just strong. The deacon motioned for Quinette to sit on a flat rock. He gave her permission to take pictures, and she boxed the priest in the viewfinder as he turned to the elders and uttered a single word in a booming voice. They answered in unison.
“Father Malachy has addressed the elders,” the deacon translated, “and they have said, ‘Apoloreng, we are here!’ That is what we call him. Father of the Red Ox.”
Turning to the women, Malachy called out to them, and they responded with a rhythmic chant.
“Now Father Malachy says that he is glad to see all the Turkana here, and the women say, ‘We are here.’ ”
Then a melodious litany was sung, the priest leading, the women answering him first, the men coming in, high voices blending with low, rising, falling in a slow tempo. The African cadences pierced her to the depths.
“We are here to call on God,” Malachy sang in his baritone.
“Oh, yes!” the congregation sang in response. “We are here. We are here calling on God.”
“God of Abraham . . .”
“Yes!”
“God of Saint John . . .”
“Yes!”
“God of Mary . . .”
“Yes!”
“All you people are calling on God.”
“Oh, yes! We are calling on Him.”
“God of Matthew . . .”
“We call on him!”
“God of Mark . . .”
“We call on him!”
“God of Luke . . .”
“We call on him!”
“God of John . . .”
“We call on him!”
“All you people are calling on God.”
“Oh, yes! We are calling on Him.”
It was beautiful, elemental, bewitching, and Quinette’s eyes flooded. She wished she knew Turkana so she could join in, although there was a whiff of paganism in the ceremony that made her a little uneasy: the chanting worshippers assembled in a circle under a tree, Malachy presiding over them like a white witch doctor rather than a minister of Our Lord. When the litany ended, the deacon rose and preached a homily. With no one to translate, Quinette had no idea what his message was. He spoke with a great deal of fervor, now stabbing the air with a finger, now tearing at the missal’s pages to read a passage aloud, pacing back and forth as he read, the people shouting “Eh-yay!” whenever he made a point they particularly approved of. Feeling out of things, she looked at the ostrich-plumed elder and tried to count the scars beneath his left shoulder. How strange and thrilling to be in a church—if this could be called a church—with a man whose chest bore the record of the blood he’d shed. Endeavoring to be unobtrusive, she balanced the camera on her knees, swiveled her legs to point directly at him, and pressed the button.
She noticed that a young woman sitting beside her was wearing what appeared to be a calculator as a pendant, its buttons and display window giving off an anomalous plastic gleam among the bright beads half covering her breasts. Quinette leaned over for a closer look and made out the words TEXAS INSTRUMENTS. She raised the camera, snapped a picture, and began to mentally compose the letter that would accompany the photographs when she sent them home. She’d been debating with herself whether to tell her family about the ambush: Why worry them unnecessarily? Now she decided she would, then go on to say that she had ventured out only a few days after the aid workers were killed, with no more protection than an unarmed priest and deacon, and taken photographs of the fierce Turkana without them harming a hair on her head. She would make some witty remark about the woman wearing a Texas Instruments calculator as jewelry, and explain the meaning of the marks on the man’s chest, making sure to adopt an offhanded tone to show that she didn’t consider it any big deal. She wasn’t sure how Kristen would react, but Ardele and Nicole would freak out, and in a corner of herself, the same dark nook where her wild impulses once flourished, prompting her to do things guaranteed to outrage her family, she relished the thought of upsetting those two timid, domesticated females with a tale of her daring—and with pictures to back it up.
The deacon finished his sermon and sat alongside her again as the congregation broke into a hymn—a hymn in praise of Father Malachy, the deacon said. “Apoloreng remembers us,” the crowd sang. Malachy stood grinning against the background of bare sticks and thornbush, his hair brightened by an arrow of late morning sun piercing the branches fanned