Ali joined Kokie at the window. It was indeed an armored troop carrier at the head of a long rooster tail of red dust. Casspirs were feared by the black populace as juggernauts that brought destruction. She had no idea why they had sent military transport to fetch her, and chalked it up to more mindless intimidation. 'Never mind,' she said to the frightened girl.
The Casspir churned across the plain. It was still miles away and the road got more corrugated on this side of the dry lakebed. Ali guessed there were still ten minutes or so before it got here.
'Is everyone ready?' she asked Kokie.
'They ready, mum.'
'Let's see about our picture, then.'
Ali lifted her small camera from the cot, praying the winter heat had not spoiled her one roll of Fuji Velvia. Kokie eyed the camera with delight. She'd never seen a photograph of herself.
Despite her sadness about leaving, there were reasons to be thankful she was getting transferred. It made her feel selfish, but Ali was not going to miss the tick fever and poison snakes and walls of mud mixed with dung. She was not going to miss the crushing ignorance of these dying peasants, or the pig-eyed hatreds of the Afrikaaners with their fire-engine-red Nazi flag and their brutal, man-eating Calvinism. And she was not going to miss the heat.
Ali ducked through the low doorway into the morning light. The scent surged across to her even before the colors. She drew the air deep into her lungs, tasting the wild riot of blue hues on her tongue.
She raised her eyes.
Acres of bluebonnets spread in a blanket around the village.
This was her doing. Maybe she was no priest. But here was a sacrament she could give. Shortly after the camp well was drilled, Ali had ordered a special mix of
wild-flower seed and planted it herself. The fields had bloomed. The harvest was joy. And pride, rare among these outcasts. The bluebonnets had become a small legend. Farmers – Boer and English both – had driven with their families for hundreds of kilometers to see this sea of flowers. A tiny band of primeval Bushmen had visited and reacted with shock and whispers, wondering if a piece of sky had landed here. A minister with the Zionist Christian Church had conducted an outdoor ceremony. Soon enough, the flowers would die off. The legend was fixed, though. In a way, Ali had exorcised what was grotesque and established these lepers' claim to humanity.
The refugees were waiting for her at the irrigation ditch that led from the well and watered their crop of maize and vegetables. When she first mentioned a group photo, they immediately agreed that this was where it should be taken. Here was their garden, their food, their future.
'Good morning,' Ali greeted them.
'Goot morgan, Fundi,' a woman solemnly returned. Fundi was an abbreviation of umfundisi. It meant 'teacher' and was, for Ali's tastes, the highest compliment. Sticklike children raced out from the group and Ali knelt to embrace them. They smelled good to her, particularly this morning, fresh, washed by their mothers.
'Look at you,' she said to them, 'so pretty. So handsome. Now who wants to help me?'
'Me, me. I am, mum.'
Ali employed all the children in putting a few rocks together and tying some sticks into a crude tripod. 'Now step back or it will fall,' she said.
She worked quickly now. The Casspir's approach was beginning to alarm the adults, and she wanted the picture to show them happy. She balanced the camera atop her tripod and looked through the viewfinder.
'Closer,' she gestured to them, 'get closer together.'
The light was just right, angling sidelong and slightly diffuse. It would be a kind picture. There was no way to hide the ravages of disease and ostracism, but this would highlight their smiles and eyes at least.
As she focused, she counted. Then recounted. They were missing someone.
For a while after first coming here, it had not occurred to her to count them from day to day. She had been too busy teaching hygiene and caring for the ill and distributing food and arranging the drill for a well and the tin sheeting for roofs. But after a couple of months she had grown more sensitive to the dwindling numbers. When she asked, it was explained with a shrug that people came and people went.
It was not until she had caught them red-handed that the terrible truth surfaced. When she first had come upon them in the bush one day, Ali had thought it was hyenas working over a springbok. Perhaps she should have guessed before. Certainly it seemed that someone else could have told her.
Without thinking, Ali had pulled the two skeletal men away from the old woman they were strangling. She had struck one with a stick and driven them away. She had misunderstood everything, the men's motive, the old lady's tears.
This was a colony of very sick and miserable human beings. But even reduced to desperation, they were not without mercy.
The fact was, the lepers practiced euthanasia.
It was one of the hardest things Ali had ever wrestled with. It had nothing to do with justice, for they did have the luxury of justice. These lepers – hunted, hounded, tortured, terrorized – were living out their days on the edge of a wasteland. With little left to do but die off, there were few ways left to show love or grant dignity. Murder, she had finally accepted, was one of them.
They only terminated a person who was already dying and who asked. It was always done away from camp, and it was always carried out by two or more people, as quickly as possible. Ali had crafted a sort of truce with the practice. She tried not to
see the exhausted souls walking off into the bush, never to return. She tried not to count their numbers. But disappearance had a way of pronouncing a person, even the silent ones you barely noticed otherwise.
She went through the faces again. It was Jimmy Shako, the elder, they were missing. Ali hadn't realized Jimmy Shako was so ill or so generous as to unburden the community of his presence. 'Mr Shako is gone,' she said matter-of-factly.
'He gone,' Kokie readily agreed.
'May he rest in peace,' Ali said, mostly for her own benefit.
'Don't t'ink so, Mother. No rest for him. We trade him off.'
'You what?' This was a new one.
'This for that. We give him away.'
Suddenly Ali wasn't sure she wanted to know what Kokie meant. There were times when it seemed Africa had opened to her and she knew its secrets. Then times like this, when the secrets had no bottom. She asked just the same: 'What are you talking about, Kokie?'
'Him. For you.'
'For me.' Ali's voice sounded tiny in her ears.
'Ya'as, mum. That man no good. He saying come get you and give you down. But we give him, see.' The girl reached out and gently touched the beaded necklace around Ali's neck. 'Ever'ting okay now. We take care of you, Mother.'
'But who did you give Jimmy to?'
Something was roaring in the background. Ali realized it was bluebonnets stirring in the soft breeze. The rustle of stems was thunderous. She swallowed to slake her dry throat.
Kokie's answer was simple. 'Him,' she said.
'Him?'
The bluebonnets' sea roar elided into the engine noise of the nearing Casspir. Ali's time had arrived.
'Older-than-Old, Mother. Him.' Then she said a name, and it contained several clicks and a whisper in that elevated tone.
Ali looked more closely at her. Kokie had just spoken a short phrase in proto-Khoisan. Ali tried it aloud. 'No, like this,' Kokie said, and repeated the words and clicks. Ali got it right this time, and committed
