“Mama!” I called, walking toward it as I looked around wildly. I coughed as smoke wafted in my direction. “Papa!” I stopped yards away, everything around me was silent but the sound of embers crackling and softly popping. I looked away. Then, slowly, I turned to face what was left of my home. Because of me, I thought. And I could feel my okuoko begin to writhe on my head and against my back. My Meduse anger sharpened everything. The Khoush had always seen my people as expendable, tools to use, toy with, and discard, useful animals until we weren’t useful anymore. During war, we were just in the way.
“When elephants fight, the grass suffers.” The green words appearing before me seemed so out of place and the words so profound that I was snapped from my dark thoughts. Mwinyi had sent them to me through the zinariya.
My eye went to the base of the house where the embers were glowing.
“It wasn’t just called the Root because it was a family place,” I said. “Most of the house’s foundation was actually built on the old root of an Undying tree.” My mother had told me this when I was about five years old. I’d been sure she was just joking until the next thunderstorm when I realized the house wasn’t groaning because of the wind. “The cellar was—” I couldn’t say it. I knew what we’d find in the cellar.
Mwinyi left me and walked around the house.
As I stood there, I felt it more than I heard it and every part of me reacted. My okuoko writhed, one of them actually slapping the side of my face as if to say, “Look!” The zinariya contracted and expanded my world and I heard distant voices commenting from a distant place, just softly enough for me not to understand. I automatically called the simple equation that always focused my mind, a2 + b2 = c2. Then over and over, I spoke the number that relaxed me, “Five, five, five, five, five, five, five.” I let my mind follow the zipping dancing fives and with each triangular motion, I steadied. When I looked toward the road leading to the Root, I was thankfully calm enough to simply observe what stood there like the spirit it was.
The Night Masquerade. Again. This time during the day! And now I was seeing it from much closer than I had the first time when I stood in my bedroom a few days ago, before my bedroom had been burned to ash. It looked taller, standing about my father’s height. Its raffia body cracked and snapped as it stretched an arm to point its long finger at me, fingers of gnarled sticks. The wooden mask’s mouth was full of yellow teeth.
Only men were supposed to see the Night Masquerade and it was believed its appearance signified the approach of a big change; whether it brought change with its presence or change came afterward was never clear. The Night Masquerade was the personification of revolution. Its presence marked heroism. To also see it during the day was doubly unheard of. My family was dead; what more change could I endure? What was heroic about this happening? If this was a revolution, it was an awful one.
It spoke in Otjihimba and its voice was like the sound of a vibrating Undying tree during a thunderstorm. “Death is always news,” it said, the acrid smoke billowing from its head thickening.
I felt the world swim around me as the weight of my family’s death and my own terror tried to pull me down. Around it, everything seemed to vibrate. My eyes watered, and I kept blinking and blinking away the blurriness. The Night Masquerade slowly stepped toward me and I nearly screamed. Instead, I coughed as I inhaled a great whiff of its smoke.
“A bird who has flown off the earth and then returns to land is still on the land,” it said. “Remove your shoes and listen.”
Phoom! The smoke from its head was copious now and when it finally cleared, the Night Masquerade was gone.
“Oh, thank the Seven,” I whispered. But its presence stayed with me and its words echoed in my mind. I looked down at my dusty sandals. I’d bought them on Oomza Uni in the local market. They were made from the secretions of a friendly spider that lived in swamps. When fresh, the webbing could be molded into anything. When it dried, it kept that shape for a thousand years, the seller told me.
I was considering taking them off when Mwinyi called, “Binti. Come here.”
He and Rakumi were on the other side of the house and as I jogged there, I felt faint. My family was in the cellar. Dead. Had they burned? Suffocated first? “We cannot get out,” my father had said. I stopped and realized that beside me were the charred remains of the sandstorm analyzer my brother had built and placed on the roof. The steel box with its optical particle counters looked like the discarded head of a primitive robot. He’d been so proud of that instrument and so had my mother.
As I ran around the side of the house, I stopped again. My mouth fell open. Then I shut it because I could taste the stench through my mouth just as much as I could smell it through my nose. There were bodies all over and vultures stood and were pecking at some of them. Khoush soldiers. Men and women. With their chests burst open. I twitched and I was back on the ship in the middle of space. The smell of blood and now decay. How is that possible? I thought, because my stunned senses were telling me I was alone on the Third Fish again and the Meduse had just performed moojh-ha ki-bira. It had just happened.
Happened.
No warning.
So many.
I saw stars. Red and blue and silver. Bursting before my eyes. My mouth was full of decay, as it hung open, trying to pull in air. Now I couldn’t breathe. None around me were breathing. I stumbled, gasping, and one of the vultures lazily spread its wings and hopped away.
I blinked and I was back at the remains of the home where I’d been born. The violence was here now. I’d brought it by leaving home and coming back home. I was hyperventilating now. What did my therapist Saidia Nwanyi say I should do when I can’t breathe? I thought. I put my hands behind my head, though doing so made me feel more exposed to the gruesome sight before me. There had to be fifteen, maybe even twenty bodies strewn about like fallen trees. “Five, five, five, five, five,” I chanted as I let myself tree. Each time the number left my lips, I was able to take in more breath. And with each breath, I came back to myself. The moment I could move, I fled.
When I reached the back of the house, I stepped onto a sheet of solid yellow glass. It cracked and shattered beneath my foot. I took another step and stopped, realizing this was the spot where Okwu’s tent had been. Mwinyi stood in the blackened center. Not far to the left was what remained of my brother’s garden, a charred skeleton of tomato bushes and ash. Rakumi sniffed the greener parts and began munching on a tomato bush.
“Did you see—”
“Yes,” he said, still looking at the cracking glass beneath him.
“I think Okwu did that,” I said.
“Maybe because the Khoush did this,” he stamped on the glass and his sandal went right through it, shards flying this way and that.
I shut my eyes and took deep breaths, holding myself shallowly in the tree, numbers and equations cartwheeling and floating around me. “This explosion would have killed anything it hit,” I said. “Unless Okwu wasn’t in the tent.”
“I don’t think they killed it,” Mwinyi said.
“Why?”
“Your family was hiding inside the Root when they set it on fire.” He paused to inspect my face. “They burned the Root because they couldn’t find you or . . . or Okwu.”
The idea hit me so hard that when I turned and ran off, I didn’t care about the possibility of glass cutting my feet through my sandals.
The road into town was dusty and my sandals kicked it up with every step. Even as I ran further and further from home, the air continued to smell of smoke. The Yennes’ house was still burning. The Mahangu building was blown to bits. The Omuzumbas’ house was still intact and I glimpsed someone on the balcony watching me run by. How many others were watching me run down the road? How many had fled the destruction?
A Khoush ship had just flown by, which meant they were still in the area. I didn’t care. I passed the remain
s of the souq, where it looked as if the market’s women and men had left everything behind in a rush. There were overturned tables and booth dividers and in some places crushed and rotten meat, vegetables, piles of grains, and crushed baskets. The smell of spices, snuff, and incense mixed with the stench of smoke here. I leapt over an overturned bench. Sweat was pouring down my face now, and my heart felt like it would smash through my chest.
I stopped at the lake and stood there. Its water was so serene that it looked like the glass burned into the sand where Okwu’s tent used to be. “So calm in all this chaos,” I said, breathing hard. The sweat was getting into my eyes, so I wiped my hand down my face. My hand came away red orange with otjize. I heard someone behind me.
“What . . . are . . . you doing?” Mwinyi asked, jogging up. He bent forward to catch his breath, putting his hands on his knees. “We don’t know if the Khoush are around here!”
“I . . . saw the Night Masquerade again,” I said. “In broad daylight. We don’t know anything anymore.”
“Back at the Root?” he asked. Even Enyi Zinariya people believed in the Night Masquerade.
I nodded. There was movement to my right and I turned my head. Two men. Himba. I knew them. I knew most everyone in my village. The Council Elder Kapika and his second wife Neeka.
“Binti?” Chief Kapika said, coming closer. Neeka followed. And as they came closer, I noticed more people peeking from behind market dividers and from within homes across the street.
I hesitated, then turned to the water and walked into it. I felt all eyes on me as the lake water washed off the thin layer of otjize on my legs and sweat washed it from my face, neck, and arms. In front of all these people, Himba people. I went in up to my waist, then I opened my mouth and shouted, “Okwuuuuuuuuu!”
My voice echoed across the water and then there was silence. I could hear people behind me whispering. Still, I waited.
And then the water began to ripple as Okwu swam up and rose before me. I smiled, tears stinging my eyes. Its dome was a deep blue in the sunshine. And it was covered with clusterwink snails. I stepped back as more domes emerged around it. More Meduse. A woman screamed from the group of people and there was the sound of scuffling feet as people fled.
I waded back to the land, joining Mwinyi. “How did you know?” he asked. He sounded more than nervous, but he didn’t step away as the Meduse emerged from the water.
“Because I know Okwu,” I said, turning to Okwu. In Meduse, I asked it, “Are you alright?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you answer me?”
“I didn’t want you to come.”
“I thought you were dead!” I said.
“It’s better than you being dead, Binti.”
“W—. . . what happened? Why is . . . The Root! They burned it! And there were dead soldiers. Many! What happened?” I was shaking and crying now.
Okwu blew out gas and both Mwinyi and I started coughing.
“When you left, I stayed in my tent,” he said in Otjihimba. “Your family was kind to me, except for your sisters, who like to yell. Your family had a meeting that evening, so many were there. The Khoush came in the night when your father took me out in the desert to meet with your elders in private. The elders wanted to speak with me. And as we talked, from where we were we saw the Khoush ship fly in and blow up my tent.”
“What?” I whispered.
“The elders told me to stay with them in the dark, as your father ran back, shouting at the Khoush to stop. He told all your people to run inside for safety. There were Khoush on the ground at this point. One of the Khoush argued with your father. I could hear it; the man called himself General Staff Kuw and he had no hair or okuoko on his head. He didn’t think I was in the tent and he wanted to know where I was. Your father refused to tell him and the general accused him of sympathizing with the enemy and having a daughter who’d even mated with a Meduse—”
“Mated?” I exclaimed. The Meduse hovering around Okwu all thrummed their domes.
“Yes, the Khoush are a stupid people,” Okwu said. “Your father said they were the enemy because they’d just blown up part of his property. This angered General Kuw. That’s when he ordered his soldiers to firebomb the Root. I think they expected everyone to run out. They didn’t expect your father to run inside as it was burning. But that’s what he did and no one came out.”
“The Himba do not run away, we run within,” I said, quietly. “They went inside, even as it was burning.” I clucked my tongue, as my hands began to shake and my mind tried to cloud. “The Khoush like to joke that we are a suicidal people.”
“As the elders watched the Root burn in the night, I left them . . . who just stood there staring at the fire that was so huge, it showed light far into the desert,” Okwu continued. “As the Khoush, in a stupid rage, went on to firebomb more homes in Osemba. They weren’t even looking for me. I activated my armor, crept up to those standing near the house, and killed as many of them as I could. I wanted to kill that General Kuw, but he had already fled onto a ship. Coward.
“For you, for your family, they all deserved to die. When I could kill no more, I covered the air and escaped as they coughed. There were too many who were coming from their ship. One does not fight a war it cannot win. I hid in the lake and waited for the others. Now when the time comes, we will fight the war we will win.”
“They burned everything!” I heard Kapika yell from behind me. He pushed his wife away as she tried to hold him back. Several of the people had come back to listen too. “The Khoush came and burned everything! Out of spite! Because of you people!”
There were about ten Meduse and the only one who was not blue floated up so quickly that I thought it would barrel over me. It was so clear that I could see the white of its stinger as the sun shined right through it. The Meduse chief.
“See what they did to Okwu? You see why we kill them?” the chief rumbled. “We have come. They don’t know we are here. We will meet them when they are not ready.”
I stepped back and looked at them all. “You need to make peace,” I said.
“No,” the chief said. “We are here. We will make war. You should want war.”
I felt my okuoko twitch as it dawned on me. I looked beyond the Meduse, at the lake. I moaned. I turned to Mwinyi, then to the Himba standing around us. “Chief Kapika,” I said, stepping over to him. I put my chin to my chest as I took his hands. I felt him twitch, wanting to pull away from me. My otjize had washed off. I stood before him, before everyone, naked, so I was not offended by his discomfort. “Please,” I said. “I know I come to you as a barbarian. Please, put that aside for now, and focus on the fact that I am a Himba daughter, regardless of how I look and where I have been . . .”
“And what pollutes you,” he added.
I paused, restraining my Meduse prideful anger. I let myself tree and called up a current. As the numbers flew around me, through me, I felt calmer, clearer, and more confident, though the anger still boiled beneath, trying to push thoughts of my dead family to the forefront of my mind. I continued to hold his hands, my head respectfully bowed. “Yes, what pollutes me. But I am still a master harmonizer,” I said in a steady voice, loudly enough for the others to hear. “I am more than and better than what I was when I left here. I want to call an urgent meeting of the Council Elders.” I looked up into his eyes. “It is urgent and a matter of peace in these lands. Please. We can’t have more die.” I hesitated and then pushed on. “C—. . . call an Okuruwo.”
An Okuruwo was only called when the lifeblood of the Himba people was in grave danger. It was only called by elders, because it was to call on the soul of the Himba to heal itself and that took a power only the old could wield. Usually. The healing power of the Himba is carried within the elders, even the word Okuruwo is usually only spoken by older Himba. Thus, the word felt hot coming out of my mouth. I cleared my
throat as we stared at each other. His irises were a deep brown, the whites of his eyes yellowed by the sun. “Have you not looked around?” he asked in his soft voice. “Your childish selfish actions led to all this strife. We don’t leave our lands for a reason, Binti. Now you speak beyond your years. What makes you think you can call an Okuruwo?”
I didn’t miss a beat. “Because there are Meduse ships in the lake and if we don’t do something immediately, we’ll be the grass crushed beneath the feet of two fighting elephants.”
* * *
The Council Elders use the same method of communication that Himba women use to spread the word about the date of the pilgrimage: a large leaf is cut from a palm tree and passed from member to member. The Himba people are the creators and makers of astrolabes, devices of communication. However, the Himba people have been communicating important meeting announcements in this old, old way for centuries and we will continue to do so.
So I watched a young girl climb a palm tree, use a large machete to cut a large leaf, climb down, and hand it to Chief Kapika. Okwu, Mwinyi, and I stood there silent as he took it and went into his home and came out with a jar of his wife’s otjize. He held the jar out to me.
“You’re calling the Okuruwo, so you draw the circle.”
“Why don’t Himba males put otjize on their skins?” Okwu asked, floating up beside me.
From behind me, Mwinyi chuckled. I took the leaf and the jar, ignoring Okwu’s question.
“What reason does a man have to be beautiful?” Chief Kapika asked as he watched me spread the leaf on the dry dirt.
“Beauty does not need a reason,” Okwu responded.
I opened the jar. The otjize was so fragrant that for a moment, I swooned. It had been so long since I’d smelled Earth-made otjize. The zinariya squeezed and expanded my world as images of home tried to flood my brain—town’s square, the lake, the schoolhouse . . . his wife must have collected the clay from near there. My otjize no longer even smells like this, I thought.
Binti, The Complete Trilogy: Binti ; Home ; The Night Masquerade Page 24
