Acts of faith (75 page)

She stepped out, and her entrance brought the same outburst that had greeted Douglas. At first she had a sensation that she was outside herself, and she judged that she looked like an imposter in her Nuban dress; but the ululations and whistles encouraged her. She heard in those sounds Africa giving voice to its acceptance of her, and she experienced a lightness, a soaring relief, as if she’d been suddenly cured of a debilitating sickness.

The drumming got inside her, pulsing with her blood. She rejoiced in the movements of her body; it was liquid, her legs and hips seemed to flow. She knew now how to answer the declaration Michael had made to her. Aware of a hush that had fallen over the spectators, waiting to see what she would do, she ventured closer to him, swaying with abandon, swishing the grass bundle. He saw her and, in obedience to the rules of the Nyertun, brought his head down demurely, his legs trembling with latent excitement. She brushed teasingly against him. She felt wild and wanton; then with the sheaf in one hand, she paused to hike the dress up over her knees with the other and raised a leg to his shoulder. Just as she did, she bowed slightly to say, “Now I’ve said it.”

He rose and danced with her. Immersed in a bath of sound and movement, she experienced a communion like the one she’d known on her first journey to Sudan, when she seemed to merge into her surroundings. She lost all sense of herself as a being separate from those around her, while they, ululating, blowing their whistles, lost awareness of her separateness from them. Loneliness was the disease from which she’d been released. It had afflicted her ever since her father’s death and her exile from the farm, her father’s land. How wonderfully strange that plunging into a deeper exile in Africa had healed her.

H
E PULLED THE
dress over her head and said, “From this night you will be White Nuba Woman in all ways.”

He picked her up and carried her to the bed. The mosquito net fell over them, creating an illusion of perfect privacy. Behind its veil, they embraced and kissed and drank in each other’s musky scents. She caressed him, and with his finger he drew circles around both her breasts, then a line between them, and made random patterns on her stomach. Now he plucked at her skin, following the designs he’d traced, circles and loops, straight lines and lines like a child’s depiction of ocean waves.

She didn’t ask what he was doing, fearful that one word from her would break the spell.

He laid a palm below her navel and whispered, “If you were a Nuba girl, you would be tattooed three times, the first time here, when you are ten years. You go high up into the rocks with only women present, and the tattooist smooths your belly with oil, like this”—he rubbed her there—“and then draws in the oil the designs you choose, like this.” He penciled another motif with his fingertip, his touch lambent and warm, like a paraffin flame. “And the final thing she does is to lift up the flesh with a thorn and make a cut with a small knife.” He pinched her repeatedly, just hard enough for her to feel it. “When the cuts heal, they make the tattoos. The next time is when you have passed from girl to woman. Again, you go to the secret place high in the rocks, again the tattooist rubs the part of your body where the marks will be with oil, here and here.” He massaged her ribs and her stomach just beneath her bosom. “And again—” pinching—“the thorn, the knife . . .

“You are beautiful, Quinette, and I am making you more beautiful.” He clasped her ribs and turned her resistless body face-down and knelt over her. “The third time is after you have borne your first child. It’s always done to the back. It’s the most painful tattooing, it takes two days to complete. Also the most expensive. Your husband has paid the tattooist with goats and chickens and money, he has supplied the oil that is rubbed into you from here to here on the first day.” He stroked the nape of her neck, her shoulder blades, her spine down to her hips, his finger sketched curves and slashes, his pinches were harder than before, bringing a light sting. “Many cuts are made, hundreds, that’s why this is the most painful, but now a powder is applied, made of herbs and sorghum flour and the ash of burned acacia to ease the pain and stop the bleeding and make the marks stand out from the skin when the cuts heal, because those that stand out are the most beautiful.” As he kneaded her back again, she felt as if her bones had turned to gelatin. “On the second day, you are beautified here and here. Here and here the oil is rubbed in.” He dug into her buttocks, the backs of her thighs. There she felt his fingertip making spiral imprints before he pinched her, still harder, squeezing her flesh between his nails. He asked if it hurt and she nodded and he told her she mustn’t make a sound, a Nuba woman was brave and never made a sound when the tattooist’s thorn and knife pricked her. “Imagine you are lying on the warm, smooth rocks, high in the mountains, I am the tattooist, I am now soothing the cuts with the powder of ash and herbs and flour.” In an almost drugged state, she accepted the pressure of his hands, moving over her bottom, down along her legs and up again. “Now you are fully a Nuba woman, very beautiful, admired by all in your village.” His voice seemed to cover her as he parted her thighs. He reached under her to touch her, and she felt how damp she was there when he embraced her at the waist and pulled her toward him. She rose to her knees in a feline crouch, sighed through clenched teeth as he penetrated her to his whole length so that his bristling hairs scratched her. They worked each other into a swift orgasm, and when it came, in a quivering rush, her ass slapping his belly, she felt that their joined selves were floating free of gravity, and in that blissful suspension she knew with the wordless knowledge of the heart that God would forgive her, for with their joyful outcries she and Michael answered the moans of all the wounded and all the mourners’ laments, with the wet smack of flesh upon flesh they annulled the strikes that insensate steel had made against flesh. Mourning, steel, blood—all that was no; all this was yes, and what God would begrudge such an affirmation?

Douglas

He had clipped the newspapers, the
Arizona Republic,
the
Tucson Daily Star,
others, and pasted them in a scrapbook. He wanted to keep the bad memories fresh; he never wanted to forget them.

RANCH FAMILY SUES TUCSON DEVELOPER FOR
$
16 MILLION

Attorneys for Edith Brady, owner of the Baboquivari ranch, yesterday filed suit in civil court alleging that the purchase of 10,000 acres of the 25,000-acre property was obtained under fraudulent circumstances by WebMar Associates, one of the state’s largest housing developers.

STATE TO INVESTIGATE TUCSON DEVELOPER

Arizona Attorney General Laura Altobuono announced today that her office has opened a criminal investigation into the purchase of a ranch property by Web-Mar Associates, builders of Rancho Vista, Tucson’s largest retirement community. A civil suit has already been filed against the firm, owned by Weldon E. Braithwaite and Martin Templeton, both of Tucson. The allegations are that the two developers in effect bilked Edith Brady, 86, heir to the Baboquivari ranch, in the $16 million sale of . . .

INQUIRY INTO WEB
-
MAR WIDENS

Web-Mar Associates, already beset by a civil suit and a state investigation into its purchase of a Spanish land grant ranch, has attracted the attention of federal investigators. . . . Web-Mar is alleged to have signed a contract agreeing to restrict development of the property to ten-acre parcels, but then drawn up another contract allowing high-density housing to be built and hoodwinked the ranch’s 86-year-old owner into signing it in a complex shuffle of documents. According to informed sources, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix is looking into evidence of financial links between Web-Mar and Enrique Cabrera, boss of Mexico’s biggest drug cartel . . .

COURT RULES IN FAVOR OF PLAINTIFFS IN BABOQUIVARI SUIT

FEDERAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO DRUG LORD
’
S
TIES TO TUCSON DEVELOPMENT FIRM

WEB
-
MAR DECLARES BANKRUPTCY

WEB
-
MAR CEO FACES CHARGES OF MONEY
LAUNDERING
—
PARTNER CLAIMS NO KNOWLEDGE
OF DEALINGS WITH MEXICAN KINGPIN

BRAITHWAITE TRIAL OPENS TODAY
—
DEFENDANT PLEADS NOT GUILTY

WEB
-
MAR CEO WILL TAKE THE STAND

TUCSON DEVELOPER KILLED IN CAR BOMB BLAST
—
COCAINE CARTEL THOUGHT RESPONSIBLE

Weldon E. Braithwaite, 59, defendant in a federal trial on alleged money-laundering between his firm and the boss of a Mexican drug ring, was killed early this morning when a powerful bomb exploded in his car as he was leaving his home for a second day of testimony.

PART TWO

Warlord

T
HE JINN VISITED
him so often that he’d achieved a rapport with it, speaking to it as he would to a living man. “I will do today what it is said you wish me to do, so why are you here? Why do you trouble me this day?”

Abbas sat across from him, staring with wordless reproach. Ibrahim Idris detested that expression, but he knew it would do no good to look away, because no matter in what direction he looked Abbas would be there, the haft of the knife protruding from his ribs, his wide-set eyes glaring judgment.

“It is the opinion of the elders and my kinsmen that if I make peace with your mother’s lineage, you will trouble me no more. Very well, a
murda
takes place this very day, and trust that I will make peace, so go away.”

But Abbas remained.

Ibrahim took the copper pot from the fire and refilled his cup with sweetened tea. “Listen, this much I know. God would not permit you to trouble me because I beat you for committing rape. It was you who drew the knife on me. On me! The uncle who was as a father to you!” He flung the tea into his nephew’s face and watched the scalding liquid fly right through him and spatter in the dust.

“Ya, Ibrahim. Saddled and bridled and everyone is ready.”

It was Kammin, leading Barakat by the reins. At the Dinka servant’s approach, the jinn vanished, rising with the campfire smoke through the branches of the tree beneath which Ibrahim had passed a troubled night. A distance away, resembling a flock of egrets in their clean
guftans
and jelibiyas, the elders and the heads of the lineages that stood with Ibrahim’s, the Awlad Ali, were gathered around a
haraz
tree.

“You are like the haraz,” Hamdan, his old and loyal friend, had told him some time ago. “That is why you suffer.” Ibrahim had asked, “How so?” and Hamdan reminded him of the story. At the creation of the world, all the plants and animals were called upon to submit to Allah, but the haraz refused, saying, “I am the lord of the forest, why should I bow before any other lord?” For that, God condemned it to suffer through the hot season in full leaf and to shed its leaves in the rains. “It suffers for its pride,” Hamdan had counseled, “and so do you, but you are causing all the Salamat to suffer with you. Is that just? Unlike the tree, you have the means to end your suffering and ours as well.”

So he would eat his pride this day. Kammin bent down and locked his hands, making a mounting block. There had been a day when Ibrahim could vault into the saddle, but now he needed a boost. Drawing in the fragrance of camp smoke mingling with the odors of cattle dung, he rode slowly with his entourage through the camp to calls of
“Allah yisalimak”
from the men, to the ululations of the women, to the silent prayers from all that brotherhood be restored with his sister-in-law’s lineage, the Awlad Sa’idy, and the two clans aligned with them. The oldest of the old men could not recall a time when the Salamat had been as divided as they were now.

“Why do you look so glum?” asked Hamdan, riding alongside. “This is a murda we’re going to, not a funeral.”

“I am wary,” Ibrahim answered. “My worst enemies are with the Sa’idy. Only one thing will satisfy them, and that is a satisfaction I won’t give them, not even if it means breaking the bonds of brotherhood for good and all.”

“I’ve spoken to the mediators,” Hamdan assured him. “Believe me, they’re on your side. The demand will be made, but nothing will come of it.”

His sister-in-law’s grief had turned to madness, madness into a cold, abiding fury. At Abbas’s burial, she’d thrown herself on his body, wrapped in a white winding-sheet, torn her hair, and cursed Ibrahim. He who had sworn to protect her son had caused his death, as surely as if he’d stabbed Abbas himself. Later, after she’d recovered her senses, she prevailed upon the head of her lineage and the kinsmen of Nanayi, the girl Abbas had pledged to marry, to send a delegation to Ibrahim with a demand for blood money: sixty head of cattle, half to go to his sister-in-law, half to Nanayi’s kinsmen. He refused, sixty head being the established price for cases of murder. What blood was on his hands? he asked the delegation. Abbas had tried to murder him and in the blindness of his rage had stumbled and accidentally killed himself. They argued that Ibrahim had lost control of himself, provoking the young man; therefore he was responsible for what happened, all the more so because of his high position.