Lice dug into my skull. My fingernails were bloody from scratching my head. Flies kept buzzing on my face and crawling on my arms. I’d given up batting them away. And the mosquitoes left blood marks and big bumps. The driver ants on the beds bit me when they weren’t attacking each other. I itched everywhere.
I wanted to hide from Oba and Kofi and escape, but I was scared of the jungle more than them. One kid left, and they brought back his dead body, all torn up by lions. I could hear animal cries in the night, horrible sounds that kept me awake. I hoped Papa would find me, but as the days passed, I was giving up. Maybe he was too busy with his work to come. That made me mad.
I heard the bell. The boys ran for the outdoor shower, where the water was brownish. Nobo followed me everywhere. We had a quick wash—if you could call it that—and everyone lined up at the fire pit for breakfast. A large pot of the villagers’ grains bubbled on the fire. I followed the crowd of boys, wanting to fit in, knowing I couldn’t. They called me Mzungu. White boy. My skin color made me stand out like a zebra on a grassy plain. The boys always stared at me.
I dreamed of home, clean sheets on my bed, the smell of Cook baking fresh bread, the view of the gardens. I even missed Hakan’s son, Rifat, who Papa said I had to play with because his father worked for him. Anything was better than this place.
One day, Kofi told all the boys to sit on the wooden picnic benches. Every boy got a rifle. He told us it was our new best friend and to keep it with us all the time. Oba stood in a corner watching. I didn’t look at him. The guy was scary.
Kofi held an AK-47 in his bony hands and showed us how to take it apart and put it back together. The rifle was kinda cool. A big kid named Blado was the fastest. Poor Nobo wasn’t good at all, his small hands too weak. I snuck a quick look at Oba, but his black eyes were all weird. I didn’t want him to notice me, so I worked on my AK-47. But I was good, so Oba came over and watched me work.
Then he saw that Nobo had barely started. Oba grabbed the tiny kid by the ear and screamed at him.
“Five weeks, and you still can’t do this?” He was so mad.
Nobo shook all over.
My mouth opened before I could think. “He’s too small to do it. Why don’t you get him to count bullets instead?”
All the boys were quiet. I knew I had made a mistake.
“Do we accept weakness in this camp?”
No one said anything.
“I asked if we accept weakness.”
Total quiet.
“The answer is no.” Oba pulled out his gun, lifted Nobo into the air, and shot him in the head. The loud bang made me jump. Blood splashed my face.
I felt sick. My heart skipped a few beats. I couldn’t move.
Nobo lay on the table beside me, his mouth open, showing his two missing teeth.
“Get to work. Now!”
Oba hit me hard on the back of the head with the rifle. I saw stars, wanted to puke. My hands were covered with Nobo’s blood, but I started working on the rifle. I didn’t want to be the next person shot. Still, I felt bad. I could have stripped Nobo’s AK, tried to teach him. I showed Thea how to do things at home. But I was too scared to help. I had to do everything Oba said if I wanted to live. And the things I did were bad.
The yellowed pages of Nikos’s story trembled in Thea’s hands. She sucked in a deep breath. Every benign thing she’d been told about her brother’s kidnapping had been a lie. Ripples of shock reverberated down her spine. Who else knew what had actually happened to Nikos? Hakan? Rif? Was she the only one who’d been kept in the dark?
When Nikos had been held hostage, Papa had met with countless experts behind closed doors. A grave hush had fallen over the household, as if no one could take a full breath until Nikos came home. She remembered those long months when he was missing, his kidnapping a tangible presence at every meal. Still, she’d never fully understood what her brother had endured, because Papa had always stuck to the same myth of where he’d been—held as a bargaining chip between rival African tribes, a little hungry and dirty but relatively safe.
Lies, lies, lies.
Empathy overwhelmed her. Nikos had been through sheer hell, and perhaps her father had misguidedly tried to protect her from the horrific truth. She’d participated in numerous hostage debriefings. The horrors of captivity were never easy to handle, but this one hit her especially hard. This was her brother, her rock after their mother died.
Nikos had never been the same after he returned. The first few days he was awkward and withdrawn. And really angry. Lots of doors slamming, yelling, outbursts. Allison, their nanny, had abruptly left two months after Nikos came home; then her brother had been sent away to a school in Utah for troubled kids.
Her world had become smaller and smaller as the people she cared about went away. She called her brother every Sunday, but she always got the feeling he was holding back from telling her how miserable he was. She’d wanted Nikos home with her full time. But when he’d return for holidays, he’d act withdrawn, dark, almost a stranger. Being around Papa seemed to set him off.