The Alchemists of Kush

by Minister Faust

Eyes flicked onto him. “Excuse me?”

  “Raptor.”

  “Aren’t you getting a little oldt for dinosaur nicknames? Or, or, or is it the basketball team? You don’t even play basketball!”

  How would you know?

  Sucked down as big a breath as far as he could, then released it s-s-s-lowly like Jackal’d told him (advance intell on Brother Moon’s promised gold-minding).

  “No. Like a bird of prey,” he said, clearly as possible, trying not to sound patronising. “Like a falcon.”

  She shook her head, chewing her lip.

  He gave himself a 39% on voice control.

  “So since when are you calledt—”

  “Since a long time.”

  “Fine. R-r-r-ap-tor.”

  That rolled r.

  Since he was a kid. Like being hit rapid-fire with a rolled-up newspaper.

  And he wasn’t down with letting anyone hit him with anything anymore.

  Raptor: “I’m moving out.”

  “What?”

  Diners, the owner, a waitress: looking.

  She lowered her voice, leaned over the table.

  “Stop talking such nonsense!”

  “I’m sick of dealing with Doctor Liberia—”

  “Don’t call him that—”

  “—and how you let him treat you like some—”

  Swallowed, searching for a word. Any word but that word. Her large eyes now larger.

  “—like somebody who doesn’t deserve respect.”

  His mother unfurled a roll of injera, tore it into shreds for picking up doro wat and gomen and atekilt aletcha wot.

  But then she put the pancake bread down, without scooping any chicken, spinach or curried potatoes and cabbage.

  “Thank you,” said Raptor, “for not insulting my intelligence by claiming he respects you when you know he doesn’t.”

  “My silence,” she whispered, “has naathing to do your manipulative talk. And you are nutt the adult, here. You don’t give me ultimata—” (even coldly furious, his mother insisted on the correct Latinate plurals, something he hadn’t even understood until Brother Moon began teaching him etymology) “—about who I can have a, a friend ship with—”

  “It’s not an ultimatum. I’m not threatening to move out. I am moving out.”

  “You dun’t even have a job! Are you planningk to live on the street?”

  “I’m moving in with my friend Jackal,” he lied. Improvised. “His family’s nice and they already—”

  “Jackal? Jackal? You’re staking your future on a boy named Jackal?”

  “I don’t care whether you like his name. It’s a done deal. And I’m not sticking around anymore for when that drunk old bastard drives you both head-first into a truck or off a bridge!”

  “What do you want me to do, Raphael?” she hissed. “To gett you to stupp this insanity?”

  Knew he had her on the ropes.

  Ten seconds. Staring.

  Twenty.

  “You’re tearing this family apart with these threats!” she said finally. “Your, your father . . . his last words to me, his last words to me were to hold onto you—”

  (The sidekick she’d never even tried throwing before, that’s how desperate she was, how bad things must’ve gone between her and the Destroyer, that she was lying on her side in the octagon and’d fired her last good one and was completely defenseless—)

  “My father!” he said. “How many times in my life have you mentioned his name, ever? And now you think you can just, like, invoke it? Like a word-of-power? Like that’s all it takes to stop me? You really think you have that much magic left?”

  “Whatt are you even talkingk about?”

  “My whole life you’ve been locking-down information on him like a refugee hoarding food!”

  He’d come up with that line three hours before. Gave himself full credit on the writing, and a 90% on delivery.

  But his mother was educated. Emotion alone wasn’t going to take her out. He had to brandish his intelligence in front of her like a sword beneath a skyful of lightning.

  “Why is that, mum? Why have you refused to pay me the respect of teaching me about my own father?”

  She didn’t even try denying it.

  Reaching down, picking up her crumbled injera, scooping a shred of chicken into her mouth and swallowing like she was taking cancer meds.

  His mother: “Whatt do you wantt to know?”

  Didn’t smile. Didn’t even smirk.

  “Everything.”

  9.

  “My family ran very successful businesses in Somalia before the government collapsid.”

  Been a minute of lip-licking and false starts before his mother’d opened with that.

  “Mining equipment, computers, satellite dishes . . . after the government fell in 1991, all of us endedt up across East Africa. My parents, my aancles and aunts, set up businesses wherever they wentt.”

  At last he was eating, but he could barely taste the food from straining to imagine his mother’s—his own—vast, wealthy family flung across Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania . . . who knew where else? With faces that didn’t look anything like his.

  “We endedt up in Sudan,” she said, damming a cascade of hair behind her ear. “Because I was oldt enough, I went to the University of Khartoum. Forget everything you see on the TV about Muslim countries. That campus was full of female students in every field. My parents wanted me to become a doctor.”

  She snorted at that.

  “I was in my thirdt year of Journalism, the firrist time I saw your father. He was speaking at a studentt eventt. And he was dressed very conservatively, in a narrow suit and a tie. I thought maybe he was one of those Christianists. The evangelicals, you know.” She shook her head.

  “He was talking about engineering, using engineering skills in the rural areas, employing local people, nutt falling for those Western ‘aid’ programmes where they fly in and house one or two rich foreigners when they could’ve hired ten local doctors or engineers or technicians for the same money.”

  She sighed, blinking, and her eyes went wet and sparkling.

  “I was excitedt by every wordt outt of his mouth. Talking about studentt brigades, taking our skills to the countryside, making a peaceful revolution in poor people’s lives.

  “Now, my parents were business people. They hadt no idea their crazy rebel daughter was in the Sudanese Communistt Party for a year already, which was illegal then, but it was also the mostt progressive party for women, and had a lot of women leaders, like my hero Niemat Kheir. Anyway, hearing this young, beautiful man talk about revolution . . . it fired me up.

  “I guess I imagined myself wearing a beret and a couple of bandoliers, except filledt with pens instead of bullets, getting rural people to tell their life stories of struggle, teaching them how to write, empowering everyone . . . . ”

  She chuckled. “This rich Somali girl-communist telling Sudanese women how to—well, I was young.”

  For the first time, she smiled at him.

  “And so I signedt up to help however I couldt. And I started workingk with your father.

  “He was so serious when he was giving thatt speech. Yes, he was passionate, but I wondered if he knew how, how to be fun. If he knew how to laugh.”

  The owner, the Rakim-looking brother, brought them a pot of spiced tea. His mother poured for both of them.

  “Once we were on a planningk committee together,” she said, “he started slowly showing his charm, like putting a litter of puppies out in the yard, one at a time. He could make any ordinary story about simple things seem amazingk, like, like if was tellingk you about gettingk groceries at the outdoor market, he’d talk about how a big man haulingk sacks talkedt with a lisp, or the way a chicken hangingk from a hook lookedt like a guilty husband hidingk from his wife. He’d have everyone in the room laughingk.

  “He was skinny, just like you. If he were carrying two sacks of rice, he might haff weighedt seventy kilos. But he h
adt broad shoulders. Beautiful, blue-black skin thatt was like . . . like polishid ebony. Eyes like that looked right into you and crinkled every time he smiledt or laughedt. Which was mostt of the time.”

  Smiled, shaking her head. Arranging salt and pepper shakers, napkin holder and water glasses.

  “When we’d been working together for a couple of months on figuring out a development project, I managedt to slide into the conversation that I could never marry a smoker.”

  “My father smoked?” The words’d jumped Raptor’s turnstiles before he could tackle them to the floor.

  “Oh, yes! Like a factory! He hadt long, slender fingers, and he usedt to holdt his cigarettes out like this—”

  Demonstrated: holding a rolled-up napkin at its base, its tip pointing straight up. Raptor could almost see the smoke rising to stroke the ceiling.

  “—and anyway, that’s all I said on the subjeccit, and aboutt a week later, thatt was the only time I ever saw him graampy. Just a little short-temperedt with everyone.” Smiled. “Tryingk to quitt. I mean, he hadt quitt. For me.”

  Eyes glimmering, wetter still. Blinked and blinked.

  Raptor remembered it all, everything he’d never seen and had never heard.

  His mum, still, after all that time.

  In love.

  “He was stylish, you know.” She smirked. “Very suave.”

  She looked up and around, as if she could see his dad strutting around the restaurant. A head-turner, even in death.

  “He had some few beautiful shirts from Nigeria with all that embroidery they do on top of batik. Especially yellow. Oh, my godt—with his skin? He would glow! He was glorious! And he had a black, silk Vietnamese jackett, too. I lovedt thatt one. It had a golden phoenix on the back—I never learned where he gott it. He was so . . . so cosmopolitan!

  “But mostly he wore thatt narrow suit of his. To think I’d thoughtt he was an evangelical. But really, he just lovedt Sam Cooke.”

  Raptor laughed. “My dad loved Sam Cooke?”

  “Oh, yes. When we were working alone he used to sing me ‘Chain Gang’ and ‘Cupid.’ And he loved ‘Change Gonna Come.’ And he lovedt Sam and Dave, too, and all those ’sixties rhythm-and-blues artists. So he dressedt just like them. It was his ‘schtick.’”

  His old man. The Sudanese styler.

  “Now, even in a large city like Khartoum, even att the university, women were conservative, so they didn’t, you know, they weren’t throwingk themsellevs at him. But they talkid to each aather. They all talkid about him, the beautiful golden man.”

  “Huh?”

  “His name.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Jini.”

  He stared back at the explanation that wasn’t one.

  “His name! Your last name, Garang, it’s like . . . for the Dinka, Garang is like Adam. The original man. And Jini means ‘gold.’ You didn’t know that?”

  Gold. Amazing. “No,” he said.

  “My fault,” she said, “that you don’t know more Dinka.”

  No kidding. And your fault I’m only finding out about my own father now.

  He sucked cool air down as far as he could, trying to drown the burn.

  “So all these women, they used to gossip about me. I was too ‘aggressive.’ So they called me Araweelo.”

  Raptor blinked hard. “What do you mean, they called you that? You mean, like, it’s rude to call you by your first name or something, there?”

  She showed him her driver’s license: Kaultom Farah.

  “Your name isn’t even Araweelo?”

  “Not legally,” she said. The name came from “the morality police,” she said: jealous female Dinka students angry at her for “stealing” a good Dinka man, jealous Muslim women who called her a whore for working unchaperoned with a man (angry because she had the guts to go after him), or the Somalis who accused her of slumming with a Dinka.

  “I didn’t wear hijab, so I was a badt woman. Loose.”

  Raptor chuckled. He knew the old-school meaning of the word, knew his mum didn’t know kids today used it to mean something anatomical. Same difference, really.

  She snorted, oblivious. “And pushy, and talkid too much, and thoughtt I was a queen. That’s why Araweelo,” she said. Told him, when he still didn’t get it, about the ancient Somali queen who ruled at the time of Christ and was one of the most powerful women in history.

  By legend, she’d hanged enemies by their balls.

  His mother smiled at his reaction—liked he’d been slapped. Obviously liked that she could still shock her son.

  Tried imagining Doctor Liberia punished with an Araweelo Special.

  “To them,” said his mother, again oblivious to the reason for his smile, “‘Araweelo’ was the ultimate insult. But I lovedt it. I startedt introducing myself as that, which droffe them crazy! And your father lovedt it, too.”

  “So . . . did you, like, date? Or, how long did it take you to get married?”

  Her smile vanished.

  “There were,” she said, wiping the condensation off her glass, “complications.”

  10.

  “I knew my family wouldn’t approve,” she said. “Yes, they’d travelledt, they were educated. Yes, they’d never forcedt me to wear hijab and so I never didt unless we went somewhere extreme. They were consideredt liberal. Maybe a little too Western.

  “But one of my older brothers who’d gone to Italy was married to an Italian woman. They never forgave him. So for me, a daughter, to marry a Dinka, a non-Muslim . . . thatt was haram. He wasn’tt even a Christian!”

  “Really?”

  “No. To them he was kafir. That’s the kind of slur they use againist animists. But he was Dinka. He believedt in Nhialic. Dinka are monotheistic, you know. Not pagans, like ignorantt people say.” She laughed. “Look at me! I’m an atheist, and I’m defendingk . . . the point is—”

  “Did your parents know? That you were an atheist?”

  “Are you crazy? They didn’tt even know I was a communistt. Not thatt they really caredt about religion, but who wants a wild daughter ruining the family reputation?”

  “So how’d you get married?”

  “Masaafo,” she said. He didn’t react. “Your Somali’s so good, I justt thought you’d know thatt word. We elopid.”

  Eloped. Amazing. He chuckled. Happily or un-, he didn’t know. How many more secrets could there be?

  She spun out the tale of how they waited to finish their studies, then fled for the southern city of Juba where his family lived.

  To a Dinka girlfriend headed for studies in Berlin, she gave eight letters dated across the following calendar year, to be mailed on those dates, which wove a fiction of how she was seeking a reporting job with Der Spiegel, but she’d take any news work she could get.

  Since she’d always been the wild child, she knew they’d believe her fiction—hell, she actually did freelance a couple of stories from southern Sudan to the German daily, and had her friend send clippings of her bylined pieces to her parents.

  “We likedt living in Juba,” she said. “It was smaller then. Just a dusty town with red soil and hills on the horizon. A hundredt thousand people—barely bigger than Red Deer.”

  Since he’d never been to Red Deer, that didn’t help him.

  “And your father’s family, they embracedt me like their own daughter,” she said, “which overjoyedt me. But it also made me ashamedt because I knew my family would never give my husbandt the same treatimentt.”

  While his father’s brothers were helping them build a house next to his parents’ home, Araweelo and Jini built a cross-disciplinary team of students at the University of Juba. Bringing pre-natal and neo-natal care to rural people, building water purifiers and teaching them how to make their own, helping them create small businesses and set up international sales contacts.

  His mother led another project: not teaching just literacy, but Dinka literature and creative writing.

  “It wasn’t
t just the North-South war we were dealing with in Juba,” she said. “Thingks had always been harder in the south.

  “Outside Juba, schools were even worse than they were inside. Maybe two kids in a hundredt finishedt school. Girls almost never didt. Andt the authorities didn’t emphasise or even respeckit the Dinka culture.

  “But we helpedt people change thatt. We taught parents and grandparents and children. They put on plays and wrote stories and learnedt debating . . . we even publishedt a small book of poems, and another one of legends and songs and elegies, because everyone there hadt lost so many people in the war.

  “But I have to tell you, Raphael—sorry, R-r-r-aptor—I mean, to you it may sound crazy, but those were the most exciting times of my life!

  “I had a handsome, brave, brilliantt husband, I was free of my family and their bourgeois attitudes and backwardt inhibitions, I had justice-work I caredt about with beautiful, kind rural people who treated me like a goodt granddaughter who’d come back home.

  “And I was young and foolish enough to think it wouldt lastt.”

  Hung so long on the words that Raptor had to finally lean forward and ask her, “But?”

  “But butchers came and murdered your father.”

  “Murdered?” sputtered Raptor. “You told me he died in a car accident! You, you . . . why would you lie about that? My god—”

  “Don’t rush me, Raphael!”

  “What would possess you to—”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me about ‘possess!’ You haffn’t hadt to wander in the wilderness with the misery I haff! You haffn’t hadt to suffer the knives I have, plungedt into my heart again and again, every time I look at your face and see—”

  Everyone in the restaurant silence, looking at them.

  Then turning back around.

  She stood up. Marched to the washroom.

  He sat.

  Wondering if she were going to turn off the tap for another seventeen years of his life.

  Neck and shoulders burning, brain cranking triple-speed for the words to apologise.

  Her talking to the owner, confirming their tab was zero.

  Deep-breathing. Deep-breathing.

  That panic to apologise cracked into shards, plunged into the waters, dissolved.