The Garden of Burning Sand

by Corban Addison

  Over the next ten minutes, Luchembe rehearsed the high points from his memorandum: that Zambia’s Constitution protects a person against unlawful search; that while a court may order a criminal defendant to submit to a medical examination to ascertain any matter material to the proceedings, the word “examination” should not be interpreted to include a blood sample; and that a court-ordered DNA test would not only violate Darious Nyambo’s constitutional rights but would also pave the way for the rights of all defendants in rape cases to be infringed.

  The defense attorney’s performance was remarkably lackluster, and Zoe found herself nursing a fleeting hope that Kaunda would grant their application. She looked at Sarge, expecting him to deliver a point-by-point rebuttal, but his reply, when it came, was spare.

  “Your Worship,” he said, “the choice before you is not an abstraction; it is a child. Kuyeya deserves justice. This Court has the power to deliver it. I trust you will do so.”

  The magistrate nodded. “I thank counsel for your words. As promised, I will take this matter under advisement. Let’s hope the election in a few days is peaceful.”

  When Kaunda disappeared into chambers, Benson Luchembe stomped out of the courtroom, prompting a scramble among his staff.

  Zoe stood and moved toward Sarge to congratulate him. “That was an argument worthy of the Supreme Court,” she said.

  Sarge glanced at the bench. “Somewhere along the way, this case became personal.”

  Zoe smiled. “Let’s hope young Thoko feels the same.”

  Chapter 11

  The magistrate’s opinion arrived by email the next morning. Zoe had never heard Sarge curse before, and the sound of it shocked her. He jerked away from his desk. “Kaunda had it written before the hearing,” he exclaimed. “He only pretended to listen to me.”

  He stood up quickly and disappeared into Mariam’s office. Minutes later, Mariam called the response team to a meeting. Zoe walked to the conference room with Niza and found Joseph already there. He glanced at her but didn’t speak, his eyes fraught with anger.

  After everyone was seated, Mariam said, “The ruling is a setback. We need to decide what to do about it. Joseph, do you have any evidence that Kaunda was corrupted?”

  Joseph blinked as if coming out of a trance. “I followed him everywhere. He didn’t meet with anyone from the Nyambo family or Luchembe’s firm. But that doesn’t prove anything. They could have spoken on the phone or by email.”

  That’s why I didn’t see you for days, Zoe thought. You were shadowing the magistrate.

  “In light of that, we have two options,” Mariam went on. “First, we take the DNA issue to the High Court. Second, we proceed to trial without DNA.”

  “An appeal will take months and give Luchembe an excuse to delay the trial further,” said Niza. “There’s no chance that a High Court judge will make an example of Patricia Nyambo’s son. They’ll find a way to rule against us on a technicality.”

  Sarge shook his head. “The magistrate has to be compromised. You don’t write an entire opinion on a subject so significant before you hear oral argument.”

  “He could have written it last night,” Mariam suggested.

  “It’s the longest decision I’ve ever gotten from him. Ten pages of careful reasoning. He knows we stand little chance on appeal. He wants us to try this case in front of him without DNA. We have to find a way around him.”

  “The only way around him is to get him recused,” Mariam said. “But without evidence of bias or corruption, we can’t go to the Principal Resident Magistrate.”

  Joseph leaned forward in his chair. “I have a thought. It’s been bothering me since the beginning. Did any of you see the way Kaunda looked at Darious at the initial hearing? He was apologetic. What if they know each other?”

  “Now that I think about it,” Zoe said, “I saw the same thing.”

  Sarge furrowed his brow. “It’s an intriguing idea. But they would have to have a substantial relationship to create a conflict of interest. The Principal Resident Magistrate will never intervene if they’re just acquaintances.”

  “It’s worth a look,” Mariam said to Joseph. “Let us know what you find. In the meantime, does anyone vote for an appeal?”

  All heads shook in unison.

  “Okay,” she said. “That means we have to proceed on the assumption that the burden of proof must be met without DNA. We need more evidence. We need an adult eyewitness. We need someone who can tell us definitively when Kuyeya was born. And if there was a personal motive, we need to figure out what it was.”

  “I’m working on the virgin rape angle,” Joseph said. “I’ll go back to Kanyama and Kabwata and beat the bushes. Perhaps I’ll find someone I didn’t talk to before.”

  “And I’ll keep digging into the past,” Zoe said. “I think a trip to Livingstone is in order.”

  “I agree,” Mariam said. She looked at Joseph. “If you can spare a couple of days, I’d like you to go along. We’ll cover your expenses.”

  He gave Zoe a hint of a grin. “The falls are nice this time of year.”

  Zoe returned to her desk and powered up her laptop, barely containing her enthusiasm. Victoria Falls was one of her favorite places on earth. She purchased a pair of round-trip tickets to Livingstone, reserved a rental car, and booked two rooms at the Zambezi Safari Lodge. At noon, she drove home to pack. She threw some clothes into a duffel bag and placed her MacBook and Bella’s diary in her backpack. Then she cobbled together a lunch of grapes and cheese and ate it on the deck while studying a map of Livingstone.

  Just after one, Joseph met her at the gate in his truck, wearing a short-sleeve shirt, cargo shorts, and sandals. She tossed her duffel into the flatbed and climbed in, wedging her backpack between her knees. He smiled and gunned the engine, throwing her against her seat.

  “Are you excited or something?” she asked.

  “I haven’t been on an airplane in years,” he said with a laugh.

  “What is it with men and mechanical things?” She rolled her eyes. “My brother is like a kid every time he’s at an airport.”

  Twenty minutes later, they parked in the lot at the Lusaka International Airport and entered the terminal, joining the queue of passengers waiting to pay the departure tax. Before long, Zoe’s eyes began to wander. The airport reminded her of the Park Street bus station in Johannesburg—a modernist cavern with wide-open floors and a confusing array of gates.

  Suddenly, she frowned. Thirty feet away, a man was leaning against a wall, staring at them. Dressed in a floral-print shirt and black sunglasses, he had the build of a bull—large head, no neck, and a body sculpted out of muscle. She stared back at him until he turned away, searching her memory for his face. She couldn’t place him. He was holding a duffel bag. He was probably just another passenger.

  When their flight was called, they boarded the twin-engine propeller plane and took seats at the rear—Zoe by the window, Joseph by the aisle. The last passenger to board the aircraft was the man in sunglasses. He looked toward them briefly and then sat down in the second row. Zoe studied the back of his head, feeling a vague flutter of concern. She considered pointing him out to Joseph, but she didn’t want to seem paranoid.

  The plane took off and banked to the southwest, climbing into the spotless sky. Zoe watched Lusaka recede into the distance and then vanish altogether, like a mirage in the highland bush. She took out Bella’s notebook and began to reread pages she had marked with sticky notes. Halfway through the volume, she reached the only letter Bella hadn’t written in English. She had meant to ask Joseph about it some time ago.

  “Is this Nyanja?” she asked.

  “It’s Tonga,” he said, scanning the letter. His eyes darkened.

  “What?”

  “Didn’t Doris tell you she owed Bella a debt?”

  Zoe nodded. “What does it say?”

  He translated the letter in paraphrase. It was summer—the year was unclear. Bella had been working the stree
ts with Doris and a girl named Loveness. One evening a man in a Jaguar flashed a wad of cash and asked if they wanted to party. He took them to a bungalow where they found a group of seven men, all snorting white powder. It wasn’t long before the men turned violent. They held Loveness down, forced her to swallow a pill of some kind, and raped her repeatedly. Two of the men dragged Bella into another room, waved knives around, and joked about circumcising her. Fearing for her life, she kicked one of the men in the groin and plunged his knife into the other man. She fled the room and found Doris spreadeagled on the floor, crying. Loveness was nowhere to be seen. At this point, Bella did something with the knife that resulted in a great deal of blood—her description in Tonga was threadbare. Then she and Doris ran naked into the night. They wandered for a while, hiding in bushes when cars passed. At the edge of Kalingalinga, they found an old woman who took pity on them and gave them clothes. They never saw Loveness again.

  When Joseph finished, Zoe didn’t speak for a long time. Her senses felt raw from the reading. “Doris took care of Kuyeya because Bella saved her life,” she said at last.

  “It appears that way.” He stared at the notebook. “Do you know how Bella died?”

  Zoe nodded. “Let me show you.” She flipped to the end of the notebook and watched over his shoulder as he read the words of Bella’s last entry.

  Dear Jan,

  I have AIDS. It is very advanced. My CD4 count is 42. That is why I have been sick so much. I have been coughing for months, sometimes with blood. I have fevers and sweats at night. I see terrible things in my sleep. The woman who tested me told me what I already knew. It is TB. She said I need treatment right away. I went to the hospital, but there were no doctors or nurses. Something happened in the government. They told me to come back in a week or two. I don’t know if I will be able to make the trip.

  I took my last client in May. I don’t have strength to do it anymore. I am running out of money. If not for Doris, I would not have food for Kuyeya. I am very worried about her. Who will take her when I die? She is not like other children. She needs special care. Her heart is weak. She has bad eyesight. Who will pay for her medicine and get her new glasses? People do not understand her. They say she is cursed. I am afraid she will be abused. I trust Doris, but I don’t trust the other girls or the men who come here.

  I don’t know why I keep writing. What do these words matter? There is nothing here but pain. And now death is coming. I will give what I have left to Kuyeya. I must go. She is having a nightmare.

  Zoe stared at the period at the end of the last sentence and felt the sorrow afresh. Bella’s final letter was like her life—cut off prematurely, bereft of resolution.

  “She was prescient about the men,” she said. “But she underestimated Doris. The irony is Doris was the reason she waited so long to get tested. Doris was suspicious of ARVs. She thought AIDS was invented by the West to kill Africans. Bella went to the ngangas to placate her. Then when she finally asked for help, the nurses were on strike.”

  “The Ministry of Health scandal,” Joseph said softly.

  Zoe nodded. The story was infamous in Zambia. In the winter of 2009, tens of millions of dollars had disappeared from the Ministry of Health, prompting international donors to suspend aid payments and health-care workers to abandon their posts in protest.

  “I’m sure the kleptocrats who took the money never thought anyone would die,” she said. “They just wanted Ferraris and Swiss bank accounts.”

  Joseph tensed when she said this. He looked as if he was about to reply, but the words never quite materialized. After a moment, he reclined his seat and closed his eyes, bringing an abrupt end to the conversation.

  Zoe watched him carefully, puzzling over his reaction. It wasn’t Bella’s battle with AIDS that set him on edge. That would make sense, given his sister’s death. It was the embezzlement at the Ministry of Health. But why? Why did he seem to take the scandal personally? Finding no answer, she took out the inflight magazine and read until the pilot announced their final descent into Livingstone.

  When the plane parked outside the terminal, the man in sunglasses was the first to disembark. He hefted his duffel bag and left the aircraft without a glance in their direction. By the time Zoe stepped onto the tarmac, he was halfway to the terminal. Seeing the purpose in his stride, she set aside her earlier suspicions. He’s just another passenger in transit.

  She led the way into the terminal and finalized the rental of a Toyota pickup, ignoring Joseph, who had yet to speak. The attendant escorted them to the lot and gave her the keys.

  “You drive,” Zoe said, handing them to Joseph.

  “Where are we going?” he asked in a surly tone.

  “Livingstone General Hospital,” she said, stifling the urge to ask what was wrong. “I bet the nursing school is still open.”

  On the drive into town, Zoe stared out the window at the bush, its scrub-like blanket a stark contrast to the cerulean sky. She waited for Joseph’s mood to improve, but he just gazed out the windshield, lost in his own world. When they reached the city limits, he turned right on Mosi-oa-Tunya Road and headed toward downtown.

  “I think we turn here,” she said, remembering the road from the map she had studied.

  He tossed her a glance. “I was under the impression you wanted me to drive.” She studied his face and saw with great relief that the storm clouds had passed.

  “You’re cheering up, thank God.”

  He didn’t respond, but the corners of his mouth turned upward.

  A few minutes later, they parked in the hospital lot. At once antiquated and austere, Livingstone General had the look of a nineteenth-century sanitarium transplanted in African soil. Its bricks were the color of riverine clay, and its louvered windows, darkened by dust, were open to admit fresh air.

  They went to the reception desk and greeted an officious-looking matron. When they asked for the registrar of the nursing school, the woman shook her head.

  “Her office close seventeen hundred.”

  Joseph repeated the question, noting that they had ten minutes left before five o’clock. Reluctantly, the woman directed them toward a hall on the far side of the lobby. Skirting a filing cabinet brimming with paperwork, they entered the admissions office of the nursing school. Behind a wooden desk sat a heavyset Zambian woman clad in a pantsuit that clung a little too tightly to her frame. The woman shook their hands.

  “I am Kombe,” she said in accented English. “I am Dean of Admissions.”

  Joseph made the introductions and then deferred to Zoe, who gave the woman a sanitized version of their interest in Bella—Charity Mizinga.

  “We believe she was a student here sometime before 2004,” Zoe said.

  The dean typed on her keyboard. “All students enrolled after 2001 are on our computer system. She is not listed.”

  “What about students admitted before 2001?” Joseph asked.

  “We have a paper registry,” the dean replied. She disappeared through another door and returned a minute later with a dust-coated book. She dropped the book on her desk and waved away the particles that flew up. “It is organized by year and surname. If you start at the back, you’ll see the roll for 2000, 1999, 1998—you understand.”

  “What we’re really looking for is information about her family,” Zoe said. “Is there anyone who might remember her? A professor or a doctor, perhaps?”

  The dean ushered them to the door. “Dr. Mumbi has been here more than twenty years. I don’t know if he is on rotation today.” She pointed. “There are chairs down the hall that you can use. Leave the registry with the receptionist. If you have additional questions, I will be in the office tomorrow.”

  They took seats on folding chairs, and Joseph cracked the musty book. It wasn’t long before they found Charity’s name in the 1995 term. An asterisk had been placed beside her name, together with a date: April 15, 1996. Returning to the front of the book, Joseph found an explanation for the asterisk. It referred
to a student who left the program before the conclusion of the term. He flipped to the 1994 term, and they found Charity’s name again.

  He furrowed his brow. “She dropped out in her second year.”

  “Something serious must have happened,” she said.

  He nodded. “Let’s find Dr. Mumbi.”

  They returned to the lobby and waited for the receptionist to finish a phone conversation.

  The woman arched her eyebrows, staring at the registry in Joseph’s hands. “You back?”

  “Inga ndayanda kwambaula chitonga. Ino yebo?” he said. “I prefer to speak Tonga. Don’t you?”

  Hearing her native language, the receptionist’s face transformed.

  They chatted briefly and then Joseph turned to Zoe. “Dr. Mumbi is here today. He usually walks the wards, but he just stepped outside to take a call. He hasn’t come back yet.”

  While Joseph thanked the receptionist, Zoe walked out the door and saw a man in a white lab coat talking on his mobile phone. He was wiry and bespectacled with a shock of white hair. When he ended the call, he moved toward the entrance, lost in thought.

  “Dr. Mumbi?” Zoe said.

  The man looked startled. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

  Zoe introduced herself and Joseph who had just joined her. “We’re looking for the family of a girl who studied nursing here in 1996. We understand you’ve been here twenty years.”

  “1996 is a long time ago,” the doctor replied. “What’s the name of the student?”

  “Charity Mizinga,” Zoe answered.

  Dr. Mumbi thought out loud. “Charity Mizinga in 1996. That was the year we were wrapping up the pediatric AIDS study. Yes, now that I think about it, I remember her. She was a gifted student, but she left the school without graduating. A shame.”