How Beautiful We Were(116)

* * *



—



We believe the Five woke Thula up and told her that they had Mr. Fish and his wife.

We don’t know when the Five left Kosawa to go to Gardens and kidnap Mr. Fish and his wife. The Five were in the village in the morning: we saw a couple of them leaving to go hunting. We saw them in the evening, sitting on their verandas or visiting relatives. They must have left for Gardens after most of the village was asleep.

How great was Thula’s disappointment and shock when she found out?

What did she say? What could she have said?

Did she attempt to stay out of it, wanting nothing to do with a crime? Did the Five command her to join them, or else? They wouldn’t have. They revered her. But Thula would never have wanted to leave Mr. Fish and his wife at the mercy of angry gunmen. Mr. Fish was an oilman, but we did not hate him; he had never been unkind to us. Thula respected and appreciated him for what he’d tried to do. It seemed to sadden him that he derived his livelihood from our suffering—and Thula, though her meetings with him were heated, believed he truly wanted Pexton and Kosawa to reconcile. We all wished he could do more than say that the decision about the cleanup of our land and waters rested with headquarters in New York, but Thula would never have wanted him dead.



* * *



—

Mr. Fish and his wife were in Thula’s family’s hut for three days, and we did not know it. Sahel had given the hut’s key to Thula, and Thula kept it in the care of one of the Five, so she could open the hut whenever she wanted to be in it. She couldn’t have imagined that the Five would open it one night and put Mr. Fish and his wife there. What did Thula say to the Americans when, likely still wearing her sleeping clothes, she entered her family’s hut that night and saw them? Did she offer the couple her mother and father’s room, in which she had installed a bed and table and chair? Did she take the Five aside and plead with them to take the Americans back to Gardens? Did she truly write those ransom letters, or did the Five write them and sign them with her name? Thula’s handwriting was made up of tightly packed, slender letters; the handwriting in the letter the government released was chunky and spacious.



The morning after the Five kidnapped the Americans, the wife in whose hut Thula was staying woke up and prepared breakfast. When she went into Thula’s room and found the bed empty, her husband told her not to be alarmed, Thula had been stirred to wake up before dawn and do some writing. Thula needed to be alone for some time in her family’s hut, he added. The husband took all of Thula’s belongings from their hut to the Nangis’ hut, along with extra kerosene, supposedly for Thula’s lamp. His wife understood—it wasn’t surprising for Thula, during her visits to Kosawa, to open her family’s hut and spend time alone in there, writing in her notebooks.

We imagine Thula and Mrs. Fish chatted about New York during those three days as they waited for the two ransom letters to be delivered to Lokunja and Gardens and for the government and Pexton to make their move. Thula would have felt the need to keep the mood in the hut cordial so the Americans would not be in a permanent state of fright. No matter what their state was, we’re confident they were well fed, because the wives of the Five set aside meals for their husbands every day, which their husbands took to the Nangi family’s hut, saying something had come up, they needed to eat with their friends while they discussed it. The wives had shrugged; they’d heard that too many times. In those three days, Thula did not come out of the hut. It must have been the decision of the Five. She would have wanted to come out at the end of the day if she could—she loved sitting with her women friends and their children on verandas in the evenings.



While Mr. Fish and his wife were in the hut, the Five must have taken turns guarding them, likely two at a time, guns in hand. The rest of them carried on around us so we would not suspect that anything was awry. And we never suspected; nothing seemed peculiar; their manners were ordinary. We did not notice when they went to Gardens and Lokunja to drop off the ransom letters the government claims Thula wrote.



* * *



—

Pexton wanted to heed the letters’ warning that soldiers be kept out of the negotiations. It wanted its man and his wife free to return to their children in America, it wanted no more blood on its hands, Pexton had not come to our country to get involved in our lunacy and carnage. We heard that His Excellency’s men in Bézam told the Pexton men that the decision was not Pexton’s to make: His Excellency did not take take orders, particularly from women. They say Pexton’s leader in New York called His Excellency and asked again that soldiers not be sent to Kosawa, Pexton would give the kidnappers whatever they wanted. Some say Pexton’s leader warned His Excellency that, if he sent the soldiers and there was bloodshed, Pexton would have to cease doing business with our country—Pexton held the highest regard for all human life. His Excellency is said to have laughed and told Pexton’s leader to stop wasting his time with stupid bluffs.

Pexton, having no choice, sent its men along with the soldiers.



* * *



—

They arrived in a truck and parked it at the entrance to our village. Seeing them, we began spilling out of our huts, confused, not daring to go too close. We held our children’s hands, though we did not need to worry about their getting close—they’d been born with a fear of soldiers, they knew from birth what men with guns could do to them.