The Rift

by H Schmidt

  There were two guards at the gate this morning. It had been that way since the lady at the brothel had been killed. The second man was a fierce-looking Sukuma, who had been hired a few days after the news about the madam. Willie’s donkey had turned so that Willie could see through the tall iron gate onto the road.

  “Look, Frau Kibo. It is Maluto. Herr Singh, the egg man is coming.”

  Herr Singh was walking from the small herb garden he had started near the west wall of the compound. He smiled at the little boy’s excitement. He started toward the gate where Maluto soon would be. As the man approached, the Sukuma guard spoke in Swahili to Herr Singh, asking him to verify that they should open the gate for the man. As Maluto approached, both guards looked up and down the road and the huge Sukuma reached for the key that hung from his belt.

  “Hello, Maluto.” Little Willie, still mounted, spoke to the smiling egg man. “Hello, young gentleman. How are you this fine morning?”

  ---

  Across from the gate, a stream ran along the other side of the road. Fifty meters from the gate, it moved under the road through a large culvert and into a wooded area between the von Mecklenburgs and the residence to the right. Gustav had all the trees removed that were close to the compound walls. Ibrahim had noted the woods from the hospital roof, and the culvert leading under the road from it. He had also noted that the von Mecklenburgs often rode their horses into the countryside, all except the little boy Willie.

  Before light, Ibrahim and three men had moved into the woods and waited. Armed with revolvers and their long daggers, they watched as the family and the Chagga boy rode past. Always, unless the weather threatened, they would be gone for two hours or more. This morning the little man selling eggs would come to the gate. Ibrahim had been in this place two times in the last two weeks. The first, to watch and test whether he could move through the culvert, through the high grass along the stream, and stand unseen behind the thick clump of bougainvillea across the road from the gate. The second time, he took three henchmen with him, his intentions to take the boy. That morning, the egg man did not come, the gate was not opened.

  This morning, he heard the small boy yell in Kchagga that the egg man was coming. One of the men with him was a Chagga, and whispered what the boy had said. The four men watched the egg man.

  ---

  Maluto did not pull his cart this morning but proudly led the small, aged donkey he had purchased in the market the day before. For two hours, he had bargained with the wizened old Arab for the donkey and the harness. Now, at last, he had his own donkey. His children had beamed when they saw him walk his animal into the village, pulling the cart. Now, Maluto was a man of means.

  ---

  As the egg man stopped his cart in front of the gate, the Sukuma, Nyomo, looked about him. He stared into the bougainvillea, where Ibrahim and the three men stood frozen. Satisfied, he took the large key and inserted it into the lock.

  ---

  The distance from where Ibrahim stood and the gate was less than twenty meters. They could rush through the bougainvillea and most likely shoot the guards before they could fire. But the huge Sukuma may have had a chance to relock the gate before they could reach it. Ibrahim had a different plan.

  On each of the visits, the egg man had stood in the road, and the Indian had come out to the cart. The last two visits, the girl and the little boy had also come out to the cart and talked to the egg man in Chagga. Ibrahim had watched the small boy then. He watched as the dark eyes flashed as he talked quickly in Chagga. He would bring a good price, indeed. He knew the Germans and the English would come after him. But they would look for him in the wrong places. He knew where they would not look.

  As Nyomo opened the gate, he stood aside to let the cook out. As Kibo and the boy started to move through the gate, he stepped between them and the road.

  “It is alright, Nyomo. The Herr has approved.”

  Kibo was a very pretty girl, Nyomo thought. She would make a man a fine wife. But a Sukuma would not stand a chance with the arrogant Chagga. He knew her family would not approve. For a moment, Nyomo hesitated, and then stood aside as the boy dashed into the street. As the boy reached the cart, Sukuma saw movement in the bushes across the road. He saw the bushes suddenly open up and four men moved toward him. As he and the other Chagga guard moved their rifles to their shoulders, he felt the bullets sear his chest and stomach. Still, he raised his rifle and fired at the man directly in front of him. The man went down. He grabbed the bolt of his rifle when a round smashed into his forehead. He went down, unconscious and dying. The second guard was hit, and went down, writhing in pain, his rifle beside him.

  On the road, Herr Singh lay dying. Kibo grabbed for the boy, whose eyes opened wide, not understanding the events that whirled around him. Kibo began to run with the boy in her arms. The tall Somali grabbed her by the back of the neck and pulled her back. Willie began to scream as Kibo did, the long dagger thrust beneath her ribs into her heart. Still, she clutched the boy as the life in her ebbed. She had managed to turn on her killer, looking into his eyes.

  “Do not hurt little Willie, please.” She fell to her knees, then, still holding the terrified boy, collapsed on her side. Ibrahim reached down, and pried the clutching hands from the boy.

  Maluto held tightly to the reins of his donkey. In one minute, the wonderful world of yesterday was gone. He could hear galloping horses coming closer. He dared not look around. He dared not look at the men who he could feel very close to him now.

  He heard a man speak. It was the Chagga. “He has done nothing. Let him go.” Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. He did not want to look at the man who had put his hand on his shoulder. Something told him if he did, they would kill him. Ibrahim looked at the man. He had no compassion for him, but if he killed the man, who would tell the ferenji that it was Ibrahim who had taken the boy; who had killed their guards, their nurse, and their Indian?

  Maluto shook as the man spoke. “Look at me,” he shouted. Maluto raised his eyes and he looked into the cold, black eyes of Ibrahim. “Tell them, egg man, it was Ibrahim.” The Somali stared at the Chagga, who lowered his eyes.

  “Yes, Bwana.”

  Ibrahim grabbed the screaming boy, and lifted him into his saddle. Pressing the boy’s hand beneath his own on the pommel, he pulled himself in the saddle. He swung his horse to the east. Looking down at Maluto, who stood staring at the ground, Ibrahim pulled his revolver from its holster and shot the donkey through the head. It dropped in its harness.

  “What is my name, egg man?” The smiling Ibrahim looked down, enjoying the laughter of his men. The smoldering eyes of the Chagga looked directly at him now. Ibrahim stopped smiling, and then forced himself to bring the grin back to his face.

  “Your name is Ibrahim.” Maluto said.

  As he spurred his horse, the Somali shouted. “Remember it, egg man.”

  The egg man did not hear the pounding hooves of the galloping horses heading east on the road. His slight shoulders sagged and he felt the hope drain from his body. He looked at the beautiful Kibo, lying still on the gravel road. At the Indian, dead. At his wonderful donkey, its rasping breathing now only a whisper. Behind the gate, he heard the groans of the guard and the wails of the servants. He went to help.

  The five riders had maintained a steady canter, the sound of the hooves muffled by the soft earth and fresh grass of the rainy season. As they climbed the last small hill that had hidden their residence, they saw the large crowd in front of the residence. Gustav swung his horse in front of the others. He saw the frightened, anxious looks on the faces of his family.

  “Mother, keep the children here.” He turned and spurred his horse, which lunged forward, stretching its body in full gallop toward the crowd. As Gustav came closer, he could see the crowd had formed a half circle. He could not see what they were looking at but could see the soldiers moving about, looking down; on the road, he could see the ambulances coming from the hospital.

 
PART THREE

  Chapter One

  The five men and Willie had ridden southeast toward the Pagani River. They passed the many travelers on the busy road, some settlers who shouted at them, demanding to know what they were doing with the little white boy who was still screaming. Many went directly to the police station to report what they had seen. Within two hours, a detachment led by Lieutenant Schmidt was on the same road, following the trail which led to the coast. Telegraph messages were dispatched to every station along the route, asking for information about the kidnappers. Posses were formed from the villages in the Pare and the Usambara Mountains, who began to cover the trails leading east. Detachments of troops came ashore from the SS Moewe to assist in the search. Reports continued to come in along the road to the coast of five men with a white boy. By evening, the road and side trails running to the coast were blocked within sixty kilometers of Moshi.

  Sergeant Hoffman stood with Inspector Reinhold outside the police station. The sun’s first rays touched the rooftops across the street. The air was cool and caused their breath to form white vapor as they spoke.

  Both men were in a self-reminating mood. Both wished they had worked harder to find the Somali. They thought of leads they had decided to ignore, of the men that they had assigned to other work. Now, there would be no other purpose than to find the boy and Ibrahim.

  “They will take him up the coast. Ibrahim will not kill the boy. He will sell him. There are a thousand despicable men who would buy a European boy. We cannot let him get out of Africa. The British have been informed. We will catch him.”

  Inspector Reinhold spoke in a monotone. He had not slept the evening before. It was he who was responsible for protecting the settlers in Moshi, and he had failed. He had failed with the most important family in Moshi. He did not want to return to Germany. In Germany, he had been just another inspector in Frankfurt. With a modest salary, he lived in a modest home with his wife and three children. Here, he was given a large home, servants, and as a European he was at the top of the social ladder with Africans and Asians beneath him. Being a member of the white nobility was a heady experience for this pedestrian man. The short, thick man who stood beside the Inspector was a professional soldier. The sergeant had been an orphan boy who ran the streets of Hamburg, running errands for bar owners, stealing from drunks, holding his own among the street toughs. He had found a home in the army. During his career, his drinking and attraction to wives of officers and burghers often threatened to have him cashiered, but his performance as a soldier always saved him. The last such escapade gave his commanding officer no alternative but to send him to East Africa or take the only thing that meant anything to him away.

  Now, as he stood there on the quiet street, the sergeant felt pain different from anything he knew. The little boy who called him‘Uncle Sergeant’ had been kidnapped. He thought about the first time he saw the von Mecklenburgs and how he was prepared to endure the arrogance and contempt of this Junker family. He had been surprised by their warmth and Gustav’s understanding of his value as a noncommissioned officer. When he had been assigned to Moshi, he was further surprised when an invitation came from the von Mecklenburgs to visit their home. He had never seen Willie until then, but remembered the distress Willie had caused Maria on their journey from Dar es Salaam. Each time he had visited their home, it was Willie who had come to give him a hug and to pull him outside to show him something or other. He remembered the last time it was a raven, which had fallen from a nest and Willie now kept in a cage.

  “I am going to teach it to talk, Uncle. Ravens are very smart.”

  Now he remembered the words. A realist by training, he knew he was unlikely ever to see the little boy again. He glanced at the Inspector. He tried to disguise his feelings for the man, who, he felt, should have found the Somali. It was his job to know what was going on in Moshi.

  As he thought about Ibrahim, he recalled what had happened after the ambush. He was setting up the defenses while Gustav returned to Moshi. He had been scanning the surrounding country, looking for places where his defenses might be most vulnerable. For an instant, he saw a tall man standing under the trees on the ridge. He knew then it was Ibrahim. Should he have sent some of his soldiers to that ridge? The sergeant seldom speculated about the past. He dismissed the thought. That moment was over. Now, he must find the boy.

  He spoke calmly to Reinhold. “Ibrahim has escaped us for years. He has done that by guessing correctly where we would look. Is he heading for the coast? It is strange that he would allow so many people to see him heading east and south.” The sergeant was looking at Reinhold, whose eyes seemed to brighten, grasping at whatever was thrown his way.

  “Do you not think he is heading for the coast? You think he might be heading west?” Reinhold asked.

  “I think you should continue looking for him to the east and south. That is still the most likely.”

  ---

  They were in Masai country. Their camp was near a small lake formed by the rains. As they ate, Ibrahim watched the small boy, who had grown silent the last two days. Tied to a thorn tree, Willie stared at the hills to the north. His view of the great mountain he had watched the last two days was clear this morning. The white clouds of the day before were gone. There was only the empty blue sky. Willie did not know his own name. He didn’t remember how he came to be tied under the tree, why he was with the strange men who laughed at him as he stared before him, seeming to see nothing.

  “Do you know my name, boy?” Ibrahim stood before Willie, touching him with his boot. Willie stared at the tall man. His eyebrows began to furrow as he tried to focus on what the man was saying. Then he felt the pain of the short whip the tall man carried. He started to cry as the man repeated his question to him. Again the sharp pain. Willie wailed but did not speak. The tall man turned and spoke to the other men. Willie could hear them laughing. They were looking at him.

  They were west of Moshi and Arusha. They traveled at night, moving south of the Great Lake. Ibrahim had told his anxious men that they would pass beyond Lake Victoria to the land of the powerful Haya. Ibrahim did not tell his men that he had never traveled so far to the west; that it was from the Nyamwezi and the Sukuma that he had heard of the great riches to the west where the Haya lived. They had not seen the riches, he told them, because in the country of the Haya, the rivers flowed to the west into the Atlantic Ocean. The Haya owned gold and diamonds, and many slaves. He told them it was where he would sell the boy, where the father who killed Farah would never dream his precious son was a slave to a Haya chief.

  In the shade of the acacia tree, Willie leaned against its rough trunk. Sometimes the Chagga would lean over to him and rub a salve on the cuts on his arms. He understood the language of the man, but did not know his own name.

  “Do you remember Kibo, boy?” Willie shook his head.

  “Do you remember your mother and father?” Again, Willie shook his head. But he had remembered a strange dream he had that morning as they rested. He was riding a donkey and he was laughing with a dark lady who pulled the donkey. He remembered great iron bars, but then he awoke.

  The Chagga shook his head, patted Willie on the head and walked away. The sun faced Willie as he sat. To the left of the sun the two great mountains could be seen clearly, although they were a hundred kilometers to the east. To reach the spot they had chosen, the men climbed the great western wall of the east arm of the Great Rift Valley, and now camped south of the great Ngorongoro Crater, the enormous dead volcano where thousands of wild animals now grazed.

  Once Ibrahim had glanced up the face of the escarpment. On the skyline directly above them, a band of Masai morani, their young warriors, looked down upon them. Less than two hundred meters above where he stood, Ibrahim could see the bright red color of their robes. They leaned upon their spears as the men climbed toward them. None moved. Ibrahim checked the snap on his revolver holster and loosened the dagger in its scabbard. Climbing on foot, leading his tired mount,
he turned to see if the others had seen the Masai. All acknowledged with their eyes that they had. He scanned the skyline away from the morani, feigning indifference to their presence. When his eyes returned to where they were standing, they were gone.

  As the men rested, they looked anxiously around. They had selected a spot away from the water and the sweetest grass because it was close to a wooded area where the Masai could be upon them before they saw them. The five men had been selected by Ibrahim because all were known as killers, to whom death meant little. One of the men was a Somali, a nephew by the marriage of the sister of Ibrahim and Farah. He had arrived in Moshi soon after Farah’s death, feeling the same hatred for Farah’s killers. He too was wanted by the Germans for the death of a merchant seaman he had robbed. One was the Chagga who cared for Willie. There was a Shirazi, the people who traced their ancestors to Persia but who had intermarried with the African coastal tribes, and looked much like the Arabs from Oman. Another was a member of the fierce Shaba, who only seven years before joined Bushiri’s revolt against the Germans. The last member of the gang was an Arab, who, like Ibrahim, had seen his fortunes as a slave trader fade with the coming of the Germans.

  Willie could hear the wildebeests grazing. The shaggy animals seemed indifferent to the men, caught up in the succulence of the new, green grass. The herd now stood between the camp and the wooded area that the men had avoided. The men in camp could not see the band of twenty warriors, moving silently through the tall grass, upwind to the contented wildebeests. The animals were no more than twenty meters from Ibrahim’s men. Only the Shirazi and Ibrahim were awake, sitting against the trunks of thin thorn trees, hypnotized by the contented munching of these ugly beasts. The others were in a deep sleep despite the earlier sighting of the Masai, exhausted by the climb out of the valley and the relentless way Ibrahim had driven them to work clear of the Germans.