I spent that night at his apartment, sleep elusive, my mind unquiet. It was as if I was living through one of those dreadful nights of our childhood, only this time I wasn’t afraid of death, I was just hyperaware of it, listening to it say to me, I’m coming for you, Thula, get ready. It all forced me to consider: What if Austin is right about life being an endless cycle of feeling pain and causing pain? I don’t want to partake in such a cycle anymore either. All night, I couldn’t stop asking myself: Is our fight against Pexton driven by pain, or by love? Could it be driven by love? Should it?
Yesterday, back in my room, I lay in bed and imagined myself in a space full of beautiful things made of glass. The space was vast, the size of Kosawa. There was nothing in it but me and plates and trays and glasses and vases, colors of every kind, adorned with flowers, row after row of priceless, breakable things. I yearned to break them. I closed my eyes and screamed. I began running around the room. Pulling things off shelves. Smashing them on the floor. Flinging them against the wall. Kicking them. Crying as I broke them. I toppled the shelves. Destroyed until there was nothing left in that room but me and my brokenness. I then sat against a wall and wept until my head ached and my cheeks felt numb. I dried my eyes. I stood up and saw a broom in a corner. I swept the pieces out of the room. There, they dissolved into nothing. I closed the door and I was alone in the empty room. I started crying again, but this time I wasn’t just crying. I was crying and dancing, then just dancing, laughing, my joy abundant.
I hope the love that dwells today in my heart remains forever, but if it doesn’t, may this letter serve as a testament that there once was a day when all I wanted was for peace to reign. Tomorrow I may wake up in pain with a mind crowded with images of what we’ve suffered, and I may want nothing more than to punish Pexton. I may wish I hadn’t sent you this letter, but it’ll be too late. You may have read my words and decided to join me in freeing Kosawa without causing pain to anyone; without any word, thought, or action that destroys another. You may have vowed never to break or burn again, because you would have come to wonder if I was wrong, if we were all wrong to believe that we could seize freedom through destruction.
Or maybe you’ll read this letter and toss it into the fire, considering it nothing but the ramblings of a lost woman, wondering why you’d ever given so much credence to my words. I ask you only to search your hearts, ponder the idea of reclaiming our land with the love that flows in our blood.
I see it clearly as I write this, what we must do. I see us marching to Pexton, singing, dancing in front of soldiers. We may cry, or get angrier, but our fury will be from a place of love for ourselves, for our birthplace. From this love we’ll demand our rights, and we shall win.
If we should die, let it be that we died for peace.
I’ll always be one of us,
Thula
In our response and final letter, we told her it would be better if we discussed what she was suggesting in person. We revered her intelligence, but we recognized her words to be those of a woman about to bid farewell to her beloved, having been so altered she can only speak of love. None of us believed we could win this fight with talks of kindness and singing and dancing. The time for friendliness with our enemies had come and gone.
One of us had recently been approached by a soldier who whispered to him that he could help us get guns. Guns would allow us to do more than break and burn—they would make Kosawa safer. We had pondered the soldier’s offer and decided that it was an investment worth making. Still, we thought it best to wait and ask Thula for the purchase money in person. That was why we said little to her in our final letter; we merely told her that we’d heard all she’d said and were thankful that she had found peace.
We confirmed to her that we’d be at the airport to welcome her on the day of her return, and that we’d already told our wives to starch and iron our best outfits. When she visited Kosawa a week after her return, to truly be home again, our friends who had long ago left the village would be there to join us in celebrating her homecoming.
—
Our wives had already decided who was going to cook what. A couple of goats would be slaughtered, the village square swept. Our children who were born after she left wanted to know everything about her, their Thula. What rejoicing there would be that day in Kosawa.
And it was, though our joy began sooner than everyone else’s, when, at the airport in Bézam, standing next to her family, we watched her come out through the gates and into our arms. She had left as a seventeen-year-old and was now on the verge of twenty-eight, a woman in years lived but not in looks, for she still looked girlish, her face smooth and free of creases. She was as thin as ever, though the largeness of her eyes was more apparent, her smile bigger and brighter, her hair stringy and long, all of which made her beauty more uncommon and alluring. She cried as she hugged us. Her mother and brother cried. It had
