The Children
We are the age-mates of Thula and the Five, the ones who had long ago moved on from the group and gone silent. This part of the story can only be told by us.
Some of us were still in Kosawa the day we learned of the judge’s verdict, but many of us had left by then. We had left for new husbands, for our families, for no longer wanting to hear relatives rebuke us about our complicity in the deaths of our children, the same words we would later heap on our family and friends who remained in Kosawa. We had built new huts, had children, leased lands from relatives on which to farm.
—
Those of us who remained in Kosawa did so with pride.
Our enemies underestimated the depth of our resolve. They never appreciated to what extent we would go to protect that which our ancestors had passed down to us.
When we had begun marching, all they did was send soldiers to observe and report. The reports must have said our actions were harmless, because they let us be. What could marchers do to a regime? Did raised voices ever bring down a system? When Thula got a newspaperman to spread news of our movement overseas, when she took delegations from villages burned down by soldiers to meet with big men in ministries, the people in Bézam sighed. The woman was a nuisance. They never threatened to take away her job if she didn’t stop. When she taught her students things the government didn’t wish its future leaders to be taught, they ignored her, leaving her to do as she pleased—American-educated women were sometimes hard to control. They would have preferred she teach only what she was paid to teach, but they had to grant her the leeway; her educational accomplishments were matchless. Standing before rapt students, she flung insults at His Excellency, at his senseless cronies, their ineptitude, their shameless disregard for morality. The government yawned when they heard about her Village Meeting in her government-provided house. They said: What can one angry woman do?
—
One angry woman did everything, and she failed.
Did she cry alone in her house the day the lawyer from America called with the news that we would not be getting justice from an American court? Or did she go to her parents’ house for a hug? Did she wish she had chosen Austin over Kosawa?
The judge who made the final verdict did not deny that Pexton had ruined our land, Thula told us when we gathered in the square to hear the news. The judge said it was likely Pexton and our government had colluded to commit countless crimes. But she also agreed with Pexton that American courts had to stay out of the matter and let the courts in our country decide whether Pexton and our government had done us wrong. She said it would be unfortunate if we did not get justice in our country’s court, but America had to respect other countries’ boundaries. What the judge meant by this, Thula explained, was that a man could not go into his neighbor’s house and beat him up just because he didn’t like the way the neighbor was running his household.
We did not know whom to feel sorry for the most when we heard this—ourselves, or Thula. Our friend’s lips quivered as she spoke, but she would not allow herself to cry. This is not over, she said repeatedly. But we knew it was over. We had lost our last chance at restoration. Filing a lawsuit against the government and Pexton in a Bézam court would be ludicrous. The people who owned those courts were the same people who had given our land to Pexton. The judges who would rule in our lawsuit might be the same ones who had condemned the Four to death. We had no chance at justice there.
Throughout the village that day and the next, it was as if an eternal night had settled and the sun would never come up. We went to our farms, and to the forest, and to the market, but our thoughts were seldom on what our hands were doing, or where our feet were going. Our minds swirled with questions: How could this be? What do we do now?
With every subsequent visit to Kosawa, Thula seemed to be sinking deeper into the same darkness that had consumed her when her father vanished. She spoke little and she wouldn’t eat, though we offered to make her favorite meals. When the children ran to her, she looked at them blankly. She and the Five sat in the square late into the night, whispering. It was from one of the wives of the Five that we learned that there was even worse news than Thula had told us: Pexton had filed a lawsuit against Kosawa, demanding that Kosawa pay its lawyers, since it was our fault that they’d needed to hire lawyers. If we lost that lawsuit, whatever we owned of worth would go to Pexton.
Thula told us at a meeting that we had no reason to worry about the lawsuit: no judge would ever place such a punishment on us. Pexton was only doing it to warn those who would dare follow in our footsteps—they didn’t want villagers thinking they could rise against corporations with impunity. “Do you really believe an American judge will side with us and not allow Pexton to take everything we own?” someone shouted. Hadn’t a judge just doomed us to perpertual terror? Thula did not seem to know what she believed; she spoke without conviction. We heard little hope in her voice when she said that she’d had many conversations with her friends in America, friends who still believed in her dream, and she had also spoken to Carlos. They had all reminded her that there were other courts we
