Three days, three hundred posters, three thousand handbills. Seeds of Sbai Seshat’s media training had yielded them this mighty harvest.
“We built Kush with the golden hammers he gave us, cuz we were there! Am I geometrical?”
“Geometrical!”
“When he named 107th Avenue Khair-em-Nubt, which means the Path of the City of Gold, we were there! When he raised up the Kush Party to replace-elevate us into a better way, we were there, doing it with him!”
“They wanna tell us our man, our warrior, our teacher, our brother,” said Sbai Seshat, “burned down his own business, his own home, and his own self.” Mic-booming, Senwusret’s system, no longer one but four Optimus Primes. “Y’all b’lee ’at?”
“Naw! No!”
“Boo-oo-ool-shi-i-it!”
“Forget that!”
Raptor, surveying everything. Logistics: ’Noot, Ãnkhur, Jackal and him. Even press releases and calls with reporters—that’d been Ãnkhur.
So now all Raptor had to do was watch the blocks stack up. And revel in Sbai Seshat’s microphone control. She was always a stepping razor in the Street Laboratory, but out here in front of real crowd, she was a buzzsaw.
“At’s right!” she said. “You damn skippy! Whatchall got is a buncha professional liars trying to damage control themselves out of a lawsuit by controlling public opinion!
“Lemme tell ya suh’m: Brother Moon’s brilliant. Brother Moon was an electrical engineer before he went into computers. Brother Moon faced gun-toting killers with nothing in his hands but bravery and a talent for fool-smacking!
“So you actually trying to tell me if he wanted to start a fire for insurance, he’d burn up his own self along the way? How you sposta collect insurance if you dead?”
Dropped the D-word, but they gave it up anyway, even if the laughter tasted like bile.
But Raptor knew. Just like that song by Martina Topley-Bird: Moon was too tough to die.
But whoever did this to him . . . .
Some were sworn already. Menfítu. Soldiers.
And when their proof was iron, they would act.
“How many times,” she said, “has the Destroyer come with fire to our homes? In Min-Nefer? In Kigali? In Port-au-Prince? In Darfur? In Philadelphia? In Montreal? Or come with long-fanged metal machines to tear down our homes in Africville! Killing our babies in Soweto! Killing our men in the Audubon! Raping and killing our women in Congo! I said how many times?”
“Too many!”
“How many?
“TOO MANY!”
“And how many times we rallied just like this, in the cold, in the gathering dark, saying ‘no more’ when in our hearts, we all KNEW! That shadowed men. With murderous knives. And fingers cruel. Were coming BACK?
“Coming back cuz we failed to stand up as one with our golden hammers in the air, saying, ‘You take one of us, you gon hafta take us ALL!”
Applause, cheers, howls, and then, ore in a smelter bleeding and breeding gold, someone shouted:
“I am Brother Moon!”
Someone else: “I am Brother Moon!”
Scattered ones, then a dozen: “I am Brother Moon! I am Brother Moon!”
And on the mic Seshat said, “I am Aset the Avenger! And I am Hru!”
Cops glanced and flexed, cameras aimed and clicked, reporters scribbled and scrambled, and Kushites jumped and cheered:
“I am Hru! I am Hru! I am HRU! I AM HRU . . . . ”
5.
Facing the hurricane, the adult Alchemists were overwhelmed. So the Street Falcons stepped up, held fast.
Step one: securing replacement space for their charred Laboratory.
’Noot block-booked Wednesday evenings at Sprucewood Library a couple of blocks south of Khair-em-Sokar on 95th. The meeting room held only thirty people. On that first night they were sixty. But the overflow read books or chilled out on the library’s main floor.
Pocket change easily covered the $15 half-day charge. And they knew Raptor was right when he transformed it in the shenu:
“The Golden Fortress can’t be destroyed. It didn’t burn down in the Street Laboratory. Look around you. Whenever two or more of you stand together, you’re raising the Golden Fortress right there!”
After Daily Alchemy, they studied the Scrolls together, Originals training middlers and middlers training newbies.
Then they organised fundraising plans for their lawsuits—goods to sell, services to provide, a hall party where ’Noot and Golden Eye would perform. And made a list of organisations to approach for larger training space.
Divided the city into sectors. Glorified each with a golden name: Southern Millwoods transformed into Swenet . . . Strathcona, Saqqara . . . Muttart and its glass pyramids, Giza . . . Westmount, Waset . . . the North Saskatchewan River, the Nile . . . .
At leaving-time, instead of the usual Hotep or Nub-Wmet-Ãnkh, one Falcon after another said, “Raise the Shining Place forever.”
Outside. To range.
Their revolution: to seek out all the Wanderers in those Savage Lands, to make stand those who wept, to reveal those who hid their faces, and to lift up those who’d sank down, for in so doing, they would all rise nearer to the supreme state of being.
6.
A few hours later. Maãhotep’s place, before Raptor and ’Noot headed back to the hospital.
Gamal, putting mugs of hot chocolate and a plate of cinnamon banana bread on the table between the teens who were working on Gamal’s and Maã’s laptops.
Planning the next rally, locating space, putting out fires.
A YouTube up in the corner of Raptor’s screen: a Moon wisdom from sometime around Christmas taken on a shaky mobile phone.
. . . we’re not a temple. We’re a laboratory. Because we’re Alchemists. You have to be able to pick up beakers and test tubes and turn on the Bunsen burners and experiment so you can actually learn . . . .
Raptor: “That’s not too distracting, is it?”
’Noot, eyes and smile happysad. “Naw, it’s comforting.” And back to work.
Him, glancing at her screen. Posting to the Falcon blog. A booklist? Damn. Girl was taking over the job Moon’d given him.
She clicked POST.
Cover graphics for every book, plus links to buy online. She was good.
Kalakuta Republic by Chris Abani
Aya of Yopougon by Marguerite Abouet
King by Ho Che Anderson
Mindscape by Andrea Hairston
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor
Palestine by Joe Sacco
“That’s golden, ’Noot.”
She smiled. “Thanks.”
Moon, still revealing wisdom:
Yeah, we have you memorise your lessons, but not to turn them into prayers. You memorise em in the same way you learn safety and procedure in any lab. But then you get down to work.
“Just remembered,” said ’Noot, reaching for her bag. Handed him a CD, still wrapped. Orchestre Baobab’s Specialist in All Styles.
“You’re always just even talking about how much you love that song—”
“‘Dée Moo Wóor,’ right!” He grinned. Tried to step up. “It’s so passionate.” Hoped he didn’t trip down the stairs. “Like me.”
She didn’t call him on it.
“Thank you, ’Noot!” And he actually reached for her hand. Squeezed it. She smiled at him even when he let go.
Ripped off the CD’s wrapping, opened it, looking for lyrics. Never’d found any online, not even after years of looking. Could find any Top 40 Leadite lyrics going back fifty years, but the most romantic love ballad ever performed, if it was written in Wolof? Forget about it.
No lyrics. But a summary:
Ndiouga Dieng gives a memorable performance of Dée Moo Wóor. Over a sparse backing he recalls the nights following the death of his father which he spent contemplating the true meaning of life. He reflects on how life can be
disappointing and cruel. The weeping notes of Barthelemy Attisso’s lead guitar are a perfect compliment.
’Noot: “Something wrong?”
Leaned back. Pulled on his lip.
“No, no . . . . ”
Bit into banana bread, sipped hot chocolate. Knew each tasted good, but he was X-raying that paragraph while his comprehension cleaved from the nadir to the zenith.
Moon, urging him on:
We expect you to debate everything. Question it all. Turn it upside down. They’re your tools for investigating the universe. Don’t hide em away. Use them, all the time. The truth can always be questioned. Only lies die in the light.
Stunning. To think he could’ve been that far off for that long about that song.
And if was that wrong about that, what else was he doing or thinking wrong that needed replace-elevate?
And then once you started overturning everything, how were you sposta know when you could stop?
True and living gold. That’s what you are. If there is a God, a creator god, or even just something called Universe, no matter what, since matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed but simply repatterned, then they’re all part of that divine spark, that Big Bang. Their stuff, their substance, was there 13.8 billion years ago. They’re made of “God.” Which means, sure, they’re God. And therefore so is everyone around you. And so are you.
Gamal came by, cleared the two mugs and the plate of banana bread crumbs. ’Noot, still focused on her own screen.
Maybe if you started acting and thinking and treating yourselves and each other that way, the Golden Fortress would already be here. ‘Whatsoever you do to the least of your brothers,’ transform?
“Okay, guys.” Gamal, putting on his coat. “I’m headed back to the hospital in two. You ready?”
“Yup,” said ’Noot, powering down the laptop.
Raptor, shifting posture, faking like he was ready to go.
So for you Christians, God is in the bread. And in the wine. But also in you. And in your enemies. And in pain and joy and defeat and victory and oppression and in justice.
Moon, the online immortal:
So yeah, you can find God everywhere. In everything. That’s called panentheism. So if it’s true, what’re you gonna do about it?
’Noot and Gamal, standing at the door, coats and shoes on.
Raptor, powering down machine and powering up himself. Flipping open note pad, uncapping pen.
Outside, in the car, on the way. Let ’Noot ride shotgun.
Asked Gamal to put in his gift CD, hit track 3.
“Dée Moo Wóor.” Still no lyrics, but one paragraph of liner notes and he’d begun a new revolution.
Began scribing: “How far . . . can a falcon . . . fall . . . ?”
What else needed revolution? Today? Right now?
Because there might not be much time.
6.
Outside the burn ward. Araweelo, hurrying from the elevator with the two charges she’d shuttled from the airport in Moon’s Sunfire.
One: a striking sister, maybe twenty or twenty-one, five-eleven, with beaded braids and cat glasses. Looked like the actress Zoe Saldana. Jackal almost broke his eyes staring so hard.
Even frumped by jet lag, she projected two things: intellect, and pain.
Two: Kiya’s brother Ptah, young and serious-looking behind his own glasses, skinny inside his bright yellow windbreaker. His hair wasn’t long, but it was pebbly. Needed tending.
Maãhotep embraced Kiya in a long hug, then nodded to her brother without offering even a handshake. “Ptahhotep, you’re huge! Do you remember me?”
“Of course I remember you, Uncle Maã,” said the fifteen-year-old. His tone was so even it was like it’d been planed. “I haven’t seen you for thirty-one months and nine days. How are you this evening?”
Maãhotep winced. Tried smiling. Glanced at Raptor, who was puzzling together pieces he hadn’t known had ever been a puzzle.
Ptah’s hands were fists. But was no violence in them. Only restraint.
“Pete,” said his older sister, “these are all Dad’s friends.”
Ptah, rotating to each one: “You’re Jamal, also called Jackal. You’re Raphael, also called Raptor. You’re Almeera, also called Yibemnoot—I saw your reading list,” he monotoned. “I saw all your pictures on Facebook. I’ve never been to Edmonton before. I’ve never been on an airplane before. We flew on a DC-10 manufactured by McDonnell-Douglas. Many people are afraid of flying in airplanes but statistically people are more likely to die of heart disease or automobile accidents than from air catastrophes—”
“That’s very true, Ptah,” said Maã. “Good job. And I’m glad you’re here.” To Kiya: “Are you . . . ready?”
She looked at the floor. Her beaded braids slipped past her shoulders, drooping.
Raptor, standing: “Your dad’s the strongest man I’ve ever met.”
“Take your time,” said Maã, smacking Raptor quickly with his eyes. “But not too long. Do you think your brother should . . . ?”
“I’ll go first. Can you . . . ?”
Maã nodded.
Why he wasn’t on Facebook. Why he didn’t shake hands or hug. Why Moon had the skills to chill Jackal’s little brother during his freakout. How Moon could point all those Somali families and their committee in the right direction.
Raptor, introducing himself without offering to shake hands. Asking Ptah if he knew about Static. In fact Ptah knew quite literally everything about Static, both comic and cartoon and how they were made, and began reciting it all.
Araweelo went for information from the doctors, having lied from the beginning that she was Moon’s common-law wife.
Kiya came out fifteen minutes later. Eyes were red, face was puffy.
Ptah said, “My sister Kiya has a lot of allergies. But it’s the fall here so I didn’t expect her to have a reaction.”
Ten minutes later, Araweelo returned, beiged. Her eyes: empty.
Took Raptor aside, held him close, whispered: “He’s conscious now. You haven’tt seen him before, my son. So prepare yourself.”
Raptor started to move inside, eager to fill Moon in on “Dée Moo Wóor” and everything they’d accomplished and were about to accomplish while he was getting well.
His mum grabbed his arm. “If you have anything you wantt to say to him, Raptor . . . don’tt waitt.”
7.
Washed, socked and smocked in hospital togs, Raptor entered the white sepulcher.
Found his mutilated master.
The fire’d torn him up, melted him back together. Brown lumps, rippled through with white and pink streaks, puckering with blasted-open blisters. A humanoid volcanic eruption.
And that was just the exposed skin.
The sight of him. Raptor’s intestines coiled and snapped. Like he’d missed two steps down a staircase.
The unbandaged part of Moon’s face, thank god, still a man.
Lived together more than a year. Shared food and books and music and life. And some secrets, but not all.
He’d yearned to tell Moon. Sometimes got close enough to feel his throat bulging, esophagus dilating and tearing to deliver the words and expel their wretched afterbirth.
Yet hadn’t Moon also kept things from him?
Why did people do that? Keep their truest selves from the only people who’d earned the right to meet them?
The ninth scroll included The Man Who Was Weary of Life. Ballad of a spiritually destroyed man in the civilisational collapse of the Middle Kingdom. Contemplating suicide. And visited by the only one who could understand him.
The ba-bird that was one of his own souls.
Heard patiently his every misery, but begged him not to murder himself, to hang his pains on a coat-hook, make offering to the gods and cling to life. Promised, when his real day should come, to guide him to the eternal plains and raise a shining place with him forever.
So which one of them was the ba now?
And what could he offer?
He spoke to Moon’s uncovered eye.
He was nine.
The camp was in Kenya, but sometimes in his mind it was Chad, or Sudan, or Ethiopia. The birds were huge, maybe buzzards, feasting on trash, and when they found bodies, on them, too.
They’d known each other in one camp when they were five or six, then miraculously had met in Kenya after three years and several exoduses and camps apart from each other.
Wacera, the running, laughing little girl who was raindrops and blossoms and mango in the desert.
The NGO: Jacob’s Ladder. The aid worker’s name was Seth Apsey, but he didn’t make kids call him Mr. Apsey or Bwana Apsey and mostly they didn’t even call him mlungu because he told them “Just call me Seth—c’mon, say it! Say my name! That-a-boy!” and gave out candies and chocolates and Laughing Cow cheese in silver-wrapped wedges, which none of them had ever seen or let alone eaten in their brief and brutal lives.
In the locked-boxes of his fabulous tent, Seth held even more wonders, including dried fruit and salted meats and blocks of cheese. The worst of which was called Trappist cheese, which smelled to Raphael like feet, armpits and ass.
“These Jacob’s Ladder people,” Raptor said to Moon (eyelids fluttering, irises wobbling slowly in a widening gyre) “they were evil.”
Tried swallowing, couldn’t. Dry-heaved the words.
“They said they were trying to help Darfur refugees. But I wasn’t from Darfur. Neither was Wacera, or most of the kids.
“Told the parents they were gonna fly us to Europe for medical attention, that they’d bring the parents on the next flight.
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