Then She Was Born

by Cristiano Gentili

  Adimu stayed awake most of the night, replaying anticipated scenes of meeting her best friend for the first time. In each scenario, Adimu felt an immediate sisterly bond. Martha and Roman told her the girl’s name was Shida. Shida, Shida, Shida. All night she chanted the name like a calming mantra, one with the promise of enchantment.

  At dawn they continued driving to Shida’s. During the trip, Martha explained things to Adimu. “Shida lives with her grandparents, and you know they’ll want to be certain she’s going to a good place. So if they ask you, tell them you’ve lived in the protected community for a year and that you like it.”

  Nkamba had always told Adimu to tell the truth. But her curiosity about another girl who would be her friend—her first true friend—prevailed, and she agreed to lie for the peace of mind of the girl’s grandparents.

  When Adimu met Shida she was enthralled. They approached each other slowly, their hands stretched outward to confirm that the other truly existed. After a fleeting moment of disbelief, they smiled at the other timidly, the intense emotion making them awkward.

  “Shida, introduce yourself to your new friend,” encouraged the grandfather. Shida took Adimu’s hand and whispered in the softest voice how happy she was to meet her, as though with Adimu she was certain the two would share a secret language.

  Shida was younger than Adimu, about ten years old. Her maternal grandparents had raised her in isolation to protect her. She had never gone to school. In the nearby village, few people were aware that a zeru zeru lived in the vicinity—their house was secluded, and they lived off their land and animals. The little girl spent most of her free time listening to a wind-up radio.

  Adimu noticed with a sense of longing that her new friend’s grandmother behaved differently from Nkamba, who had never been demonstrative. Shida’s bibi kissed and hugged her often, and her grandfather lived with her, unlike Kheri who had been with the mango tree when Adimu’s bibi was alive. With a pang of envy, Adimu thought about how she had never had the opportunity to know her grandfather, a good and courageous man who was the protagonist of so many of her grandmother’s stories.

  The elderly couple observed the girls. Once the children’s initial shyness was overcome, Adimu and Shida became inseparable. Their granddaughter’s radiant happiness convinced them to let her go with their guests.

  “Please stay with us for supper,” they said to the two adults.

  “Thank you. But we can’t. We have a long way to travel,” replied Martha.

  “Here are the documents to sign for the authorization, and here’s a financial contribution so you can come visit your granddaughter,” said the white man, handing a one-hundred-dollar bill to the grandfather, along with a stack of printed forms.

  The old man looked at the money. He turned it over in his hands several times and showed it to his wife. “Thank you, thank you very much,” he said again and again. “I’ve never seen dollars before.”

  He scrawled a signature on the papers. He was unable to read but was reassured because, as he said, “Documents guarantee and ink stains, not like words that vanish into thin air.”

  “You white folks are the hope for this land,” he said, his rheumy eyes scanning the forms. “You are the future. Unfortunately, we live in the past. You would never behave like us Africans,” he added, looking up. “Why would someone like you come from so far to do us harm? A person only travels that far to do good. Please, take my granddaughter. She deserves a better future than we old farmers can give her.”

  The grandmother nodded at her husband and dried her cheeks. Letting go of her granddaughter was harder than she had expected.

  The car left with the two girls in the back seat. The grandparents stood on the threshold of their hut and watched them drive away. From the car window, they looked like two small plaster statues, hugging each other.

  Adimu could hardly contain herself she was so happy, and her hands sought unremitting contact with Shida. That she didn’t know where they were headed had become a small detail. With Shida beside her, she was no longer fearful. Shida touched Adimu’s hair and ran her fingers along its unusual length. The vehicle raced on as they headed toward the sunset.

  43.

  Adimu’s stepsisters noticed her absence the following day when the clean laundry wasn’t in its usual place. The complaints reached Juma’s ears who, together with Sefu’s daughters, went “to the place where Adimu sleeps,” as they called it, at sunset. They found the door of the hut closed with a lock. They waited for a while and then continued on to the lake to wash the dishes.

  They returned to Nkamba’s hut again the next day. The door was still closed, and there was no trace of Adimu, not even a shadow. At sunset of the following day, the youngest stepsister told her father that the zeru zeru had vanished. Sefu went to the hut and broke the lock. Inside, everything was tidy, except for a pile of dirty laundry in one corner—garments that belonged to the women of his household.

  He paused to look at the books that were wrapped in bags on the plastic table. “This is strange,” he said aloud. While the carefully stored volumes implied a willful departure, the dirty laundry suggested a kidnapping. Adimu would never have disobeyed him, of that he was sure. “The lock could have been put on the door by anyone,” mumbled Sefu, trying to make sense of the confusing situation. His anger mixed with a strange sensation of privation, like an executioner who, at the last moment, sees the police take away the victim he had been stalking for years. He needed to inform Kondo of the recent developments.

  As soon as he heard the news, the village chief called a meeting of his villagers under the great baobab. “Everyone must participate in finding the isope,” he announced.

  The islanders undertook the search, even the villagers who were relieved by the sudden disappearance of the zeru zeru. Most of the inhabitants of Murutanga, though, were far from happy. Adimu was their last hope—their guarantee for a future of wealth in case Zuberi’s headhunters failed. The villagers had been circling their zeru zeru from the moment the Spirits of the Lake gave her to them, waiting for their moment to pounce.

  The children participated in the search as though it were a game. They ran through the village shouting the girl’s name as loudly as they could. They dashed to their own secret hiding places and ferreted around the school. The fishermen dropped their nets in the water and dredged the lake bottom. The farmers upturned the earth to be certain no body was buried below. The women checked the riverbanks and the lakeshore. The adolescents went into the forest and investigated every cleft and chasm they knew, even the treetops.

  Adimu had vanished. Just like a zeru zeru!

  That afternoon, Juma was at the lake, washing clothes. She rubbed the garments with a piece of white soap and beat them over a smooth stone. She noticed how the other women who were there doing laundry turned their eyes away from her and spoke in low voices. She ignored them and continued washing. That daughter of mine, that damned zeru zeru who ruined my life should be doing this chore, she thought to herself. Agitated whispers reached her ears in fragments. She had the impression the women were talking about her and her misfortune, injurious words that traveled from one mouth to another, spreading like a contagious virus. The women, the fishermen on the shore, the children who ran naked in the sun, even the branches of the trees and the soft lapping of the waves of the lake seemed to speak ill of her behind her back. As a younger woman, she had had a prosperous business as a tailor, but since birthing a zeru zeru, she became a pariah, husbandless, and hid away in extreme poverty. Anger swelled inside her, and her hands continued to move faster and faster, beating the clothes on the rocks with fury. She wrung and kneaded them until the fibers of the threadbare fabrics nearly tore. Sweat ran down her back and between her breasts. It must have been Sefu who made the embulamaro disappear, she thought, selling it for money, trading the rotten fruit of our love as he did the day of its birth when he destroyed my pride, my life, and my future. The curse will follow me always. And the mor
e she thought about the curse of the zeru zeru, the more she took out her anger on the clothes until, eventually, her palms were scraped and raw. There was silence around her now. The other women observed her rage until a spatter of soap shot into her eye. Irritation became acute pain when she cupped her hand in the lake and rinsed her face. The soap had tinged the water a bright white that glistened in the glare of the sun, sudsy tentacles reaching across its surface. She wiped her eye dry with the hem of her dress. Then, in a burst of rage, she threw the piece of milk-white soap against the stone that had been her washboard. She saw it bounce off the tip of the rock, sink in the lake, and drift down onto the sandy bottom like a large shell. She grabbed her laundry, hung the clothes as best she could on some bushes, and marched off. One of the women lifted her sarong to wade into the water and recover the piece of soap.

  “If she doesn’t need it, I’ll take it,” the woman said lightly, raising a roar of laughter from the others.

  From a rock, Yunis surveilled the scene. Her laundry was already rinsed, and rivulets of white foam ran from the stones. She left the clothes she had washed and walked along the path in the direction Juma had taken. Once out of the other women’s sight, she started to run to her old friend who she saw through the bushes. She called out Juma’s name, but the woman didn’t turn around to look at her.

  With hurried steps, Yunis got close enough to catch her shoulder. “Please, listen to me.”

  Juma spun around, her eyes full of disdain. With a jerk, she freed herself and continued on her way, her head down.

  Yunis did not give up. “I know how I hurt you by taking away Adimu. Believe me, I was trying to free you, Sefu, and our clan from the curse.” Yunis didn’t notice the rough terrain as she pled her case. She tripped on roots and stones along the path, intent on having Juma understand. “On that day in the forest, I held her away from my body. But it wasn’t long before I realized she was closer to me than I thought.” Yunis took a breath. “Then she began to cry. I uncovered her face and saw that she was the same as any other baby. I set her down and touched her, and her flesh was soft like that of other babies I had caressed and cradled. I offered her my breast, and she latched on like any other creature would. I felt like a mother. In that moment—the only time in my life—I felt as if my greatest desire had come true,” she said. “The desire to be a mother.”

  Juma slowed her pace. Shock mixed with anger as she listened to the belated confession. Though she had an impulse to hug the woman, her rancor and suffering caused her to ignore it. She continued to walk, eyes on her feet, Yunis beside her.

  “I was telling the truth when I said I had been kidnapped,” continued Yunis, “but it wasn’t the zeru zeru who made me change direction and led me to the white couple. It was the darling baby attached to my breast. She pulled from me the life I could not give her. I could not abandon her, because, in the oddest way, I had become her mother. She was the baby I had always wanted…How could I leave her to the Spirits of the Lake to die? What I’ve just told you is the truth.”

  Juma could barely hold back her tears. The path had become narrower, and only a few pale bushes dotted the ochre yellow of the ground. Yunis walking next to her, close to her. The silence was broken by the swishing of their dresses and the muffled sound of their sandals on the stony path.

  “I can make this confession only to you,” said Yunis, stopping abruptly in front of her friend, blocking her way.

  Juma stopped and looked into the face before her, for the first time in many years.

  “You and I are the same,” whispered Yunis. “We each had one daughter, one child, though neither of us had the courage to keep her. That day, in the forest, I thought about leaving the island with Adimu. I lacked the courage. And so I took her where I knew she would be safe.” Softly she added, “Far from us.”

  The sun sank, painting the tops of the sparse trees red. Soon night would fall over the island. Juma stretched a hand across her forehead as if trying to make space for her friendship with the woman standing in front of her. In her heart, though, she did not find a trace of the old affection. Juma turned and, with determined steps, continued on her way home, leaving Yunis behind.

  44.

  Jackob knew his employer well, better than Mr. Fielding knew himself. Sooner or later his boss would decide he needed a live and healthy zeru zeru. For Mr. Fielding, all people were goods for sale with bar codes tattooed on their necks from the time of birth.

  Zuberi laughed heartily when Jackob told him Mr. Fielding’s latest directive. “A terminally ill embulamaro! Did he really say that?” He paused and cocked his head to one side. “It does have a certain logic, though the priority is now to find a live embulamaro in the shortest time possible. I will give the hunters new instructions this very evening,” the witch doctor promised. “I’ll suggest they scour the public hospital in Dar es Salaam where patients come from all over the country.”

  It was, however, only a suggestion, Zuberi told Thomas. “The important thing is to act quick,” he said. “By now, I have many, many clients to satisfy.”

  The hunters took Zuberi’s suggestion and went to Dar es Salaam. Access to the hospital was easy: they divided into two groups and said they were relatives of albino patients, careful to avoid using derogatory terms for ngazu, as the witch doctor had reminded them.

  Once inside, however, they sensed immediately how difficult it would be to kidnap someone from the ward. The hospital was well supervised by private guards and, during the night, additional support came from the police.

  They spent three days observing the hospital. “The white shadows are mixed in with the other patients,” a frustrated Thomas told Zuberi over the phone.

  “Really?” the witch doctor replied with surprise.

  “Yeah, and the ones that are about to die are in rooms where there are always doctors or visitors.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s not at all what we expected. We have better chances in villages near the forest where there are places to hide. The city’s nothing but concrete and noise.”

  Not long after, the five young men sat around the fire, their morale expended. The last rays of sun filtered through the forest, kindling the leaves and green branches with a soft glow. The air was thick. They had been on this mission for too long. Thomas was smoking, and Amani gathered wood for the fire. Akili and Aki were polishing their weapons, sprawled among the roots of an enormous acacia tree.

  Ramadani, the only unarmed hunter, stared at the flames that licked the twigs. He glanced intermittently at the two men’s machetes and listened to them talk about their dreams of a different life—a sheet-metal roof over their heads, plenty of food, a woman who was both wife and good mother, accommodating young lovers, and several sons.

  The trip to Dar es Salaam had awakened their awareness of the misery in which they were immersed. The big city had initially frightened and confused them. Now, though, it lured them like a beacon, guiding them away from their dark villages that offered them nothing. They wanted to return to the metropolis with their money from hunting a nobody when the mission was finished. A good job, an apartment in a new building, and enough cash to hold their heads high. They would be envied and respected.

  Ramadani did not participate in the conversation but, instead, listened to the sounds of the forest. To keep himself from thinking about his future on Ukerewe, he considered the variety of animals moving through the wild, intricate passageways that surrounded him.

  His meditation was interrupted by the voice of one of the hunters calling out to Thomas. “Boss, do you want me to sharpen your machete?” asked Akili, testing the blade of his weapon on the trunk of a tree.

  “No, I can make my way through the forest just fine as it is,” answered Thomas. “And, besides, when the time comes, I have a better weapon,” he said, tapping the butt of the pistol tucked in his belt. He took a final toke from his cigarette and tossed the stub into the fire.

  Amani added more wood to the flames
that were hot and blazing amid them, a pulsing red heart.

  “Best thing would be to find a zeru zeru near Mwanza,” said Thomas calmly, looking through the barrel of his freshly cleaned gun. “Less distance to cover for delivery, fewer risks.”

  “I know of a holdover place around there that another group uses,” said young Amani.

  “What do you mean?” Thomas asked.

  “A place to let the waters calm after a kidnapping. The group’s headed by a mzungu. They kidnap zeru zerus, keep them there until the families and police stop looking for them. Then they sell them.”

  Thomas looked at the boy before shoving two bullets in his pistol and, in a single leap, bore down on Amani.

  “Why didn’t you tell us before?” exclaimed Aki, moving close to his comrade.

  Thomas shot his gun into the earth and grabbed Amani by the neck, squeezing so tight the younger man’s face changed color. The gun pointed at Amani’s chest, Thomas said, “I hope this helps you remember other details that might interest me.”

  “We’re looking for a zeru zeru dying from tumors,” croaked Amani, “not a young, healthy one. There are only embulamaro kids at the holdover place. For politicians and the rich. I didn’t think you’d be interested. You said you didn’t want to take risks.”

  Thomas released Amani, and the boy collapsed on the ground, holding his head between his hands. The leader looked at him with disgust, spat at his legs, and took hold of a knife. With long strides, Thomas approached a lamb he had earlier tied to a tree that wasn’t far from the fire and took it by one of its back legs. The poor thing bleated desperately as it was dragged backward. It tripped and hit its muzzle on the ground.

  Ramadani watched the scene—useless suffering. Torture was not something he could stomach. He wanted to intervene. He would kill the lamb quickly, and they’d eat it. But he knew if he did, Thomas would consider it an affront, and Ramadani would be the next victim of the sadist.