Everything is a mess, an unbearable cacophony for all of them but one.
The Maimuna in the air looks at the Maimuna on the ground. There she is, the stupid girl who set out to transport dangerous cargo over the border at her uncle’s urging. She’s the one who’s most dangerous to herself. If she’d kept calm. If she’d known to keep her big mouth shut. But instead she schemed: she claimed she was pregnant, trying to save herself with a hastily constructed lie. But Iman would have done the same. Iman and maybe Liya Kebede too, and maybe Alek Wek—none of them would have given up without a fight. She took up Mikael, the long-legged man with the camera and the beautiful pictures, as her weapon.
Mikael, Marcel, and Maimuna were forced out of the Amanar Restaurant. They walked, stumbling before the rifle barrel, hands crossed behind their necks. They were shoved in the back of a car, Maimuna on top, her face against the front of Mikael’s trousers, her stomach and the packages strapped to her stomach on Marcel’s knees. There, as the car tossed about and the exhaust pipe popped, she thought her idea through. She would be carrying Mikael’s child. Then the wheel of the jeep sank in the sand.
Shlomith suddenly lifts a finger. She has a question. Listen up! The women, all except the Maimuna in the air, concentrate on Shlomith. Listen up! Shlomith has a question that all of them, especially Maimuna, need to hear. Why didn’t they just take the belt away from you, Maimuna?
In that moment it becomes clear: Shlomith is speaking to them. They accept Shlomith’s question, which thus becomes their own calming, bright thought: Why wasn’t the belt enough for them, Maimuna? They ask this in their own heads because they’re listening to Shlomith: Why, Maimuna? In echo they ask why, until Nina, pragmatic and efficient Nina, makes the bold move that someone has to make if they want to move forward from the situation:
You aren’t going to start bartering with them, are you?
But the Maimuna in the air doesn’t hear. The Maimuna in the air wants to go down next to the Maimuna lying on the ground. She too wants to take the hem of the dress and pull it back down over her thighs. To say on her own behalf: Take me, take me and sell me, but let me live.
They’re on their knees . . .
Those men.
On the . . .
. . . sand . . .
Next to you.
Are they . . .
The women begin to feel the thoughts flow; they begin to separate their own from the others’. One focuses, and the others give her space. Thus the idea becomes heavier, so weighty that it suffuses everything and spreads everywhere. The others accept the new idea as best they can. They begin to sense that they can exchange thoughts. They begin to understand, through trial and error, that the brightest idea is the same as the heaviest idea, that the brightest idea comes through most easily, that it can be built upon. They begin to realize that if they want their voices to be heard, they have to struggle, they have to leave behind the safe, soporific murmuring. They have to participate. To think. Each one of them has to think.
How can we help you, Maimuna?
What should we do?
The picture is still stopped, because the Maimuna in the air wants it so. The Maimuna in the air would like to slap the Maimuna on the sand across the cheek, to see the trajectory of the punishing hand, to experience chastising her: You stupid girl! She would like to kneel and press her lips against the cheek of the Maimuna lying on the ground: You dear, hopeless girl, dear God. Because it is she, she herself, Maimuna Mimi Mbegue, prone on the sand, soles of her feet facing the sun.
The Maimuna in the air takes a step forward. The women move and close the chain behind her. Polina and Wlibgis reach for each other, and the others move closer too, compressing the half circle.
The gunman stands behind Maimuna, finger on the trigger. Could their combined strength crush him? The other men stand a little farther off, their hands raised. Could they disarm them all? Could they turn the course of events? One head is about to turn: one man is about to check if there are any dust trails. Is anyone coming after them yet? Soldiers? And where is the new car?
The Maimuna in the air makes an attempt to push Marcel, who like Mikael has fallen to his knees in shock behind the Maimuna on the sand, closer to the floating women. Of course nothing happens. The worlds do not meet, except for that millionth of a second during which Maimuna took her last step to prepare her very own journey. She can’t help anyone else. Or change the direction of time.
But Maimuna prolongs her transition. She needs the women’s help to die.
Maimuna?
Do you feel it too?
Is it coming from the ground?
Something is shaking under us.
Is it your heart pounding with fear?
The noise of the cochlea, a kettle-drum-like pulse, a beating felt in fingers, toes, scalp, and spine . . . Mikael and Marcel huddle on the sand, resigned, weaponless. They have never carried a pistol on their trips. They believed they could get by with words. Now they believe they will be executed. They tried to make a deal before Maimuna opened her mouth—futile. They barely managed to throw all the céfas in their pockets on the ground before Maimuna told her lie to save her skin—meaningless. The crumpled bills didn’t interest the criminals. Marcel and Mikael are the best currency here.
And Maimuna.
Smuggled out of Africa.
A virgin—that important piece of information came from Monsieur Moussa himself.
And what now?
“I’m pregnant!”
Maimuna told her lie as soon as the men ordered them out of the stuck jeep. The first furious shot was fired in the air.
