Home (Binti #2)(28)

Gold People


The Enyi Zinariya lived in a vast network of caves in a huge limestone cliff. Within the bowels of these caves were winding staircases that led from cave to cave, family to family. Some caves were tiny, no larger than a closet, others were as vast as the Root. Upon arrival, I was taken for a quick tour of my grandmother’s family’s caves. I met so many of her people, young to old, all enthusiastically waving their hands about, that I could not understand the logic of where people lived.

It seemed everyone could stay wherever he or she was most comfortable, from child to elder. I saw a cave where an old man and his teenage granddaughter lived, the girl’s parents (one of whom was the old man’s daughter) living in a cave connected by a narrow tunnel. The old man and granddaughter were both obsessed with studying, collecting, and documenting stones, so their cave was full of stone piles and stacks of yellowing paper with scribbled research.

“Best to just have only one cave full of rocks,” her mother told me with a laugh. “Those two are happy together.” My grandmother’s cave was tiny, but sparse and tidy with colorful shaggy blue rugs, delicate mobiles hanging from the ceiling made of crystals one of her daughters had collected, and bottles of scented oils they specialized in making. The room also smelled immaculate.

It was brightly lit by a large circular solar lamp in the room’s center. What was most striking was that my grandmother’s cave was full of plants. It reminded me of one of the Third Fish’s breathing rooms. There were pots with leafy green vines tumbling out of them hung near the high ceiling beside her bed. There were several large woven baskets full of sand with complex light green treelike succulents growing from them and dry bioluminescent vines that grew directly on the cave’s walls. Right there in the cave, my grandmother was growing five different types of tomatoes, three types of peppers, and some type of fruiting plant that I could not name.

“I’m a botanist,” she said, putting her satchel down. “Your grandfather was, too.”

“Was?”

She nodded. “He was Himba.” And that was all she would say, though there was clearly so much more. I wanted to ask why he left the Himba and if he stayed in touch at all. I wanted to ask how he felt when my father decided to leave and return to the Himba. I wanted to ask if this was where my father had stayed when he was a child. I wanted to ask why she loved plants. I wanted to ask why she lived alone when everyone else in the village lived happily with many, even in the smaller caves. Instead, I looked at my grandmother’s many thriving plants and breathed the lush air that smelled so different from the other caves and the dry desert outside.

I stopped at a small yellow flower growing from a dry root in a pot bigger than my hand. This was the same type of flower that had been growing on the edan years ago when I’d found it.

“What’s this one?” I asked.

“I call it ola edo,” she said. “Means ‘hard to find, hard to grow’.” She laughed, “And not very pretty. Okay, time for you to rest, Binti. Tomorrow is your day.”

As I had in the Third Fish’s breathing chamber, I slept well here.





The Ariya


The Ariya’s cave was a mile from the cave village in the center of a dried lake.

“Something used to live in it, back when this was a lake,” Mwinyi said as we walked. “Maybe even dug the hole in the rock, itself.”

“How do you know?” I said, looking at the ground as we walked. At some point, the smooth limestone had become craggy, making it hard to walk. I had to concentrate on not tripping over jutting rock.

“It’s in the Collective,” he said, glancing at me. “That’s the Enyi Zinariya’s memory that we all can touch.”

I nodded.

“But no one knows exactly what kind of creature it was,” he said. He waved his hands before him.

“Did you just tell her we’re close?” I asked.

He looked sharply at me, frowning. “How’d you—”

“I’m not a fool,” I said.

He grunted.

I laughed and pointed up ahead. “Plus, I see something just up there. A hole or something.”

To call it a hole was to put it lightly. The opening in the hard ground was the size of a house. When we stepped up to it, I noticed two things. The first was that there was a large bird circling directly above the opening. The second was that rough stone steps were carved into the stone walls of the hole wound all the way to the bottom.

We descended the steps, Mwinyi going first. I ran my hand along the abrasive wall as I recited soft equations in my head. I called up a soft current and the mild friction from the current and my hand running over the coarse stone was pleasant beneath my fingertips. The deep cavern’s walls were lined with books, so many books. The location of the sun must have been directly above, for the strong light of midday pleasantly flooded into the space. However, along with the light, bioluminescent vines grew in and lit the darker corners.

She stood in the shadows, beside a shelf of books, her arms crossed over her chest. “You haven’t changed a bit,” she said. Nearly a decade later, her bushy crown of hair a little grayer, her face a little wiser, and I still would know this woman anywhere. Could old women grow taller over the years?

“Hello, Mma,” I said, looking up at her. I used the Himba term of respect because I didn’t know what else to use.