peace came, and to the bungalow that would shelter visiting clergy. The mission compound breathed an atmosphere of order and serenity, and Quinette and Michael gazed at it with pleasure and hope.
A rededication ceremony was held that Sunday, Fancher conducting a praise service. Quinette got chills, listening to familiar hymns made unfamiliar by African voices, African drums. Oh, they made a joyful noise! Fancher delivered a homily, promising better times, assuring the congregation that the will of God would never lead them to where the grace of God could not keep them. He concluded with a prayer for rain.
Afterward, perhaps concerned that the white minister’s petition would prove efficacious and diminish his already-diminished authority, the kujur employed gangs of young people to run through town, whirling sticks tied to long cords. They made a droning sound, like ceiling fans turned to high speed. The devices, part of the rainmaker’s traditional toolkit, were supposed to inspire the heavens to open.
At sundown, as she stood to stretch after weeding her vegetable patch, Quinette looked southward and saw a belt of black clouds, embroidered by lightning. It advanced with incredible speed, pulled by the high wind that drove before it, shaking the palms and baobabs, bending the tall, burnt grass in the meadows. She ran into the house just as a deluge slashed across the courtyard, accompanied by a crash of thunder. Watching the rain transform dust into mud, listening to it splatter against the makuti roof, she wondered if she had unconsciously absorbed the Nubans’ superstitions, if the mountains’ silences and spaces and shadowed crevasses had turned her imagination toward realms unperceived by the senses, her mind toward belief in spirits whose supernatural powers could be invoked through chants and magic; for she was inclined to give the kujur’s whirling sticks as much credit as Fancher’s prayer.
Michael dashed in, totally drenched, laughing. “It has broken!” he shouted, picking her up, spinning her around. “It has broken!”
He peeled off his uniform, kicked off his boots, and as the wind fell, went outside to stand naked in the rain, facing a sky twice darkened by night and cloud, his mouth open. Quinette pulled her dress over her head and joined him, drinking the rain, bathing in it. They laughed hysterically, choking as they laughed, eyes squeezed shut against the heavy wet darts that stung their faces. Then the arms of a former wrestler scooped her off her feet and carried her inside, and she knew, falling on the bed, that this would be the time. The spirits who had broken the drought on the land would break the one in her.
THE RAINS DID not fall incessantly but swept over the mountains in tightly wound, localized storms. Avoiding them, government planes resumed bombing, the Antonovs flying at altitudes beyond the range of antiaircraft guns and missiles. The reports crackling over the radio from Michael’s subcommands made it clear that Khartoum was targeting the Nuba’s airstrips. Three were struck in as many days. The purpose was obvious, said Michael. The blockade had failed to stop aid from reaching the Nuba, so now the government intended to isolate it, making it impossible for relief planes to land.
A broadcast on the state-controlled radio, picked up on the shortwave, confirmed his speculations. He translated the Arabic: Sudan’s vice-president had made a formal protest to the United Nations Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, charging that the UN relief operation was being used to channel aid not to civilians but to the SPLA . . . Reliable information had it that some of this aid included weapons . . . In the Nuba mountains in particular, planes based in Kenya were known to have delivered shoulder-fired rockets, one of which was used to down a civilian aircraft carrying oil workers . . . The nation’s military forces had been ordered to strike back and were winning glorious victories on every front.
“So they are on to the game,” Michael said, switching the radio off. “I am amazed it took them so long.”
A fourth airfield was hit. Like the other three, the runway had been blasted end to end. Considering that the bombs were dumped, like cargo in an airdrop, from aircraft four miles up, this degree of precision was remarkable.
New Tourom’s was the fifth.
The air raid came shortly after school had started. Quinette was helping Moses with a spelling lesson when the ground quivered and there came a terrible, ragged roar, followed by another, dust and dirt shaking down from the grass