to the Arab, who then turned and walked away, followed by the three men, carrying Yamila like hunters a bagged trophy. Quinette listened to her cries and howls slowly diminish, knowing they would echo in her memory for some time to come. But those too would diminish, till she heard them no more. She had made friends with the stranger who was herself, with the woman she’d become. She had come full circle. Yamila’s fate was shameful, yes, but the multitudes of women she had redeemed from slavery had to be balanced against this one she’d sent back into slavery by speaking two words, the same two, curiously, she’d uttered in her wedding vows.
Michael turned from the figures walking in the distance, bent over as if he were sick, and took Quinette’s hand. She threaded her fingers into his and squeezed to assure him that it was all right. God would forgive him, and God would forgive the woman she now was as He had so often forgiven the one she’d been. Jesus was still her friend. Jesus loved her.
Small True Facts
PLANE CARRYING JOURNALISTS SHOT DOWN IN SUDAN
KHARTOUM DENIES RESPONSIBILITY, BLAMES REBELS
CRASH OF SEARCH PLANE NOT RELATED
THERE WAS NOTHING like the deaths of Caucasians to give the war more than two seconds of air time and four paragraphs in the newspapers. And there was nothing like the deaths of three of their own to whip the media into a froth. CNN gave the story big play—their woman in Africa, blown out of the sky in the line of duty. Curiously, the network had nothing to say about what she had been working on.
A press trip was organized to bring correspondents and cameramen to the scene. Fitzhugh and Pamela Smyth secured places for themselves on the plane. Pamela was seeking what she called “closure”; so was Fitzhugh, though of a different kind. He was willing to entertain the possibility that in this instance the Sudanese government was telling the truth.
The trip was delayed a few days by the fighting in New Tourom. When it was deemed safe to travel, the press plane flew to Malakal, where a chartered helicopter delivered its passengers to the crash site, ringed by SPLA soldiers. Michael was on hand, eager to give interviews. Troops were filmed and photographed holding the perforated wing while he pointed at the bullet holes, each about the size of a golf ball, with a rim of bent metal around it. A 12.7- or 14.5-millimeter antiaircraft machine gun, he informed the reporters, one of whom asked if he would comment on Khartoum’s version of events. The usual nonsense and propaganda, he replied. The government had failed to subdue the Nuba, had failed to isolate it by bombing its airfields, and now resorted to terror to stop aid from reaching the mountains.
With Michael on board, the helicopter brought the journalists to New Tourom for a tour of the destruction wrought by the attack. He had insisted on this to present further proof of Khartoum’s perfidy. Quinette joined her husband as guide, offering an eyewitness description of murahaleen thundering through the town on horseback, her account underscored by the stench of rotting horseflesh that still lingered in the air.
As the group trekked back to the airfield for the first leg of the trip home, Michael handed Fitzhugh a sealed envelope for delivery to Douglas—a letter of thanks, he said in an undertone. “Without the assistance you people brought to us, we would have lost this battle and all the Nuba with it.”
Under a grass-roofed shelter at the side of the runway, Fitzhugh and Pamela waited with the reporters for the helicopter to finish refueling. Sitting on the ground against a post, she spotted an object lying in the grass—a small plastic bottle with an orange bullet-shaped cap. She removed the cap and squeezed the plunger, sending a jet of mist into the air.
“Maybe this will help,” she said. “That stench—I can’t get it out of my nose.”
“Could I see that?”
He held the bottle upright between a thumb and forefinger and studied it, like an archaeologist examining an enigmatic artifact. The label read, NASOKLEAR. FOR RELIEF OF ALLERGY AND SINUS SYMPTOMS.
“It was lying right there?” he asked.
“Yes. Maybe I’d better not use it. Who knows where it’s been.”
“Who knows,” Fitzhugh said. He thought of Adid’s “fresh ideas” and pocketed the bottle. Un petit fait vrais—a phrase his Seychellois father was fond of using.
Having not quite achieved closure, Pamela put past enmities aside and called on