The Garden of Burning Sand

by Corban Addison

  Zoe replayed the footage she had captured. The way the man was dressed suggested he had spent the night in the apartment. Was he sleeping with Priscilla Kuwema? If so, who was the cousin? And why had the man not paid for the fritas?

  Fifteen minutes later, the man left the apartment looking more presentable. He climbed into a delivery truck and drove off. Before long the door opened again and the cousin appeared, a pretty girl in tow. He was dressed in a pink Oxford shirt and jeans, and the girl was heavily made-up and clad in a low-cut blouse and high heels. They kissed beside the red jeep. Then the man left and the girl flirted with the chain-smokers, trading smiles for fritas.

  When a third man—older than the others—left the apartment with yet another scantily clad woman, Zoe knew that the riddle of Priscilla Kuwema had only two solutions: either she lived with roommates who had regular amorous visitors, or she was a mahule—a prostitute.

  Zoe checked her watch. It was after eight. She had five minutes before she had to head to the office. She looked down the street and saw the fritas vendor soliciting a man on a motorcycle. She locked the Land Rover and waded into the sea of pedestrians. When the motorcyclist left, she approached the girl, money in hand.

  “Muli bwange,” she said.

  The girl smiled with her eyes. “Ndili bwino. Kaya inu?”

  “Ndili bwino,” Zoe said. “Do you speak English?”

  “Some.”

  “For fifty pin, I want a bag of your fritas, and I want to ask you a few questions.”

  “Okay,” the girl said.

  “Do you know Priscilla Kuwema?”

  When the girl looked confused, Zoe pointed at the woman’s apartment.

  A shadow crossed the girl’s face. She glanced down the street. “She not use that name.”

  Zoe remained impassive. “What name does she use?”

  “Doris.”

  “Why doesn’t she use her real name?”

  The girl took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

  Zoe slid the money into her pocket. “If we are going to do business, I need the truth.”

  The girl hesitated. “The men,” she said. “They call her Doris.”

  “Where is her husband?”

  The girl studied the ground. “She not have husband.”

  “Who are the men?”

  The girl looked scared. She handed Zoe a bag of fritas. “They come from the bars.”

  “Is Doris a mahule?”

  The girl nodded. “Now I go. Please.”

  Zoe paid the girl and returned to the Land Rover, her mind churning with possibilities. Had Kuyeya’s mother also been a prostitute? Had she lived at the apartment with Priscilla Kuwema—Doris? How many of Doris’s customers had seen Kuyeya? Could one of them be a pedophile? On the other hand, if Doris was a mahule, then why did she move so quickly to report Kuyeya’s absence to the police? Joseph was right and wrong at the same time. Doris knew nothing of the rape, but Kuyeya’s mother was hardly immaterial to the investigation.

  Zoe arrived at the CILA office a few minutes before the all-staff meeting. She looked around for Joseph but didn’t see him. She muddled through the meeting and the morning, conscious of her growing pile of work but consumed by the puzzle of Kuyeya’s case. At noon Sarge asked for an update on her research into the laws of Britain. She extemporized on the fly, but even her near-perfect recall of case authorities didn’t make up for her lack of progress.

  Sarge raised an eyebrow. “I need something by the end of the day.”

  “I’ll have it to you by four o’clock,” she promised.

  She sat down at her laptop and engaged her legal brain. She printed the report five minutes before four and set it on Sarge’s desk, pointing at her watch. Sarge was on the phone, but he acknowledged her with a nod. She got a glass of water from the kitchen and returned to her desk, listening to him flip through the pages. She felt her iPhone vibrate in her pocket.

  “It’s Joseph,” she told him. “I’m going to take it outside.”

  “Fine, fine,” he said distractedly. “This is good …”

  She took the call beside a trellis of flowering creepers.

  “I’m almost at the office,” Joseph said. “Are you free?”

  “Perfect timing,” she replied, walking to the gate. She crossed the road and climbed into his truck. “I have a surprise for you.”

  He peered over the rim of his sunglasses. “What would that be?”

  “A little video I took this morning before work.” She took out her iPhone and played him the footage. “The woman goes by the working name Doris. The men come from the bars. I spoke to a vendor of fritas on the street. Doris is her best customer.”

  “This changes things,” Joseph said. “The perpetrator could be a client.”

  She nodded. “Doris has some explaining to do.”

  He put the truck in gear and entered the flow of traffic on Church Road. “You’ve made yourself useful. Well done.”

  “One other thing,” she said, playing her advantage. “I’d like to talk to her alone.”

  Joseph navigated the double roundabout by the Zambia Supreme Court and sped east toward Nationalist Road. Zoe waited, allowing him to make the decision on his own.

  “I suppose she might find it easier to talk to a woman,” he said. Then he pointed at her phone. “Can you record the conversation?”

  “With or without her consent?”

  He laughed. “I don’t want to make you a witness. I just want to hear what she says.”

  Ten minutes later, Joseph knocked on Doris’s door. When she didn’t answer, he knocked again, this time more insistently. An old woman peered down at them from a balcony on the third floor but withdrew as soon as Zoe noticed her. Joseph tapped his foot, growing impatient. Just then, Zoe saw two school-aged children—a boy and a girl—walking toward the stairwell.

  “Excuse me,” Zoe said to them, “do you know if Doris is home?”

  The boy giggled. He turned to the girl and spoke a string of words in Nyanja.

  “What’s he saying?” Zoe asked Joseph.

  “They’re talking about an animal—what do you call it?—a genet. It hunts at night and sleeps during the day.” He patted the boy on the head. “Zikomo,” he said, and the children ran chattering toward the stairs.

  They knocked again on Doris’s door. After a while they heard the sound of shuffling feet, then the door opened a crack, revealing the face of Bright. The girl was dressed in pajama pants and a T-shirt. She stared at them fearfully. Joseph exchanged a few words with her in Nyanja.

  “Her mother is taking a bath,” he said to Zoe. “Why don’t you wait for her? I’m going to walk around and ask some questions.”

  “Muli bwange?” Zoe said when Bright opened the door.

  “I’m okay,” the girl replied, gesturing toward the couch. “Wait here.”

  As soon as she disappeared, Zoe took a seat and studied the room around her. The furnishings were simple and clean. The couch had a matching chair. The floor was covered with woven rugs, and there were curtains on the windows. Beside the door was a bookshelf adorned with half-melted candles and carvings of game animals. The walls, however, were bare, save for an ebony ceremonial mask that hung over the door.

  Eventually, Doris appeared and greeted Zoe with a plastic smile. Clad in a conservative chitenge gown, she barely resembled the seductress who had purchased six bags of fritas that morning. “Where is the officer?” she asked.

  “He’s outside talking to the neighbors. I wanted to speak with you alone.”

  Doris tilted her head. “Would you like tea?”

  “Please,” Zoe said.

  Doris went to the stove and filled a kettle with water. “You are American?”

  “I’m from New York,” Zoe replied.

  “Ah.” Doris sounded almost wistful. “Lusaka is small to you?”

  Zoe shrugged. “You can see the stars at night.”

  They continued to make small talk until the tea finishe
d steeping. Doris handed Zoe a mug and took a seat on the chair. Zoe reached into the pocket of her suit jacket and touched her iPhone, commencing the recording.

  “Ms. Kuwema,” she began, “I want you to know that I’m not here to investigate you. I’m here because of what happened to Kuyeya. I need your help to find the man who raped her.”

  Doris nodded, looking nervous.

  “I know how you make a living,” Zoe said, speaking softly to lessen the blow. “I know you go by the street name Doris. I know that the man who was here last night is not your cousin. I saw the men who were with you this morning, and the other women.”

  Doris stared at her.

  “I don’t want to make problems for you,” Zoe continued. “But I need you to answer my questions exactly as I ask them, leaving nothing out. Will you do that, for Kuyeya’s sake?”

  The silence between them extended until it became awkward. Zoe was about to restate her plea when Doris spoke, her tone low and even. “I will tell you what I know.”

  Zoe let out the breath she was holding. “Good. How old is Kuyeya?”

  Doris shrugged. “I think she is thirteen or fourteen. But I’m not sure.”

  “When did you meet Bella?”

  Doris looked at the ceiling. “It was winter, the year Chiluba was arrested.”

  Zoe processed this. Frederick Chiluba, the first Zambian president in the multi-party era, had been charged with corruption by his successor, Levy Mwanawasa, and subjected to public prosecution—an event that had shaken Zambia’s patronage system to the core. She searched her memory for the year. “That was 2004?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  Doris placed her hands in her lap. “On Addis Ababa Drive, near the Pamodzi hotel.”

  “You were streetwalking?”

  Doris nodded. “She was new. The other girls were unkind because she was pretty and they didn’t want to lose business. I took pity on her. She reminded me of my sister.”

  “Where was she staying at the time?”

  “I don’t know. I think it was a flat in Northmead.”

  Zoe took another sip of tea. “Did she move in with you?”

  “Yes. Soon after we met. She helped with rent.”

  “Was Bella her street name?”

  Doris nodded again. “Her real name was Charity Mizinga.”

  “She never mentioned anything about Kuyeya’s age?”

  Doris thought about this. “I think she was born in January. I do not know what year.”

  “Where was Bella from?”

  “She came from Southern Province. Her mother was Tonga.”

  Zoe felt a twinge of hope. “Are her parents still alive?”

  Doris shook her head. “I think they are dead.”

  “And her extended family?”

  “I don’t know. She never talked about them.”

  Zoe took the conversation in a different direction. “When Bella brought men here, what did she do with Kuyeya?”

  Doris stood. “I will show you.”

  Zoe followed her down the hallway to the door on the right. The room beyond was bare except for a mattress and a chest of drawers.

  “This was her place,” Doris said. “Now I rent it to other girls. When Bella did business here, she put Kuyeya in the bathroom. When she went out, she left Kuyeya in this room.”

  On the far wall, Zoe saw thin marks in pairs and triplets. She knelt down and examined them carefully. From their spacing, she guessed they had been made by fingernails. She pictured the girl scoring the wall, and remembered Joy Herald’s explanation of the stigma of disability. The indignation she felt was tempered by sorrow.

  “Bella was popular with the men,” Doris said when they returned to the living room. “But she never had enough money. She was always giving it to ngangas for Kuyeya’s medicine.”

  Zoe frowned. An nganga was a traditional healer. “Why didn’t she go to a clinic?”

  “She trusted the ngangas. They helped us with STDs.”

  “Did the men Bella brought here ever … touch Kuyeya?”

  Doris looked horrified. “No. The child was not available.”

  Zoe took a breath. “We think her rapist may have been a client of yours or Bella’s. Can you think of any man who showed an interest in her?”

  Doris shook her head. “Kuyeya was like a shadow. A spirit. When Bella put her in the bathroom, she gave her medicine to sleep. The men left her alone.”

  Zoe sat back against the couch. Doris’s lifestyle and Bella’s history were interesting but irrelevant without a connection to a suspect. Then an idea came to her. It was bizarre, really—on the far side of remote. But she had no other cards to play.

  “Did you ever keep a record of your clients? Did Bella?”

  Doris narrowed her eyes and vanished into the hallway, returning moments later with a spiral-bound notebook. “Bella liked to write,” she said, handing the book to Zoe. “I am not good at reading, but I kept it. Other than Kuyeya, it was her most precious possession.”

  Zoe studied the notebook. Its cover was worn, its pages dog-eared. On the inside cover, Bella had written in English: “VOLUME 3: APRIL 2004—”

  “When did Bella die?” she asked Doris quietly.

  “The winter of 2009. July, I think.”

  Zoe pointed at the inside cover. “This says ‘Volume 3.’ Are there other notebooks?”

  “That’s the only one I have seen.”

  “Zikomo,” Zoe said. “I’m sorry to ask such difficult questions.”

  “Life is difficult,” Doris replied. “Is the child well?”

  “She’s in good hands.”

  Doris nodded gratefully. “I owe Bella a debt I can never repay.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ask her,” Doris said, gesturing at the book. “I think she will tell you.”

  When Zoe emerged from the apartment, the sun hung low and molten above the horizon, and traffic on Chilimbulu Road was at a near standstill. She glanced at her watch and searched the crowded roadway for Joseph. It was almost 5:30 p.m. He was nowhere to be seen.

  She leaned against the fender of his truck, waiting. She saw a group of boys knocking a soccer ball around. One of them gave the ball a swift kick—too swift for the intended recipient—and the ball rolled in Zoe’s direction. She scooped it up and walked toward them, intending to ask about Joseph, when she saw him striding toward her, holding a stuffed doll and a pair of wire-framed eyeglasses.

  “Where did you find those?” she asked, tossing the ball back to the boys.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he said, eyeing the notebook in her hands.

  “I asked first.”

  He grinned. “I’ll show you.”

  She followed him down the road. When traffic began to move again, she caught sight of a pickup truck carrying a group of young Zambians in green T-shirts. She grabbed Joseph’s arm, looking for the bandana-clad gang leader. It took her a second to realize that everything about the vehicle was different—the paint color, the model, the driver, the boys in the flatbed. Her dread quickly turned into irritation. Get a grip! They’re harmless.

  “Are you all right?” Joseph gave her a concerned look.

  She nodded, starting to walk again. “I’ll be glad when the election is over.”

  Joseph led her to the entrance of a walled alley separating two apartment blocks. The alley was rutted with tire tracks and littered with piles of trash and dog scat. “I found the doll here,” he said, showing her a knee-high pile of cinderblocks. “The glasses were beside it.”

  “They could be anyone’s,” Zoe objected.

  “It’s possible. But I found a girl named Given who saw a silver SUV on Saturday at nineteen hundred. She said it was parked right here. I asked the neighbors to make sure, and no one claimed them. Where they were sitting, they could have gone days without being noticed.”

  Zoe gave him an intense look. “Did Given see the driver?”


  “Only his back. She confirmed he was tall. I showed her the symbol that Dominic drew in the dirt. She recognized it, but she didn’t know what it was.”

  “Did she see Kuyeya?”

  “No. The man was climbing into the vehicle. The girl must have been inside already.”

  Zoe sighed. Another witness who can be neutralized.

  They walked back to Joseph’s truck, and he handed her the doll and glasses. “I hope you’re not in a hurry to get home,” he said, gesturing at the traffic crawling by.

  She shook her head. “Nothing waiting for me but a swim and this notebook.”

  His eyes moved to the bound volume in her hands.

  She smiled. “I’ll tell you on the drive.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Zoe sat on a chair beside the pool, her skin tingling from an exhilarating cold-water swim. The sun was gone, leaving the garden in shadow, but the tall sky held the afterglow like the embers of a dying fire. She took long breaths, allowing the scented air to reach deep into her lungs. Overhead, in the jacaranda that shaded the pool, a Heuglin’s Robin sang.

  Zoe opened Bella’s notebook and read the first page. It was a letter written in English.

  Dear Jan,

  Yesterday I argued with the girls again. They tell me I should pay more rent. They do not listen when I tell them I have no money. Kuyeya had a fever and the nganga charged one hundred pin for medicine. I paid him two hundred pin last week. The blisters were bad again, and I couldn’t work. The girls stole my notebook and threw it in the toilet. It is ruined now. This is the second notebook I have lost. I should probably stop writing. But it is all I have, along with Kuyeya.

  I need more money. The bars are too crowded. The men pay less than they used to. Girls make more on Addis Ababa. But some die, too. A girl told me about Johannesburg. She made videos and earned two million kwacha. But I am not as pretty as before. I am older and sick. Sometimes I dream that I am going to die. But if I die, what will happen to Kuyeya? I need to find another place to stay.