Binti: The Night Masquerade

by Nnedi Okorafor

  “What? What were ‘they’?” I asked. “Another tribe?”

  He nodded. “But not of humans, of elephants.”

  My mouth fell open. “I’ve never seen one, but I hear they hate human beings! The Khoush say they kill herdsmen and maul small villages on the outskirts of—”

  “And they always kill every human being they come across, right?” he asked, laughing.

  I pressed my lips together, frowning, and unsurely said, “Yes?”

  “Because I’m actually a spirit,” he said.

  I shivered at his words, thinking, Is he?

  Mwinyi groaned. “Haven’t you learned anything from all this? What’d you think I was a few days ago? What did you think of all Enyi Zinariya?” I didn’t respond, so he did. “You thought we were savages. You were raised to believe that, even though your own father was one of us. You know why. And now I’m sitting here telling you how I learned I was a harmonizer and you’re so stuck on lies that you’d rather sit here wondering if I’m a spirit than question what you’ve been taught.”

  I sighed, tiredly, rubbing my temples.

  Mwinyi turned to me, looked me up and down, sucked his teeth, and continued, keeping his eyes on me as he spoke. Probably enjoying my discomfort with his gaze. “They rushed up to me,” he said. “The biggest one, a female who was leading the pack. She charged at me. When you see elephants coming at you as you sit in the middle of the desert … you submit. I was only eight years old and even I knew that. But as she came, I heard her charge, ‘Kill it! Kill it!’ I looked up and I answered her. ‘Why?!’ I shouted. She stopped so abruptly that the others ran into her. It was an incredible sight. Elephants were tumbling before me like boulders rolling down a sand dune. I will never forget the sight of it.

  “When they all recovered, she spoke to me, again, ‘Who are you? How are you able to speak to us?’ And I told her. And I told her that I was alone and I was a child and I would never harm an elephant. The others quickly lost interest in me, but that one stayed. She and I spoke that day about tribe and communication. And for many years, we met there when the moon was full, as we agreed. A few times we met when I needed her advice, like when my mother was ill and when I quarreled with my brothers who were bigger and older than me.”

  “What of your sisters?”

  “I don’t have any,” he said. “I’m the youngest of six, all boys.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s strange.”

  “What’s stranger is that I’m the only one who doesn’t look like he could crush stone with his bare hands,” he said, smiling ruefully. “Even Kam, who’s a year older than me, just won the village wrestling championship.”

  I laughed at Mwinyi’s outrage.

  “Anyway, during these times, when it wasn’t a full moon, I was able to call Arewhana, that was her name, from far away. She taught me how to do it. It was something she said I could do with larger, more aware animals like elephants, rhinos, and even whales if I ever ventured to the ocean.

  “Arewhana taught me so much. She was the one who told me I was a harmonizer. And she was the one who taught me how to be a harmonizer. Elephants are great violent beasts, but only because human beings have treated them in a way that made using violence the only way for elephants to survive. There are many elephant tribes in these lands and beyond.”

  An elephant had taught him to harmonize and instead of using it to guide current and mathematics, she’d taught him to speak to all people. The type of harmonizer one was depended on one’s teacher’s worldview; I rolled this realization around in my mind as I just stared at him.

  Mwinyi’s bushy red hair was still full of dust and sand and he didn’t seem to mind this, but his dark brown skin was clean and oiled. I’d actually seen him rubbing oil into his skin earlier. I knew the scent. It was from a plant that grew wild in the shade of palm trees and some women used it to flavor desserts because it tasted and smelled so flowery. He carried some in a tiny glass vial he kept in his pocket. A few drops of it went a long way. The oil protected his skin from the desert sun in a way quite similar to otjize, and it brought out its natural glow. I wondered if this plant smell had also set the elephants at ease.

  I chewed on this thought, while gazing at Mwinyi. My world had stabilized again.

  * * *

  As I settled on the mat in the tent, I could hear Mwinyi moving about outside while he softly yipped and panted. I watched as the wild dogs got up; soon our tent was surrounded by the group of about eight dogs. None of them slept now; instead they sat up and watched out into the night like sentries.

  Mwinyi came into the tent and lay beside me. “Better sleep now,” he said. “I think we have about three hours of safety at most. Then they’ll leave and if there are hyenas or bigger angrier dogs out there, those can sneak up on us.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. Sleep stole me away less than a minute later.

  Chapter 2

  Orange

  Every week, the village market opened in the desert. Always at noon, when the sun was highest in the sky. The village was small, but it wasn’t isolated. People came from different villages, towns, communities. But these connected communities were small and all of them were insular, secretive, and happy. And that’s why it worked.

  The children loved their mobile phones and social networks; some of them ventured out into the rest of the country or even the world. A few never came back. But most stayed and all kept the area’s secret. There were never any uploaded photos, drawings, paintings, or videos. No blog posts, no interviews, no news stories. No need to share. The people in this part of the country took from the rest of the world, but kept to themselves and explored from within. The people here preferred to venture inward rather than out. Because what was within was already a million times more advanced, more modern, than anything on the planet. And what was inside had come from outer space. Thus, the rest of the country never learned of the friendly “alien invasion,” the friendship that took root and was on full display in the market every week.

  Women squatted before pyramids of tomatoes, onions, dried leaves, spices. Men brought in bunches of plantain on their heads, reams of Ankara cloth. The local imam was holding a meeting. Children ran errands and into mischief. And among them all walked twenty-foot-tall, slender beings who seemed to be made of molten gold. They glinted in the sunshine and people sometimes shaded their eyes against the glare, but other than that, these extraterrestrial people mingled easily and naturally.

  One girl ran around one of them, stopped, and brought up her hands. She motioned wildly and then kept running. She wove around two women haggling over a yam, squeezed between the group of men listening to the local imam preach, and ran right up to the tall golden figure waiting for her. She smiled, held up an orange whose peel had been cut away. “You bite into it,” she said. “Like this.”

  * * *

  I awoke with the taste of oranges in my mouth. When I opened my eyes, I was facing the desert and I could see the dream that wasn’t a dream retreating from me into the distance, like something sneaking away.

  “Why bother hiding?” I muttered. “Why don’t you just ask if you want to tell me stories? I am a student. I will listen.”

  I sat up and looked around. The dogs were gone. The sun was about an hour from rising and Mwinyi was already preparing Rakumi for the journey. I sat up and watched him for a moment as he grunted and patted the camel’s back before strapping the saddle onto her. There was a strange moment when Rakumi turned and looked right at Mwinyi and he gazed right into her eyes. Then the camel touched her soft lips to his forehead and turned forward and Mwinyi finished putting the saddle on.

  I reached for my jar of otjize and held it before my eyes. So little left. I applied some to my face and a thin layer to my arms and lower parts of my legs, rubbing some into my anklets. If my family saw me like this, they’d be mortified. At least during more normal times. I climbed out of the tent and stretched my back. I was stiff, but okay, having slept a
bout four solid hours.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  He turned around and nodded. “Not yet, but soon.”

  “Can we make it there by the end of the day?” I asked.

  “Maybe. If we move quickly.”

  But what will we find? I thought. I shivered and went to relieve myself a distance away from our camp. As I walked back, I called up a current and let myself tree while I looked up at the night sky. There were stars now. The clouds had dissipated. I would see things clearly when I returned home.

  I reached into my pocket and brought out the golden ball with the fingerprint-like designs on it. Running a current around its surface, I watched as the ball lifted from my palm and rotated before me like a tiny planet. Then I retracted the current and let the ball drop into my hand. When I put it back in my pocket, I ran my fingertips over the triangular metal pieces sitting at the bottom.

  I reached into my other pocket and brought out my astrolabe. Holding it to my face, I stopped walking. I stared at the elegant device. What I realized made me sick to my stomach and my legs grow weak. After all the changes I’d been through in the last year, becoming part Meduse, making otjize on a different planet, but especially with the activation of the zinariya, my astrolabe didn’t seem like the most advanced technology anymore. Astrolabes were the only object that also carried the full record of your entire life on it—you, your family, and all forecasts of your future. The chip in it had to be transferred if the astrolabe broke, which they rarely ever did if they were made by my father or me. My family’s fortune and identity were based on the importance of astrolabes to the world and beyond and the superiority of the ones we made. Even peoples at Oomza Uni used astrolabes. However, I’d barely even glanced at mine since I’d been taken into the desert.

  Now I touched it to turn it on and my heart sank even lower. It wouldn’t turn on. I called up a current and used it to “inspire” my astrolabe. I’d built this astrolabe myself, special specific part by special specific part. I’d made it to last. But because I knew every inch of it, I knew that now it was pointless trying to turn it on, reset it, shake it, smash it against my leg. My astrolabe was dead. I whimpered as it crossed my mind that maybe even the chip inside it was now unreadable. This would mean that I’d just lost my entire identity. I put the astrolabe in my pocket and took five deep breaths, the tears in my eyes drying more with each breath. Mwinyi finished packing the tent on Rakumi’s back.

  “I’m ready when you are, “I told Mwinyi.

  * * *

  Rakumi walked at a steady strong pace, her onward wavelike movement seeming to say, “Forward, forward, forward.” The motion was uncomfortable at first, but I grew used to it. Mwinyi sat right behind me and I leaned against him and this is how we stayed for several hours.

  “Binti?” Mwinyi asked, breaking the silence.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re close.”

  “I know. The land looks the same but it’s somehow familiar.”

  “I have something to tell you,” he said. “From your grandmother.”

  My astrolabe was broken and in order for my world to stay as it was, I had taken Mwinyi’s advice and not tried to use the zinariya at all since going to sleep. I hadn’t bothered trying to reach Okwu through my okuoko, either. In this way, the last several hours of disconnection had been the most peaceful hours I’d experienced in quite some time. My heart began to pound and suddenly it felt difficult to breathe, and an image of Heru’s chest bursting flashed through my mind.

  Mwinyi climbed off Rakumi and I did the same. We stood there facing each other.

  “What … did she say?” I whispered.

  He hesitated for several moments and I wanted to hug him for those moments. “Three days after we left your home, you stopped hearing from your partner Okwu.”

  I frowned at the word “partner.” “Yes. I’d just learned I could reach it through a sort of … connection we had. I said I was okay, Okwu said it was okay, then that third day, nothing.” I turned to Mwinyi and he looked at me as if he wanted to put some distance between us. “Why?” I asked.

  “I know more of what happened now,” he said. He looked at his feet. “The Ariya told me everything a day ago.”

  I frowned deeply at him.

  Mwinyi looked me in the eye now. “I thought it better to tell you now than a few hours ago.”

  We stared at each other. Rakumi’s reins clicked and dragged on the sand as she looked curiously at us.

  “That wasn’t your choice to make,” I finally said, but the words didn’t come out in an angry growl, they came out choked. I pressed the tips of my right fingers to my forehead. “I’d rather know ev—”

  “They came for Okwu.”

  I sighed. “Khoush soldiers,” I said. “We know that. They fought and my family fled into the Root, into the cellar. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  It felt as if there were hot embers in my chest. “Okwu … Did they…” I didn’t want to say it. “Tell me, Mwinyi!”

  A pained look crossed his eyes and that made everything he said next more devastating. “Things … things didn’t happen exactly as I thought.” He took a deep breath and surprised me by stepping closer. “The Khoush did come for Okwu. They’d always planned to come for it. The Meduse-Khoush War…”

  “I understand,” I snapped. “Go on.”

  Mwinyi nodded and continued. “Your father said they blew up its tent, but Okwu wasn’t in it. Okwu wasn’t there. The Khoush soldiers demanded that your family tell them where it was. Your family refused. They threatened to kill your father.”

  I pressed my hands to my mouth. “They killed my—”

  “No, no,” he said, taking my wrists. “But your family would not give up Okwu.”

  I looked into Mwinyi’s eyes and said, “If they burned Okwu’s tent, that’s deep, deep disrespect to Himba land … Land is sacred to us. We would never, ever cooperate after something like that.”

  Mwinyi nodded. “This angered the soldiers and they used their weapons to set the Root on fire,” Mwinyi said. “And…”

  I was suddenly faint. “The Himba don’t go out, we go in,” I said, breathlessly. “My family ran into the Root … and the Khoush set it on fire, didn’t they? What I saw was true!”

  Mwinyi kept talking as I paced in circles, my hands grasping my okuoko. “Your father believes Okwu killed many of them,” Mwinyi said. “Even as the Root was burning with all of them inside, he could hear it. Khoush screaming, over and over. The only Meduse there was Okwu, so it had to be Okwu doing it. And it most likely sent a distress call to other Meduse. But eventually, the noise stopped. All this, your father communicated to your grandmother.”

  “As the Root was burning around him, around everyone?” I shouted at him.

  Mwinyi paused, seeming to question whether or not to say more. “At some point,” he continued, “he stopped communicating with her through the zinariya. So Binti, I … I don’t know what we’re going to find when we get there.”

  “The Ariya knew all this before we left?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet she told us half-truths and didn’t try to stop me from leaving.”

  “No.”

  “She would not have succeeded,” I muttered. I felt numb. Dead. Mwinyi may not have known what we’d find there, but I did. Charred bones. My family was dead. My family was dead. My family was dead … five five five five five five five five five five five. I climbed high into the tree and when I turned to Mwinyi, the motion felt slow, and I could have been looking at him from outer space. “If you think I’m such a mess, why did you come with me?”

  His eyebrows rose. “I’m the only one who could get you here safely on my own.”

  We stared into each other’s eyes and I knew he wasn’t telling me all of it. I waited. And waited. When it was clear he wasn’t going to speak, I blurted, “If Okwu called on its people, it’s the Khoush-Meduse War all over again.”

  He looked away. “Maybe
.”

  “What if no one is left?”

  “I don’t—”

  “You know you don’t have to say it to say it to me,” I said. “And, Mwinyi, I came back with a Meduse, the Khoush nearly killed both of us the minute we stepped off the ship, why would they leave it at that?” I stepped over to Rakumi, my legs feeling like someone else’s legs. The number five was in everything and I was glad. I patted Rakumi’s neck. “And why would Okwu not fight back? It wanted a reason to use the weapons it made at Oomza Uni, the same place the Khoush brought the chief’s stinger. Okwu hadn’t forgotten anything. And the Khoush have always been jealous of the Himba; why not find a reason to burn down Osemba’s oldest home?” I shut my eyes, whispering, “Z = z^2 + c.” When my heart rate had decreased, I said, “All because I came home.”

  “Binti,” Mwinyi said. “It wasn’t your homecoming, it was a matter of time.”

  I was listening to his every word, from deep in the tree, but in my heart, I burned.

  “Ouch!” Mwinyi hissed. I felt the electric shock all over my body, but mainly in one of my okuoko. Rakumi bucked and groaned loudly, turning an eye toward us to see what was going on. “Why does your hair do that?”

  I frowned, staring ahead. “It’s not hair.”

  “What?”

  “When I was on the ship, the Meduse, they did this to me.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry … I didn’t … can I ask you … why … why did you let them—”

  “I didn’t let them!” I shouted. My eyes were hot with tears. I needed to get home. “But it was done. I couldn’t turn back.” The world had started exploding again. If I looked behind me, I knew I’d see the tunnel that was often there, the one that led to the alien mind of my other people. I wanted to scream. I was too many things and my family was charred bones in the ruins of my home … five five five five five five five. I sat down right there in the sand beside Rakumi’s front leg. I climbed higher up the tree and stayed there.