The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 13
“Stay close. Don’t let go of each other’s hands,” Papa said as he led us through the crowd toward the building. Inside, mostly women and children occupied the complex. The dragon’s men patrolled the building with rifles, and older women served small cups of dry white rice to a line that wrapped around the interior walls of the complex and continued out of and around the building.
“’Scuse me,” Papa said, touching a soldier as we entered the building. The soldier looked at Papa like he had done a bad thing. Papa pulled his hand away.
“What?” the soldier shouted, the whites of his eyes red and yellowed, his mustache and beard coiled into small balls of hair that wanted nothing to do with each other.
“Do you know when we will be able to return?” Papa asked, nicer than I had ever heard him talk.
The soldier’s lip curled and he did not answer Papa.
“Can you give me estimate of how long they will take to capture the rebels?” he asked.
“You want go home, go home,” the soldier yelled and hissed his teeth at Papa. He spit on the ground before walking away, his gun pointed out into the air by his side. Brother James touched Papa’s shoulder.
“Come, man. They don’t know what’s going on either, and you don’t want to raise suspicion. Let’s just go rest. We will find out what’s happening in the morning.”
I had never heard anyone talk to Papa that way, or walk away from him before he finished speaking. He did not move for long after that. He stood looking in the direction of the soldier.
“Let’s go,” Papa said finally, and led us to a corner inside the complex. There were stains on his shirt from the dust on the road and his clothes smelled sour with sweat.
“What are you doing?” another soldier yelled as Papa and Brother James cleared the space in the corner for us to sit.
“Men not allowed here to rest. You sleep outside,” he said as he moved toward us.
“Okay,” Brother James said quickly, like he was afraid of the soldier.
“On the tennis court!” the soldier yelled. He stood and waited for Papa and Brother James to follow him.
“Stay with them, yeh? We will be right outside,” Papa told Ol’ Ma before kissing her on the cheek. “Right by the door.”
Ma nodded, and she looked as if she would cry.
“Where you going?” I asked, grabbing Papa’s arm.
“I will be right outside,” Papa said over the noisiness of the crowd.
“I want to come with you,” I pleaded.
“Let’s go!” the soldier screamed. Other men with rifles looked his way.
“Come on,” Brother James said to Papa.
“I want to come!” I cried.
Torma pulled me away from Papa as he disappeared with Brother James through the crowd and out of the complex to the tennis court.
Ma and Torma pulled us in.
“Nah-mah,” Torma said. Never mind. “Nah-mah, yeh?”
Ol’ Ma hummed and her voice formed a shield around us. In the corners, trash hung around each trash bin—there were too many people in the school and loose paper, lost clothing. The floors were covered with lappas, where other women like my Ol’ Ma sat with small children, silent as they cried, voices gone after those lies of going back home soon soon.
“Where is Mam?” I asked and missed her smell. “Where is Mam?” I asked again but no one answered. Perhaps I was dreaming and when I woke up I would continue watching my American film as Moneysweet cut the rosebush outside and Korkor washed the lunch greens at the sink and Torma braided Wi’s hair as I danced. And Papa would read to me in the evening before calling Mam in New York and I would tell her how well I was doing. Perhaps this was only a long journey to market and the sounds outside were only festival drums and something bad happened at the festival and that was why everybody had to come to this place, but tomorrow we would be dancing together because maybe this was a surprise for us since they liked giving us surprises when we least expected it.
Or maybe since everyone kept saying Hawa Undu’s name, at the pastor’s house and on the road, then at that moment the prince and his men surrounded the forest and Hawa Undu was shaking now, hiding underneath a fallen branch so that the rebels would not see his scales.
At dawn a woman screamed. It was a shriek, a painful sound that made some duck for cover and others awake from their sleep. She cried while she screamed, a continuous sound that I heard in my dreams. She said her daughter was stolen in the night and was convinced that it was a soldier at the ETMI, certain that some of them were rebels in disguise. She was so ruined that she searched the corners and splayed lappas on the floors while calling her daughter’s name. Ol’ Ma stood up as soon as she understood what the woman implied happened to her daughter. She raised us to our feet, folding her lappa and placing it back in a bag that hung at her waist. I had never seen her look so desperate, so furious.
“Come, come,” she said. “Come now.”
She picked up K and grabbed my hand.
“Hold Wi’s hand tight,” she said to Torma, who, though confused and with eyes that had only just adjusted to morning, obeyed.
We hurried through the crowd to the tennis court outside. Soldiers stood in clusters on the edges of the court. We were at the doorway for less time than it took to walk outside before Papa and Brother James came running to us. Their clothes were wet and the air still held a mist from the overnight storm.
“What happened?” Papa asked.
“They stealing children. One woman said they stole her daughter,” Ol’ Ma said. I could tell that she intended to whisper or conceal