Why won’t Thula let go? I ask this question of Nubia. She has no answer to offer me. We each carry our burden, she says, searching for a place to lay them down—smart bitches know how to carry their burdens with style, and how to lay them down. She said she knew she could lay down her burdens only by returning her mom and brothers and sisters to the life her dad had cost them. Only then could she give the finger to His Excellency and the women who had turned her family away. And she knew she had to stick it to them wearing red stilettos and apparel off the racks of European designers.
Years ago, when Nubia had just become my girl, I found out that the father of one of her friends was the Leader of the team Kosawa had held captive. Nubia and I went to the man’s house once. I shook his hand, we exchanged words, but I did not mention that I had been there that night at the village meeting, and that afternoon when the soldiers rescued him and slaughtered my friends and relatives. I told Nubia about it after we left the house, but asked her never to tell her friend. It was then that Nubia told me the story of how the Leader’s wife and two oldest children had died, eleven months before he started coming to the village meetings. She told me about how the car in which the wife and children were traveling had fallen into a river. The bridge under them had collapsed; government men responsible for maintaining it had misallocated the funds for the repair of the bridge, putting it in their own bank accounts. Some of them had been the Leader’s friends, people he had laughed and drunk with. They consoled the Leader at the wake as his children and wife lay side by side in matching coffins, dressed in white. The Leader, when he returned to work after the funeral, stopped thinking about the right things to do for the sake of others. He thought only about his surviving children.
He worked hard for them, to send them to America, convinced that there was no hope for our country, a country cursed at its birth, beyond salvation. He traveled to villages, doing his work for Pexton, parroting what he was paid to parrot. Whenever he returned home, he hugged his children, ironed their clothes, fried eggs for their breakfast every morning. He never remarried, choosing to cook for his children and clean the house himself. Nubia’s friend told her about how, one evening, she’d entered her father’s bedroom to see him lying on the floor, weeping, clutching a photo of her and her surviving sister.
I’d sighed after Nubia recounted this, and she’d asked me why I’d sighed. I told her that on all sides the dead were too many—on the side of the vanquished, on the side of the victors, on the side of those who’d never chosen sides. What good were sides? Who could ever hail themselves triumphant while they still lived? Perhaps someday, I added, after all the dead have been counted, there will be one number for the living to ponder, though the number will never tell the full story of what has been lost.
—
I thought about that conversation last night.
I thought about Kosawa. How much longer will it remain standing? Mama reminds me that our people carry the blood of the leopard, but she seems to forget that leopards are disappearing; few remain in our part of the world. It’s been twelve years since Thula returned, five since Liberation Day, yet the village remains poisoned.
I watched on the news the other day how Pexton’s profit has increased by double digits from last quarter. His Excellency is expected to appoint a new Cabinet next week. He finally allowed our nation’s first presidential elections last year; his European backers had insisted on it, saying he needed to demonstrate that he cherished the ideals of democracy. Opposition parties formed overnight to contest. Thula dismissed it all as a charade. No one was surprised when the results were announced.
Earlier this year, Carlos called Thula with the news that the Justice Department would not be indicting Pexton under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Thula did not tell me why when she informed me; she barely wanted to talk about it. Carlos had hoped that an indictment by the department would bring publicity to the village’s pending lawsuit based on the Alien Tort Statute and force Pexton to make a settlement—an ideal scenario, since Carlos did not think that the village stood a good chance at trial. And Pexton had indeed gone to Carlos with an offer, but Carlos did not consider it to be enough. No longer in danger of a Justice Department indictment, Pexton took all talks of a settlement off the table. Kosawa’s only chance at restoration now rests on a judge’s decision.
My sister is approaching forty. The toll of the struggle is finally visible on her face—soft lines are appearing on it, her cheekbones are protruding. Seldom do I call upon the Spirit, but last night, as I thought about Kosawa, my journey from there to here, and everything in between, I prayed for my sister, and
