Acts of faith (36 page)

“Go somewhere and clean it again. I wish to speak to my guests in private.”

Led by Kammin, the Messiriya trader Bashir approached with his companion. They sat down, folding their legs, and Kammin poured them each a glass of tea and they exchanged greetings with their host, who asked if they’d slept well. They looked tired. Bashir scratched his beard and replied that the hospitality of Ibrahim Idris made the hardest ground as soft as a bed.

“A new acquisition?” he asked, gesturing at Bashir’s wristwatch. “It looks very dear.”

“It is. A Rolex. Entirely of gold.”

Bashir took it off and passed it over for his inspection and admiration. The watch was heavy for so small an object and the band gleamed and there were two small dials within the big dial, which, Bashir explained, gave the date and the day of the week. He handed the watch back to the trader.

“So business must be good for you to afford such a watch that does all those things.”

He leaned against his saddle and waited for Bashir to say something. He had little respect for men who bought and sold for a living—it wasn’t man’s work, like raising cattle—and he especially disliked Bashir. Dealing with him was a tiresome chore but a necessary one. The government provided horses to the men but not feed, saddles, and bridles; they were expected to furnish those themselves, and because many could not afford such items, the cost came out of Ibrahim Idris’s pocket. The fifty-thousand enlistment bonus had been for one time only; the government did not pay the murahaleen wages for the time they spent away from their herds, and that was another expense he had to bear. For all practical purposes, he was a privateer, and the jihad had been draining his treasury before his path crossed with Bashir’s, during the last dry season. God be praised for causing their paths to cross! He’d come upon Bashir and his associate, making their way home from the south with bags of money, a great deal of money, and after he persuaded them to reveal how they had acquired so much treasure, he proposed that they enter into an arrangement of mutual benefit. Bashir could not refuse. He traded with foreigners and infidels who stood in enmity to the regime and to the jihad, and knew full well that Ibrahim Idris had the power to shoot him on the spot, or to turn him over to the military authorities, who would shoot him later. His life and the liberty to continue doing business—those were what he would get out of the arrangement while Ibrahim got income to defray his expenses.

“This trip wasn’t as profitable as my previous ones,” the trader now said. “As I’m sure you know, we were able to collect only ninety-two this time.”

Bashir reached under his jelibiya and produced his machine and pressed the buttons and turned the machine around to show the figure. The machine fascinated Ibrahim Idris. So small it fit into the hand, yet it could make calculations faster than any man could speak the numbers.

“There is what comes to you. The machine doesn’t lie,” Bashir said, tilting his jaw.

“Only if the one who uses it doesn’t lie.” Ibrahim motioned at his saddlebags and said, “I’ll count it later.”

One of the other men removed the bound bills from a pouch slung over his shoulder and leaned over and stuffed them into the saddlebags. It wasn’t necessary to remind Bashir that he and his companion were to remain his guests until the money was counted.

“This business would be much more simple and quick if you accompanied me with the murahaleen.” Ibrahim was voicing a thought that had been on his mind for some time. “As soon as I have the captives rounded up, I sell them to you on the spot, then you bring them to your foreigners and they pay you.
Halas.
” Wiping one hand with the other. “It’s finished with.”

Bashir did not appear enthusiastic.

“It would spare you from going from owner to owner, buying one here, two there,” Ibrahim added. “It would spare me the trouble of bringing a lot of people to the markets.”

“Ya, my friend! It’s not so simple. With what money would I buy them from you on the spot? To pay you, I need first to be paid by the foreigners. They come here only a few times a year. What would I do with all the captives in the meantime? Also, the foreigners ask the captives to tell their stories. They record their stories, word for word. If we made an arrangement as you propose, the abid would say they were sold to me by you on the very day you seized them and the foreigners would see what we’re doing and stop dealing with me.” Bashir cupped his knees with his hands, as if to push himself to his feet. “You could count it now, Ibrahim? We have a long way to go.”

“Moment, moment.” Motioning to the trader not to be so anxious. “How often do your travels take you here to the Nuba?”

“Why do you wish to know?”

“A Nuban girl, a
serraya,
escaped from me some time ago, with our small son. One of my wives, the youngest, arranged for their flight in secret.”

“Jealous, was she?” Bashir asked with a knowing leer. “You know the proverb, ‘Beat your wife each morning—if you don’t know the reason for it, she will’? Ya, with a wife who did that, you would both know the reason. And I would divorce her after beating her.”

“What I did is no concern of yours. This serraya’s name is Miriam, but her Nuban name is Yamila. The boy is called Abdullah. The girl is perhaps eighteen years. Tall and very good-looking, with two lines of marks across her forehead, like this”—he traced his finger over his brow—“and more marks on her belly, in the shape of bird’s wings, and still more marks around her upper arms, like bracelets. Also—”

The trader rather impolitely stopped his speech by raising an open palm. “You wish her returned to you.”

“I do.”

“Ya, Ibrahim! It’s not our trade to take captives or to retake them when they get away.”

“It isn’t necessary to tell me what your trade is. Esmah! You must see and hear a great deal in your journeys. The blacks speak freely to you. They consider you a brother, while I’m their enemy and all our conversing is with guns. Should you hear of her or, inshallah, discover where she is, I ask you to report it to me. If I am then able to get her back, I’ll extend to you the hand of brotherhood.”

“Brotherhood with you—a thing to value highly,” Bashir said, kissing the tips of his own fingers. “But may I say that I would wish there to be something else in the hand you extend?”

“Provided your information is accurate and the girl once again with my house, there will be.”

“How badly do you wish for that?”

“One hundred thousand.”

The trader gazed at his associate, who offered no expression with voice or face, and then he picked up a stick and made marks in the dirt.

“That’s four times what the foreigners pay for each captive,” Ibrahim Idris reminded him.

“A little less four times. Twenty-nine thousand per head they pay. But that’s for any abid, young, old, strong, weak, beautiful, ugly, man, or woman. A serraya such as you described is extraordinary, worth ten to one, I would judge. In addition, there is the son. Your own blood, omda.”

“I’m not offering to buy them. I’m offering to buy information.”

“But in this case, the information would be the same as buying. Without it, you have nothing. Three hundred.”

“That’s outrageous.”

“For a young and beautiful woman? For your own blood?”

“I’m not going to bargain for them as I would for cows.”

“Very well then, don’t bargain.” Bashir, in the time-honored custom, made a show of anger and disgust, flinging the stick aside, rising suddenly. “You have a lot of spies and good ones, too. They certainly know what I’m up to, day to day.”

“Yes. Those spies are to help you resist the temptation to make off with your income without paying my percentage.”

“Ask them to find her.”

“I have, but they have not been successful.”

Bashir tsked in contempt, and as he turned, pretending to leave, Ibrahim Idris offered one-fifty.

“Two-fifty,” the trader countered. “What you’re asking won’t be easy. It would take a lot of time, and if I ask too many questions, the abid would become suspicious. Two-fifty, no less.”

“Who do you think you’re dealing with?” Ibrahim Idris stood to his full height and willed a glint to enter his eyes. When it came to shows of anger, he took second place to no one, and in this instance, it was not entirely a show. “I’ll tell you who. The omda of the Salamat, the owner of eight hundred head, a captain of murahaleen, the father of a martyr! A man about whom songs are sung!”

“I’ve heard them,” Bashir said calmly. “And most are in praise of your generosity.”

He paused. The remark had pricked his pride in his reputation.

“Two then. Two hundred thousand and no more.”

Again Bashir glanced at his companion, who gave a quick nod.

Bashir said, “Done.”

Redeemer

M
ORNING LIGHT INFILTRATED
through the mesh windows and the cracks in the zippered tent flaps so that she now could see the canopy of her mosquito net and the dark blots made by the dormant flies clinging to it. Mosquitoes were not abundant in Loki this almost rainless rainy season, but flies made up for the deficiency.
Was it darkness or the cooler temperatures at night that put them to sleep?
she wondered. In the two beds to the right of hers, Anne and Lily, the Irish girls from Concern, lay cocooned within their nets, Anne snoring lightly, but Quinette had been awake since before dawn, taut with anticipation. She’d tried reading herself back to sleep, first with Scripture and then with a Christian romance, but neither the novelist’s stilted prose nor the dull prescriptions of Leviticus quelled her excitement.

Almost everything in Africa excited her. The most common scenes of everyday life—boys playing bau under a tree, a Turkana man striding down the road with his walking stick and wooden headrest, a flock of goats bleating along a dry riverbed—thrilled her because they weren’t mere tourist backdrop but part of her daily life. She was the WorldWide Christian Union’s field representative in Loki. She had a real place here and real work to do, and it was hers to do for as long as she wanted and for as long as she could put up with the privations, and she was sure she could because she didn’t regard living in a tent with two other women and outdoor privies and taking showers under a canvas bucket as privations; nor were the heat, dust, mud, and bugs, the isolation and the hazards of flying into Sudan in small planes. These were minor trials, the small price she had to pay for fulfilling what she’d always known would be her destiny—to live an extraordinary life. She was doing something difficult, unusual, and dangerous in a difficult, unusual, and dangerous part of the world. Best of all, it was righteous work.

Since her return to Africa two months ago, there had been times when she felt lonely and homesick, when the heat, dust, and bugs got on her nerves, when a desperate boredom seized her because there was absolutely nothing to do after working hours except to hang out in the compound bars with the aid workers and pilots. Bandits roamed beyond the compound’s fences, making it inadvisable to venture out, even in a group. Besides, there was nowhere to go, Loki being just about the most wretched town on earth—a bunch of filthy tukuls and mud-walled shops with corrugated iron roofs and streets adrift with trash and stinking of shit. Goat shit, cow shit, human shit.

When the spells of loneliness or boredom came over her, she bucked up her spirits by reflecting on the torments and hardships the early Christians endured for their faith. Not that Quinette believed there was any equivalence between those and the inconveniences she faced. It was the lesson the first Christians provided: they embraced their sufferings as gifts flowing from God’s love and favor, for He reserved a special place in His heart for those who suffered in His name.

God loved her, and Jesus was her friend. She was more sure of that than ever. If He didn’t love her, if He didn’t see her as exceptional and suited for the job, He would not have hired her. Sometimes she saw Him not as an Abrahamic patriarch in long white robe and long white beard but as a celestial executive, the CEO of the universe, sitting behind an enormous desk in a smart Armani suit, poring through thousands and thousands of résumés, rejecting ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent, looking for one that stood out. The résumé of a chosen one. She imagined Him selecting hers from the pile and remarking upon it favorably and then, through some mysterious means of divine communication, directing Ken Eismont to make good on his promise to hire her.

After returning to the States from Sudan, she’d waited a long time to hear from Ken. She feared he’d forgotten his offer, or had given the job to someone else, and grew desperately unhappy and backslid a couple of times—a night in a bar, a one-night stand with a guy in her computer class. God forgave her, after she vowed to improve. But it was hard. The excitement of her homecoming had worn off, the attention she’d received after her slide presentation at Family Evangelical—it had been a terrific success—had faded. She felt a little like Cinderella after midnight, slipping back into the drab clothing of her old life and self: Quinette Hardin, shopgirl. When six weeks passed without a word from Ken, she considered moving out of her sister and brother-in-law’s house, feeling hemmed in and tired of playing the poor relation who’s been taken in, but she continued to hope that escape was at hand.

The letter arrived on a Saturday morning. Sorting through the mail, Nicole said, “This one is for you.” In Nicole’s commonplace kitchen, the letter looked as out of place as Waterford crystal would have on the Formica table. The pale blue envelope bordered by diagonal stripes, with the words
Par Avion
printed below the Swiss stamps, larger and more artistic than American stamps, and the postmark that said
Genève
instead of Geneva, exhaled a foreign glamour, and so did the return address, the street number coming after the name, beneath the words, “WorldWide Christian Union—International Headquarters.”