The Garden of Burning Sand - By Corban Addison
PROLOGUE
I am the end of the tunnel lost in my beginning.
—Dambudzo Marechera
An African Night
Lusaka, Zambia
August, 2011
The girl walked alone on the darkened street. Lights moved around her as cars drove by, their headlights shining on the dusty roadway, but no one seemed to notice her or care that she was alone. Her gait was steady, but her steps were irregular, for one of her legs was shorter than the other. She was wearing a thin dress that offered little protection against the late winter chill. She felt the cold on her skin, but it concerned her less than the empty flat she had left.
She looked back at the building where she lived. Lights were on in the windows. She could hear the blare of televisions over the sounds of traffic. She held her doll by the arm and stared at Auntie’s flat through the thick lenses of her eyeglasses. She didn’t understand where Bright and Giftie had gone or why they had left her by herself. She didn’t understand why they had forgotten to close the door.
She turned back to the road and started off again, swinging her doll like a metronome. She heard music in the distance, and for a moment it distracted her. Then she saw a group of young people across the road. They were smoking cigarettes and talking loudly. Remembering Bright and Giftie, she took a step toward the tarmac, wondering if the smokers knew where they went. But a horn blast from a passing car stopped her in her tracks.
She clutched her doll to her chest and glanced around again, rocking ever so slightly on her feet. Everything looked strange in the dark. Sometimes Giftie took her to another building to play, but she couldn’t remember which way it was. The street didn’t appear the way she remembered. She began to cry. She wanted the sun to rise and the strangeness of everything to go away. The night made her afraid. People lost their kindness when darkness fell.
The girl saw him then—a boy playing with a ball in an alley. She focused on the boy and started walking again. Bright and Giftie had many friends. Perhaps the boy was one of them. She strolled along a wall rimmed with razor wire, her feet scuffing the dirt. As she approached the alley, she heard a popping sound, like fritas frying in a pan. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a truck pull up behind her, its tires grinding the earth. The truck stopped beside the wall and its lights pierced her eyes. She turned away and looked for the boy with the ball. He was gone.
The girl entered the alley and listened to the boy’s voice echoing off the walls around her. She heard another voice—a woman’s voice—rise above it, sounding cross. The girl caught a glimpse of the boy running. Seconds later he disappeared and the woman’s lecture stopped. The girl walked deeper into the shadows, holding her doll and searching for a break in the wall—whatever the boy had passed through. She stumbled on a pile of rocks and tears gathered in her eyes. Even the ground was unfriendly at night.
She looked at the buildings beyond the walls. They were tall, like the building where she lived, but they were strange. The fear came upon her in a rush, and she decided to go back to the flat. Auntie would return soon, and Bright and Giftie would come home.
She was about to turn around when she heard the popping sound again. At once, light filled the alley. Then just as quickly darkness descended. The girl looked toward the street and saw the truck that had stopped beside the wall. It was driving slowly up the alley, its headlights off. A man got out of the truck and stared at her. There was something in the shape of the man’s face that made her comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time.
The man knelt down and held out his hand. She saw a sweet in his palm. Her mother had given her sweets whenever she had asked her to sleep in the bathroom. After a moment, the girl reached out and put the sweet in her mouth. She smiled at the man, deciding he must be a friend.
What happened next made no sense to her. She had no idea why her legs grew weak and her fingers lost hold of her doll, why the night spun out of control and pain shot through her head. Her eyelids drooped, then opened again. She saw the shadow of the man hovering over her. He bent down and lifted her off the ground. She had lost her glasses, but his face was close as he carried her and she saw his eyes. They were large and round, like a cat’s. Her mother had told her stories about cats—the cats that lived wild in Africa.
She heard a click like a door latch and felt the man’s hands push her into a cramped space blacker than the sky. Her last impression was the rumble that began beneath her and grew louder until the world fell away and the night itself vanished in darkness.
A Hearing in the Senate
Washington, D.C.