After the Flare

by Deji Bryce Olukotun

  He hadn’t expected them to be so close. If anything, he had hoped the Jarumi would still be in Kano, held back by Detective Idriss and his men.

  Not far from the caravan, Bracket spied the scarred wreckage of a large aircraft. It was still smoking, and the charred body of the pilot—it might have been a woman, maybe a man—had its hands fixed to the gear stick, as if preparing to fly itself into the afterlife. Bloodied bodies were scattered beside it, either victims of the crash or all indiscriminately murdered, and covered in a layer of thick sand from the dust storm, looking like the petrified dead after a volcanic eruption.

  The Jarumi must have taken the aircraft down, he realized. Maybe shot it, or perhaps—yes, there, in the sky far above him, he saw three eagles wheeling in the wind, scanning for hostile drones. The birds might have done something to the plane, although he couldn’t say how. He anxiously looked back toward the spaceport, where the Masquerade was affixed to the two Indian rockets, its nose pointed toward the sky.

  “Josephine wouldn’t have fueled the rockets yet,” Seeta whispered. “Not with the Jarumi so close by.”

  The perimeter fence was intact, and the guns in the guard towers also seemed to be operational, as far as he could tell, but the guards weren’t firing. The Jarumi must have been out of their range. And looking more closely, he spotted some crumpled bodies not far from the perimeter. The Jarumi had probably launched an attack and then been repulsed, and were now reconsidering their strategy. Meanwhile, no one would be getting in or out of the spaceport.

  That’s when Bracket remembered his Geckofone and discreetly turned it on again by rubbing its back with his four fingertips in his pocket.

  “Can you get a signal?” Seeta asked.

  “No. Nothing. We should be in range.”

  “They could be jamming our communications.”

  “Then they’re cutting us all off.”

  Looking more closely at the road where the caravan was situated, he began to understand—it seemed to be a dirt path that snaked deep into the Sahel. The Jarumi would have been expected to move along the main highway from Kano and to attack the spaceport from the entrance road. Instead they must have flanked the city on backroads to attain the much larger prize of the spaceport; if they could gain control of that, the rockets, the Masquerade, and even the mission itself could fund an entire army of rebels for years, outfitted with the most advanced weapons. For the time being, the Jarumi had laid siege to the spaceport and were locked in a stalemate.

  Next to him, the Wodaabe women were also carefully studying the caravan, their silver hairpins and loop earrings glinting in the sun.

  Bracket pointed at his arm, encircling it with his fingers. “Armband—see? They have the same armband. The children are there.”

  Close to where the women were cooking a meal, a group of children were sitting sullenly together smoking cigarettes. He tried to explain to her that there were more of them, and they were now soldiers, but she didn’t understand him.

  “You may not like what you find has happened to them,” he said aloud.

  The women consulted among themselves and pointed up at the sun, tracing an arc across the sky.

  “They want to wait,” Seeta guessed.

  “For what?” Bracket asked.

  But Durel seemed uncomprehending.

  “They’ll try to get back their children,” Seeta said.

  “Let us help you,” Bracket insisted. “We can get support. Weapons.” Him gesturing through all of this like a mime. “We can get more people.” But even as he was saying it, he knew the women wouldn’t trust him anyway, not after Wale had attacked Durel with his cane. Balewa reopened the entrance to the tunnel, surprising him by using the Songstone outside the cave, as if the ability to activate it in daylight made it more real somehow. They all climbed back down, where they waited in silence as she closed the portal behind them.

  Twice Balewa reopened the entrance to the tunnel, only to have the other women decide that something wasn’t right. One of them left down a tunnel and returned with porridge for all of them. Bracket fell into a dreamless sleep as the women ate peacefully in silence. He awoke when Balewa opened the passageway again, and the sky was turning a deep cobalt blue. The women started walking into the crepuscule, with Bracket and Seeta following behind.

  “We should send everyone we can to help,” Bracket hissed. “The Jarumi have guns. Powerful weapons.”

  “Kwesi—”

  “They want to let themselves get butchered?” He pointed at Balewa’s bulging stomach. “She’s pregnant, Seeta. She’s in no condition to fight!”

  “They want to do it their way.”

  The women removed their sandals as they moved through the scratchy bushes of the flat Sahel, padding along quietly, and soon he could barely find their silhouettes in the dusk. He crouched back down with Seeta.

  “Can you get this entrance back open?” Seeta asked him.

  “No. I couldn’t catch the tune.”

  “They’re two distinct melodies, I think: one on the way in and one on the way out. But it was too subtle for me.”

  “Then we’ll have to wait for them,” Bracket concluded.

  “Still can’t get a signal on your G-fone?”

  “Nothing.”

  “We should alert Josephine that they’re out there.”

  “I’ll have to send it manually.”

  He wrote a message for Josephine:

  We’re okay. Hold your fire.

  He figured he should at least buy the Wodaabe women some time. He set the G-fone down in the dirt, and it began scurrying off into the bush, Bracket hoping that it would draw enough heat from the ground as the temperature began to drop, because its battery was already low. He composed countless other messages in his mind but could think of none that would set Josephine at ease. Because he himself wasn’t at ease—the women were no longer in sight.

  CHAPTER 26

  The five Wodaabe women paced quickly away from the tunnel, melting into the scrubland. Bracket hadn’t noticed when Abir and Balewa exchanged glances after he had offered his help. Unlike that loudmouthed man, Wale, who had lied when he assaulted Durel with his cane, Balewa trusted the other two. She found that the white man with the deep voice had delivered on every promise he had made, and he seemed to be the moderating force in their group. But the scientists had not practiced singing with them, and indeed seemed to have no musical ability, meaning that they would not be reliable with a Songstone.

  As they pushed through the bush, Balewa reminded the others of their stratagem and the names of the songs they would use to unleash their stones. They had all washed their bodies with water infused with the bark of the tanni tree to protect against sorcery, and they consulted the talismans strung around their necks and ankles for courage in the face of danger. The cave had allowed them to rehearse freely with the stones, but the fresh air would present new problems, because there would be no amplification other than their own lungs. She thought this might rattle the other women, who would perhaps lose their focus.

  In fact the opposite seemed to be happening. As they plunged deeper into the wilderness, they recalled their days roaming the lands to the north. The vegetation was familiar. The soil under their feet felt similar. They found their old alertness coming back, sensing odors on the wind and hearing the rustle of the grasses. Here Abir noticed a twig bent by a cow; there, Durel spied a pile of goat dung, about three months old. Herders must have moved through here and left.

  “We’re here for the children,” Durel reminded them.

  “We’re with you,” they all replied.

  This had been the one condition upon which Durel had agreed to participate, that they were not to become murderers like the militants. They were only going to demand what was theirs by right.

  “Let’s begin,” Balewa said. She wanted the women to use their Songstones well before they came within sight of the Jarumi. Together they began humming in unison, crouching down low, and she was
pleased that the aurae surrounded them correctly as they had practiced. They were soon immersed in a tunnel of multicolored light and sound that amplified the fading colors of the foliage around them.

  Ahead of her, she caught sight of a flame as a militant lit a cigarette. He was less than fifty paces away.

  “Abir,” she said.

  Abir began to clap softly, humming all the while. The aura strengthened, a blue haze cutting through the light brown earth.

  “Durel.”

  Durel started clapping a slightly different rhythm, and the other women soon added a third and a fourth rhythm, so that all of them were clapping and singing softly to the beat. Balewa would join in last because when she sang no one would be able to speak anymore, and they could indicate only with their eyes where they intended to go. In the cave, they had tried to communicate through lyrics but that required improvisation that made them lose their focus.

  Balewa let the chorus build around them, the aurae strengthening until it began crushing back the vegetation. Dust clustered and swirled.

  It was time. Now Balewa added her voice to theirs, stringing together the various rhythms with a sensuous harmony. She took a step forward and the women rushed from their cover among the scrubs. They startled a group of men who were busy stoking a fire. One of them raised his gun and Balewa hurled her aura around him. The bullets ricocheted within it, until he fell. His companions rose to their feet but were surrounded before they could discharge their weapons. The militants still couldn’t see who they were and shielded their eyes from the spitting dust. To them, it looked as if a small tornado had swarmed from the scrubland. One man hurled something in their direction in desperation, but Abir surrounded it in midair and it disappeared in a white explosion, shaking the ground with the force.

  Focus, Balewa thought. Focus on the music. We are here for the children.

  Next they came across some women and girls locked inside a makeshift cage, where they were guarded on all sides by men and dogs. Many of the girls had only just begun to form breasts, and yet their bellies swelled. Pregnant. Pregnant like me.

  She split off from the other women to confuse the guards. The men shouldered their rifles more quickly this time and began firing. But they should have looked behind them. Abir flung her aura until these men too tumbled to the ground in agony after being struck by their own bullets. Then Durel, of all people, swept in and crushed their legs with a blast so powerful it stung Balewa’s ears.

  All about them now, the Jarumi soldiers rushed this way and that in confusion, thinking it was a coordinated attack. One group of men leapt into a truck to escape, but Balewa punctured their tires with a shrill note.

  “Tell me where the children are!” she shouted.

  “That way,” one man said, terrified. “Over there.”

  The children were kept in a corral made from bramble and bushes, just like those they used to build their suudu during the migrations. The young boys and girls were of varying ages, but before the Wodaabe women could search their faces, some women in the corral surrounded them protectively and held them back with their arms. These women didn’t seem as frightened as the others they had found being held prisoner earlier. They were all wearing niqabs, covering their arms and faces, instead of the customary hijabs. Suddenly they parted and Latif rose from behind them holding a rifle.

  She ducked out of the way as Latif squeezed off several rounds. This time it was Abir who maintained her poise, belting out a blast that knocked Latif from his feet. Balewa scrambled to her feet to grab Latif’s rifle, but one of his wives picked it up and pointed it at her.

  She had not expected this, and Abir kept humming while glancing at Balewa for instruction.

  Laughing, Latif slowly climbed to his feet. He had wrapped a bandolier around his shoulder, and his eyes were half asleep, glazed over from marijuana smoke.

  “She’ll kill you if I say so,” he said in their Fulfulde dialect.

  “We won’t let her,” Balewa replied.

  “You think that you’re here to rescue them, don’t you? But they don’t want to be rescued.”

  “That’s a lie,” Balewa said.

  “It’s God’s truth.” He motioned with his neck and the girl pulled the trigger. But the Wodaabe were prepared. They launched a dust cloud at the girl until she couldn’t see, then they knocked the rifle from her hands with quick bursts of sound. Latif tripped over his own legs as the dust pelted his eyes.

  Balewa looked into his long, malnourished face—a face that had once enchanted beauty contests at the Geerewol—and remembered his tobacco-stained teeth when he had forced himself upon her. She thought of the infant kicking in her belly and how it would have the soul of a coward.

  “Stand up,” she said, as the other women continued to chant and clap around them.

  “You can’t stop what I’ve begun,” he said. “These children will defend me to the death.”

  It was true, she realized. She could recognize the loyalty in the children’s eyes. They would protect him. These girls must have been his wives, and she realized that the other children also seemed suspicious of their intentions, as if they were the attackers and not the other way around.

  “Tell them how you raped me!” she said. “Tell them how you betrayed your own clan!”

  Latif’s face pulled into a scowl, and he spat in her direction. “You don’t even deserve the seed I’ve put in your filthy womb!”

  So he knows, Balewa thought. He knew that she could be the mother of one of his own children yet still thought nothing of killing her. She couldn’t will herself to sing again in the face of such selfishness and cruelty. It was as if he had swallowed the very music from the air.

  “We know the true way,” he went on. “We gave these girls something they never had: money, security, and the comfort of God. What do you offer them? Nothing! Poverty, shame, and hunger. All while the government spends billions of cowries on going into space! We are right here, living on Earth, and no one is providing for us. No one except God. God gives us what we need. God provides them with husbands and dowries and all the food their children can eat.”

  “God does not order you to kill,” Balewa retorted. “God does not order you to steal.”

  “He takes from the greedy. We’re going to take the food from the nonbelievers at the spaceport, and we’ll sell the rest. Nothing you can do will stop us.”

  But Durel had heard enough. “Shut up, Latif,” she interrupted. “Give us back our children.”

  She inspected the children, scanning their faces, searching for any sign of recognition. She shouted out their names: “Mohammed? Tambaya? Boubacar?”

  “We sold them a long time ago,” Latif scoffed.

  “Where? Where did you sell them?”

  “You’re all apostates! We’ll bring all nonbelievers to justice under God’s will! We’ll serve God with a new generation of true followers! There’s nothing you can do to stop us!”

  “We’ve heard enough, Latif,” Durel snapped. “I nursed you myself when you were a child, and this is your thanks to us. This is how you treat people from your own clan, who loved and supported you. It’s time for you to face justice.”

  Now Durel led the song with a ferocity that caused Latif to cower before her. He tried to scuttle away like a land crab, plugging his ears to protect himself against the sound. But there was nowhere else to go.

  CHAPTER 27

  Dusk fell rapidly, and soon it was growing so black that Bracket could barely make out the silhouettes of the bushes stenciling the Sahel. Above them the stars speckled the sky, each one sharp and distinct. This was the sky the Nok had lived under, the stars that caravanserai had followed across the desert, guided to the kingdom by their astrolabes bearing jade and turmeric and cornelian. Here they would have discovered rich music that melted rock itself.

  Seeta perked up beside him.

  “I can hear them. They’re coming back.”

  The women returned through the bush dragging
along Latif, a tall, lanky man who whimpered as he was half marched, half carried to the entrance to the tunnel. They looked weary and their braids were covered with dust from the fight, with globules of blood splashed here and there on their wrappers. Bracket realized as they brought the man closer, with revulsion, that they had crushed one of his ankles.

  “Oh no,” Seeta observed. “They’re alone.”

  Their children weren’t there. He could see the bitter disappointment in their faces. One of them, Abir, buckled over and began crying aloud, her chest heaving. They all grieved together in the starlight.

  “Spaceman,” Latif said when he saw Bracket, wincing as the women prodded him forward. He motioned with a hand as if launching it into the air. “Mask-raid.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s saying Masquerade,” Seeta explained. “The ship.”

  So Bello had ignited the imaginations of the Jarumi about space travel too.

  Bracket turned to the Wodaabe women. “What will you do with him?”

  They pointed toward the tunnel. They would take him back inside.

  “And then what?” he asked.

  They didn’t reply. The bandit cried out from fear as Balewa sang open the entrance and dragged him down below.

  When they returned underground, Wale had subdivided the chambers into quadrants, having scratched lines and numbers into the dirt. He was eagerly cataloging what he found in each quadrant: the statues, glyphs, and carvings, even the bones. He pointed to one of the tunnels, which was strewn with rubble and dust.