Golden Boy

by Tara Sullivan

  It’s a day off school, so it takes a while to get all the children dressed and out the door and over to a neighbor who is willing to watch them, but then Chatha, Davu, and I are on our way.

  We don’t take a dala-dala, but instead the three of us pile into a private taxi. I run my hands over the black plastic seats, hardly able to believe all the new things I’m getting to do in just two days.

  Enjoy it while you can, whispers that same ugly voice in my head. This may be the last time you go anywhere. Remember, Alasiri is in the city, hunting you.

  I swallow against the sudden tightness in my throat and sink down lower in my seat, farther from the window.

  “National Central Library, Bibi Titi Mohamed Road,” says Chatha, and the taxi weaves off into the Dar es Salaam traffic, taking me to my answers.

  We pull up outside a soaring white building that looks like it was built in layers. We climb the many steps to the front door and walk inside. For a moment, I’m not sure what to make of the space. There are study tables and large open spaces, and people crowding both. The hurricane-glass windows are open to allow a breeze to come through the building, and there are electric fans and bright lights hanging from the white ceilings high above, making it easy to see. And everywhere: books! Shelves and shelves of books lining the walls. So many books. I had no idea there were this many books in all Tanzania, let alone in one library in Dar es Salaam. I turn in slow circles, taking it all in.

  “Habo!” Davu’s voice breaks my spell. I see that she and Chatha are across the foyer, in front of the membership registration desk. I hurry to catch up with them. I get there just in time to see Chatha hand over some money.

  “What’s she doing?” I whisper to Davu.

  “She’s paying for us to have a day membership.”

  “How much does that cost?”

  “One thousand shillings each,” she answers. “Why are we whispering?”

  Just then, Chatha turns around. In her pudgy fingers she holds two slips of paper.

  “Now,” says Chatha. “I have to run a few errands. Here are your day passes.” She hands them to us. “Stay in the building, don’t go anywhere with strangers, and I’ll be back in four hours. Okay?”

  “Sawa,” says Davu, snatching her pass and twirling it around in her fingers. I look up at Chatha, up the mountain of well-fed, well-dressed woman to her round face. I look past the scowl and meet her eyes, wide-set and kind no matter how hard she tries to mask it, and think about how she has taken time out of her day, paid for a taxi, and now paid for two day memberships at the library, just because she knows it’s important to me to find out more about something.

  “Asante sana,” I say, still whispering out of habit.

  Chatha smiles at me in a way that scrunches up her entire face. “Karibu sana, Habo. Go on.”

  “Kwaheri, Mama!” Davu waves and then grabs my hand and leads me away into the middle of the library.

  We spend the first few hours of our time talking to people in reference, finding books about albinism and newspaper articles about my members of parliament. When Davu discovers how bad I am at reading, she can’t believe it.

  “How did you not learn to read? Didn’t you go to school?”

  “I went to school,” I mumble, looking away from her.

  “And they didn’t teach you to read?” she asks.

  “They taught us to read,” I say. “But they made me sit at the back and I couldn’t see, so I never learned very well.”

  Davu is quiet for a moment. I sneak a glance at her face. Her eyes are clear, considering. Her mouth is a serious line across her face. I look away, ashamed.

  “Oh, this is ridiculous,” Davu huffs. She stuffs the newspapers and a large book we found under her arm, grabs my elbow, and hauls me toward one of the reference desks. “Excuse me!” she calls to the man working there. “I need a magnifying glass. Can you get me one, please?”

  The man blinks at her in surprise for a moment and then smiles, promising to look for one for her. Davu and I stand there, waiting for him, Davu muttering to herself under her breath the whole time. I’m no longer entirely sure who or what she’s angry at, so I just keep my head down and try to think about how to get away from Davu and the man at the desk. I had thought it might be awkward for Chatha and Davu to know that I can’t really read, but I had no idea Davu would make such a big deal out of it. No one else has ever cared that I’m no good at reading. I scuff my feet against the floor.

  “Can we go now?” I ask.

  “No,” says Davu, still looking after where the man has gone. She holds out the mess of newspapers to me. “Here, do something with these.”

  So I do. I carefully refold the newspapers and make them into an easy-to-carry packet while we wait. I tuck them into the large book.

  Finally, the man shows up again, holding a square of plastic with a bulge in the middle.

  “Here you go,” he says, handing it to her.

  “Asante,” says Davu. “I’ll bring it back soon.” And grabbing me by the arm again, she scoops up the big book with our newspapers in it and marches off in a new direction.

  After a short walk, we arrive in a section of the library that looks different. The walls are painted a light green, all the furniture is low to the ground, and all the books are slim and brightly colored.

  “This,” says Davu, “is the children’s room.”

  I flush bright red. I’m not a child! Why did Davu bring me here? Just because my reading isn’t good doesn’t mean that I’m stupid.

  “I don’t want to read anything in here,” I say.

  “We don’t have to stay long,” Davu says over her shoulder, already scanning the shelves. “I’m just looking for a simple book to see if you can read it using this.” She waves the magnifying glass at me. I cross my arms and stand by the wall, wishing I could disappear. All the little kids in the room are staring at me. I pretend to be very interested in the shelf in front of me.

  “Now.” Davu is suddenly at my elbow. “Come over to a table and let’s have a look at these.”

  I sigh and follow her. Maybe if I’m really nice and do everything she wants, she’ll lose interest quickly in this project and we can go read the books we found about albinos. I sit in one of the small chairs at the table. Davu plops down beside me, a pile of thin books in her arms. She sets the big book off to one side and hands me one of the thin books and the square of plastic.

  “What do you want me to do with this?” I ask.

  “Hold it in front of the book and see if that makes it easier for you to see.”

  Scowling, I hold the square of plastic over one of the colorful children’s books Davu has brought me. To my great surprise, the tiny text on the page leaps toward me, becoming as easy to see as the Vodafone and Airtel signs on the bus ride from Arusha.

  I must have gasped because Davu giggles beside me. “Better?” she asks.

  “I can see,” I say, squinting at the page. “I can see the words.”

  “I thought so,” Davu crows. “You just need glasses! Some of the boys in my class have glasses, you know. They’re smart. You’ll look good in glasses.”

  I pick at my fingers, not sure what to make of all this attention and the talk of glasses. Shyly, I hold the square of plastic up to my face and bend over the children’s book again, trying to quietly sound out the sentence in my mind. A brown finger, magnified to the size of a sausage, pushes onto the page in front of me. I jump, surprised, but Davu is reading the words to me, moving her finger with the sounds. I put the plastic back up to my eye and follow along with her giant sausage finger.

  “Rat was the only one who knew how to make fire.” I read shakily, with bumps and stops, like a handcart pushed over a rutted road, but I don’t stop. “Rat liked all the animals, but Elephant was his best friend.”

  Even though Elephant first stea
ls Rat’s food, he learns the true value of friendship in the end. I look at Davu, bending over the table, completely unashamed at reading a children’s picture book. I have a friend, I think. This makes me very happy. Together, we finish the story.

  “Hooray, you did it!” she says, way too loudly. “Let’s pick out another few for you to take home.”

  “We can take them home?”

  “Ndiyo,” says Davu. “Our day passes allow us each to take out two books for two weeks. We’ll have to return the magnifying glass, of course, but I’ll ask Mother to buy you one on the way home. That way you can practice your reading while you wait for it to be safe to go to Kweli’s.”

  That reminds me why I’m here. I suddenly feel queasy and the room sways slightly around me. I grip the little table in front of me to steady myself and take a few deep breaths.

  There’s no other way, I tell myself. You have to either face the danger of setting a trap for the lion or be hunted by him for the rest of your life.

  “Can we go look at the newspapers now?” I ask.

  “Of course.” Davu shoves all the little kid books onto a cart in the corner. Then, taking two skinny books from the shelf at random, she grabs my hand and we head out into the main library. Davu is practically skipping as we walk. Her eyes are bright, and her braids bounce around her face. I follow her quietly, gripping the heavy books and the folded newspapers under my free arm, the magnifying glass safe in my pocket.

  We find a free table in a corner and spread the newspapers out around us. Slowly, Davu and I wade through them. There are some talking about the inauguration of the albino MPs we saw on the television. The woman was appointed, but the man was elected. Both of them have received death threats. The woman MP has adopted two albino girls who were attacked with machetes near Mwanza. I shiver. And then there’s no escaping the horror.

  Albino girl killed for body parts.

  Africans with albinism hunted; limbs sold on black market.

  Tanzania’s first elected albino MP fears for life.

  Seven new albino killings in Tanzania and Burundi.

  Life of fear for Tanzania’s albinos.

  Article after article tell about mutilations and murders.

  You’re next, the hideous little voice whispers in my head. Tomorrow these headlines could be about you.

  I stare at the newspapers spread out on the table in front of me. Names, dates, descriptions, pictures. I feel cold and numb. A warm hand on my arm pulls me back into reality.

  I look over at Davu and see tears streaming down her face. She squeezes my arm softly.

  “Let’s read this for a while instead,” she says, and pushes the A volume of the encyclopedia she found over the open newspapers in front of us.

  “Sawa,” I manage, and open the book.

  We look up albino together, though Davu does most of the reading because the print is so small.

  “I think this basically means that you’re white because your skin doesn’t have any color,” she says, frowning to figure out the big words.

  “That’s a stupid book,” I say, because really, even I could figure that out.

  “If you’re going to be difficult, I just won’t read to you anymore.” Davu scowls at me.

  “No, no, sorry!” I say. “Please, keep reading.” Her braids whisk forward, covering her face as she bends over the page.

  “It’s a ‘genetic condition’ . . . whatever that means,” she mumbles to herself. “Oh, here’s something that’s nice and simple.” She looks up. “You got this from your parents.”

  “But my parents are black.”

  “Well, this book says that both of your parents had to have the thing that made you this way. If only one of them had it, you wouldn’t be albino . . . It also says here that this means that some kids in the same family will have it and others won’t.”

  Davu goes on, but I’m not really listening to her anymore. I’m stuck on what she just said. Both of my parents had to be albino-makers. So my father left for no reason. It was his fault as much as Mother’s. I miss her suddenly, thinking of the hollow-eyed nights she spent trying to keep the farm without him. I know I’ve been putting Kweli off, refusing to call home, but maybe I’ll do it soon. I’d like to tell Mother what I just learned.

  “Are you even paying attention?” Davu sighs. I jerk around to face her. There is a wry smile on her face.

  “Sorry,” I mumble. “It’s a lot to think about.”

  Her expression softens. “That’s enough of the encyclopedia anyway,” she says, shoving it to one side. “All those big words were giving me a headache. Let’s look at some more newspapers.”

  She leans back from the table so I can’t see the pages and flips through them quickly, her eyes darting back and forth across the page. She tosses most of them over to the far side of the table, keeping only a few. Finally, she takes the small pile and sets it in front of me.

  “Here,” she says. “Read these.”

  Tanzania jails “albino trafficker.”

  Albino trials begin in Tanzania.

  Albino killers get death penalty.

  Davu makes me read the large print of the headlines, sounding out the words for me if I have trouble getting them right away. The pile she won’t let me read is a lot bigger but, even so, I can’t help but smile. It’s been a long time since anyone has made this much of a fuss over me. In a sudden pang, I miss Asu terribly. She would love this whole library, this whole experience.

  “Read this one, too,” says Davu, handing me another newspaper.

  “Sawa,” I say, and hunch over the table, sounding out the words that leap at me under the magnifying glass.

  We spend another hour finding things in the book areas. Then Davu remembers something that gets her really excited.

  “The computer room!” she squeaks, grabbing my arm and pulling me inside. “Just wait till you see what we can find on the Internet!”

  Apparently Davu learned how to search the Internet in computer class. I think about my one-room school where we sat on the floor in my little village and cannot imagine what Davu’s school must be like if they have a room set aside only for computers. It must be like this library.

  Neither of us has any money, so we wait along the sides of the room and check when each person gets up. After a few tries, we find someone who still has time left on the clock. I pull up a second chair and let Davu show me what she knows about computers. She even makes the print really big so our reading lessons can continue.

  On the Internet, Davu finds nice pictures of people like me that I stare at for a long time, wondering who those people are and what their story is. We also find horrible pictures about the killings that we click past quickly, but not quickly enough to stop the little voice from reminding me that Alasiri is in Dar es Salaam. We find out that Tanzania has an official Albino Society, and that there are organizations in the city that are dedicated to protecting and educating people like me. We find out that I should be wearing something called sunscreen, because I will probably get skin cancer if I don’t. The pictures for that are awful and make me feel queasy again. I don’t know how I’m going to afford it since it’s really only sold to foreigners, but Davu assures me we’ll find a way. We find more news stories about my MPs, campaigning for albino rights, insisting that the killings stop. While we’re at it we find information on prison sentences for poaching elephants and trading in illegal ivory, too.

  It’s so much for me to take in all in one go. But Davu is frantically scribbling notes, so I know that I’ll be able to think about this more later. When our time expires on the computer, Davu looks at the clock.

  “Oh no!” she squeaks. “Mother’s going to kill us!”

  We quickly return the magnifying glass and hurry to the checkout station, where Chatha is indeed waiting for us, arms crossed tightly. We make meek apologies a
nd then use our day memberships to check out the two simple books for me, and two other books about albinism that Davu found for us to read when we get home. We pile into the taxi, and I look over my shoulder one last time at the library.

  I wonder how much a full membership costs and how many carvings I would need to sell to get one.

  When we get to Davu’s house, we get another surprise. There, waiting for us in the living room, are Kweli and Davu’s father. Over an afternoon together and dinner, the men catch us up on all the developments in the plan. The policeman has arrived. The message has been sent. A reply has been received.

  Alasiri’s trap is set to be sprung tonight.

  25.

  I’m shaking as I walk with Kweli. Ahead of me the night-dark street stretches like a tunnel with no ending, and I feel like I’m a boat, cut away from the shore, floating, floating, sinking in the ocean of the city. Alasiri isn’t due to arrive until after midnight, but my mind conjures him leaping from every doorway we pass. The deep shadows between buildings and the faint flicker of a streetlight off their grayed-out fronts remind me of the tall rock formations in Mwanza and how I had to duck between them, fleeing for my life. Without meaning to I start slinking along in the shadows, making myself more obvious in an attempt to disappear. When we pass under a streetlamp, my clear arm hairs shine up at me like silver.

  I’m beginning to wonder whether I should have stayed at Chatha’s, or at least let her husband come with us. Everyone tried to convince me to stay there and just let everything be taken care of, but I told them this matters too much to me, and Kweli said he didn’t want to be fussed over anymore. If I want to sleep soundly for the rest of my life, I need to watch them take Alasiri away with my own eyes. I swallow hard against the bile rising in my throat.

  “So, Habo, did you have a nice day without me?” Kweli’s voice interrupts my frightened thoughts.