Following his uncontrollable impulses Shantaya threw the cell phone back on the floor. As she had no other means of communication at hand she bent down to pick it up and checked with relief that it was still working.
“All right. What do we do now?" The woman asked.
"First, control your temper. You must understand that I am not willing to work for a hysterical woman. In my profession I cannot tolerate neurosis." The hit man made a moment of silence allowing time for his hard words work their way in the psyche of his old friend. Then he went on. "They may be traveling somewhere. I'm going to track the trips abroad. You say the boy is Argentine?”
“Yes.
"I'm going to start there. I will keep in touch.”
He immediately cut off the call. Shantaya was furious at the reproach she had received but in the depths of her mind she was intimidated by the character she had hired. The woman had opened a box full of dangers and was beginning to realize it.
Chapter 15
Zahra maintained absolute silence while the quiet Russian driver employed by Boris led them to the border of Canada. Federico took her hand and began to babble some explanations but the woman stopped him with a movement of his hand.
"I do not blame you," She said in a distressed tone. "I know it's part of a plan that woman drew around you and you've been just an instrument of that plan. But I cannot hide the way I feel.”
Actually Zahra had mixed feelings. On the one hand rage because the man she had chosen with so much illusion had fathered a son in the womb of her rival, her enemy. But on the other hand there was a feeling of envy she had already experienced when she learned that Adhiambo was pregnant. Most African women see pregnancy and childbirth as an inescapable phase of life and long to have those experiences as soon as possible. It is perhaps a subject at once genetic and cultural.
To divert her mind from all those negative thoughts Zahra began to explain to her partner the last minute arrangements she had to make to leave her affairs in New York in order so as to be able to resume them later if the situation of insecurity in which they lived got solved even partially.
"So Imani and Kafil will leave New York and hide in the shelter offered by Boris?"
"Yes, they will be coming back every few days to the city to determine if it is possible to reopen the store with reasonable security.”
"And what did you commission Adhiambo?"
Zahra had never discussed with Federico her additional business related to the search of suitable husbands for the African girls who ended up abandoned in the city. She had not done so realizing that it was difficult to discern her activity from the trafficking and exploitation of women carried out by Shantaya. With many precautions and marginal explanations she made him aware of that facet of her business and her life.
"And you have asked Adhiambo to take care of those tasks."
"Yes, we have about ten women who are more or less established and I think Adhiambo knows in depth the problematic in which they are and I trust in her to handle the situations that can arise.”
Jomo Kenyatta International Airport Nairobi-Kenya
The long flight from Toronto arrived fifteen minutes in advance. Federico helped Zahra load her hand luggage up to the conveyor belt in order to look of the rest of the suitcases. As they left the restricted passengers area they looked for someone waiting for them. Many drivers carried signs with names of passengers in different languages and alphabets. At last, at the end of the corridor, Zahra saw a tall, thin man dressed in traditional African clothing, which contrasted with the western dress of the rest of the people who wandered at the airport. She approached him and then recognized one of Chief Nkwame Obonyo's sons. She held out her hand to greet him and said.
“Duma. I barely recognize you. When I left Kenya you were but a child. As I remember you were no more than ten years old.”
Obviously flattered by the treatment of the elegant lady who had recognized him the young man stayed confused for a moment. Finally kissing her outstretched hand and whispered something in a dialect that was incomprehensible to the woman. Zahra introduced her companion.
“Duma. This is Federico, my boyfriend. Federico, this is Duma, my foster brother.”
Duma tried to repeat the boy's name but only managed to mumble something that sounded remotely similar. Then he carried the suitcases with a surprising display of physical vigor to a man so slender. The couple recently arrived looked astonished as they saw Duma approaching an old all-terrain Land Rover. Once there he opened it and placed the luggage in the trunk and on top of the roof.
"Do you have a vehicle of your own?" Asked admiringly the woman.
"Belongs to my ... our father. Now there are already several cars in the village.”
"Prepare for a long journey." Zahra said to her boyfriend. "Although I did it only once and in the other direction, I remember that the village is many miles away and I do not know what the road will be like in the last part, the one closest to the boma. It was awful at the time I left.”
Nkwame Obonyo was delighted to receive his foster daughter and his joy was contagious. The man looked sturdy yet and his outfit was partially westernized. He had extended his family recently by marrying a girl of about fourteen, which brought Zahra not very happy memories. Another wife, a little older, had a very advanced pregnancy and carried by the hand a girl about three years old. There was no doubt that the man was sexually very active.
They installed Zahra and Federico in what had been the Anglican mission until just a few years before and whose original occupants Zahra had known. She remembered that the missionary was the first white man she had ever seen and that she had then decided to marry one of them. The woman also remembered his wife and a couple of blond children.
"Now we have a school run the government in the village and the missionaries have moved to another place." Explained Obonyo. "You'll be comfortable here until we build a house near mine for you. As you will see, we no longer build huts but houses of bricks and mortar with certain comforts.”
"Do not worry, Father, we'll be fine anywhere."
"Are you going to stay in the village?"
"For the moment, yes.”
“Are you in danger? Is anyone stalking you?
"There's some of that, Father. I'll tell you later.”
"You'll be safe here. However you must tell me of whom we must protect you. In the savannah a bird does not fly without us knowing it.”
The first days Zahra and Federico were establishing themselves in the temporary accommodation that had been awarded to them. Since they had left New York with a small baggage they had to travel a couple of times to Nairobi to activate a bank account to which they could transfer money from the Zahra´s bank in the United States and buy suitable clothes and implements to equip their house. Duma Obonyo took them to the city where they stayed in a hotel with the commitment to look for them in two days.
The young people strolled around the city, shopped and used the occasion to eat well in restaurants with European and African menus. One day Zahra used her notebook to communicate via Skype with Imani. The woman told her that they were permanently visiting the flower shop and its surroundings and there were no signs that they were being watched by hostile people.
"If within a week there is no news you can open the store and restart the activities." Said Zahra. "You know the business, you know where to buy and you have access to my account at the Bank. You can make the payments, collect your and Kafil's salaries and deposit the remainder. Here I can withdraw the money to live without having to depend economically on my father. You have my absolute confidence. I also ask you to communicate with Adhiambo every so often.”
That night Zahra and Federico made love in a fiery way among the soft sheets and king size bed of the hotel. The next day they only got up for lunch at three in the afternoon. The woman wondered how her boyfriend managed to extract so much energy from his slender body. Recalling the boy's confidences about the brutal methods with whic
h Shantaya had trapped him; Zahra resorted to all the hard-sex arts she imagined. She rode the man's face, covering him with her fluids, biting his neck and shoulders to make them bleed, scratching with her long nails his back producing red furrows and beating his chest and face with her clenched fists. Zahra progressively noticed that as she performed these activities she came up with new ways of physically mistreating her man and that they brought her a pleasure whose origin she could not explain. When she produced wounds in his body the girl felt a burning in her intimate zone that the boy had to extinguish with all the resources of oral or normal sex as she indicated. The two days in Nairobi were of an amatory frenzy that set the pattern of their future relationships. Zahra did not notice it at the time but the relationship between them gradually acquired a sadomasochistic imprint that satisfied them to delirium and would not abandon the couple thereupon. The woman had discovered in herself a sadistic side previously unknown to her. The tortures and humiliations inflicted on her man, which had originally been just a method to retain him, gradually became a source of incomparable erotic pleasure.
"I cannot believe what I'm doing. You have blown my head." She said to Federico. "I will not accept losing you."
That afternoon Duma appeared and among the three loaded the items bought in the city to the roof of the truck. They had even purchased a double bed and its entire trousseau, since they wanted to reproduce in the village the days of ecstasy spent in Nairobi.
"I had never seen such a number of things to equip a house," Said Duma. "Neither my father nor his wives have so much...”
Chapter 16
When they returned to the village Zahra received the great surprise that Kitwana was waiting for her. The shaman was very old but still moved with agility and ran the savannah offering his services to his regular clients. Their mutual excitement was immense and the girl warmly embraced the old man to the surprise of the whole village, whose members were unaccustomed to such public effusions of affection. Finally Zahra noticed that Federico was present and releasing Kitwana took the boy's hand and proceeded to introduce them.
"I introduce you to Kitwana, the man who picked me up when I was wandering alone through the jungle and brought me to this village that is my now home." The woman's tone showed that she was shaken. "I told you the story and you know what I am talking about.” Then she turned to the shaman and said.
“Kitwana, let me I introduce you to Federico, my boyfriend.”
At the insistence of the grateful young woman the shaman stayed with her and her boyfriend in the mission. Both Zahra and Kitwana wanted to tell each other everything that had happened in the twenty years since their separation when the young girl left the village of her foster father. Federico left them alone so that they could speak privately using the tribal dialect or the Swahili in alternative form.
After a prolonged exposition by the woman and a much shorter one by the shaman, they both went to an interior garden of the building where the old man lit a small fire. As Zahra knew what would come she sat on a small bench in front of Kitwana and remained silent. The sorcerer extracted a handful of ground and dried herbs from his pack and threw them over the fire, producing an acrid, thick smoke. The girl felt a slight dizziness and then a state of well-being that were well known to her and brought back memories of her distant stay with Kitwana. The shaman rolled his eyes and began to swing back and forth over the stone on which he was sitting while humming an ancient melody in a forgotten language. The process lasted an eternity, and every so often the sorcerer threw a new handful of herbs into the fire that immediately burnt crackling . Kitwana suddenly opened his eyes and said.
"He's totally in love with you."
"Who?" Zahra's question was utterly unnecessary, and only allowed her to gradually assimilate the pleasure caused by the phrase.
“Your boyfriend. He would follow you to the end of the world and you can do with him whatever you want ... in fact you are already doing it.”
“ What do you mean?” New rhetorical question.
"What you do to him gives you a new kind of pleasure ..." The old man ignored Zahra´s question and continued with his vision. "... something that was unknown to you and now you want to keep at all costs. It is something that should bring you remorse and even embarrass you, because you are abusing him but you have become addicted to this feeling ... and so does he.”
The old man looked at Zahra in the eyes for the first time since his peroration began while the woman defiantly looked at him.
“Then follow with your instincts but you will have to restrain yourself because you can harm him and he will never complain ... because he is your slave.. your voluntary slave.”
Kitwana, who looked tired from the effort of sustained concentration paused and loosened his stance while Zahra, who had been drinking with relish the old man's words, remained silent. The man recovered himself, extracted a new handful of the hallucinogen from his bag and continued.
"But I see a shadow ... a shadow that comes from the past." The woman jumped on her bench paying full attention.
"It is a woman ... surely the former owner of your slave ... who is still in love with him and who is about to give birth a son of him and will not rest until recovering him... or kill him and kill you too.”
Under great agitation Zahra stood up but shortly after regained control of her and sat down again. For the first time, she opened his mouth.
"What will this woman do to get him back? She does not know where we are....”
Kitwana frowned and began to hammer and hum again. Finally he continued talking.
"Do not rely too much on your safety ... there's one ... no, two ... three black men behind your lead. It's a matter of time before they get to you and your boyfriend.”
At that moment Federico, who had left them alone a couple of hours before, appeared in the door without speaking a word. Zahra jumped again.
"Do not say any of this to Federico," She pleaded.
“I will not. But I will talk to your father to prevent him. He will know how to take care of you.”
When the line phone rang Shantaya immediately rose. She had already received a text message announcing the call.
"Hi ... yes Narcisse, all right, I listen to you.”
The interlocutor kept speaking for a while narrating his investigations.
"... I finally determined that they both flew to Nairobi from Toronto. They must have crossed to Canada by car.”
"It makes sense, because I know that this Zahra woman is Kenyan, the same as Adhiambo. What is the next step?”
"Go to Kenya and try to find a clue in Nairobi."
“ Then fly right now and start searching.”
"I must bring two of my men, both Africans, to move in that continent which is unknown to me.”
“Well, just do it.”
“There will be expenses.”
"Pay no attention to expenses. Bring me what I asked for.”
Chapter 17
After a week in Chief Obonyo´s village and according to his habits Kitwana continued his way. Seeing that his daughter was free of commitments Nkwame asked her to visit him at his hut and once there the two of them had a meeting. From the first moment Zahra guessed that her father wanted to talk to her about something important.
“You know that despite you are not my biological daughter you are my favorite descendant. This is so because of your natural gifts, which none of your brothers can match. You are brave, determined, and resourceful, with a strong temperament and you command respect wherever you are. The fact that you have prospered in America, in an extremely competitive environment, confirms what I say.”
Again the girl was flattered by the words of a man who knew her well.
"That is why I have chosen you to help me in my duties as head of our village and our clan and replace me when I when I decide to retire, an idea that comes to my mind more and more often."
Nkwame Looked at his daughter in the eyes.
"In fact,
the direction of tribal affairs in this complex time is an increasingly heavy task.”
"But what about Duma and his other younger brothers, who have stayed with you all the time? They will see it as an injustice.”
"This is not a fair world. The wise leopard and the robust lion eat their prey regardless of their merits.” The chief paused."With regard to your brothers, they may be resentful for a while, but deep down they know that you overcome them in leadership conditions.”
"But men will hardly accept being led by a woman.”
"There are many stories of women who have led villages and tribes larger than ours.”
Nkwame made another pause while Zahra respected his times. It was obvious that his father was looking for the right words to go on.
"The problem that remains to be solved is that of your boyfriend Federico....”
Zahra had been waiting for the emergence of that issue since she had arrived in the village a month before.
"You mean he's white, not a member of the tribe?"
"No, that's not the point.”
"Then you mean he's a cerebral man, not a warrior."
“Not that either. I think he is a very intelligent young man with a lot of knowledge of the outside world. All that can surely be valuable in the village. Do not forget that the chief will not be Federico but you.”
"Then tell me what your fix is."
"That ... you two are not married for any of the rites accepted by our people ... in particular the traditional ritual. This is very important because your descendants must be legitimate children to follow my lineage. For example, I adopted you formally at the time and that is why you are now eligible to lead our village.”
"Then what are you asking of me?"
"Get marry by the traditional rite. Is he a Christian?”
"He is a Christian by baptism, but he is not a practitioner. We have never talked about it. I do not think that is one of his priorities.”
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