The Garden of Burning Sand (4 page)

He led them down the lane to a house with unpainted block walls and crumbling mortar. A gaunt woman wearing a sweat-stained shirt and
chitenge
skirt sat outside the door, holding a carton of cheap Lusaka beer. The boy pushed aside the curtain and sat down on a torn couch in the cramped living room, displacing a half-naked child who jumped up to make space for him.

“The truck drove by,” said the youth. “I was sitting here. I saw its lights.”

“What kind of truck was it?” Joseph asked.

“I think it was a Lexus. It went that way.”

“Was it an SUV?” Zoe asked, realizing the vehicle had been traveling toward Abigail’s house.

The boy nodded.

“What direction was the girl walking last night?” she asked Abigail.

The old woman pointed down the street in the same direction.

Zoe turned to the boy again. “You said you saw its lights. Did you see brake lights?”

He shook his head.

“What about the driver? Did you catch a glimpse of him?”

He gave her a blank look. “I saw nothing else.”

She examined his face and decided to believe him. Unzipping her backpack, she took out the money she had promised him. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Wisdom,” he replied.

“Wisdom is the finest beauty of a person. It’s a proverb. It applies as much to
muzungu
ladies and little girls with funny faces as it does to Zambian men. Think about it.”

She handed the boy the kwacha.

“We need to find someone near Abigail who saw the truck,” Joseph said.

She nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”

They retraced their steps, questioning the people they had met and a few others who appeared on the street. None had seen the silver SUV. Zoe checked her watch. It was nearing five o’clock. From the way Abigail was walking, it was clear she was growing tired. Zoe was about to suggest that they take her home when Joseph led them toward Agnes’s shanty and knocked on the door. The old woman appeared, and Joseph spoke a few words in Nyanja. Agnes scratched her head and blinked a few times, then replied in the same language.

“What did she say?” Zoe inquired.

Joseph ignored her and asked Agnes another question. The old woman nodded and walked around the corner of her house, showing
them an alleyway strewn with loose stones and litter. She gestured toward the road and spoke again in Nyanja.

“She heard a vehicle outside her house,” Joseph said. “It stopped for a minute or two, and then it left. She didn’t think about it until now.”

Zoe felt a chill. “Did she hear any voices?”

He put the question to Agnes. “She didn’t hear people,” he interpreted, “but she heard something that reminded her of a drum.” The woman spoke again, and Joseph clarified: “Two drumbeats. Perhaps they were car doors being shut?”

Zoe left the alley and stood in the lane, staring at Abigail’s house thirty feet away. She imagined Kanyama huddled against the night, its narrow streets lit by porch bulbs and the glow of the moon. Then headlamps appeared in the darkness, followed by the flash of an upmarket SUV and the sound of an engine. The driver had pulled into the alleyway beside Agnes’s house and left the girl.
It explains why no one has seen her before. She’s not from around here
.

Her eyes wandered the scene and focused on a group of children playing a game in the dirt. They were the same children who had showered her with curiosity when she got out of Joseph’s truck. She had an idea. She asked Joseph for the camera and walked toward the children. They looked up from their game. There were five of them, and they were seated around a circle drawn in the dirt. At the center of the circle was a pile of rocks.

“How do you play?” she asked the oldest boy while Joseph translated.

Instead of speaking, the boy gave a demonstration. He threw a ball into the air, grabbed a few rocks with his fingers, dragged them outside the perimeter of the circle, and caught the ball again with the same hand. The second time he threw the ball into the air, he moved all but
one rock back into the circle, and placed the orphaned rock in a pile beside his knee.

“Chiyanto,”
Joseph said. “I played it when I was a kid.”

Zoe held up the camera, showing it to the children. “Can I take a picture of you? I’d like to show it to my friends back home.”

They began to talk excitedly. “Photo,” said the oldest. “
Muzungu
lady take photo.” They wrapped arms around each other, smiling and waiting for the camera to flash.

She laughed. “They’ve done this before.” She captured the moment in the digital frame and showed the picture to the kids. The oldest boy asked her to take a photo of him alone, which she did. It was then that Zoe brought the camera down to the level of the youngest and displayed the picture of the girl. The children crowded around and stared at it without speaking.

“Have you seen her before?” Zoe asked. “She was on this street last night.”

The oldest boy tilted his head and shrugged. He looked around, seeking confirmation. All of them shook their heads—except one. The child was no more than seven years old, and his eyes were too large for his head. He smiled at Zoe shyly. The oldest boy pushed him and said something in Nyanja, but the child continued to stare at Zoe.

“Girl,” he said, nodding.

Zoe took a sharp breath. “Will you translate?” she asked Joseph.

“I’ll talk to him,” he replied.

He sat down beside the child and spoke to him softly. When the child responded, Joseph bobbed his head and smiled. Joseph’s performance had the intended effect. The boy spoke without restraint, using his hands to emphasize his words.

Eventually, Joseph looked up at Zoe. “His name is Dominic. He lives there.” He pointed at a green-painted house close by. “Last night
he was in bed. But he had to use the latrine. He saw the truck when it stopped. He saw a man with the girl. The man got back into the truck and drove away. The girl walked toward Abigail’s house. She looked like she was crying.”

“Did he see the man’s face?” Zoe asked excitedly.

Joseph shook his head. “It was dark. He said the man was tall—taller than his father.”

“And the truck: did he see the license plate?”

Joseph translated the question into Nyanja. Dominic’s eyes widened and he drew something in the dirt. Zoe stared at the sketch as it materialized. The boy had traced what looked like a misshapen rectangle with an X at the center.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Joseph said. He talked with the child further, and Dominic drew a second rectangle to the right of the X. “He saw something like this beside the license plate. He doesn’t remember anything about the plate itself.”

She tried not to feel disheartened. Dominic was an extraordinary discovery, but his testimony couldn’t be valued on the street. It had to withstand cross-examination.

Joseph pulled a pen and notebook from his jeans. He filled a page with notes and reproduced Dominic’s sketch. Then he and Zoe followed the boy home and had a conversation with his father—a sturdy man with salt-and-pepper hair. Joseph punched his mobile number into the man’s phone and patted the boy on the head.

“Zikomo,”
he said. “It is a good thing you have done.”

The child smiled and scampered back to his
chiyanto
game.

When the sun disappeared behind the corrugated metal horizon, they returned to the alley where Joseph had parked his truck. Zoe glanced
at him and saw the disappointment in his eyes. It was obvious he had expected to learn more from an afternoon in Kanyama.

“This is a strange case,” she remarked.

“Every case is different,” he replied.

“Sure, but most of them follow a pattern. The perpetrator is a neighbor or family member. The crime happens near the victim’s home. The suspect covers it up with threats and bribery. This is different in every respect.”

“It’s different in
some
respects,” he corrected. “The girl could have known the perpetrator.”

“Sure. But why go to the trouble of driving into Kanyama at midnight? It’s as if he wanted her to disappear.”

Joseph nodded. “Or be violated again. The perfect cover for rape is another rape.”

“My God,” she exhaled, acknowledging the horrible symmetry of the idea.

“The question I have,” he went on, “is how he snatched her so late at night?”

“We have to find her family.”

He nodded. “They’ll file a report eventually.”

She was about to ask another question when she heard the squeaking of brakes behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a pickup truck blocking the alleyway—a truck carrying young men in green T-shirts. The driver stepped out of the cab, and Zoe’s heart lurched.

It was the hawkish boy in the green bandana.

The rest of his gang jumped out and surrounded them. Joseph made a move toward his truck, but a brawny kid stepped into his path. Zoe scanned the alley and saw that they were boxed in. The walls were too high to scale, and the neighbors were useless—they would never come
to the aid of a stranger.
Why are they doing this?
she thought.
What do they want?
Suddenly she knew.
They want me
.

“Let me handle this,” Joseph said, stepping between Zoe and the bandana-clad leader. He spoke a string of heated words in Nyanja, but the young man just smirked, eyeing Zoe.

“What your name,
muzungu
?” he asked in heavily accented English.

“Don’t talk to him,” Joseph commanded her. He gave the boy a piercing look. “I’m a police officer. You touch us and I’ll throw you all in jail.”

The gang leader laughed as if Joseph had made a joke. “In Kanyama, police sleep. You sleep with
muzungu
, police?”

Zoe heard sniggering and glanced around. The gang had closed ranks. A wave of dread surged through her and spawned an equal but opposite wave of anger. She was certain Joseph was unarmed; Zambian police officers were rarely issued firearms. She searched the ground for a weapon but saw only scattered bricks ten feet away.

“Back off,” Joseph said darkly. “You don’t want to make an enemy of me.”

The gang leader looked annoyed. “What you do, police? You fight for
muzungu
? Rupiah Banda fight for
muzungus
.” He glanced around at his companions. “Police is friend of MMD.”

The allegation had its intended effect: the gang members began to grumble and curse. Emboldened, the gang leader tried to shove Joseph out of the way, but Joseph backhanded him across the face. The gang leader cried out and threw a wild punch, which Joseph easily ducked. He countered with a swift jab into the kid’s stomach. The gang leader doubled over, and Joseph pivoted on his feet, searching for another target. He managed to land two more punches before three boys took him down.

Zoe screamed as strong hands grabbed her from both sides. She fought back instinctively, torquing her body to escape their grasp and lashing out with her feet. She drove her heel into the jaw of a reed-thin young man, and he collapsed in a heap. She kicked a stocky boy in the stomach and hit him in the side of the head with her backpack. A third gang member wrapped her in a bear hug, and she kneed him in the groin and crushed his nose with her palm.

But she was no match for a joint attack.

Two boys came at her from behind, lifting her off her feet. She kicked violently, screaming at the top of her lungs, as they pushed her into the dirt and held her down. She felt their rough hands yanking at her shirt, at her jeans. Time seemed to fragment like shattered glass.
No! Please, God, no!
Apparitions danced around her in the dusk. One of the boys sat on her thighs and another straddled her back. She began to lose touch with reality.
This can’t be happening! Not again!

Suddenly, she heard a voice rise above the din. “Get away from her!” Joseph screamed. “Get back or I’ll
shoot
!”

The weight on her thighs relented, as did the pressure on her back. She blinked, squinting through the dust clouding her contact lenses. Joseph was standing over a heap of bodies wielding an AK-47 rifle. At the sight of the roving barrel, the gang members who were still on their feet stepped back, and one of them dropped Zoe’s backpack. Joseph trained the gun on their leader.

“I told you not to make an enemy of me,” he hissed.

In an instant, fear replaced the gang leader’s bravado, and he ran to the pickup truck. His compatriots followed, the injured stumbling behind the able-bodied. As soon as the gang leader keyed the ignition, he floored the accelerator and sped off down the lane, nearly throwing two of his companions out of the flatbed.

When they were gone, Zoe stood slowly, her whole body trembling.
She leaned against Joseph’s truck, feeling a relief so overwhelming it found no expression in her conscious thoughts. She watched Joseph as he fought to catch his breath. His clothes were coated with dirt, and he had a large scratch on his neck. At last she managed to speak.

“I didn’t know you had a gun.”

“I keep it in the truck,” he growled. “My brother was in the army.”

Zoe shook her head, struggling not to think about how close she had come to being raped. Then it struck her: the girl at the hospital had walked by this alley less than twenty-four hours ago. A man driving a silver SUV had abducted her, raped her, and abandoned her to the night. No one had come to her rescue. Zoe pictured her sleeping in her hospital bed, Dr. Chulu’s monkey beside her, and heard the doctor’s words:
“Now she has you
.”

Joseph picked up Zoe’s backpack and dusted it off. “Where’d you learn to fight like that?” he asked, handing her the bag.

She let out a small laugh and felt some of the tension release. “I took self-defense classes in high school. I have a brown belt in tae kwon do.”

He raised an eyebrow and managed a half-smile.

She opened the passenger door of the truck and climbed in slowly. “Can we stop by the hospital on the way back?” she asked when he joined her in the cab.

He gave her a baffled look. “Why?”

“The girl,” she replied. “I’d like to see her again.”