City of Saints & Thieves(56)

“That’s not what I was going to—”

“Guys always assume that. That the only way to survive on the streets or as a Goonda is to be a prostitute. ’Cause that’s all girls can learn how to do, open their legs.”

“Okay. Jeez, sorry. I didn’t . . .”

“And even if I did, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

Michael puts his hands up in surrender. “Point taken.”

We sit in silence again.

“So,” Michael finally ventures, “what do your tattoos mean?”

I look out at the fields, terraced rows lacing the hills all the way to the top, dotted with mud huts. I try to think how to answer. “It’s how Goondas remember things,” I say. “Big battles, deaths, a really good heist. It’s like recording your history, just, on your skin instead of paper.”

I turn around and tug my shirt down so he can see the leopard face on my shoulder blade. The spots travel around my back and arm and turn into flying birds. “I got this one after I did my first major break-in.”

Michael doesn’t say anything, but he leans forward attentively.

“I thought I was pretty smart. Pretty slick. Like a leopard. Did you know there are more leopards than any other big cat? You just don’t see them. They can trail you like a shadow for miles and you’ll never even know.”

Michael looks amused.

“Yeah, I know. It’s corny. But I was thirteen.”

“Thirteen! And the rest of them?”

I tell him that I got my armbands of Swahili henna after I stole a rather famous emerald from the new bride of a Kuwaiti oil sheikh. They had been on honeymoon at Sangui’s most luxurious beach resort and I had admired the bride’s hennaed arms. They swirl around the wheel on my left arm and the sword on my right.

“What’s the wheel for?”

“That history’s private.”

“It’s odd. It has spikes.”

“Yup.”

“And it sort of matches the sword on your other arm, in the same spot.”

“You are very observant.”

“And . . . ?”

“And it’s still none of your business. Are you in the market for ink? I know a good guy named Spike . . .”

Michael smiles and rubs his arms. “I think Mom really would kill me.” The thought seems to cheer him. “Maybe one day.” He turns his arms over and looks at them. The pale sliver of flesh shaped like a crescent moon stands out on the inside of his left arm.

“You can still see your scar,” I say.

His eyes search out my own arm, my own scar, surrounded in loops and dots, but clear. Something had made me stop Spike from tattooing over the long straight line. Michael slowly reaches over and runs his finger along it, sending goose bumps straight up my arm and a rush of blood to my throat.

Michael studies me. “Yeah. I guess my history is on my skin too.”

Then he settles back down and closes his eyes.

? ? ?

Night. We huddle as best we can under thin blankets and tarps the driver gives us and try to sleep. Somewhere in Tanzania, I wake up and find I’m curled in between Michael and Boyboy, both of them fast asleep. The stars are so bright along the Milky Way they look like one solid mass, like a net. I think about moving, but the wind is cold and before I can make up my mind I realize it’s morning again.

By midday Tanzania is behind us. Then Rwanda.

We get off before the official checkpoints and walk on well-worn paths through the bush. There are other men guarding the way here too, but it doesn’t matter to them who comes and goes. They only care about getting paid. They don’t haggle. If you don’t want to pay what they ask, they push you to the side and take the next person in line behind you, who already has her money out and ready.

“Welcome to Congo,” one of them finally says, after counting our bills. “Bienvenue.” He wears an AK-47 over a blue football jersey and waves us on.

When the checkpoints are out of sight, we get back in the lorry and continue down the road.

After Goma the road narrows and turns to rough, red murram that rattles everything and makes sleep impossible, and soon we’re climbing through forests where sad-eyed monkeys dart across the path and the air is wet and cool. The towns we pass through spring up furtively where they can, like mushrooms after a rain, but then just as quickly they dissolve back into trees and tall grasses in a way that makes you wonder if maybe you just imagined them. It’s as green as grasshopper dreams.

Sometimes the road threads through trees that cut out nearly all the light, and sometimes it skirts the edges of cliffs. Sometimes we see the crumpled remains of trucks far below, vines already crisscrossing them like the jungle is a sucking beast that claims everything it touches.

The skeleton men say we are almost there.





TWENTY-SIX


Kasisi,” one of the men says as we finally roll to a stop on the side of the red dirt highway. I look around, eager for any sign of something familiar, but it looks no more like home than any of the other sleepy towns we’ve passed through. A few one-story block buildings cluster at the crossroads. Once optimistically painted white, they are now splattered red with mud. The street is full of people, goats, chickens, dogs, and trash. I can see the edge of a market ahead, men coming and going on bicycles, women balancing plastic bowls of fruit on their heads and yelling to one another in greeting. The smell of frying mandazi makes my stomach growl.