audacious enough to risk going to prison,” said Zuberi’s brother.

  It took more time than Zuberi expected to form the group of headhunters. Each man had to meet precise requirements: enough hunger and anger to block out reason; poverty and ignorance; previous experience; and an ability with weapons. The head of the group was an ideal candidate. He was twenty-five years old, raised with no natural parents, and recruited by force at the age of seven.

  While he had been chasing a ball of rags along the beach, a group of mercenaries kidnapped him. The soldiers fed him and kept him alive, which was enough to make him grateful. He was told his name was Thomas. Thomas, and nothing else. FLPC[18] was burned into the skin on his back, branding him for the militia group to which he now belonged. If he tried to look back, those four letters were there to remind him of who owned his body. He’d been assigned to a group of young men from villages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His commander was twenty years old. Thomas respected him, obeyed all his orders, and his dedication was rewarded with food and beatings. For Thomas’s ninth birthday, he received an entire pack of cigarettes and a Kalashnikov. “You’re a man now. It’s time for you to learn the value of life in a war,” the leader told him after Thomas fired the automatic rifle at his first banana tree.

  White men fascinated Thomas, even if he rarely saw them, perhaps because he rarely saw them. He knew white mercenaries had taught his commander to use weapons; they were the ones who made the decisions. He observed the white Gods from a distance and lowered his eyes when he felt they were watching him. That’s what he’d been ordered to do by his commander. Look down. He was an inferior, a fact that he accepted. He was content to have food, cigarettes, and to feel part of a group, a surrogate for the family. That was enough. Thomas looked at his black skin and tried to calculate how much more superior to him were the white leaders. White was the color of power, of wealth. No one rose above the white men. He tried to stay out of the sun to become more like them. Once, while his commander and his woman were having sex, Thomas found a tube of cream on a windowsill that his commander’s girlfriend used to lighten her skin. He stole it. He put the cream on his skin while he was on guard, hidden among the brush. He rubbed it sparingly on his arms, face, and neck and saw his skin fade until he imagined himself white.

  He thought of his commander’s words: “Our weapons come from Europe and America. They are perfect. Here in Africa we only know how to make machetes.”

  One evening, while he was on lookout, camouflaged by a tree branch, the tube slipped from his hand and landed on the head of a comrade who was sitting below him. So loud was his comrade’s taunt that it attracted the attention of the commander. Since it was nighttime, Thomas’s punishment was postponed until the soldiers were awake to witness it. At sunrise the group went into the forest.

  “Wazungu are not examples to imitate. They are thieves who have stolen everything, even our sleep. From them we learn how to use weapons so that one day we’ll destroy them by their own means,” bellowed his superior.

>   Thomas didn’t understand why his commander obeyed the whites if he hated them. An impertinent observation escaped from his lips. “Your girlfriend uses lightening cream.”

  “She’s a woman, little more than an object!” shouted the leader, waving a stick. “You are a man, one of my soldiers!”

  The commander’s stick slammed against Thomas’s legs so forcefully that he fell to the ground. The man hit him again. And again. “Why?” asked Thomas. The more Thomas asked why, the less he understood what was wrong with wanting to look like his betters and the more lashes he received for rejecting his race, his color. He held back tears when the pain kept him from breathing, even when he lost control of his body and felt his pants become warm and wet. Thomas was stronger than he had thought, and through clenched teeth, he repeated that he was a man. A soldier.

  Only once had Thomas cried, many years later while he was running away, running from a white mercenary.

  That boss had picked up a silvery fish and threw it at Thomas.

  “Smell it,” the man growled.

  Thomas obeyed.

  “Where does it stink?”

  Thomas looked at another soldier he was with, unsure of how to answer. His eyes deviated to the blade of the white man’s knife that was kissing the thick neck of his commander.

  Moments stretched into minutes.

  “I said, tell me where it stinks!” repeated the man, his pale blue eyes narrowing till they seemed like two crevices at the top of Kilimanjaro.