the city,” Mr. Patel advised. “Come, come! Get in before the reporters realise I have come to take you away.” He beckoned and I slid into the seat.
“How kind of you to come and get me,” I murmured.
He ground the gears to powder and the truck lurched away. “Think nothing of it. The sahib sent word and told me to do this.”
“You’ve heard from Ryder?”
Mr. Patel said nothing for several minutes as he negotiated his way out of the heavy traffic, weaving through ox carts and rickshaws and long, smooth touring cars. Finally, we turned onto the damp murram road out of Nairobi and he spoke.
“What was it that you asked me? Oh, yes, yes, Memsahib Delilah. I have heard from him. He cables me to come to get you, and I am happy to do this thing.”
“He cabled you?” There were few dukas farther out than Patel’s and none were in the direction he was supposed to have taken Gideon. “From where?”
“Egypt.”
“Egypt! What the devil is he doing there?”
“This I do not know. He says he has business and he will come when it is finished.”
I hesitated. “Was there anything else?” I didn’t dare ask about Gideon directly. I didn’t know how much Ryder had told Patel and the fewer people who knew Ryder had taken him, the better.
Mr. Patel’s brow furrowed. “No, memsa. All he spoke of was the package you had entrusted to him.”
“What did he say about the package?”
“That it arrived safely and you were not to worry. He would tell you more about the package when he returns. This is all that I know.”
The monkey began chattering again and it was impossible to talk. I slumped back against the seat, letting the weight of the last weeks roll away with each mile that unfurled over the thin red ribbon of road.
* * *
The drive was long and sticky and I was drooping with fatigue when we arrived. But the smell of the earth after the short rains was intoxicating. Bushes were thick with green leaves and gladioli and wild orchids burst from ripe buds. Everything seemed heightened, the colours brighter, the sounds sharper. The scent of Africa hung in my nose and mouth, the tang of the freshly saturated earth, the green smell of new grass, woodsmoke and dung and that peculiar smell of Africa itself, unlike any other. It was evening when we arrived at Fairlight, and to my surprise, Mr. Patel stopped just inside the gate. He turned off the engine, and in the silence I heard it, a steady pounding, like a great beating heart within the land.
“What is that?”
He gestured for me to get out and I did. We walked the last quarter mile, and as we came around the curve where the jacarandas stood in full bloom, I saw them. From every tribe who crossed Fairlight—from the Masai, from the Samburu and the Kikuyu, from other, smaller tribes. They stood, shoulder to shoulder, some of them enemies from the womb, and yet there they were, stamping their rhythms into the soil of their common mother. They were dressed for celebration, wearing their finest skins or kanjas, decked in beads and bracelets, copper wires and necklaces. They lifted up their voices together, a mixture of tribal tongues and Swahili and English, a new Babel, but with one meaning. In every gesture, in every face, I saw the same emotion, and I felt the weight of it so hard upon my shoulders, I almost fell to the ground.
I moved forward and the people gathered about me, closing around like a fist, fingers cradling something precious within the palm. They chanted and sang and stamped, and at length one figure broke forward. It was Gideon’s babu, guided by a moran. He put his hand to my head and blessed me, and when he spoke in his high, reedy voice, it was loud enough to carry over the stamping of a thousand feet.
“Nina mjukuu.” It was Swahili, and his words were halting but I understood them. I have a granddaughter. He carried on, speaking and blessing, but I heard none of it after that first pronouncement. The chanting and stamping was a buzzing in my ears, as if a thousand bees had come home to nest. When he stopped, I took his hands in mine and acknowledged his blessing.
“Nina babu,” I replied to him. I have a grandfather. The people gave a great shout, and I saw that some of the women wept. They