How Beautiful We Were

by Imbolo Mbue

  How the news leaked we never knew, but in no time, across the district, people were talking about the killings. Some said one of the laborers was sleeping with a soldier’s wife and the soldier had killed him and his friends in revenge. Others said Pexton had paid soldiers to execute the men for something they’d done to offend the overseer. One of us heard a woman in the big market telling her friend that it was the spirit of someone one of the laborers had betrayed: spirits now had guns. This was closest to the truth, for it is what we’d become: phantoms leaving dead bodies in the dark.

  A month after the killings, knowing of a house where two soldiers lived, three of us went there and put holes in their heads while they slept. A government worker at the head office in Lokunja was next, together with his wife, in their car. We knew none of these people. We executed them only to pass a bit of our pain along to our tormentors.

  After every kill, those of us who had taken part in the act accepted palm wine from the others. While the killers got drunk, the sober ones pondered whom to kill next.

  We were now the spears of our people.

  * * *

  —

  The soldiers came hunting after our twelfth kill. In all eight villages, they searched for guns under beds and in kitchens, ransacked piles of dirty clothes looking for bloodstains. They gathered males in village squares and ordered the murderers to surrender. Their warning was clear: if the murderers did not surrender and were later caught, all the men in the village would be executed. They got no confessions, only silence.

  In some villages, they forced dozens of women into their trucks at gunpoint and drove them to Lokunja. There, at the prison, the women took turns lying on their backs in a dim room as the soldiers interrogated them, demanding every detail on the whereabouts of their husbands and sons on the night of the latest killing. Old women, who’d heard only rumors, were struck in the head and promised a protracted death if they did not give detailed enough answers. Young women returned home with accounts of how their underwear was ripped off, their legs pried open by three or more soldiers—some women couldn’t recall how many soldiers had mounted them. The sister of one of us was among them. A cousin, barely out of girlhood but with the body of a woman, was left bleeding for days, her womb in danger of becoming useless. Our wives cried, as did our mothers, fearing their turn would inevitably come. Sonni met with the wojas of the other villages to search for a solution. They went to the district officer, who told them that until the murderers were handed over he couldn’t promise that our people would be left alone.

  Thula came from Bézam with a newspaperman. She took him to all the eight villages to talk to the women who had been beaten and raped. The newspaperman asked the women if they thought the killer was from our villages. The women shook their heads; they swore upon their ancestors that no man among our people could do such a thing. Thula swore too, even though she knew. She’d figured it out after the first killings. She’d pleaded with us to stop it, and we had asked her what evidence she had that it was us—wasn’t it possible there were other men in the eight villages with guns? We couldn’t confess the truth even to her; we couldn’t expect her to understand why we had to do it.

  When the newspaperman left, Thula wept while describing to us the face of a raped woman she’d visited, how it was still swollen from the punches she’d received, her eyes still shut. Being raped was her worst fear, she confessed. “For the women’s sake,” she cried, “please, stop it. For the sake of your wives and daughters, I beg you to end it.”

  We’d had the talk among ourselves already—for whom were we killing if our actions left our children motherless, our sisters childless, our parents daughterless? We hated our enemies even more for taking away from us this chance at blood reparations, but we knew we had to pause. We vowed to resume with new and better tactics.

  * * *

  —

  As if the Spirit was in agreement with our cease-fire, no one died in Kosawa in the next six months, so our regret at laying down our arms was abated. Whatever rift had developed between Thula and us as a result of the killings began to narrow. Whereas in the days of the killings she seemed afraid to look into our eyes, now she hugged us, and commended us on jobs well done, as if we were wayward sons who had returned home.

  It must have been around the seven-year anniversary of her return home that she announced to us that she had selected the date for Liberation Day. When we told her that the date was only three months away, too soon, she told us that it was fine, we would have to proceed with however many people had thus far heeded our message. We did not think this to be a prudent move, and we cautioned her against it—if we were to start a movement with a scanty rally, we would become objects of ridicule. We needed more time; an explosive revolution could not be ignited with a feeble spark. Also, in the aftermath of the killings, the soldiers were not wont to show mercy. Did she want to provoke them at a time when they were eager to use their guns? There would be no guns, she said. She’d used her position at the school and her privileges as a top government worker to get a letter from the presidential palace giving her permission to rally young people in Lokunja to celebrate the country. The district office would have a copy of the letter; any soldiers at the rally would be there for our protection. We could have laughed at the irony—soldiers ordered to protect us—but we didn’t, concerned still, as we were, about the turnout, about whether she was ready to address a crowd and tell them to get ready for a revolution. And what would the government do when they learned of her true motives?

  We believed Liberation Day needed another year or two of preparation. It had become wholly evident to us that, deep as hatred for His Excellency ran, desperate as many were for change, few, if any, would join a movement led by a woman, worse still an unmarried, childless woman. We couldn’t ask people to look past her lack of a family. We couldn’t tell them that it meant nothing—it meant everything. It meant her deficiencies were many, too many for a man to take on. We hoped that, with time, she’d find a husband, someone with whom she’d have a child so that she could become a real woman, because nothing could make her respectable besides motherhood and marriage.

  We couldn’t hurt her by telling her this, nor could we tell her that we were having enough of a struggle explaining why we were followers of a woman—we’d already come to terms with the mockery—but neither could we let the resistance fail because our leader was determined to remain unfathomable. Still, after listening to her argue that we couldn’t keep waiting for the perfect moment, it might never come, we agreed to her date after consulting with the twins, Bamako and Cotonou.

  Though they were still boys, the twins were already in possession of skills almost as good as those of Jakani and Sakani, and we knew we couldn’t proceed with Thula’s plan without going to them to seek the Spirit’s favor.

  After we made a payment of smoked bushmeat to them, they agreed to intercede on our behalf. Days later, they came to us with the message that the Spirit was in agreement with the date Thula had selected for Liberation Day. The Spirit had also instructed them on the ritual they would need to do to prepare Thula.

  * * *

  —

  On Thula’s subsequent visits to Kosawa, we started putting together the groundwork for Liberation Day. Now that our belief in the movement had been renewed, thanks to the hope given to us by the Spirit’s approval, our enthusiasm grew as the day neared. The elation that carried us through those weeks enlivened all of Kosawa. Without our asking, our families began disseminating the news across the other villages. Old and young alike were talking about Liberation Day, counting down to it, to the day when the light we’d long been dreaming of would begin emerging. Word spread to towns and villages in the surrounding districts. We busied ourselves thinking of the speeches we would each make, organizing our children into a choir for entertainment, persuading friends to bring their drums so that, after Thula had declared a new day,
we would all dance till the stars came out and the crickets joined our chorus and we had nothing left with which to rejoice.

  * * *

  Thula returned to Kosawa six days before the Day, having taken off time from her job to be present in the area and be of help with the final details. She was sleeping in one of our huts, late one night, when the twins arrived and told us the time had come for the ritual.

  The twins began by sedating her, spraying something in her room, and closing the door. After that, one of us carried her on his back into the twins’ hut and exited with no memories of what he’d seen. He did not need to see anything—the twins had told us what they’d do to her, and we’d agreed to help them do it, though only after a quarrel.

  It was the worst argument we’d ever had: two of us were against the idea, three were for it. The night we met to decide on the matter was laden with pleas and blames and threats. The two of us opposed to the idea believed that it was not our place to make a decision about her body—we were neither her father nor her husband. Though we trusted the twins that the ritual would be for the best, that it would fortify the movement, we nonetheless thought it best that she be informed about the procedure so she could decide whether she wanted it to be performed on her. We were adamant that we would not partake in doing such a thing to her. But one of the three of us who supported the idea, in a long talk two nights before the ritual, argued that we had to help the twins. He said we couldn’t trust Thula to make the right decision on this matter; Thula was willing to die for a better country, but she’d never give up her right to control her body. We needed to make the choice for her, for her sake, for her dreams.

  By the time the night of the ritual arrived, we were all in agreement that we had to do it for her sake. It brought us no joy to have to do such a thing to her, but sacrifices had to be made—hadn’t she often said so herself?

  The twins, speaking to us as if we were children and they the adults, had told us what they would do to her. The semen would be that of a young man in the village, someone the Spirit would cause to sleepwalk into the twins’ hut, spill his seed into a bowl, and return to his bed still unconscious. Though the semen would be this young man’s, the child in it would be the Spirit’s, for the young man would only be a vessel.

  In Thula’s sedated state, the twins would undress her from the waist down. One of them would spread her legs apart and keep them open while the other inserted the semen inside her, rubbing her belly as he chanted to the ancestors, declaring her victorious, proclaiming that the child of the Spirit within her would make her a woman above all men, anointing her the Mother of a people ready to be reborn. After the procedure, we would carry her back to her bed and lay her on her side to stop the semen from leaking. In no more than two days, all who looked upon her would see what the Spirit had done.

  * * *

  —

  We were the first to notice the change, eager as we were to see the results, so much hinging on it. She was still the same size, and yet there was something about her, a glow and a majesty that could only be from the child growing within her. She was a woman, finally, beyond woman even, and everyone could see, though they could not tell why, they could only conclude that she was deserving of their devotion. She was no longer a childless old-girl whom loutish elders could laugh at, or the enigma her friends wanted to marry off; through the power of the Spirit-child living within her, she had transcended her body and become sublime.

  The twins had told us that she’d never know anything of it, and we could tell it was so. The seed within her would stay dormant, and she would never question why she’d become a recipient of greater deference and admiration from men and women, old and young. When we asked the twins about the child she was carrying, they told us that the child was in no rush to depart the host of the unborn. On a day of the Spirit’s choosing, they said—it could be months or years away—whenever it was that Thula woke up in the arms of a beautiful man, the Spirit would cause the seed within her to start growing.

  * * *

  The revolution began, as she’d dreamed it, on a November evening in 2005, at the field of our former school in Lokunja. We set up stools for the old to sit on, and tables on which we would stand to speak. Our brothers and sisters and friends, mothers and fathers, relatives we would never have supposed cared for our message, arrived from all corners of the eight villages. Young men took buses from distant towns; young women dressed as if for weddings, hoping to find husbands. The enterprising brought one thing or another to sell. At one end of the field, drummers practiced for the finale while little children danced. We hadn’t planned for a festival, or a day for relatives to reconnect and for friends to meet to pass gossip, but that was what we got in the first hours. The entire district seemed to be there, the crowd spilling past the school compound. In the distance, soldiers stood with tight faces, their guns pointed. No one feared them; our bliss made them invisible.

  * * *

  —

  In our welcoming remarks, we told the crowd that this day was their day, the day for them to declare their readiness to take back their lives. Their roar could have caused all our dead to rise. Our children had rehearsed a song for weeks but decided that they no longer wanted to sing, so one of our wives led the crowd in a chorus about how magical it was to be alive, everyone clapping as they moved in rhythm. Three of us climbed onto the table to introduce Thula Nangi, our sister, back from America, ordained by the Spirit to lead us to victory over our adversaries. The people shouted for joy as we lifted her to the table and handed her a bullhorn.

  “Power to the people,” she cried with her fists clenched up.

  “Power to the people,” the crowd cried back.

  “Who are the people?”

  “We are the people.”

  “Yes,” she said, “we are the people, and our moment has come.”

  The multitude roared. With every declaration she made, they roared louder, raising clenched fists alongside hers.

  “This land is our land.” Roars.

  “We’ll take it back whether they like it or not.” Roars.

  “We’ll no longer be slaughtered, poisoned, or trampled upon.” Roars.

  “Let those who stand in the way of our peace and happiness be warned. Let them know that we’ll march through the streets of Lokunja and district capitals around the country. We’ll clench our fists until we get to Bézam. We’ll roar until they give us back our dignity. Our voices will be the fire that will burn down every system of injustice, and from the ashes we will build a new nation.”

  “Fire,” someone shouted.

  “Fire,” the crowd sang.

  “Yes,” Thula cried, “we are the fire that will leave nothing immoral unburned. My brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, we have seen the light. There will be no return to darkness for us. We have awakened, and we will not stop raising our voices until every man, woman, and child in this country is free.”

  Juba

  What does it mean to be free? How do humans behave when they start believing that their definition of freedom is at hand? I saw how, that day in Lokunja. I saw men standing tall, strutting as they headed home. I saw little girls waving and smiling at soldiers as if to say, Hello, look at my pretty dress. I saw women throw their heads all the way back when they laughed. I sensed the air around me vibrating from the burdens that had momentarily been cast off shoulders. Possibility was written on the faces of the multitude, an unguarded anticipation of the future. I saw it over and over as I followed my sister to the next rally, the next district; as we traveled the western part of the country. I heard it as people lifted their voices and demanded a democratic election, demanded that His Excellency give them the right to choose their own president so they could create their dream country. I saw freedom on my sister’s face, as she stood before crowd after crowd.

  * * *

  —

  Her
fists never unclenched. Her resolve never wavered. She never stopped believing that Kosawa would one day be whole. She took her people to Gardens, to Mr. Fish’s front yard. They demanded reparations. They demanded to be treated with respect. When guards lifted their guns, Mr. Fish asked that they lower them, chanting never hurt anyone. This land is our land, they sang. Some days they sat at the center of Gardens. Mothers with babies on laps. Grandparents on stools. Many who had fled returned to fight. They shared stories about Kosawa’s lost days of splendor. They sang: Sons of the leopard, daughters of the leopard, beware all who dare wrong us, never will our roar be silenced. The oil was their inheritance, they said—they had the right to occupy Gardens. One week they occupied it nonstop, taking shifts. They wouldn’t relent. Even if Pexton continued to ignore them, they said, an American court would one day grant them victory.

  * * *

  I was with my sister the first time she spoke to Kosawa’s new lawyer. She had written to a former professor asking for advice after her talks with Mr. Fish stalled. The professor told her about a nephew of his, a man named Carlos, who was a partner at a prestigious New York law firm. Carlos’s firm represented the likes of Pexton, the professor had said, not the likes of Kosawa. But it would be of no harm for Thula to talk to him.