over his head. He seemed to bask in his parishioners’ adoration, which didn’t appear quite right to Quinette. Shouldn’t he tell them to offer their thanks and praise to Our Lord instead? At the same time she envied his communion with them. He’d opened his heart to this parched corner of Africa, and it had taken him into its heart. Maybe one day she would experience the same reciprocity. She loved Africa and wanted it to love her back.
“Hey, you Turkana!” the priest called out as the last trilling ululations died away. “Let us pray for rain!”
“Eh-yay!”
“May all you people be blessed!”
“Eh-yay!”
“May you elders be blessed!”
“Eh-yay!”
“God of Saint John!”
“Give us rain!”
“God of Mary!”
“Give us rain!”
Two hundred pairs of dark arms and one pair of pale arms rose toward the cruel blue sky, and Malachy seemed more than ever the tribal shaman.
“We call upon the one God to bring rain and our animals to come back from death. Make us fat! Give us oil and food! The one God, make us happy!”
“Eh-yay!”
“May all cattle thieving go away!”
“Eh-yay!”
“May peace come down on you and the Toposa!”
“Eh-yay!”
“Goodness come down!” He raised his hands high, lowering them, palms facing the ground. “All evil, go away!” He thrust his hands to one side, as if casting an object over the top of the boma. “Goodness come down! May all you people be blessed!”
The appeals went on, voices rising to such an emotional pitch that Quinette would not have been surprised if the heavens clouded over and thunder cracked that very minute. She felt herself caught up in the steam-locomotive rhythms, the football-cheer repetitions, the movements of arms, swinging up, swinging down. It was hard to restrain herself from tossing her own arms into the air, and she probably would have if the service—no, rite—had gone on much longer, but it ended in another burst of keen ululations that made the enclosure sound like an aviary. Breathless, sweating under her arms, she watched the people begin to file out, greeting Malachy at the entrance, just as churchgoers did back home when church was through.
“So what did you think?” the priest asked Quinette. Cheeks flushed, the tails of his sweat-blotched shirt hanging out of his shorts, he was standing beside the senior elder.
“It was . . . interesting? Actually, beautiful,” she added, deciding that interesting sounded too wishy-washy. “It wasn’t . . . It was strange? I mean . . .”
“Not quite Christian is what you mean. The Vatican has the same opinion.”
“Mind if I take your picture?”
“Surely I don’t.”
“With him.”
Malachy spoke to the Turkana chief, who grasped the priest’s hand and then said something to Quinette.
“He’s telling you that he and I are of the same brand, meaning that we’re brothers.”
She framed the two faces—a white square one and a black oblong one side by side.
“Turkana identify themselves by their cattle brands,” Malachy said, as Quinette stepped forward for a closer shot. “That’s why saying you’re of the same brand means you’re brothers.”
She flicked her head to acknowledge this snippet of ethnological information and took the photo.
“And I am his brother,” the priest carried on. “The secret to working with these people is that you bring yourself to them and become one of them without ever, ever forgetting who and what you really are. It’s a bit of a high-wire act.”
“Could you get my picture with him?”
She posed with her shoulder touching the Turkana’s, the print developed in her mind before the shutter clicked. She saw it laid out with the other photos on her mother’s kitchen table, the ancient white steel table with a border of thin black stripes that Ardele had salvaged from the auction because no one would buy the ugly old thing. She and Nicole were sitting at it, looking at Quinette in her long, golden Dinka dress and at the African beside her, his robe slashing diagonally across his chest, his ritual scars bared. They would show the picture to their friends, and the story of Quinette’s experience would spread, as stories do in small towns, and soon everyone would know that the distance she’d traveled from Cedar Falls could not be measured in miles alone.
A Clash of Cultures
“RADIO AND AVIONICS on, Captain Quanah. Quanah. I love it. Was that an inspiration of the moment?”
“It’s one of my established routines,” Dare said.
Mary flipped black toggle switches.”GPS on and checked. How about the reservation card? Quanah Dare, the certified Comanche? Where’d you get that?”