Matthew. Both wore turbans and long white robes, like bedsheets, and they weren’t Dinka, even she could see that, noticing their cherrywood complexions and noses like eagles’ beaks. One had a short beard, the other was clean shaven.
“Salaam aleikum,” said Matthew, his hand fluttering past chin, nose, forehead before it swept outward with a comically exaggerated flourish.
“Aleikum as-salaam,” said the bearded one. A knife in a hide scabbard was strapped to his upper arm, and he didn’t appear to be amused by the Dinka’s theatrics. He jerked his pointy chin at Quinette, in a kind of contemptuous way and said something in a language she didn’t recognize, though she could tell that he was asking a question. Matthew answered, and the man grunted without expression; then he and his friend walked off, robes swirling around their brown ankles.
“Messiriya,” Matthew said.
She cocked an ear.
“Those fellows. They are from the Messiriya tribe. Arabs.”
“What are they doing here?”
“That is what they asked me about you.”
“I thought the Dinka were at war with the Arabs.”
“We are, yes.”
“Then what are they doing here?”
“We are not at war with all Arabs.”
“You mean, with their tribe? You’re not fighting this Miserya tribe?”
“Messiriya. We are fighting them all the time. The Messiriya and Dinka—” He made fists and knocked them together, knuckle to knuckle.
She gave him a long, searching look. “I’m confused.”
“Oh, yes. The war makes a big confusion. Sometimes I am confused by it.” He gazed down the street in the direction the Arabs had gone. “The omodiya of those fellows is not at war with us. For now. A few months from now—” Matthew twitched his shoulders to indicate the unpredictability of future events.
“The omo what?” Quinette asked.
“Omodiya. It is like a very big family. How in English? A very big family?”
“Clan?”
“Yes! The clan of those fellows has made peace with the Dinka for now because they need to graze their cattle on Dinka land and also to come to Dinka towns to buy things. Soap. Sugar. Tea. Also to sell slaves. That is what those fellow are here to do. They go about in the north, buying slaves from the people who own them, and when they have so many, they bring them here to sell them back to their families for cows or goats, sometimes for money.”
Trading cows and goats for human beings? Her brain was swimming.
“Three cows for one person,” Matthew continued. “But many Dinka don’t have three cows to give. That is why you, your friends are so very welcome. You have the money for buying them, return them to their families.”
Looking past him, she observed that several women and children had gathered on the street to gawk at her with fixed, quizzical stares. Well, she was probably as conspicuous here as one of these Dinka females would be in Cedar Falls.
“Was anyone from your family taken?”
“My sister. Two years ago. I have heard she will be among those to be given freedom, so I got the permission from my commander to come here and bring her home.”
The small crowd edged closer, approaching as if she might be dangerous.
“Hello, bye-bye,” said Quinette, raising a hand.
A young woman in a long black skirt and Chicago Bulls T-shirt turned her face aside shyly and giggled.
“Ha-lo. Bye-bye,” replied another woman with two small kids at her side, a girl in a ragged dress, a younger, naked boy. The woman touched Quinette’s forearm, the way you would touch an iron to test its heat, and then spoke in a soft, musical voice.
“She is saying that you are her sister,” Matthew translated.
She liked the sound of it. It persuaded her that she’d read the glances of the two women down the road accurately.
“Tell her that I’m honored to be her sister,” she said.
She reached down and lifted the naked boy into her lap, a gesture that brought a murmur of approval from the crowd. She loved kids and occasionally regretted that she and her ex hadn’t had any (though she was more often not the least bit sorry, knowing that she would now be a single mother working two jobs, battling for child support, and probably not getting any, because Steve was an odd-job handyman five days a week, a guitarist in a tenth-rate country music band on weekends, imprisoned by the futile hope that he would be discovered and asked to come to Nashville).
Ken and Jim came parading in with the others, surrounded by a welcoming mob.
“See you’ve made friends,” Ken said to Quinette. “Our ambassador