Pigment (3 page)
July 13
The haze over Los Angeles is thicker than usual. When you’re sitting still, in a suit, on leather seats, and the AC is broken, bumper-humping on the 101, it feels like a sauna. It’s just wrong being in the new Audi without any air. Car costs too damn much money to have the AC give out like that.
The city barrels in his open windows, heavy with stagnation and the Mariachi tunes from the gardener’s truck to the left.
Jalil is a man of action, not built for sitting in traffic. The silver that frosts his tightly cut hair doesn’t make him any more patient. He finishes reviewing a proposal on his tablet and puts it down on the passenger seat. He loosens his tie and reminisces about driving Aliya to the airport. What is it now?...Two months gone by already? He looks to his right at the empty seat and shakes his head. His phone rings. It’s an international number. He answers, “Yeah.”
The voice on the line belongs to Rolf Teigen, a tall fifty-year-old Norwegian with a deep voice and heavy Oslo accent. He hasn’t seen Rolf in ten years, but they have strong history. Soldiers who serve in private wars make friends for life. Knowing that Rolf was in Tanzania, Jalil had sent him an email, introducing Aliya and letting him know she was coming to his part of the world -- an unspoken ask to look out for one of their own. “Jalil…” He sounds older than he had when they last spoke. There is tension in Rolf’s voice and the connection is full of static and breaks in and out. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”
“What is it?”
“She’s gone.”
“What are you saying?”
“She is missing. Your daughter is gone.” The connection trails off with an echo.
“What do you mean gone? When?”
“Three days or so. Jalil...”
He cuts him off. “I’m on my way.”
“It’s too late...”
He barely hears Rolf’s last words as the line washes out with a roar of static. “Rolf?” There’s no human response, only more static. He tries again, “Rolf?” Nothing. He hangs up the phone. Three days. Three days is too long. She’s gone. Gone where? Did someone take her? Three days is a desert. He has to get there...If there is any hope. The trail is three days cold. He looks at the hopeless expanse of stopped cars in front of him and behind him. He pulls his passport out of the glove box as he nudges and honks his way to the shoulder, then speeds along the barrier. He exits onto the 10, and it has a solid herd of vehicles at a standstill. He ducks down at the next off-ramp and takes Venice across town. He looks again to the empty seat next to him, then back at the road.
July 13 (later)
“Reggie, put your Mama on the phone.”
“I got a new video game, Jalil. You have to come play!”
“Put her on
now
.” His voice is stern. Jalil, in the last seat in business class, sees the flight attendant preparing for takeoff.
He hadn’t had time to phone Tamika
and
make his flight. Okay, he probably could have, but how could he tell the mother of their child this? How could he tell her, after all he’s put her through?
The stewardess catches him on the phone. “Sir, please turn off your cell phone.”
He nods.
She continues her lap to check that devices are off and that all seatbelts are fastened.
“Jalil?” Tamika’s voice sounds concerned. Jalil never calls her. He can’t answer. “Hello?”... “Jalil?”
“Tamika…Something happened. I’m on a plane.”
Tamika braces herself against the new granite kitchen counter she and Mike got for their anniversary last month; her hand rises to cover her mouth. She senses the blow coming.
“I’m flying to Mwanza through Nairobi.”
“Why Mwanza? She’s in Zanzibar...”
“I thought by now she’d have told you.”
“Told me what?”
“There are added challenges for people like her over there, for people with her condition. It’s not safe.” He’s using his military voice to keep emotion at bay. It’s normal for him, in situations like this, situations where he is trying to keep control. “Aliya went down there to fight for people like her, to make the system prosecute people who hunt albinos.”
In a whisper, “Hunt? I don’t understand. She was there to teach the children...”
Emotion breaks through and he is at a loss for words. He can’t speak.
Tamika melts against the cabinet where she keeps the pots and pans, sliding down onto the cold tile floor that she mopped an hour ago. They listen to each other breathing, the weight striking their eardrums through to their souls.
The flight attendant sees Jalil and repeats. “Sir, this is the last time I will tell you to turn off your device.”
Jalil says into the phone, “I have to hang up or they’ll put me off the plane. I’ll find her.”
The phone disconnects.
Tamika is frozen in shock. Her eyes shoot around the room, matching the pace of her desperate mind as tears pump down her face with each shutter of her eyelids. An idea washes over her and she pulls herself up and goes to the computer in Aliya’s room. She types into the search engine: “Tanzania albino...” she pauses before she types the third word, then types “hunt” and presses enter. The screen fills up with stories and images of albino children missing limbs and mutilated remains of albino children. She holds her hand out at the screen as if she could stop seeing the images now in her head, images of the place where her daughter went. She stands up to walk away from it, but when she turns, she is faced with Reggie. He’d been looking over her shoulder from the doorway. If this boy ever looked pale, it’s now. She squats to block his gaze. She embraces him. He looks over her shoulder at the bloody corpse of an albino baby on the monitor.
#
A few hours into the flight, Jalil gazes out the window, into blackness. He can’t see the moon or the stars, just black. He looks at his cell phone to a picture of Aliya smiling brightly. Her voice echoes, “What made you come back?” Then he peers back into the night and his mind takes him to its darkest corner.
#
Seven months ago. Teheran. Jalil is driving a private securities firm military-style truck on the desert road heading back to camp, through the dusty poverty stricken streets. It’s a hot day, sweat streams down his face.
He drives cautiously; it’s essential to study everything and everyone, to watch, to be alert and ready for possible land mines, anything off.
Up the road is a man wearing a big coat. He is carrying something underneath and walking in the direction of the truck.
Jalil stops and turns off the engine. He gets out and stands at the side of the vehicle with his rifle drawn. He shouts at him in Arabic, ordering him to show his hands and open his jacket.
The man does not reply, but keeps coming.
Jalil shouts again for him to open his jacket, but he won’t do it.
Jalil takes the safety off his gun. “Stop! Don’t come any closer or I will shoot!” Jalil aims his gun at the man, who stops. “Show me your hands!”
The man can’t speak. He looks as though he is in shock. He turns around and starts walking slowly back the way he came.
“Stop!” Jalil commands.
The man moves one of his hands and it looks like he might be trying to press an ignition trigger on a bomb strapped to his chest.
Jalil shoots.
The bullets hit the man in the back. Blood and flesh bound from the hit. He falls face forward, his arms losing their grip. He lands on the dirt road, not moving.
Jalil cautiously approaches the body, his gun still aimed at the man.
Jalil pushes the dead man’s body over with his foot. If it were a bomb, it would have gone off, but he’s still cautious.
There, cradled in one of the man’s arms is a frail little girl, three years old, looking at her dead dad. She looks at Jalil. There is a calmness and old soul way about her, very similar to Aliya’s. She holds her hand out toward Jalil, who falls to his knees and starts to check her vitals. There’s so much blood. Was she hit? Jalil desperately searches her for wounds. He finds punctures to her abdomen, gnarled insides on the outside, father and daughter hit by the same bullets. His bullets. Blood is gushing out of her. He tries to hold it in with his hand.
She stops breathing and the light in her eyes fades away.
Tears swell in his eyes as he cradles her lifeless body.
#
Jalil shakes off the memory, wanting to focus on Aliya. He needs a clear mind. This is what brought him back to his daughter. And now she is gone. Gone what? Gone missing? Gone gone?
The plane flies through the night over the dim expanse of the Serengeti. He flies over the same swarm of wildebeest that Aliya saw, though now they are farther down their path and stationary for the night.
July 14
The next morning in LA, Tamika is sitting on the sofa, peeling sweet potatoes. Soon as she finishes one, she adds it to the pile in a pot on the floor and takes another from the bag at her side. She long ago developed the habit of cooking when faced with major challenges in life...when Jalil left, when her mama died, and she cooked a lot when Aliya was born. Something about doing the motions of simple everyday things, it helped her keep from drowning. She can’t do anything else. She cooks nonstop. She can’t eat any of the delicious food, but she cooks all the same. She’ll serve one of the sweet potato pies to Minister Jeffries and Abby from the rectory when they come over to sit with her. The can take the other one with them.
The TV is on and the local news station, KTLA, is replaying the story they broke this morning about Aliya. News travels slowly from Africa. She wonders how did Jalil know first? Those “security” contacts of his. They show a collegiate photograph of her, smiling, conservative, her glasses off. That’s her picture from when she was on the school newspaper. They must have gotten that from her school. Tamika half hears the reporter: “American college student and aide worker, Aliya Scott, is missing in Tanzania...Miss Scott is said to have been traveling with another aide worker from Ireland...”
She peels some skin off her finger with the stroke of the peeler and blood drips on the orange potato in the bowl. She doesn’t notice she cut herself or the blood. She’s too in awe of the fact that her daughter is on the news, not for all the wonderful things she means to her mother, but because she is missing. She can’t fathom how her daughter could be a missing person on the news? But here she is.
Mike enters the room. He gazes at Aliya on the TV screen. He goes to put a hand on her upper back, to comfort her when he sees the blood.
She pushes him away.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Yes, I am.”
She thinks he means metaphorically. She weeps as if her tears are made of blood. She feels the pressure in her body, the fluids and cramping in her womb. Aliya was her first born and she bled through her birth.
“You cut yourself.”
Tamika sees the sizable gash on her finger though can’t seem to move. Mike puts a potato on the wound, helps her up by the elbow and leads her toward the kitchen for first aid. He steps to turn off the TV and pauses when he finds Reggie, asleep in his hiding place on the side of the sofa -- where he thinks they don’t see him -- his spot when he should be in bed. He doesn’t want to miss any news, especially now. He stays close. Mike turns the TV off. Tamika comes and turns it back on.
The news resumes, “Last seen at a Saba Saba celebration hosted by a fellow aide worker at the Hotel Protea in Dar es Salaam. Saba Saba is Tanzania’s Independence Day...”
She stands there holding the bowl of half peeled sweet potatoes, with one on her freshly skinned finger. Mike leaves her to scoop up Reggie and put him in bed.
July 15
Jalil leaves the Mwanza airport and stands on the street. It’s hot. He’s sweating feverishly. Ironically, almost as if something or someone were guiding him -- some internal or external force -- he stops on the same spot Aliya had been when calling her Mama. Children swarm and beg him for money, food, anything he might have to give them. He hails a cab and rides to the Legal and Human Rights Center. It’s a busy, well-established office with brightly painted walls and a staff that’s dedicated to life saving initiatives across the globe. They do much work for refugees in particular.
Jalil finds his old friend Rolf writing him a note at the main desk. His blonde hair has turned gray. He may have shrunk an inch, but when one had been six foot four for 40 years, losing an inch hardly makes a difference to those shorter. Despite their difference in height, Jalil never felt small next to him until today. “Rolf.”
“Jalil.” Rolf, still holding his pen, turns and embraces his old friend. The outlook is grave. Rolf told him not to come. That it was too late. But the line went dead. And even if he heard Rolf, Jalil was going to do what he was going to do. There’s no stopping him. No way to spare him. He is here now and Rolf will do what he can for him. “I thought I’d miss you entirely. ‘Was writing you a note in case. I just landed from another emergency East African Community Head of State Summit in Dar. I’m heading back to Kasulu. A few months ago, I had plenty of Burundi refugees to worry about. Since the coup attempt, I’ve got 5 times as many and the cholera epidemic that came with it. It’s a nightmare. It’s been a nightmare. You’re in a nightmare. Did you contact the embassy?”
“There’s no time for that.” Jalil thinks, what a strange question for Rolf to ask. Rolf knows that in situations like this, time is of the essence and the odds of a bureaucracy being of help are minimal, more hindrance than help.
“Of course.”
“Thanks for calling me.”
“I had to.”
“Did you find anything else out?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.” Rolf leads him outside onto the van. “’Can take you to Geita. Camp Kivuli is some distance in another direction from where I’ve got to go. ‘Plenty of time to talk, and sweat, on the way. I’ll never get used to this heat.” Rolf wipes his brow with a balled-up T-shirt.
They sit across from each other. Jalil studies his friend’s face. The years have not been kind enough to let him age gracefully. Life’s lines are carved deep into his skin, especially at his forehead and around his eyes.
The driver starts the engine of the van and they pull out.
Something is off. These men are like brothers and at a time of personal crisis like this, Rolf was going to leave him a note? Of all the times Jalil saved his ass...Jalil catches himself and redirects his thought spiral. He’s not slept, he’s stressed and Rolf looks like he’s been fighting wars non-stop his whole life.
They ride through the crowded streets and out of the city.
