The Uttermost Parts of the Earth

by Frederic Hunter

  Raising her window, Kalima asked, “Is there nothing we can do for these people?”

  “If there were only a couple,” Kwame said, “I would gladly pick them up. But there are so many! They may try to take the truck.” He told Kalima about Adriaan Moulaert. “It took him days to regain his strength. And he was young, strong. He had walked only from Kisangani. Some of these poor souls—”

  With the windows raised, Kwame and Kalima began to sweat. Kalima continued to watch the ragged, exhausted strangers, wishing to be of help.

  “If we stop for those we have room for,” Kwame said, “they will all want to get aboard. We can’t possibly take them. If we do, when we get to Mbandaka, what then? Where can we leave them? They’ll want us to care for them.”

  Kwame had to drive carefully because of all the people on the road. Glancing at Kalima, he saw a sheen of sweat on her cheeks, a sad compassion in her eyes. Walking toward Bikoro, she had wanted to leave Bolobe behind. Kwame wondered now, as she watched the desperate strangers, if she wanted to return to Bolobe, to be once more the safe little girl who waited on her father.

  At places where one of them should have checked the road, Kwame dared not stop. “If we stop, they’ll overwhelm us,” he told Kalima. He feared that refugees would climb on top of the vehicle or scramble inside it. Sometimes they hobbled toward the middle of the road in order to force the truck to stop. Kwame grimly persevered. He feared that he might hit these human roadblocks. But he drove slowly enough to permit them to pull themselves out of the way. Those with the energy tried to struggle aboard. They pounded at the windows. Kalima turned away, frightened by the fists and open hands slapping at her. Kwame feared they would somehow open the vehicle’s doors, pull him and Kalima out, and attack them.

  Kwame was sweating profusely. He was hungry and thirsty. But how could he ask Kalima to open the basket of food in the presence of starving people?

  The film truck crossed a section of swamp. Kwame saw figures lying among manioc plants. He supposed exhaustion had overcome them, that they were sleeping. But slowing to peer at them, he realized they were dead. He said nothing about them to Kalima.

  They neared the great river where the road split, leading both southwest toward Wendji and northeast toward Mbandaka. At the junction, Kwame came upon three bloated bodies lying across the road. They lay in pools of blood. Flies buzzed about them. Driving slowly Kwame stared in disbelief: a family, a man, a woman, and a child. Panga slashes scarred their heads and shoulders. A blow across the neck had all but severed the child’s head. Kwame thought of their baby. “Don’t look! Don’t look!” he told Kalima. He reached out his hand to cover her eyes.

  Hutu refugees, Kwame thought. The family had crossed the entire breadth of the country only to be caught by their enemies. He wondered at the hatred that motivated those enemies; they too had trudged across the country. Who were they? Rwandese Tutsis wreaking vengeance on both génocidaires and any persons suspected of being Hutu, even children? “Don’t look! Don’t!” Kwame kept advising. But Kalima saw the bodies. She began to cry.

  Kwame wondered: Were local Zairean soldiers also killing strangers? Had they been sent to prevent refugees from entering Mbandaka? Hadn’t the officer at the military camp assured him, “We will handle this matter in our own way”? Would Mbandaka set its military garrison on the refugees?

  Kalima kept asking, “Isn’t there anything we can do?” She placed her hands against the windshield so as not to see the road. She looked beseechingly at him.

  “Let’s hope it’s safe at the house,” Kwame said.

  He turned the truck northeast toward Mbandaka. Refugees fleeing toward Wendji must have hoped to cross the river there, he thought. If they got across, maybe their Tutsi enemies would give up the chase. The trampled condition of the road, however, showed that most refugees had headed toward Mbandaka. Ever more bodies sprawled in pools of blood across the road.

  Closer to town Kwame came upon soldiers digging a deep, wide trench. Others shoved bodies into it. Still others stood guard, AK-47s at the ready. They gestured Kwame to stop. Instead he floored the accelerator. “Hold on!” he instructed Kalima. “Hold on!” He raced the truck down the middle of the road, horn blaring. Kalima screamed, clutching the dashboard. Her scream frightened Kwame. He yelled at the top of his voice. Pedestrians scattered. Soldiers scrambled out of the way.

  Nearing the Berton house, Kwame slowed the truck to a crawl and turned. As he approached the house, worn and ragged men emerged from roadside vegetation. They wielded pangas, machetes. They hobbled beside the film truck, pounding on it with the broad sides of their pangas. Kwame saw dozens of exhausted refugees at the house. He gritted his teeth, turned the truck, and raced off. Kalima stared in horror at her home, overtaken by strangers. “What’s happened to everyone?” she cried. Her people working at le snack had been living there. Kwame sped toward town. Kalima watched her home until it disappeared from view.

  Some of Kalima’s people had rented a house in the cités. Kalima directed Kwame to it. When he parked outside, Kalima burst from the vehicle, whooping and calling her people. They came racing from the house. Kalima embraced them. Kwame remained in the truck, bent over the steering wheel, trying to control his emotion, endeavoring not to cry. Kalima’s people came to shake his hand. Soon some of them were weeping, recounting what they had witnessed.

  Kwame pulled himself out of the truck. He found Buta and drew him aside. “What happened at the house?” he asked.

  “While we were at le snack,” Buta said, “the strangers moved in.”

  Kwame leaned against the truck fender, too tired to stand. “Are all of our people safe?” he asked.

  Buta nodded. “We didn’t dare to go inside. The strangers implored us to help them. But how could we? We had already shared the food at le snack. We took what they allowed us to take and came here.”

  Kwame said, “They threatened us with pangas they could hardly lift.”

  “They cannot fight,” Buta said. “But they are so many. Like locusts, like army ants.”

  In the house Kwame stripped off his tee shirt, washed his face and torso. Kalima opened the basket of food from Bolobe. They ate, sharing the food with the others.

  “How have things been in town?” Kwame asked.

  “Come outside,” Buta said. Kwame pulled a clean tee shirt from his backpack and followed Buta to the truck. They stood behind it, hidden from the house.

  “It was bad at the dock,” Buta said. He spoke quietly. Most refugees had gathered at the port, he said, trying to get passage across the river. But soldiers found them there.

  Kwame asked: “Zairean soldiers? Tutsis? Kabilistes?”

  Buta did not know. There was no attack, he claimed, no fighting between soldiers. The Kabilistes and Tutsis came into town, he had heard, as brothers, in order to hunt refugees. They found Hutus at the docks. Hundreds of them. Anti-Mobutu Kabilistes instructed pro-Mobutu soldiers to give commands in Lingala. They shouted: “Zaireans, fall to the ground!” The Hutu refugees spoke no Lingala. They remained standing. The soldiers opened fire on them.

  Kwame sat on the ground. He had no energy to hear the report while standing.

  Buta reported that soldiers massacred not only strangers, but local people as well. When the firing started, panic swept the crowd. People jumped into the river. Many drowned. Others were shot in the water. When the soldiers ran out of bullets, they used pangas, rocks, clubs, any weapon that came to hand. “Go to the dock,” Buta said. “You will see clothing and belongings that refugees dropped as they ran into the river.”

  “And the bodies?” Kwame asked.

  “For the crocs,” Buta said.

  “And le snack?”

  “We haven’t been back. No one goes into town.”

  “And the library?”

  Buta shook his head.

  “Lofale? Anatole?”

  “Gone to their villages.”

  Kwame thought he must check on the library. He fou
nd a bed in the house and napped for an hour. He told Kalima where he was going. He would not take the truck; it might be commandeered. He walked through the late afternoon neighborhoods of small homes to the main road. Probably it was foolish to do this, he told himself. He felt drained from the driving. Even so, he started toward town. No one was on the streets.

  When he reached the post office, he saw out in front of the library the palm frond canopies of le snack. Soldiers idled in their shade, drinking beer, yakking, their AK-47s lying on the ground. Kwame moved forward. The soldiers fell silent. They watched him. When he stepped into the cultural center’s yard, they reached for their weapons.

  Kwame’s senses revived, grew sharp. “Tata?” he asked. “Tata Anatole? Is he—In the house at the back?” He chattered nervously.

  The soldiers glanced at one another. They did not rise. They stared at him.

  He wondered if they understood French. “Mbote!” he called. He started slowly toward the back of the building. “Ça va?” he kept asking. “Okay? Ça va?”

  None of the soldiers spoke. They watched him. Several were smoking hemp. Its odor filled the air. One of the soldiers waved a hand to let Kwame pass.

  “Anat?” he called. “Anatole?” The entry doors were open. Books littered the floor. He was certain Anatole would not be there, but he moved toward the house, calling his name. A soldier slept in the entryway of the boyerie.

  Kwame glanced behind him, then moved through the back entry into the library. Every few steps he called out, “Anat? Anat?”

  His heart beat fast. He saw men asleep in Mason’s bedroom. It was now a barracks, without furniture except for mattresses brought in from somewhere. The Zaire map had been ripped from the wall. Still visible were Mason’s scratchings: “The horror! The horror!” Kwame moved forward on tiptoe.

  In the library, books lay open on the floor. Some were ripped open as kindling for fires set to keep down mosquitoes. Kwame left by the front door. He went down the steps. He waved to the soldiers, showing that his hands were empty. He walked away quickly, feeling the soldiers’ eyes on his back.

  Outside the office of Air Zaire, he stared at the route map. He could hardly think. “What now?” he asked himself. Did it make any sense to remain in Zaire? No. To fly to Kinshasa? No. The battle to overthrow Mobutu would take place there. It might be taking place there now.

  He caught his breath and thought of his arrival in Mbandaka so many months before. What hopes he’d had! To accomplish something constructive for the underdeveloped world. And something for himself. What a way to leave Zaire! In flight from a dysfunction that like army ants ate everything in its path.

  He entered the airline office. “I am closed,” said the chef de service.

  “Are flights still leaving?”

  The man measured Kwame. “Sometimes.”

  “I need two tickets for Bangui. Are planes going there?”

  “Tomorrow noon,” said the chef. “Then not for another week. If the airport remains open. But I am closed.”

  “I’ll give you a credit card.” Kwame reached for his wallet.

  “I am closed,” the chef insisted. He shook his head; he would not accept credit. “Everything is turmoil in Mban,” the man said.

  Kwame removed his credit card and driver’s license from his wallet and handed them to the chef.

  The chef shook his head. “Who are you?” he asked. “How do I know it’s your card? Pulling things from a wallet doesn’t mean they’re yours.”

  Kwame said, “I am the American living here.” Through his fog of fatigue he remembered Odejimi’s hundred-dollar bills. He had carried them in his wallet ever since the night he had found them in the doctor’s room. “Here’s something for your kindness.” Kwame handed the chef de service two hundred-dollar bills. “Here’s my credit card and some American money. Hard currency.” The two men examined one another. “It’s always useful to carry hard currency.”

  The chef scooped up the two bills. He felt their consistency and stuffed them into his trousers. He processed the tickets, issued boarding passes. He placed the documents into an Air Zaire envelope and handed them to Kwame. “Tomorrow morning at eleven.”

  “We’ll see you then,” Kwame said. “I trust you can help us board the flight. My wife has never flown.”

  “Glad to help, M’sieur.”

  “I’ll count on it,” Kwame said.

  He did not know if Kalima had a passport, even if she had visited Belgium. It would be the job of the chef of Air Zaire to get Kalima onto the plane. Once in the Central African Republic, Kwame would throw himself on the mercy of the American Embassy. He would leave it to them to sort out Kalima’s travel status and find a way to get them both to America.

  Kwame stuck the ticket envelope into his shirt. Disregarding his fatigue, he hurried back to the cités. The red globe of the sun was now moving behind the horizon. He strode along so as not to get lost in the confusion of small streets. He must reach Kalima before night fell.

  KWAME TOOK Kalima to the Badekas. They had returned to Mbandaka several days earlier. They all embraced, relieved to see each other. In the comfort of these friends, Kwame felt his energy revive.

  “Have you come through this business safely?” Kwame asked.

  “Safely, yes,” Badeka assured him.

  “But devastated by sadness,” added Théa. “It will be years before Mbandaka recovers from this.”

  Kwame asked if he and Kalima could spend that night at the school. Their house was now sheltering refugees. Tutsi soldiers were using the library as a barracks. The Badekas insisted that they stay with them. Kwame suggested that the couple give Kalima some tea. There were a couple of errands he needed to run.

  Before he left, Théa took him aside. “You must get Kalima out of Mbandaka,” she said. “Otherwise she will internalize what she sees. It will affect the baby.”

  “Explain to her that she must leave,” Kwame pleaded.

  He took a crate of plantains, a gift from the convent in Bikoro, to the priests at the Catholic mission. When he asked about the Onatra docks, the priests glanced about to check who might overhear. Two priests had been at the docks. They had witnessed the massacre. Hundreds slaughtered, they confirmed. Women and children. Bodies thrown into the river. There were mass graves now in every cemetery in the town. Kwame asked about the number of dead. One priest estimated 500, the other 2,000.

  At the Afrique, Kwame saw an unusual number of patrons on the terrace. Many were tall and thin: Tutsis. Kwame bought a drink for Tombolo. “Don’t think this means good business for me,” the hotelier complained. “These men do not buy their drinks. They’re turning my reputable place into a bordel.” Tombolo insisted that he had seen no one killed, but he had heard gunfire and screaming and seen bodies floating on the river.

  “I went down the Ingende road about ten days ago,” Kwame said. “There were army roadblocks. Why were they set up?”

  Tombolo did not know. Perhaps soldiers hoped to stop the refugees from entering Mban, he suggested. Tombolo insisted, “It’s best to know nothing about this business.” Kwame asked if soldiers from the army camp had participated in the massacres. The hotelier merely shrugged.

  Kwame related what he had heard from the priests.

  “If those priests had sense,” Tombolo whispered, “they would mind their own business.” Many refugees had survived, he assured Kwame. Local people were sheltering them and giving food to those hiding out. Some had already crossed the river; others would follow. “It is best to know nothing. And to say nothing.”

  Kwame could hardly believe that local Zairean troops had allowed Tutsi soldiers, tribal thugs, to enter Mbandaka and murder hundreds of exhausted, frightened, starving refugees.

  “A terrible business,” Tombolo said. “But you white men!” He inspected Kwame with scorn. “So sentimental! Those strangers were not our people.” He raised his glass to patrons newly arrived in the bar. “They were not our people,” he repeated. “Some o
f them were killers. They did even worse things to Tutsis. Are we to let them take over our town? Without money? Or food? Camping in our yards? Shitting in the streets? Spreading SIDA? These Tutsis solved a problem for us that we might have had to solve in the same way ourselves.”

  When Kwame left the Afrique, he shook Tombolo’s hand and thanked him for being a friend.

  “I won’t be seeing you again?” Tombolo asked.

  “Probably not.”

  AT THE Badekas’, Kwame found that Kalima was taking a nap. He went quietly into the bedroom and positioned a chair so that he could watch her sleep. He prepared the little speech that he expected he must give to win her agreement to leave. In his mind he rehearsed all the occasions when she had demonstrated courage by adjusting to new situations: entering the relationship with Bonanga’s friend; leaving her family for the convent; leaving the convent for a life with Vandenbroucke; defying her parents to return to him. He would extol the entre-preneurship that led her to develop le snack. He would praise her beauty and education and speak of his confidence that she could master any challenge set before her. He would explain that he could not become an African, although he had tried. However she could become an American. Even if there were things about his country that distressed him, he had come to understand that he could not run away from what he was. He needed to embrace it and that embracing would be easier if she were with him.

  When he finished this recitation in his mind, he found Kalima watching him. He leaned over and kissed her. “You’re here. You were gone so long! I was afraid something had happened to you.”

  “I’m right here. And I’m going to stay beside you.”

  “Did you hear what happened at the port?” she asked.

  “How did you hear?”

  “Buta’s people told me.” She reached out to take his hand. “We cannot stay here,” she said. “We have a baby on the way.”

  He nodded in agreement.

  “My head keeps calling up pictures of that family we saw on the road. I think of that child—” Tears shone in her eyes. “We cannot stay here.”