bit too brutal, a bit too much. Maybe it had been, but there had been a real passion in it, too, Quinette thought. She jumped up and applauded as Michael was paraded by.
A fascination had been awakened in her, but she couldn’t admit that it was the reason she went to speak to him after he’d cleaned up and got back into his uniform. She persuaded herself that she needed more information about the slave trade in the Nuba. A few yards short of his circle of aides and bodyguards, a fit of shyness overcame her and she hesitated, lurking like someone who wants to join a cocktail party conversation but lacks the nerve. The adjutant spotted her.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Oh!” she said, startled. “I—I just wanted to say that we were all thrilled by the matches, and to congratulate the commander on his win.”
Michael laughed a laugh that sounded the way velvet felt and said he was lucky. He shouldn’t have accepted the challenge. The military commander of liberated Nuba had a certain dignity to uphold, and tussling in the dirt with a man ten years younger wasn’t the way to do it.
“We were told you had no choice, that you couldn’t turn him down.”
“I could have,” he said, twirling his walking stick in his long fingers. “I’m thirty-six years, and everyone knows that’s too old to be wrestling. Pride made me do it, and I was taught that pride goes before the fall.”
“Well, the other guy took the fall.”
“Ha! Yes, he did! That guy is strong, but he’s not very good, he only thinks he is. He was also tired from his previous match.”
She drew closer. It was a tad awkward, talking to a man she’d glimpsed in the buff only an hour ago.
Michael tapped the stick’s ivory handle in his palm. “And you are who?”
“Quinette Hardin.”
“American, correct?”
“Correct.”
“And you are with which agency?”
“It’s not an agency exactly. A human rights group, the WorldWide Christian Union.”
“Which does what?”
She told him and complimented his command of English.
“I see,” Michael said. “So, Miss Hardin, what do you speak besides English?”
“Nothing. Unless you want to count two years of high school Spanish.”
“I would be delighted to meet someday an American who speaks more than English. You Americans own the world now and you don’t have to learn.” There was no edge to the remark; he made it as if stating a mathematical fact. “But someday someone else will own the world, and then you’ll have to learn their language. Who do you think it will be? The Russians? The Arabs? The Chinese?”
“Couldn’t say. Never thought about it.”
“I’ll bet on the Chinese. The Arabs are too crazy to be masters of the world. The Russians are too drunk. But the Chinese, oh, they’re so disciplined and hardworking, and there are so many of them!” With a languid movement, he pointed the stick toward the mission, hidden in the trees a few hundred yards off. “I learned there. The Englishman’s English. The American English I learned taking military training at your Fort Benning in Georgia state. Do you know Georgia?”
“Not really. I’m from far away. Iowa.”
“Where our commander in chief went to university.”
“Yeah. Someone told me Garang went to Iowa State.”
“Iowa State,” Michael said distantly. “He studied agriculture, animal husbandry, I think. He’s a Dinka, and the Dinka are like the Arabs. How they love cattle. Cattle are their lives. They’re African cowboys, and the Arabs in Sudan are Arab cowboys. So this war, it’s not cowboys and Indians, it’s cowboys and cowboys.”
“What is it you wish to speak to the commander about?” the adjutant growled, bootlegging into the question an impatience with the chatter.
“I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name,” Quinette said.
“Major Muhammad Kasli.”
You can’t get more Muslim than Muhammad, she thought. Lord, you needed a program and a scorecard to keep track of who was on whose side in this war. To entice the major out of his dour attitude, she offered her hand and the wide, friendly smile that came naturally to a midwesterner (the tyrannical farmbelt grin, Kristen used to call it, because it announced that the one who wore it was so inoffensive that the one upon whom it was bestowed didn’t dare to be otherwise). The pleasantries of the American heartland didn’t apply out here. Major Kasli merely nodded, without so much as a pleased to meet you.
“The major, Miss Hardin, sees to it that my time isn’t wasted,” Michael added, with the faintest trace of sarcasm.