Mists of The Serengeti

by Leylah Attar

  Fuck.

  So Jack did the hardest, bravest, most selfless thing in his life. He turned back. He grabbed the boy with one hand, supported the mother with his other, and got them out the door. In his adrenaline-fueled state, it didn’t take more than a minute. But it was a minute too long.

  As he turned to get back inside, an explosion rocked the mall, blowing him clear off the stairs. A panel of glass landed on him, trapping him underneath. Chunks of steel and concrete rained down on the parking lot, shattering windshields and headlights. The high-pitched wailing of police cars and ambulances mingled with the incessant blaring of car alarms. But those who were hurt remained eerily silent, some of them forever.

  Jack stirred and fought the darkness threatening to pull him under. He had something to do. Somewhere to be. He focused on the acrid smoke that filled his lungs—sharp, bitter, and as black as the realization that hit him when he opened his eyes.

  Lily. Oh God. I failed you.

  As the world fell to its knees around him, walls torn, roof blown off, blood and bone everywhere—Jack felt himself rip into two. Before-Jack, who loved black coffee, blue skies, and driving into town with all the windows down, and After-Jack, whose daughter’s sweet smile and cotton-candy ponytail swam before him in the heated, five-alarm blaze of the afternoon.

  How do I look?

  Beautiful. As always.

  In that moment, as Jack struggled to lift the weight that was pinning him down, he knew. He knew there would be no escaping this, no getting back up from it. And so, like the weary antelope that bares its throat to the lion, Jack closed his eyes and let the numbing cloak of darkness devour him.

  IT’S THE HAPPIEST day of my life, thought Rodel Harris Emerson, as she signed her name on the dotted line.

  People assumed it was a man’s name, until they met her. It had happened two years ago when she’d applied for a teaching position in Bourton-on-the-Water, and it happened again when she’d messaged the real estate agent to see the property she was buying now, in the same golden-hued village—affectionately known as The Venice of the Cotswolds—in the English countryside.

  “Congratulations!” Andy looked over the contract and smiled. “Your first home.”

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  He had no idea. It wasn’t just a home; it was a dream she had chased her whole life. And now, at twenty-four, she finally had an anchor, the kind of stability she’d missed growing up in a family that traveled wherever her father’s job took them. It had been a good job, one that had afforded them the luxury of experiencing different cultures, different places, all around the world. But just as Rodel would begin to settle down and start making new friends, they would be off again. Her younger sister, Mo, thrived on it, as did her parents. They were explorers at heart, free spirits that craved new tastes, new sounds, new soil. But Rodel yearned for a rest stop, a little patch of comfort and familiarity—a real home.

  And now she had it, in exactly the kind of place that had stirred up her imagination since she’d first watched The Lord of the Rings and had fallen in love with the Shire. She had been twelve then, and it had remained lodged in her mind—a fictional, improbable ideal—until she was searching for job openings after college and came across Bourton-on-the-Water. There, in the heart of England, amongst the rural idyll of peaceful rolling hills, life was unhurried. Footpaths crossed scenic fields that bloomed with snowdrops in January and bluebells in May. Stone cottages nestled alongside tree-lined streets, and low, elegant bridges straddled the river.

  “Well, that’s it.” Andy put the paperwork into his briefcase. “There are just a few dates that we need to go over.”

  Rodel pulled out her phone and switched to the calendar. It rang just as Andy was about to get started.

  He read the name flashing across her screen. “Montego?”

  “My sister.” Rodel didn’t share the reason behind their unusual names. Their parents had named both daughters after the places in which they had been conceived: Rodel Harris, for the picturesque village of Rodel on the Isle of Harris in Scotland, and Montego James for Montego Bay in the parish of St. James, Jamaica.

  Ro and Mo.

  “Please go on.” She sent her sister’s call to voice mail. This wasn’t the time for one of Mo’s rambling chats. Besides, Rodel had big news to share. The I-bought-a-house-so-you-need-to-get-your-arse-down-here kind of news that she’d been dying to share once everything was finalized.

  “I can wait if you want to take it.” Andy was chatty and overly accommodating. Rodel had a feeling that his interest in her stretched beyond the professional.

  “It’s okay. I’ll call her later.”

  They were seated on opposite sides of the kitchen counter in the restored seventeenth-century cottage that Rodel had just purchased. It was a tiny two-story home, but it had an open living area with exposed wood beams, a book nook, and a sunny terrace steps from the river. It was close enough to the school for Rodel to walk, but set in the secluded backwater at the edge of the village. Rodel couldn’t wait to move out of the room she’d been renting for the last two years.

  “The sellers have agreed to an early closing so you can have the place in a couple of weeks.” Andy went over the dates.

  “That’s perfect.” It meant that Rodel would have the summer to settle in before the school year started in September. “Thank you,” she said, as they concluded their meeting.

  Andy stood and cleared his throat. “I was wondering if . . . umm . . . you’d like to have a drink. You know, to celebrate and all?”

  Another time, Rodel would have turned him down. She had been so focused on working toward her dream of owning a home that her social life was practically non-existent. It didn’t help that she was a book nerd. She had book boyfriends that no flesh-and-blood man could ever live up to. She might have sought tranquility in a home, but in a man, she wanted the tempest—Strider, Aragorn, King of Gondor. Another fictional, improbable ideal. Yes, Lord of the Rings had quite possibly ruined her. She had found the Shire, and she had claimed her Hobbit-hole, but she was pretty sure she would have to recast the hero. Kings like Aragorn simply did not walk among mortal men.

  “A drink would be nice,” she said to Andy.

  “Well then . . .” He looked chuffed as he led her to his car—a compact, white hybrid.

  They drove to a small, rustic pub overlooking the river. The rough, hewn wooden tables were snug, barely wide enough to hold their beers, and their knees touched as they sat across from each other.

  “In case I haven’t been clear, I think you’re very pretty,” said Andy. “You have umm . . . beautiful brown eyes. I like your . . .” He pointed in her general direction, searching for something elusive, and finally went in for the kill. “I like your hair.”

  “Thank you.” Rodel drowned her face in the dimpled mug holding her drink.

  Why was dating always so painful? Why were kisses always as piss warm as her beer?

  “Do your parents live around here?” asked Andy.

  It’s just small talk, thought Rodel. He isn’t announcing his intentions to meet them.

  For once, Rodel was relieved her parents were thousands of miles away. She’d changed her mind. She didn’t want to recast her hero. She would happily spend the rest of her life with fictional book boyfriends.

  Darcy? Oh yes.

  Grey? Oh my.

  Aragorn? Oh my, yes, yes, yes!

  “My parents live in Birmingham, but they’re retired and love to travel,” she said. “They’re in Thailand right now.”

  “Well, if you need help moving, I can . . .” He trailed off and followed Rodel’s gaze. She was staring at the TV. Something on the screen had caught her attention.

  She stood, slowly—stiff and wooden—and walked up to the bartender. “Can you turn that up?” It was more than a simple request. There was a tight, controlled edge to her voice that drew everyone’s attention. A hush fell over the pub as all eyes turned to the news broadcast.
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  “Gunmen stormed into a crowded mall in Amosha, Tanzania, minutes before a powerful explosion went off. Dozens are feared dead. More on this developing story from our foreign correspondent . . .”

  They cut to the scene of carnage, billows of black smoke rising like dark tornadoes behind the reporter.

  “My phone.” Rodel backed away from the screen and stumbled toward the table. She turned her bag upside down, and got on her knees, scouring the contents for her phone.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Andy.

  “I need my phone! My sister is in Amosha. I have to get in tou—” She pounced on her phone and started dialing. “Pick up. Come on, Mo. Pick up.” Her chest rose and fell with each breath.

  Someone sat her down on a chair. Someone brought her a glass of water. No one picked up at the other end. It went straight to voice mail. She dialed again. And then again. Her fingers trembled as she waited for the string of international dialing codes to go through.

  She was about to hang up and try her parents when she noticed the little icon for new voice mail.

  Mo. She must have left a message when she’d called earlier.

  Rodel listened as her sister’s voice filtered through the speaker, but it wasn’t warm and bubbly like every other time they’d spoken since Mo had left for Tanzania. This Mo was tense and tight, and she was speaking in sharp, staccato whispers that Rodel strained to make out.

  “Ro, I’m in Kilimani Mall . . . something . . . going down . . . gunmen everywhere . . .” The words were fading in and out, like a bad connection. “I’m hiding . . . there’s . . . only thing . . . keeping me . . .” There was a long pause. Rodel could hear hushed voices before Mo came back on the line. “ . . . going to wait . . . safe here, but if I don’t . . .” Her voice dropped. “If . . . I . . . love you, Ro . . . Mum and Dad . . . don’t . . . worry. We’ll . . . laugh . . . my crazy stories . . . Australia. I have . . . all the chances, Ro . . .”

  The recording ended. And what had started off as the happiest day of Rodel’s life trailed off, just like the empty, insidious echo at the end of her sister’s call.

  Ro . . .

  Followed by crackling dead air.

  Rodel’s mind raced.

  Mo had mentioned Australia. She had thought she was going to die then, too, and had called Rodel while crossing a crocodile-infested river in a sinking ferry.

  She had been shouting ‘Ro, Ro!’ but the people on the ferry thought she was telling them to ‘Row, row!’ The vessel had made it to safety and as Mo collapsed on the shore, the call still in progress, the two of them had laughed with giddy relief.

  “Come home, Mo,” Rodel had urged.

  “I’m not done yet,” her sister had replied. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be done. I want to die doing what I love.”

  No. I unwish that wish. Rodel clung to her phone, unaware of the invisible threads that connect wishes, actions, people, and consequences. She had no idea that the images flashing across the TV had already set off a chain of events that were heading straight for her, like cascading dominoes set into motion.

  FOR A FEW blissful seconds before I was fully awake, I forgot. I forgot that Mo was gone, that I was sleeping in her bed, in a strange room, in a strange land, where she’d spent the last few months of her life. But the guttural call of wild pigeons, the rhythmic thud of a hoe outside, the clank of a metal gate opening and closing, all reminded me that it was my first morning in Amosha.

  I opened my eyes and stared at the whirring blades of the ceiling fan. Mo had left her mark on it. Bright ribbons left colorful trails as it rotated above me. It was such a vivid, painful reminder of her—her boundless energy, her spinning, kaleidoscopic life—that I felt an acute sense of loss all over again. When you lose someone you love, it doesn’t end with that event, or with their funeral, or with their name on the tombstone. You lose them again and again, every day, in small moments that catch you off guard.

  Almost a month since her memorial service. I had kept putting off the trip to Africa, to collect her belongings and clear her room.

  “Don’t go,” my mother had said, looking at me through red-rimmed lashes. “There’s still a travel warning in effect.”

  My father stood silently, shoulders hunched, bearing the weight of a man whose daughter’s body was never recovered from the wreckage. We had all been denied the gift of closure, of seeing her face for the last time.

  “I have to,” I replied. I couldn’t stand the thought of a stranger going through Mo’s things, disposing of pieces of her.

  And so I’d arrived, the non-traveler in a family of voyagers, at Nima House in Amosha, where Mo had signed up as a volunteer for six months. It had started out as a romantic quest to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with the love of her life. Well, the love of her life that month. When he refused to share his ration of toilet paper with her, somewhere between 15,000 and 17,000 feet, Mo dumped his arse and trekked back—no toilet paper, and no plane ticket out of there. Our parents offered to bail her out, but Mo wasn’t done with Tanzania and talked them into coughing up some cash so she could stay longer. She signed up for an unpaid position, working with kids at an orphanage in return for cheap food, accommodation, and time off to chase waterfalls, flamingos, and herds of gazelles in the Serengeti.

  “Do some good, see some action,” she’d said, the last time we’d talked, before giving me a detailed account of how loudly and noisily lions mated. “Every fifteen minutes, Ro! Now you know why Mufasa is the motherfucking king of the jungle.”

  “You’re a perv, Mo. You just sat there and watched?”

  “Hell, yeah! We had our lunch there too. You need to get your arse down here. Wait till you see an elephant’s schlong, Ro . . .”

  On and on she had babbled, and I’d only half-listened, not knowing it would be the last time I spoke to her, not knowing that I would be in her room, looking up at the same ceiling fan that she had probably gazed on when she called me.

  Except for the last time, when she’d called me from the mall.

  When I hadn’t picked up.

  When she’d needed me the most.

  I flipped over to my side, trying to escape the thoughts that kept haunting me.

  The bed next to mine was empty and neatly made up. Mo’s roommate, Corinne, was gone. She’d let me in, the night before and hugged me.

  “I’m so sorry,” she’d said. “She was such an amazing soul.”

  Having Mo referred to in the past tense was painful. Waking up in her bed was painful. I got up and drew the curtains open. It was later than I had anticipated, but I was still adjusting to the time difference. The cement floor was hard on my feet, so I slipped into Mo’s slippers. They were rabbit-faced, with pink-tipped noses, and ears that flip-flopped when I walked.

  I stood in the center of the room and looked around. Mo’s side had a narrow closet, but the clothes had either slipped off the hangers, or she’d never bothered to put them up.

  Probably the latter. I smiled. We were so different, and yet as close as two sisters could be. I could hear her chatter in my head, as I sorted through her things.

  Hey, remember when I filled a balloon with glitter and stuffed it in your closet? It popped, and all your clothes were so sparkly that you looked like a disco ball for days.

  Thinking of her there beside me, sitting cross-legged on the floor, helped me get through it. It kept me from breaking down as I folded the tops she’d never wear again, her smell still alive in them.

  Don’t forget the drawer, Ro. I’m so relieved it’s you who’s doing this. Can you imagine Mum finding that dildo? I kind of debated about it myself, but it’s so realistic, you know? You should totally get one, dude. No Mufasa? No worries . . .

  And so the day progressed, with Mo’s commentary flitting through my head, like a butterfly that went from flower to flower, saying goodbye as the sun dimmed over the horizon.

  It was late afternoon when I stood back and surveyed the room. Mo’s side was all boxed up, exc
ept for a map on her wall with Post-it notes in her careless, cursive writing, and the ribbons she had tied around the fan. I couldn’t bring myself to remove those. Besides, I had three more weeks before I headed back to England. I wanted to see the places she’d mentioned, understand the magic that drove her, find some resolution in the place that had claimed her.

  Kilimani Mall was still a wide, gaping hole in the ground, but the civilians had been collateral damage. The gunmen’s target had been a government minister who was speaking at a convention that day. His security team was moving him to safety when a car bomb exploded, killing them all. It had gone off in the underground parking lot, and large parts of the mall had collapsed. No one had claimed responsibility, and investigators were still sifting through the rubble. It was one of those tragic, senseless things, like when a sinkhole appears without warning and swallows up your car, your home, the people you love. There’s no one to blame for it, so you carry your pain and anger with you, all the while waiting for an epiphany, a kernel of understanding that would help you move on, because surely it all meant something.

  I sank on the bed and hugged Mo’s pillow, wishing I could feel her arms around me. Something solid slid beneath my fingers. I slipped my hand under the cover and pulled out an eyeglass case. Her spare pair was still in there—orange cat-eye frames. Mo had a habit of stashing things in her pillowcase. I was surprised I hadn’t discovered them the night before. Then again, I had been too overwhelmed to notice.

  “I wish you could see the world through my eyes,” she’d say to me, whenever I couldn’t understand the allure of her lifestyle.

  Well, here I am, Mo. I put on her glasses and scanned the room through the distorted lens of her frames.

  The sun was setting and its golden light filled the room, falling on the wall. The metal tacks that held the map over her desk shone like the glitter Mo had spewed all over my clothes.

  I got up and traced my fingers over the yellow Post-its she had stuck on it. Taking off her glasses, I leaned closer to read them.