After the Flare

by Deji Bryce Olukotun

  Sure enough, Balewa returned, this time with a small calabash of groundnuts, which she placed at Bracket’s feet without looking him in the eye. He waited for her to retreat before picking up the bowl. He passed the bowl around to Seeta and Wale as the girl waited. Then he said, Wale translating: “Balewa, I’d like to speak with you for a moment.”

  She retreated a step. “Yes?”

  “We’re sorry that we offended you. We’re scientists. Asking questions is part of our profession.”

  She nodded, again without looking him in the eye.

  “Can you tell us what you’re doing here? Maybe we can help you, if you need it.”

  Making some show of it by pounding his cane into the floor and clearing his throat, Wale asked Balewa to tell her story. She looked back and forth among the three scientists, assessing how much she should say, Bracket guessed. She got up and went down the tunnel, and he could overhear her speaking softly with one of the other women. She came back with a woven mat and sat down upon it in one smooth motion, her belly swelling to the side.

  “I’m allowed to tell you some things, but not all of them.”

  “That’s fine,” Bracket said. She nodded, making it clear that she wasn’t actually looking for his approval.

  “We’re called the Wodaabe,” she began, “and we have roamed this area for many generations. We raise cattle, goats, sheep, and camels, and we live like birds in the wild, moving from place to place. Our men and boys raise our cattle and plot our migrations, and we women manage the house, the suudu. Every year we follow the rains to nurture our herds, and every year we celebrate the end of the year with our cousins at the Geerewol, our most important ceremony.”

  She didn’t look anyone directly in the eye as she spoke and glanced over her shoulder from time to time. Every once in a while, the eldest woman, Durel, would lean into the room with a suspicious look.

  “We lived this way for as long as we can remember,” Balewa added, “following the migration routes. Not long ago, we began to hear that some bad men were coming into our lands, men who slaughtered cattle and stole children. So we planned our routes to avoid them.”

  “The Jarumi,” Seeta said.

  Balewa sucked in her teeth. “That’s what we call them. Our men are excellent scouts and they made sure that we never encountered these people. This meant that sometimes our pastures weren’t as green as we needed for the cattle, but they still grazed enough to fill their udders with milk, and we had secret watering holes that we used during drought, as we always have. One day, a man came to our village whom we hadn’t seen in some time. His name was Latif, and he had once been part of our lineage before he fell on hard times when his cattle died from plague. He had left for the city to make a new life there as a trader, and we had learned that he’d married a girl he met in the marketplace. Many of us had known Latif as a young man. So we were all quite surprised when he arrived at our encampment after we hadn’t seen him for several years. He looked very bad. Before he left for the city, he had bright, flashing eyes and strong arms, and he had always paid close attention to his manner of dress, being one of the most popular dancers at the Geerewol. Now his clothes were in poor condition and his teeth had grown yellow from smoking tobacco. He had a red armband around his forearm. But we don’t abandon anyone who leaves us, especially if they wish to return, so our men welcomed him back, saying, ‘On jabbaama, on jabbaama’—even killing a small goat for him to eat, since he was clearly hungry. We should have suspected that something was wrong when he ate all of the food, because it’s not polite for a guest to finish all of the food offered to him.”

  Shouldn’t have finished that porridge, Bracket thought.

  “Our men spoke with Latif for some time, and they found his answers very strange. He wouldn’t tell them where he was living or what had happened to his wife in the city. He also acted differently. Latif was always loved for his togu, his charm and good manners, but he had become quiet and bitter. After finishing his tea, he excused himself and called someone on a mobile phone. When the men asked him about it, he only said he was talking to some friends. We didn’t think too much of it since we use phones to call ahead to watering holes if we can find a signal.

  “We were preparing tea the next morning—it was chilly—when our dog began barking. The men had just gotten onto their camels to take out the herds.” She paused, swallowing. She seemed to be steeling herself, deciding whether to go on, and looked over at Durel, who moved away down the hallway. “We saw trucks arriving in the distance, with the dust clouds rising behind them like a sandstorm. The first thing they did was shoot my husband. I saw him slump in the saddle of his camel, and then they shot his camel too, as if for sport, like children playing at a game. There were ten large trucks. Our men formed up in their camels to try to stop them, but we only carried swords because we’re not a fighting people. They were gunned down right before our eyes. We gathered together in the suudu of Durel, who was the strongest woman among us—she has the most munyal, as we call it, of all of us. But the men soon came to the suudu and Latif joined them. We knew then that Latif had betrayed us, that he had told them our location because he knew our routes, and because the bandits were friendly with him when they arrived.

  “These were terrible men. They all wore red armbands. Latif came after me and raped me.”

  “Oh no,” Seeta said.

  But Balewa kept speaking as if she were talking about someone else. “We were all attacked. After he raped me, I was beaten many times and lost consciousness. When I awoke, the men were loading our children onto the trucks along with all the young girls, many of whom were much too young to marry. We managed to run away into the bush while they were distracted and hid behind some bramble. They shot the remaining cattle as they drove in the direction of our next watering hole.”

  Seeta moved over to comfort Balewa, but she shrugged her away. She did not want sympathy.

  “Aren’t you Muslim?” Bracket asked. “Why would they attack you?”

  “They called us infidels. Latif said we were heathens who knew nothing of the Koran and told us we believed only what we wished to believe. We said that it’s written that you can fight those who stand in the way of God, but that you aren’t permitted to be the aggressor. But Latif only replied that we were the aggressors for not following the way of God. He could interpret everything we said to make us out to be infidels—his mind had been twisted by his time in the city.

  “Five of us escaped. We waited until we were sure they were far away, then we began walking to the south toward Lake Chad. Some generous people were kind enough to give us food and water, but they were poor and couldn’t share much, and they warned us that the Jarumi had attacked them too, so we continued walking south through the bush, staying out of sight. We knew how to find other lineages on the migration routes, but with Latif among them, he would know every watering hole and pasture. So we continued south until we came to Kano. We managed to sell some of our medicines for food in the city, but we were afraid to stay in town because we saw that Wodaabe women were treated very badly, forced to sell their own bodies to survive. We traded our medicines in the marketplace during the day and retreated to the safety of the bush at night, where we would sleep in the open air.

  “One night, we built a fire to keep warm, and we began singing songs to try to pick up our mood. And as we sang, it was as if the ground itself were pulling on our chests. The next thing we knew, one of the tunnels opened to us. That is how we found this place.”

  “Is that how you found the meteorites?” Wale asked.

  “They were here when we arrived, waiting for us, a gift, I believe, from our ancestors. We learned how to use them. This place is made from music—everything about it. We practice for the day when we’ll see Latif again so we can bring him to justice.”

  “Are you carrying his child?” Seeta interjected.

  Balewa rose from her mat, rolling it up neatly. “I’m sorry that I can’t tell you more.” She
began collecting the bowl of groundnuts.

  “I know where the Songstones came from,” Wale said.

  “You do?” Balewa asked.

  “If you tell the others to come, I can show you.”

  Bracket glanced over at Seeta, wondering if Wale had hidden some secret from them.

  “What proof do you have?” Balewa asked.

  “My proof is that I found you here. I’ve been trying to find this place for years. I know how it works and how it was created. If you bring the others, I will tell you.”

  She quickly got to her feet and left. The swiftness of her exit left the room feeling cold, the damp air closing in on them; a decision had been made they didn’t yet understand.

  “She’ll be back,” Wale said assuredly.

  “I thought you said we had nothing to offer them,” Seeta whispered.

  “I just thought of something.”

  “Be careful, Wale,” Bracket said. “What are you going to tell them?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Bracket’s eyes turned back to the fire pit. He bent over it and began clawing out the dirt in fistfuls. The chicken bones he’d seen. They looked far too old to have been eaten by the women recently, but he sensed the power of the place, the hidden, torrential energy waiting to be sprung at any moment. More of the bones of the animal came up, some of them charred. This was a goat maybe. Every time his fingers plunged deeper, he felt the sharp prick of another bone.

  “They didn’t make fires here,” he said.

  “Of course they didn’t,” Wale said. “There isn’t any ventilation.”

  “Then what is this pit for?” Seeta asked.

  “Sacrifices,” Bracket said.

  Saying it aloud startled them all out of their stupor. Wale hobbled over and poked around in the pit with his cane. “You’re right. The carbon traces you’d normally find around a real fire are missing. But these animals weren’t killed by these women. The bones are too old.” He pointed to the wall behind one of the statues. “There are lines that run to the ceiling, grooves in the wall. They’re flecked with breccia rock from the meteorites, annealed to the wall by heat.”

  Bracket saw the grooves now, which vaulted the chamber in obsidian-black.

  “Balewa said this entire place was made for music,” Seeta said. “The grooves may be designed to amplify the stones. It’s an old technique found in temples around the world, to design the room to strengthen the acoustics to create sounds that would reach the gods. The acoustic architecture can create a B tone of two close frequencies to induce a meditative state. With the Songstones, the effect would be much more powerful.”

  “Powerful enough to kill a goat,” Bracket said. “Or maybe us.”

  “They wouldn’t do that to us,” Seeta objected.

  “They have no reason to trust us.”

  “They’re not killers. They’re afraid.”

  “Then why did they kill Clarence?” Wale asked.

  That’s what bothered Bracket, the fear of these women, and what might have happened to that fear as they seethed without their children or their families or their way of life. No one opening their arms to them in the cold night except to take advantage. Fear like that could grow into something else.

  “It’s a shame,” Wale said, following the same train of thought. “This would have been one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of our time. An African discovery by Africans, not some gentleman explorer. These women are slowly destroying the place by inhabiting it, damaging the scientific record. Instead it’s an African discovery ruined by Africans. We have no respect for our own past.”

  Bracket couldn’t blame the women for being traumatized by what happened, nor for the horror they had faced. It would twist your mind, upturn your sense of right and wrong, especially when they could no longer follow their migration routes. They used to find spiritual guidance in the lowing of the cattle, the comfort of their friends and family as they drank from the well. All of these lodestars were gone for them. They were probably frightened, alone, and angry.

  Balewa returned with the other women, who retreated behind her in what seemed like defensive positions, each of them carrying a Songstone.

  “Do not be alarmed,” Wale warned, picking up his cane. “My cane will create an image on this rock wall here. It is not dangerous.” With a quick shift of his fingers, he projected the same images he had shown Bracket earlier of the ancient artwork with the solar flare from a thousand years ago. He also showed them pictures and descriptions of the Nok in colonial and Arabic texts, as well as the astrolabe, narrating along as he did so. The women watched all this impassively, but Bracket could see that at least Balewa was interested.

  “So you see,” Wale concluded, “your Songstones were activated by a solar flare. Or I should say reactivated. Those are charged particles emanating from the sun itself. The meteorites are possessed of a powerful energy, and the solar flare that struck the world last year must have ignited them again. All of these so-called magical properties can be explained by modern science.”

  He slid his hand down his cane as if cleaning it of some dirt. The tip of it let out a spark, and two bolts of electricity shot toward Durel, who collapsed on the ground. Her legs began convulsing.

  “Wale! What are you doing?” Bracket shouted.

  “Getting us out of here!”

  He fired the Taser from his cane one more time but missed, and the women were already protecting themselves with the aurae of their Songstones. They were entirely coated in the crackling shields of their own voices. They forced Wale to move first, transporting him onto the fire pit. He dropped his cane and began hurling insults at them. Strips of their aurae leapt to the wall like charges of electricity and shot along the meteorite ribs to disappear somewhere in the statues. They pinned back Bracket and Seeta to the far wall as Wale writhed in the middle. Wale put up a tremendous fight, screaming in anger as he banged against the nebulous prison surrounding him. They amplified their music to an awful intensity and clapped so that the polyrhythms played off each other in the chamber. Now their fields created a blue-green channel to the grooves on the walls. The eyes of the statues began to flicker.

  “Wait!” Bracket cried. “I can find them!” It was as if his throat were caked in ash. He felt the pressure on his lungs, but forced his voice to open up. “Your children! I can find your children! I know where they are!”

  The crackling aurae quieted down. Balewa began pleading with the others, until they too stopped their singing. Wale fell to the middle of the pit, and Seeta rushed over to help him up. The scientist’s face was exhausted from the effort, ashen and drained of blood. He wouldn’t be able to survive another attack. The side of his body that wasn’t paralyzed winced in pain.

  “Tell them, Wale,” Bracket said. “Tell them I can find their children.”

  The scientist half whispered the translation.

  “How do you know where they are?” Durel asked.

  “I saw some children in the city. Two children about ten years old, wearing the same red armband you describe.”

  “Did they tell you their names?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Bracket said. How could he tell them that their loved ones had become child soldiers? “But Latif must be with them. He’s as dangerous to us as he is to you. He may destroy our rockets and everything we’ve fought to build here. They’re coming this way right now.”

  “We trusted this old man, and he hurt us.”

  “Please—go see for yourselves. We’ll come with you if you like. No lies. No trickery.”

  The women discussed it among themselves, and he could see no change in their mien. It had been a gamble, but he had nothing to lose, given that they were slated for execution or whatever euphemism the women had called it in their language. Bracket looked at Balewa hopefully, but he knew that she wouldn’t make the final decision. It was the eldest one, Durel, whom Wale had just shot with hundreds of volts of electricity into her skin.

  Fina
lly, Durel said: “You’ll accompany us until we find the Jarumi. But the old man will remain here.”

  “He’s in no condition to stay here after what you did to him.”

  “No further harm will come to him if you keep your word.”

  Bracket looked at Wale, who seemed too tired to stand up by himself. “I need a good working flashlight,” Wale said in a quiet voice, “and food and water if I’m going to get any proper work done down here.”

  Seeta gave the old man a hug. “We’ll come back for you, Wale.”

  “Come back with some latex gloves, a duster, and an archival program. All archaeology is destruction. The least we can do is properly catalog what we’ve found. We’re ruining history with every breath we take.”

  CHAPTER 25

  They followed the Wodaabe women through the tunnels for a long while before Balewa lifted her Songstone and sang a short melody that parted the very rock before them. Sand fell into the passageway as the entrance split, and Bracket and Seeta found themselves far outside the spaceport amid the scrubland. He realized they had passed the entire night underground. The mid morning sun blazed in their eyes, causing them to squint, and they could smell smoke in the air—the scent of burning plastic. The Harmattan had coated the landscape in a fine layer of silt, but the winds had died down, leaving an eerie calm.

  One of the Wodaabe women hissed something, and everyone instantly squatted to their knees, causing the scientists to crouch too.

  “What is it?” Bracket whispered, forgetting that the women couldn’t understand him.

  But they didn’t need to. “Jarumi,” Durel mouthed.

  Keeping his head low, Bracket stole a look in the direction she was pointing and saw a caravan of Jeeps and cargo trucks spread out before them in the distance. There were perhaps fifty different vehicles, all in different states of repair: some were riddled with bullet holes, while others were burned-out shells from mortar fire. There were another ten or fifteen okada motorcycles zipping up and down the length of the caravan, the riders shouldering machine guns. The trucks themselves weren’t moving, though. The entire caravan appeared to have stopped. Indeed, he could see smoke billowing up near the vehicles, where women were cooking a meal, the soldiers hovering nearby.