City of Saints & Thieves

by Natalie C. Anderson

  While we’re waiting, I move a few paces away and call up Kiki’s school. I know I’ll be back soon, but I feel guilty just leaving without at least checking on her.

  However, “The young ladies are not allowed phone calls unless it is an emergency,” a stern voice tells me. “Is this an emergency?”

  “Not exactly, but—”

  “No calls unless it’s an emergency,” the woman repeats, and before I can respond, I hear the line go dead. I grumble something uncharitable about the nun and redial the number. It rings and rings but no one answers.

  I don’t like the idea of leaving Sangui, much less the country, without talking to Kiki. What if I don’t make it back by Friday? The idea of her sitting there in the washroom waiting on me is enough to give me a stomachache. But I’m not sure what else to do. She’ll be fine, I tell myself. I try to shake off the bad feeling the call leaves, but it sticks with me the rest of the day.

  • • •

  We are not the only passengers. When it’s time to go, I find myself in a scrum of bodies, all of them tugging overstuffed suitcases and clamoring to jump into the back of the truck at the last minute without paying the touts. Our tout fends them off, sweating and shouting and slapping at the interlopers, with his belly coming loose from under his shirt. I squeeze through the crowd toward the back of the truck, pushing Michael ahead of me, Boyboy close behind. The tout lets us climb on, but not before managing to sidle up close enough to rub his thing on my leg as I pass. He chuckles at my expression, and I can smell whatever garbage he ate for breakfast.

  There are six of us in all who’ve secured a ride. Any more and the truck will scrape bottom. I am the only female. The three men who join us are so tall and long faced that they remind me of maize stalks. They look exhausted. One of them has bartered his way on as security and watches carefully to make sure that no one grabs the goods out of the back of the truck while we’re snarled in traffic leaving the city. The others fall asleep immediately. The security man is so light and frail-looking, I can’t imagine he’d be any match for someone determined to loot us. In fact, I’m afraid that if we get going fast enough, these skeleton men might fly right off the truck and blow away like empty shirts.

  • • •

  Michael is full of questions for the skeleton men.

  He asks them one after another, and the men answer in serious, teacherish voices. And in fact, Michael soon learns that the three actually were schoolteachers once upon a time in Congo, but now they work as porters in Sangui’s markets. The men are going to Congo to check on their farms and, on the way back to Sangui, see their wives and children who stay in a refugee camp in Rwanda. They are unwelcome in Congo, the skeleton men tell him, and when Michael learns this, he presses them for more information. Who doesn’t want them there? Why? And who is fighting whom?

  I cringe at Michael’s earnest diction, but the skeleton men eat it up.

  Skeleton Man One: “It is complicated, but the basic issue is that this country of ours is very big, and there are so many different people and languages and histories. You know, the king of Belgium once claimed the whole of Congo as his property. Imagine! Everything—the people, the trees, the minerals, the very air we breathe—this man thousands of miles away proclaimed it his own!”

  Skeleton Man Two: “Our grandfathers laughed until the Belgians cut out their tongues.”

  Skeleton Man One: “Gaining our independence was long and bloody, and we inherited this place that now had borders, that was now a country. It cut up our ancestors’ lands and cobbled together other communities into something that was supposed to be a nation. Creating one Congo like the government would like is nearly impossible, especially in the east, where we come from. The government is so far away. We know nothing of those people in the capital. Our forefathers, in fact, were kings in Rwanda long ago. That was before the borders, before the king of Belgium and the French and Americans.”

  Skeleton Man Three smiles: “It is a long story. We would need a week to go through all the history properly. And you asked who is fighting.” He turns to his friends. “Who is it today?”

  “Mayi-Mayi.”

  “M23.”

  “The army.”

  “Fighting one another?” Michael asks.

  “Eh, depends on the day! Where are you going?”

  “Walikale Territory.”

  The men shake their heads. “There are some bad ones there.”

  “FDLR.”

  “CNDP.”

  “FARDC, M23 . . .”

  “And three different Mayi-Mayi.”

  Michael and I look at each other.

  “Alphabet soup,” I say. Only two of them sound familiar—Mayi-Mayi and the M23. I try to keep track when Donatien’s talking about all the different groups and alliances, but it’s tough. There are so many of them.

  Michael starts to ask another question, but Skeleton Man Three waves his hands to stop him. “Just stay away from men with guns. They are all the same! Even the army. Even the ones with whom I share a tribe. Gangs. Bands of thirty, fifty, led by one. Sometimes by tribe, sometimes not. One day they are rebels, then the next they are government soldiers when their boss makes a deal. Then the next they are rebels again. Then they change their rebel group name. My nephew is a fighter. He told me all about it.” Skeleton Man Three nods sagely.

  “Your nephew? That small boy?” Skeleton Man One asks, looking distraught.

  Skeleton Man Three hangs his head. “I know, I tried to talk sense to him, but these young men, they don’t listen. They don’t want to go to school or farm. They just want to shoot guns and drink and lie with women.”

  “Where would they farm?” Skeleton Man Two protests. “Where would they go to school? You can get shot just standing in your field! They round up children at school and put guns in their hands. Or, like me, you break your back to grow food for your family and the soldiers come and take everything anyway!”

  The men slip into their own language, talking loudly until one seems to remember we’re still listening and says, “The leaders say they are freedom fighters, but all we ever see is their lust for blood and gold. The boys who follow them are only children themselves, most of them. My poor nephew. He was such a good young man.”

  The men close their eyes, one by one, remembering other nephews, sons, brothers. And for a while they are too sad to speak.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Boyboy told me you saved his life once,” Michael says.

  We’ve been traveling for about six hours. The skeleton men are all napping, wedged like commas around the goods in the truck. I’ve managed to tuck myself in between a box of individual chewing gum packets and a bag of sandals. It’s not so bad. The sun is still hot, but the wind rushing over us is cool, and I like the view of the patchwork farms on the hills that rise and fall on both sides. But I can’t get the skeleton men’s tired voices out of my head. They made it sound like war and fighting was just the way it was, that it would go on forever. Maybe when it’s been going on most of your life, that is what it feels like. Mama used to say that a body can get used to anything.

  Michael is waiting for me to respond. He’s sprawled on a bag of sugar, looking annoyingly comfortable with his arms crossed behind his head.

  I glance at Boyboy, who is swaddled in a kanga wrapper and is snoring with his mouth open. “Not really. I just whaled on some kids who were giving him a hard time.”

  “He said they were about to throw him in the river.”

  “He would have been fine if he could swim.”

  “So you did save his life.”

  I shrug. “He’s being dramatic. It wasn’t a big deal. I hit one of them in the face and made him bleed. They were stupid kids making noise about stuff they didn’t understand, calling him names. They all took off crying at the first sight of blood.”

  Michael snorts a laugh.
“I would have liked to see that.”

  I let myself chuckle. “It was pretty good.”

  We pass a man herding cattle on the side of the road, tapping their rumps with a long stick to keep them moving. The lorry barrels past, not even slowing down, and I hold my breath. A cow starts to veer off toward us, but then the man taps her in just the right spot on her flank, and she lumbers out of the way of her death.

  As the man and his cows fade from view, Michael asks, “This trip isn’t just about Mwika, is it? You’re going to Congo because my dad’s headed there.”

  “You know about your dad’s trip?”

  “He told me he was going. He has to go check on things fairly often. How did you know about his trip?”

  “I . . . have my sources.”

  “And do those sources happen to hide out in secret tunnels?”

  Heat rises in my cheeks. “I-I erased the footage. How do you know?”

  “So you did sneak back in there.”

  I scowl at him. He’s tricked me into incriminating myself. I wait for him to get mad, but he just says, “You think following him is going to help you figure out if he killed your mom?”

  I watch him. I know what Michael is doing. He’s not making a fuss about me sneaking around behind his back. He wants me to reciprocate. But I’m not used to opening up and talking like this, to sharing. “I don’t know,” I say, which is at least honest.

  “Do you have a plan for when we get there?”

  “Find Mwika.”

  He nods. “Boyboy told me my dad made payments to him a couple of years ago.”

  I sneak a glance up. “Do you know why?”

  Michael shakes his head. I want to ask if he thinks the payment was in exchange for the video, but something in Michael’s face stops me. We’ll find out soon enough. For the first time I wonder if maybe all this is harder for Michael than it is for me. My mom died a long time ago, and the pain hasn’t gone away, but it’s dulled over the years. But how would I feel if I were discovering that she was actually a horrible person, like Michael is finding out about his dad?

  Don’t think like that, Tina. Don’t feel sorry for him. Think about Mama. You’ve worked too hard for this.

  Thinking of Mama reminds me of the other girl in the photo. Maybe she’s still there in Kasisi and we can find her. Or maybe Mama had other friends we can talk to, or family. My family. Do I have family? Grandparents? Aunts, uncles? Mama never said a word about them, and her UN file said she was an only child, parents both dead. But if she lied about being married, maybe she lied about that too. The thought that I might find blood relatives in Kasisi sends a tingle through my body. What would they be like? What would they think of me?

  I look at my tattoos, and my excitement deflates a little, imagining how they’ll take my appearance. I have a feeling tats like this aren’t a thing out here. And that girls wear dresses. Ugh.

  I pick at a loose string on the bag of sandals. “Where did you tell your parents you were going?” I ask Michael. “Are you going to be in trouble? Are they going to send people looking for you?”

  Michael is watching the hills go by. “I told them I was headed back to school, that they were letting me come back early. Got a friend to call Mom and pretend to be the principal. I had the driver drop me off at the airport and everything.”

  “They believed you?”

  “After I got suspended, Mom was really mad. She threatened to withdraw our donations from the school. Said it wasn’t fair to punish us equally for fighting if the other kid was throwing around racial slurs. I told them her threat worked.”

  “Did it?”

  Michael sticks his arms out and looks at them. It suddenly occurs to me that they’re pale by my standards, but probably not by Swiss ones.

  “No.”

  We’re quiet for a while. I tug at the hem of the kanga Boyboy’s lent me to wrap up in. They all have sayings printed on them. This one reads wache waseme: “Let them talk.”

  Michael says, “I told them you decided to go stay with a cousin.”

  I didn’t even think about his parents wondering where I went. I’m not really used to asking permission to go places. “Thanks.”

  He nods. “And since I’ve now covered for you, I get to ask a question.”

  “Okay,” I say warily.

  “Tell me about your tattoos.”

  It wasn’t the question I was expecting. I had thought he’d want me to finally talk about why I ran away after Mama died. Discuss my feelings, God forbid. “Not much to tell. All Goondas get them.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, it’s just what you do.”

  “Have you always been with the Goondas? Since you left?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you always a thief?” He looks at his hands. “Did you ever have to . . .”

  I scowl. “Did I ever have to whore myself out? No.”

  “That’s not what I was going to—”

  “Guys always assume that. That the only way to survive on the streets or as a Goonda is to be a prostitute. ’Cause that’s all girls can learn how to do, open their legs.”

  “Okay. Jeez, sorry. I didn’t . . .”

  “And even if I did, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

  Michael puts his hands up in surrender. “Point taken.”

  We sit in silence again.

  “So,” Michael finally ventures, “what do your tattoos mean?”

  I look out at the fields, terraced rows lacing the hills all the way to the top, dotted with mud huts. I try to think how to answer. “It’s how Goondas remember things,” I say. “Big battles, deaths, a really good heist. It’s like recording your history, just, on your skin instead of paper.”

  I turn around and tug my shirt down so he can see the leopard face on my shoulder blade. The spots travel around my back and arm and turn into flying birds. “I got this one after I did my first major break-in.”

  Michael doesn’t say anything, but he leans forward attentively.

  “I thought I was pretty smart. Pretty slick. Like a leopard. Did you know there are more leopards than any other big cat? You just don’t see them. They can trail you like a shadow for miles and you’ll never even know.”

  Michael looks amused.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s corny. But I was thirteen.”

  “Thirteen! And the rest of them?”

  I tell him that I got my armbands of Swahili henna after I stole a rather famous emerald from the new bride of a Kuwaiti oil sheikh. They had been on honeymoon at Sangui’s most luxurious beach resort and I had admired the bride’s hennaed arms. They swirl around the wheel on my left arm and the sword on my right.

  “What’s the wheel for?”

  “That history’s private.”

  “It’s odd. It has spikes.”

  “Yup.”

  “And it sort of matches the sword on your other arm, in the same spot.”

  “You are very observant.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And it’s still none of your business. Are you in the market for ink? I know a good guy named Spike . . .”

  Michael smiles and rubs his arms. “I think Mom really would kill me.” The thought seems to cheer him. “Maybe one day.” He turns his arms over and looks at them. The pale sliver of flesh shaped like a crescent moon stands out on the inside of his left arm.

  “You can still see your scar,” I say.

  His eyes search out my own arm, my own scar, surrounded in loops and dots, but clear. Something had made me stop Spike from tattooing over the long straight line. Michael slowly reaches over and runs his finger along it, sending goose bumps straight up my arm and a rush of blood to my throat.

  Michael studies me. “Yeah. I guess my history is on my skin too.”

  Then he se
ttles back down and closes his eyes.

  • • •

  Night. We huddle as best we can under thin blankets and tarps the driver gives us and try to sleep. Somewhere in Tanzania, I wake up and find I’m curled in between Michael and Boyboy, both of them fast asleep. The stars are so bright along the Milky Way they look like one solid mass, like a net. I think about moving, but the wind is cold and before I can make up my mind I realize it’s morning again.

  By midday Tanzania is behind us. Then Rwanda.

  We get off before the official checkpoints and walk on well-worn paths through the bush. There are other men guarding the way here too, but it doesn’t matter to them who comes and goes. They only care about getting paid. They don’t haggle. If you don’t want to pay what they ask, they push you to the side and take the next person in line behind you, who already has her money out and ready.

  “Welcome to Congo,” one of them finally says, after counting our bills. “Bienvenue.” He wears an AK-47 over a blue football jersey and waves us on.

  When the checkpoints are out of sight, we get back in the lorry and continue down the road.

  After Goma the road narrows and turns to rough, red murram that rattles everything and makes sleep impossible, and soon we’re climbing through forests where sad-eyed monkeys dart across the path and the air is wet and cool. The towns we pass through spring up furtively where they can, like mushrooms after a rain, but then just as quickly they dissolve back into trees and tall grasses in a way that makes you wonder if maybe you just imagined them. It’s as green as grasshopper dreams.

  Sometimes the road threads through trees that cut out nearly all the light, and sometimes it skirts the edges of cliffs. Sometimes we see the crumpled remains of trucks far below, vines already crisscrossing them like the jungle is a sucking beast that claims everything it touches.

  The skeleton men say we are almost there.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Kasisi,” one of the men says as we finally roll to a stop on the side of the red dirt highway. I look around, eager for any sign of something familiar, but it looks no more like home than any of the other sleepy towns we’ve passed through. A few one-story block buildings cluster at the crossroads. Once optimistically painted white, they are now splattered red with mud. The street is full of people, goats, chickens, dogs, and trash. I can see the edge of a market ahead, men coming and going on bicycles, women balancing plastic bowls of fruit on their heads and yelling to one another in greeting. The smell of frying mandazi makes my stomach growl.