Practically ran the two blocks to the Hyper-Market so he could talk to Brother Moon, who’d left to get back to work.
Hand on the door, Rap checked out the business beside the Hyper-Market: DSL – The Data Salvation Lab. Sorta remembered . . . that time when Seshat and Moon’s lawyer friend, Bamba, had talked about becoming partners and splitting his business into two kingdoms they’d help govern.
Based on the DSL’s sandwich board, Moon’s new business had absorbed all his data recovery and electronics repair. That left the internet café and Africentric books, t-shirts, CDs, DVDs, statuettes and others goods to the Hyper-Market.
Inside the DSL, Moon was slotting a disembodied hard drive into a docking station. A twenty-something Rwandan brother was working the till and helping a customer.
“Raptor!” said Moon, glancing up and grinning. “Great to see you inside the shenu today. Grown, huh?”
“Yeah!”
“People’ve missed you, bruh. That Sister Yibemnoot’s really something, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, absolutely!” Stopped, afraid he was gushing. Hyperlinked to another topic. “Thanks for the props about my rapping. To be honest, I thought you might still be—”
“Look, bruh, quality is quality. Can’t deny that. Don’want to. I mean, NWA’s lyrics might be evil, but nobody can deny their rhyme skills or Dre’s production.”
“—so, so you’re really not mad anymore?”
Moon tapped his keyboard after checking the drive-analysis.
“Raptor, you saw how crowded the Street Laboratory was today. That’s partly cuz of you. You’re our online emblem now.”
“Our mascot?”
“Our cyber-icon. See all those roughnecks there today?”
He nodded, thinking more about Ãnkhur, Yibemnoot, and the girl with the big eyes and the weave. Thandie.
“Back when I was a young Alchemist,” said Moon, “we were all university students. Middle class families or trying to be.” Moon placed the hard drive inside a Mylar envelope and then into a multi-tiered inbox marked Deep Recovery.
“But you,” said Moon, “you’re giving street cred to the Street Laboratory for these wanderers who’ve been drinking swamp water their whole lives. They’da never come here cuz of me or Sister Seshat or Brother Maãhotep—”
“Who?”
“My lawyer friend, you know, Bamba.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, he’s using his Hru-name again. Seshat never stopped using her Aset-name. Anyway, yeah. Your YouTube’s helping young brothers and sisters who’ve been needing serious attention for lead poisoning.”
The twenty-something Rwandan technician politely broke in to ask Moon a question about recovery times. Moon introduced him: Hakizimana, a comp-tech student at NAIT. Family bills—always, always family bills—meant Hakizimana’d been ten bucks away from having to drop out of school.
But swooping in at the last second was Sbai Seshat, STEP grants in hand, for him to get hooked up with Data Salvation.
The brother barely spoke—truly, he whispered. Rap remembered that until he himself came on with Moon, he’d been the same, never speaking up unless he was forced to. When the quiet cat whispered, “Pleased to meet you,” Rap figured that compared to Hakizimana, he was practically Chris Rock.
When Hakizimana ghosted away to the back room, Moon said, “Here with his aunt’s family.” Lower voiced: “Lost everybody else during the genocide.”
Felt like descending a staircase and missing a stair. Just one sentence about a brother he’d been dismissing, and suddenly he felt more in common with him than almost anyone he knew.
“He a Falcon, too?”
“No,” said Moon, shaking his head. “Be a long time before he’s gonna wanna join anything. If ever.”
Moon in the back, and Rap, alone, finally turned on his cell.
Seventeen voice-mails and thirty-one texts.
All from his mother.
Live coals in his gut.
Moon returned with a small tool and cracked open a busted iPod lying in the FIX inbox. Rap slipped his phone back into his too-big pants.
“Look,” said Moon, glancing around the iPod’s open guts. “About what you said, me being angry about that video of you . . . I was once a young hot-head too. I totally get why you tried to bring revolution to those capoeristas in the park. Truly.
“But when live long enough, you gain a new power. Suddenly surfaces aren’t like lead shields, anymore. You can X-ray things all the way through till you perceive the simultaneity, dig? Perk of getting older. I look back at all the times I was dropping matches into gas tanks, and no matter how much water I hauled after the fact —”
Moon’s eyes scrambled back and forth, like they were decrypting a password.
“Professor Xaasongaxango,” he said, apparently having decided. “He was our sbai , the one who brought Alchemy to E-Town back when we were at university. He’d studied under Cheikh Anta Diop himself, the founder of Alchemy.”
Moon looked back up from the mechanical body he was dissecting. His eyes were soft.
“I thought the world of Professor X—all of us did. The strongest elder any of us’d ever met. And when it came to African histories, Kemetic history, Yoruba civilisation, all of it, he had a mind like a computer.”
Moon’s eyes and fingers focused on the iPod’s entrails.
“But I got upset at him over some stupid shit. Doesn’t matter what. Convinced myself I was right and wouldn’t hear otherwise from anybody. And this was right at the same time the university was putting whips on Professor X’s back, bullshit crazy accusations he was leading a cult or training terrorists or whatever.” He put his tools down.
“So when the end came, I wasn’t there.”
Rap: “The end?”
“Professor Xaaso,” he said, “died of a heart attack. Wasn’t even fifty. And we were estranged at the time.”
Moon moved to the DSL’s hospitality carrel to pour two black-and-gold cups of tea from a stainless steel carafe. Rap accepted his with thanks, glancing at his cup’s hieroglyphics and its painting of the god Jehutí writing on his palette.
Blowing away steam, Moon finally continued.
“Here in the Savage Lands, our men disproportionately suffer heart disease. Guess you could say we’re exceptional.” Shook his head. “Lifetime of lead poisoning and the weight of all those chains and ancestors’ chains and a hundred million links of ghost chains.
“Now, you try telling a doctor about ghost chains, buddy’ll probably try shoving pills down your throat or lighting you up like in Cuckoo’s Nest. Or he’ll say the problem’s in your genes, or you eat too much soul food or some bullshit like that, even when you don’t eat pig. You know—it’s all our fault.”
Rap sipped his tea, trying to calculate Moon’s orbit.
“You know what that does to your heart and brain,” said the man, “all those decades of being doubted, patronised, overlooked, passed over for jobs, having people that you trained get promoted over you, being called oversensitive or accused of being paranoid? While time and again you watch lesser men climb on board the elevator and they’re shoving your desk and you in it out the window?”
Rap swallowed. Tea was bitter—seriously needed sugar. Wasn’t the right time to get it.
“Whether it’s lead poisoning or a million cuts from pyrite blades,” said Moon, “a broken heart’s how it ends for way too many of us.”
Rap knew he was expected to say something. Knew what Moon taught him: if all you’ve got is dumb answers, ask a smart question.
“So, well,” said Raptor, “how do we not die like that, then? Me, like . . . when I get really angry . . . it’s like you said, it’s like fire outta control. Like my whole body’s on fire. I can’t stop it! How’m I supposed to, to, to control that?”
Heard the begging in his own voice. Desperate for Moon to understood how much he wanted to know how to forgive. But he had no practice at it, and nobody who’d modeled it for
him until now.
And unless he planned on moving in with Moon, there was a battle gathering on his horizon like thunderheads—
“Gold-minding,” said Moon, ushering them back to the desk so he could work on the iPod.
“Gold-minding? What’s that?”
“It’s about using breath. Breath is power. It’s transforming your own mind.”
“You mean, like . . . mental alchemy?”
“Indeed, bruh.” Moon finished removing a damaged component. “When you’re in the middle of a crisis, breath is a weapon, or a tool—and if you don’t use it right, it gets taken away and used against you.
“But if you’re trained, you can be like Hru ripping out one of the Devourer’s fangs and making it into his spear-head.
“When you’re in a revolution against your own pyrite mind—that’s an actual brain region called the reptilian brain or the limbic system—you’ve got to wield your own breath to restore leadership to the frontal lobe. The gold mind.”
Replacing the damaged part he’d removed, Moon continued, “And once you learn to inhabit the gold mind at will, it becomes your command-and-control centre to accomplish everything you want in life. It’s your internal Golden Fortress.”
Moon clicked the iPod’s guts back inside its body. Rap imagined Moon as a pharaonic priest, preparing the king’s body for eternity.
“So, how’d you, uh . . . I mean, after your teacher died and everything,” muddled Rap, “how’d you, uh . . . . ”
“Forgive myself?”
“Yeah.”
“Our Golden Fortress burned down the day Professor X died, Rap. So if I do ever figure out how to forgive myself,” said Moon, “I’ll let you know.”
Didn’t know how much was metaphor and how much was matter. So Rap just hmphed.
“Meantime, we all gotta Replace-Elevate. Can you transform that?”
“Drain the Swamps. Build the Shining Place on the elevated land.”
“True indeed.” Moon smiled at him.
But Rap knew from way back, from his days in the refugee camps, that smiles were often just mirages for a man dying of thirst: lying about water and serving sand.
7.
“It’s gon be like Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, dude!” said JC the Black Jackal. Raptor’d just gotten back to the Street Laboratory, walked into the tail end of a planning session.
“When?”
“Next summer!” Jackal’s locks swayed, now longer than pine-cones, making him look like a young Bob Marley.
“You’re telling me these new Falcons are laying out plans for something ten months away?”
“Damn skippy,” said Jackal, slurping from a carton of chocolate milk. “But you know what we actually gon do?”
A street party the northern drag of Kush, 118th Avenue, which they were calling Khair-em-Sokar (“Road of Sokar”—and 107th Ave was Khair-em-Nubt . Without the map of Ancient Kemet on the wall, Rap would’ve been lost on the original names for Saqqara, Luxor and Waset). Multiple bands—including Golden Eye, of course.
(Good thing they had ten months to get ready. Sure, he had notebooks full of lyrics, but they had music for exactly one song, and no stage show. Jacking a show from some capoerista show-offs in the park was one thing, but rocking the mic when everyone expected you to rock the mic was another.)
“But dude, it aint just a party! We’re recruiting! Plus, we gon have like booths and shit set up all along Khair-em-Sokar, an tables, with information for the community, on services and stuff. Get all them social agencies, mosques, churches, whatever.
“And the Falcons’ll be selling shirts, books, DVDs, whatever. And then just like in old-old-old-old-Old School Kemet, we gon raise an obelisk!”
“What?”
“Seriously! An obelisk! Brother Maãhotep usedta build sets and stuff for plays, right? He’s gon make an obelisk, just like in the ancient temples, and we’ll raise it up just to show what we can do! It’s gon be insane! Geometrically insane!”
Jackal pushed an eyebrow up so high it disappeared behind his locks, like a signal for conspiracy.
“And Sister Yibemnoot,” he said, leaning in, “you should really work on her. Get her to sing. Cuz trust me, she can sing!”
“What makes you think I can—”
“Dude, you blind?”
Rap went open-lipped, like he’d just found something weird in his mouth. “Get outta here.”
“You didn’notice?”
“What makes you think I even—”
“Reading you when you like a girl is like reading sky-writing—”
Rap shushed him and yanked him to the inside of an alcove formed by two book shelves. “Whatever.”
“Don’t sleep on this. ‘Because a grind is a terrible thing to waste.’”
“That girl wears hijab!” he whispered. “Seriously doubt she grinds. And I’m not some pig who’s just tryinna, y’know . . . . ”
“You so hung up on Ãnkhur you can’t even—”
“Would you shut up? Besides—”
“Besides nothing—”
“Besides, like I said, she wears hijab. So even if she does, y’know—”
“Grind?”
“No!”
“Like you?”
“Yeah, basically. Even if, it’s not like she can date or whatever. Plus she’s Somali. Don’want her whole clan coming down on me with AKs, rigging my cell phone with an IED.”
“You should be thinking about an IUD. Think you’d be the first brother in history to date a Somali girl and not get caught?”
“What, like you have?”
JC opened his palms and grinned. “You like her, right?”
Rap opened up remote-surveillance on her from across the room.
Two months ago when they met she was Almeera. Now she was Yibemnoot. Sky-Heart. But still that same loose hijab draped down her black hoodie with the rhinestone Playboy bunny logo. Still as intense with that too-too-rare smile.
There she was, talking with two other muhajabaat, excitedly showing them the guts of the Persepolis graphic novel she was carrying.
Pointing with those hands. Typical Somali girl hands: like a child’s.
A hot morning, sun already ironing his neck, and her eyes glinting like dark amber. Birds and birds and birds, like a canopy of leaves ranging overhead, strobing them with shade. Eight years old and ripping into an actual mango together, one his mother’d somehow finagled him in the refugee camp. And then howling at the sight of each other, faces mango-smeared and dripping . . . .
And then a stench: curdling milk, puddles of puke—
“Yo, Earth to Raptor.”
Rap shook his head.
“So, you gon—”
“No.”
Jackal scowled, kissing his teeth. “You’re cracked. Throwing away a perfectly good girl like that!”
Biking nowhere for half an hour. Then finally landing at the Sprucewood library on 95th Street and 115th Ave, just south of, what was it?
Khair-em-Sokar.
Ignored his cell-phone. Begged scrap paper from the librarian. In a quiet corner, tore out a bunch of small squares, scribbled out ten words and quick icons on each. Orbiting them round their central star for the divine geometry, replacing and elevating the system again and again . . . .
7 pm. Couldn’t pretend any more that people weren’t turning around to look at him. Stomach’d been growling louder than a horny pit bull.
Grabbed his cell-phone, texted his mother.
8.
A couple of pretty young Somali muhajabah sat smoking sheesha at the back of the restaurant. Never saw that before. Rebels, but not in the good way. Not Street Falcons, he knew that for damn sure. Headscarves and tight clothes. Things were changing.
Another couple of Somali girls sat leaning into each other at the ear, sharing white earbuds and audio lines going into one mp3 player. Looked like they were both flesh on the ends of a giant white wishbone.
And rowdies on more sheesha
pipes: a mixed group of Somali and Dinka teens, ball caps and giant pants, too loud and swearing.
The owner, an Ethiopian brother who looked like Rakim, swung over and told them to settle down or leave. They started back-talking, and then Rap’s mother walked in, and Rap didn’t know who to be more afraid for.
The owner brought them a combo platter for two: gravied meat and vegetarian dishes in small bowls on a sheet of white pancake injera. The rowdies were gone.
No hugs when she’d landed at his table. Skull-faced. Sunglasses. Inside. Which she never did. Sure, she’d strut outta the house in a shiny red shirt or show too much neck or arms, but sunglasses inside?
Finally she took them off. Her eyes: large, red, accusatory.
Not like he’d expected bruises. Doctor Liberia didn’t use his fists. Didn’t have to.
Sat.
Awkwardly.
Glancing at his mother.
Her, staring out the window.
As if, maybe spray-painted on the drug-store mural across the street, she could read instructions for how to hack inside her son’s mind.
For “a dialogue,” like guidance counsellors and other corny adults loved saying.
Looked around, dodging her glare. Classy joint, this Habesha. Ethiopian paintings, white tile floor, rich brown wood and high ceilings. Hovering in the air, incense like honeyed ginger, waiting like a promised kiss.
Rap’d never been there before, but he hadn’t been to many restaurants, period. They never had money for eating out.
The food sat between them, pieces on a chess board, straining for either him or his mother to start.
“Since you won’tt come home,” she said finally, “I guess we haff no choice but to take our biss-nuss out in public.”
Not that public, but just like she liked it. No Somalis. Not anymore.
He said, “How can we even afford this?”
“How can we afforrad it? I helped the owner with some publicity when he started this place. We met through the Africa Centre. He’s always loyal to people who help him.” Eyes, window-ward. “But we are nutt here to discuss the family foodt budget, Raphael—”
“‘Raptor.’”
The Alchemists of Kush Page 20
