By Derek Lubangakene

When I was eleven, my best friend could kill you with a handshake.

He almost killed me the first time we met. On that fateful day, I was out of class having been caught passing a chit in Mr. Mboyo’s maths test. Given the choice between touching my toes and receiving canes, or getting reported to my mum, the schoolmistress, I chose being reported. I knew my mum would be too busy to punish me if I kept out of sight. I might still get suspended, or have to dig an anthill, or sweep all the classrooms in our block, but all that was nothing compared to Mr. Mboyo caning you.

Mr. Mboyo, afraid of the endless drizzle outside, scribbled a chit and sent me to the admin block. On the way to mum’s office I branched off into the library a.k.a. the computer lab. The 6E kids, busy thumbing keyboards and squinting at computer screens, didn’t pay me any attention as I sneaked behind the wobbly chairs on my way to the stairs at the end of the narrow church-like room. It was a miracle I escaped Mrs. Nadya’s all-seeing gaze. I locked the creaky door behind me, and climbed to the roof.

No teachers ever came to the roof. It overlooked the school farm, and if the wind was strong, it smelled like manure. It was the last place my mum would send a prefect to search for me. You could spend the whole day there and no one would ever bother you. Problem was I was so restless, I always got bored.

I waited for the drizzle to thin before squatting near the edge of the flat roof and shredding Mr. Mboyo’s chit into the rain-swollen gutter.

“What are you doing there?”

Startled, I turned thinking it was a prefect, but it was only the new kid in 6E, Asaf. Everyone called him Safi, like the juice. Yes, he was that brown. Not me, though. I figured if I never called anyone by their nickname they’d have no reason to call me by mine. Dunk, short for Duncan. That’s what everyone called me except for Malik, my arch-nemesis. He called me Dung.

I stood up to sneer at Asaf, but I didn’t realise how much taller he was.

“Mind your business,” I said.

“You’re littering, aren’t you?”

“Well done, Inspector Gadget.” I poked at his Casio DB-55 databank watch, “Are you going to report me? If so, I’ll report you too.”

“What for? I’ve done nothing.”

“For smoking,” I said.

“But I’ve not been smoking,” he said, his voice breaking. Some prefects had keys to the library and often smoked on the roof after class. Prefects were usually older kids, kids who couldn’t come to school unless they’d shaved. Though Asaf wasn’t much older than me, he was tall enough that if I grassed him the teachers would believe me.

“Yes you have.”

“No, I haven’t.” He turned his pockets upside down, and as though synchronised, a paper boat fell from each pocket. He dashed down to pick them, but I got to them first, on account of being shorter. I backed away from him and admired the boats. Well, catamarans. I’d seen many boats, but never a catamaran. The stern was solid while the legs were lighter and made of a brownish paper.

“Did you make these?” I asked. Origami had only recently become fly. Every kid could make a paper frog or paper plane, but I couldn’t even fold a cone. I made my hate of paper-folding public, yet secretly longed to master the skill.

Asaf lunged to grab the catamarans from me. I spun to dodge him, but he hit my shoulder and I dropped both boats into the drain. Asaf chased after them, but the rushing rain chucked them over the roof before he could snatch them. Instead of helping, I stood frozen.

He rose; his eyes twinkling with unshed tears. I leaned over the edge of the roof and saw the boats in the drain below. They looked like butterflies crumpled by a clumsy, sweaty bully.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“Don’t tell me your sorrys. Just leave me alone.” Asaf headed for the stairs.

“Hey Asaf!” I called after him, but he didn’t stop.

I ran after him and grabbed his hand. The way he sent me flying over his shoulders and down the stairs was the baddest jujitsu I’d ever seen; he must have had a black belt in kung-fu. But this was more than kung-fu. An electric current tore through my body like that time I was shocked by the flat-iron. This felt like six flat-irons at the same time.

He ran down and knelt beside me on the landing, murmuring, “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I never meant—”

He gripped my right hand in his, making me shake even more, then my left hand and… I can’t explain it… it was like he absorbed whatever it was he’d zapped me with. I stopped shaking. I remembered to breathe seconds later.

“Please don’t report me. I’m sorry.” He got up and ran away.

The stagnant water on the stairwell soaked through my khakis, though I think I might have wet myself also. I lay there for a while, telling myself what had happened was only a weird, weird dream. I promised myself to steer clear of the new kid… but then I saw Asaf’s watch lying where he’d knelt.

*

I didn’t see him at the weekly P.E. class in the pitch behind the mess hall, or at Friday’s general assembly. I considered keeping the watch, but my curiosity wouldn’t let me. I had to find out how he’d zapped me.

A week later I saw him bobbing across the quadrangle. The bell for end of break had rang, everyone was rushing to class like scattered ants. Asaf stood out in the middle of all those people, like that scene with the lady in red in the Matrix movie. Asaf walked the same way she did, his head down, his movements measured as if he was trying not to be noticed.

I followed him and cornered him around the canteen.

“What’re you doing?” Asaf asked.

“Nothing,” I replied. He looked at me like he was considering zapping me with his eyes… I shifted my body sideways. Narrowed his target.

“Leave me alone then,” he sidestepped me.

I reached for his hand then thought the better of it. “I have your Casio. I picked it. I didn’t… here, take it.”

Asaf stared at me a moment, then held out his hand, palms flat and open. I placed the watch carefully, making sure I did not touch his hand. He pocketed the watch and turned to leave.

“I’ll be at the roof later. If you want to race paper boats,” I said.

“How? There’s no rain today.”

“I know. But I can fetch a bucket of water and—”

“I have extra classes.”

He bounced.

Later that day, right after the bell for the end of extra classes rang, he showed up. He hovered by the roof door as though considering a clean retreat if anything went wrong.

“You came.” I couldn’t hide my excitement.

He shrugged. He walked over and crouched beside me to look at the crumpled comic I was reading.

“You can read if you want,” I said.

“Hmmn, superheroes? Only babies read superheroes.”

He unzipped his bag, pulled out a comic with a dark blue cover. On the front of it was a man who looked like the explorer Sir Samuel Baker holding a long rifle, an Indian man dressed in gold and green silk holding a sharp silver sword, an ape-man, a ghost wearing a suit, and a lady fanning herself.

“What’s that?”

“The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.”

“Sounds like superheroes,” I said.

“No. They’re anti-heroes.”

“What are ant-heroes?” Apart from Asterix and TinTin, I never knew non-superhero comics existed.

“You have to read them to understand.”

In the following weeks he would introduce me to Sandman, Akira, Moonshadow, and the Watchmen. Asaf hated superheroes. He didn’t believe in miracles or superheroes, despite being an unlikely example of both.

*

I lived in the teachers’ quarters, a tiny yellow flat barely enough for me, my parents and my twin sisters, Apio and Achen. Asaf and I would spend evenings at my house, reading comics and playing my Nintendo 64 until my dad returned and demanded to watch the news.

Asaf’s house was farther away from school, in the shadowy valley below the Blood Bank. We called it the Valley of Death because every year some hopeless kid would wander into the thick forest there and meet Mzee Polycarp, the ageless farmer who carried a sickle to chop off the head of any lost kid. Or so we were told. It was a stupid myth, but we loved vague things like that. Asaf’s house wasn’t much bigger than mine, but it was just him and his father so there was more space. It was neat, with an underlying Dettol-like scent filling the living room. Asaf assured me it wasn’t iodine or antiseptic. It was fabric softener.

“Ha-ha. Do you have a lot of khakis and corduroys?” I asked the first time I visited.

“No. The humidity is low here.” Asaf explained. “Fabric softener prevents static from clinging onto me.”

Marcus, his photographer dad was a lanky, narrow-eyed man in overalls. He and Asaf looked more like siblings. If he’d been shorter and hatted, he’d be Mario from the Super Mario game. I liked him. The shelves in their living room had more books than the school’s scanty library. They spent their evenings cooped up around desk lamps reading. Comics for Asaf and boring novels for Marcus. Silence was welcome here. Being an only child suited Asaf as much as being a single parent suited Marcus.

I envied Asaf. He didn’t have to deal with my mean, cry-baby sisters.

On their birthday that year they threw a party and invited all the kids from the teachers’ quarters, including Malik. Mum and dad had a late staff meeting and couldn’t be there. On top of that, the electricity went off mid-way, when we’d just cut the cake. Malik used the darkness to pinch half the cake and though he denied this when we lit some candles, he forgot the crumbs were still around his mouth. We sat in a large circle on the carpet, telling stories while waiting for the light to come back, but after thirty minutes Malik and the rest of the kids returned to their flats. It remained just me, Asaf, whom I’d invited against my sister’s wishes, and my disappointed sisters.

The lights returned as soon as the others left, but it kept flickering and we couldn’t put on the TV or radio. This further annoyed my sisters as they were missing their favourite show, Sunset Beach. When the lights stabilised, we’d have to let my sisters watch whatever they wanted, since it was their birthday. It was only eight o’clock, Asaf’s father wouldn’t pick him until nine, and we would rather have died than watch Sunset Beach. So I begged Asaf to perform for them instead.

I made them sit on the sofa then I rubbed one of their birthday balloons in my hair until the static was strong enough. Then I handed it to Asaf. Without touching it, he grabbed the balloon from my hand and raised it towards the ceiling. It danced above us for a long while then floated down into the space between my sisters.

Asaf bowed, rose, stooped to wipe his nose with the bottom of his t-shirt, leaving a dot of blood.

“That’s a stupid magic trick,” my sister Achen said. “You used a string to pull up the balloon.”

I shoved the balloon in their faces. “Show me where the string is?”

They swiped their hands over it but found no thread.

“You cut the thread when you pulled it,” Apio said.

“I didn’t!” I flipped my palms over to show them my hands, “See—”

They shook their heads, refusing to believe me.

“You cheated!” Achen shouted.

“Yes. You got us. We cheated.” Asaf agreed, pulling me away as I tried to argue further. “Good trick though, yes?”

But they looked at him funnily. Like him agreeing with them was fishy.

“What’s that on your nose?” Apio asked.

“Ewww! He’s bleeding,” Achen added.

Asaf wiped his nose again and turned to me. “I think the electricity is stable enough now?”

I nodded, finally catching up. Stupid me. I had forgotten the unwritten superhero rule—keep your superpowers secret. Asaf’s disguise was like Superman’s. He wanted to remain harmless like Clark Kent. Less trouble for him that way.

But like Clark Kent, Asaf’s secret couldn’t remain a secret forever. My sisters told the balloon story to Malik, one of the best science students of his class. At first, he dismissed it, saying it was only static electricity. I wasn’t there, but the way I heard it, my sisters were so firm on Asaf being some kind of Frankenstein that Malik decided he should investigate it himself.

It was all my fault, really. I never should’ve dissed Malik’s bussuu technique. Though he was reigning school champ, I had beaten him before, and felt confident challenging him. In bussuu, your goal is to slap your opponent’s hands until submission. Your opponent places their hands together, then you have to try and slap the back of their hands while they part their hands to make you miss. If you miss, it’s your turn to get slapped and vice versa. Malik’s technique involved pretending to sprinkle salt over your hands and slapping with both hands. Not illegal, but it gave him an advantage; he rarely missed.

And nothing would’ve gone wrong if I hadn’t got a knuckle-breaker from Mr. Mukisa for drawing on the edges of my science textbook earlier that day.

At lunch, Asaf and I showed up behind the canteens for the duel. Malik’s friends had spread word about the whole thing and the back of the canteen looked like a scene from the movie Fight Club. Even my sisters were there.

My hands hurt so much even Malik’s ‘salt sprinkling’ hurt. Malik bussued me, once, twice, three times. On the fourth turn, I threw my hands up.

“You win, Malik. You win!” I said.

“Are you sure? I can go slower, give you a fighting chance,” Malik circled me. Drawing cheers from the mob.

“No. I’m sure.”

“Wait,” Asaf stepped into the circle. “I’ll take his place.”

I tried to push Asaf back into the crowd, but he refused.

“Aahhh, let him bussuu!” chorused the mob. These kids had skipped lunch to watch this. They wanted to see some epic bussuu, not my weaselly surrender.

Malik bussued Asaf at least two dozen times but Asaf refused to surrender. When Malik finally missed, I begged Asaf to let his turn go, knowing what would happen should he bussuu Malik. But Malik was confident Asaf would miss on his first try, he insisted that Asaf go ahead.

“Take off the gloves, though,” Malik said.

Asaf hesitated, but finally slipped them off, handing them to me.

Then Asaf bussuued Malik, and Malik flew five feet into the mob.

Asaf stared at his hands with a fixed, blank look, then at Malik who was lying on the ground, shaking.

I rushed to his side and pushed him. “Go! Go away before someone reports,” I whispered loudly. He snatched his gloves and ran towards the dining hall, the mob parting easily for him.

After school, I went to Asaf’s house, but he wasn’t there. Neither was his dad. I returned home to find my dad waiting for me, ready to tell me I couldn’t be friends with that ‘dangerous fellow’ anymore. He made me go down to Malik’s flat just one floor below ours, to apologise.

Malik appeared to take my apology graciously, but when his mum wasn’t looking, he ran his thumb across his throat like the wrestler The Undertaker would right before he annihilated you with his Tombstone Piledriver.

The next day in Ms. Hadiya’s Home Economics class, Asaf faked nausea and left early. Mrs. Hadiya tried to pair me with Jemima and Nambi, but they’d heard about the Malik incident and didn’t want to be paired with a trouble-magnet like me. Baking alone was torture. My cake came out runny. Like thick porridge.

At break, I went up to the library roof, where I found Asaf making an origami something.

I sat beside him, “Hmmn, what’s that supposed to be?”

Asaf shrugged.

“At least it’s not as ugly as the cake I baked. Thank you very much bytheway.”

“I’m worried for Malik. I don’t know what I should do,” Asaf said.

“He’s okay. He’s a tough bastard that one.”

Asaf screwed up his face. “Maybe I should go apologise.”

“For what? They’ll probably think you’re crazy and call your dad, and suspend you for lying. Just forget it. In fact, we should be feeling sorry for ourselves. Malik is going to repay this. Trust me.”

And repay he did. He began calling Asaf El Zappa, and it spread like flu. He drew cartoons of Asaf— hair radiating from his head in fluffy spokes, eyes bulged out, with sparking hulking hands—and plant them all over the notice boards and toilet cubicles. Once he painted a pair of hands on the monkey bars and refused to let any kids play there, saying they were Asaf’s and anyone who played there would get some of his residual current.

I tried to get Malik to stop. I lent him my Nintendo, but he burned the shape of a hand around one of the pads.

“Don’t blame me, I found it like that,” he said when he returned it to me. “That’s what you get for letting El Zappa play with your things.”

I should’ve grassed him then, but the pad still worked, and Asaf begged me to drop it. Though Asaf never spoke about it, I knew he was suffering. Something in him seemed to have evaporated.

One day, Asaf, frustrated that this wasn’t ending, tried to pluck the latest drawings from the notice board but the paper clung to his hand. His rage had created an adamantine bond with the paper, despite his gloves. He swung and swung and swung, but the paper held on like gum. Malik and friends gathered around laughing.

“Don’t mind them,” I put my hand over Asaf’s shoulder. “They’re just jealous.”

Asaf shrugged my hand away. “Why do you care?”

“You’re my friend, that’s what friends do.”

“I didn’t ask you to be my friend.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why do you want so much to be my friend, Duncan?”

“Because…”

My mind went static, like the chewed part of a VHS tape.

“Just leave me alone.” Asaf walked away, still flapping his hand.

The next day there was another drawing, and the day after that. But they were all the same. Asaf zapping this, zapping that. Me in the background looking confused. It soon got old. In the meantime, Asaf wouldn’t talk to me, though we still had Home Economics class together. He’d do the work and leave. I’d go up to the roof and wait and wait, and Asaf would never show up.

A week later, at inter-house football semis, Malik kicked the football straight into Asaf’s face. Asaf had been standing on the sidelines, not even part of the game. Seeing him fold onto the pitch, his nose bleeding I rushed onto the pitch and punched Malik who had started walking away like nothing was wrong. Malik punched back. We scrapped like ruthless tomcats—scratching, hissing, cussing. It took the ref, my dad, separating us before I let go of Malik’s collar.

Malik’s mum and my mum sat us down in my mum’s office and tried to resolve the situation, but neither of us would grass on the other. In the end, my mum confiscated my Nintendo, and made both Malik and I sweep all five sections of our class for two weeks.

We left our mums in the office and as soon as we were outside I turned towards the sick bay. Asaf had been taken there with a bleeding, possibly broken, nose.

The nurse had just discharged Asaf when I walked into the sick bay’s lemon-coloured waiting area. He walked with his head bent upwards, pressing a cloth to his nose.

“What do you want?” Asaf scowled upon seeing me.

“Are you alright?”

“My nose isn’t broken. My pride though, that’s another story.”

“Didn’t know you had any pride to break,” I said, smiling.

He smiled back, then winced as his nose still hurt.

“At least tell me that bastard got suspended.”

“No.”

“You made it worse didn’t you?”

“Not worse. Just not better.”

“You shouldn’t have got involved then.”

“I was helping you.”

“Duncan, your help always brings trouble. Just don’t help me anymore. I have a plan.”

*

Malik and I didn’t fight, or talk as we swept the five classrooms that evening. I kept glancing at the doorway expecting Asaf to show up. But he didn’t. Nor did he come to school the next two days. At General Assembly that Friday, my mum announced Asaf was sick and wouldn’t be in school until Tuesday the next week. I grilled her about it at home but she knew only what she’d said, what Marcus had told her over the phone.

In Asaf’s absence, the drawings finally stopped.

Asaf showed up not Tuesday, but Wednesday. In Home Economics class we baked mermaid-shaped cookies. Ours had the best shape and Mrs. Hadiya made everyone clap for us.

“Keep it up and I’ll enter your names for the PTA gala competition,” she said.

“This is even better than my plan,” Asaf whispered.

“What plan?”

“My– our plan to defeat our nemesis.”

Malik had registered for the competition weeks ago. He was so sure of himself he didn’t mind showing everyone the scooter he’d be competing with. He’d made it from scrap. He’d come second in the previous year’s gala and won a Sony Discman. I was third and won a certificate. I hadn’t bothered to register for the gala this year. I didn’t have the energy to compete with Malik, even though the prize would be bigger. A BMX bike. I had already given up.

But Asaf wasn’t going to give up. We took Mrs. Hadiya’s advice and registered a joint project for the gala.

“What happens if we win?” I asked. Wondering how we’d share the prize bike.

“Beating Malik is the only prize I want,” Asaf replied.

“How are going to beat him?”

“Origami. It’s the one thing he can’t do.”

And so started our quest to make the perfect origami.

*

We spent our afternoons seated on the roof, despite the scanty shade, fiddling with papers, only stopping when the sky turned from the colour of a fresh wound to a blackened scab.

Asaf and I spent forever sketching, mapping and fidgeting with foil-backed paper and tissue foil. We perfected valley folds, reverse folds, squash folds, crimp heads, fold flaps, pleats. Asaf was obsessed with the idea of perfection, so we worked on each piece until it was as close to perfect as possible. Perfect catamarans, a perfect Titanic, perfect dragonflies. But nothing was quite good enough for Asaf.

Finally, while seated on the roof one late afternoon, a butterfly floated above us. It was unusual for a butterfly to soar that high. In that Asaf found the idea for his perfect origami. A floating angel. Making angels in origami was easy, but an angel that floated on its own – that was insane.

“How are you going to flap its wings? With strings?” I mocked.

He paused from his sketching, said, “You can either help me create something amazing or spend the rest of your life getting laughed at by Malik.”

I felt small with that statement, but he was right. Malik and I could trade blows every day of term but making this perfect origami would show the whole school what a talentless bully he really was; it would surely annihilate him. I agreed to help, but the way Asaf worked, I couldn’t keep up. He was like a mad scientist, like he had a deadline to beat, even though the PTA gala was six weeks away. Though his nose-bleeds and dizzy spells worsened, he wouldn’t stop. He worked harder after each failure.

“You don’t even believe in miracles, why are you trying to be God?”

It was one of those times I asked Asaf a question and immediately regretted it.

“My dad believes he will be God once he takes that perfect photograph. I am not trying to be God; I’m just trying to be better than my dad.

“Besides, you have to break an egg to make an omelette,” he said, quoting Ms. Hadiya.

“Not if you end up breaking the hen that lays the egg,” I said.

We spent a lot of time test-flying origami angels, and watching them crash. We modelled a mini-engine from the motor of a handy fan. But the angels couldn’t hold the weight of the motor or its batteries.

It was hopeless. As the days progressed the light in his eyes dimmed, he looked pale, like something ate at his stomach. Every time I asked if he was okay, he’d shrug and say: “Okay enough.”

In the meantime, Malik spent every break showing off his scooter. Asaf and I would watch from the roof as he charged kids five hundred shillings to ride it from the monkey bars until the end of the parking lot. The line was so long some kids would always end up fighting. I liked this, wishing some kid would mistakenly break the scooter. That never happened though.

One afternoon, after spending hours folding and fiddling with paper by the edge of the roof, Asaf started feeling dizzy. As we rose to go sit under the shade, Asaf lost his balance and fell backwards into the overflowing rubbish bins below. I knelt over the edge and saw him in the rubbish, unmoving. I called out his name but he didn’t respond. I rushed down and dragged him out of the rubbish then lay him on the veranda. Like in the movies, I slapped his face until he awoke.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“What happened? Where am I?” he asked, touching his cheek.

I explained what had happened.

“Stop lying,” he said. “I don’t even feel anything.”

His nose was bleeding though. And it wouldn’t stop. Usually it was just one or two drops which he’d wipe easily. This one kept on coming. Drop after drop after drop.

I braced him on my shoulders and we shuffled to the sick bay. The nurse made Asaf hang his head back and raise his feet, But the bleeding continued. After several minutes of this, she called my mum and they organised the school van to drive Asaf to St. Claire’s Hospital. Before we left, my mum called Asaf’s father and asked him to meet us there.

Marcus arrived like ten minutes after we got to St. Claire’s and a nurse took him in to see Asaf. My mum and I waited in the waiting area for another two hours before Marcus returned. He walked into the waiting area like a zombie. I’d never seen sadness like that. Not even in movies. He looked like his face was going to melt right off his skin. He didn’t even notice us.

I tapped Marcus’ arm. “Is he going to be alright?”

Marcus stared at me like didn’t know who I was. Then he shook his head. “A candle that burns twice as bright…”

Marcus sat in between us and buried his face in his palms. He didn’t cry or say anything after that. My mum put a hand on his shoulder and kept it there a long while. I wanted to do the same, but it seemed such an adult thing to do. I waited until both my mum and Marcus fell asleep, then I sneaked around the corridor opening the doors to different rooms until I found Asaf’s.

Asaf lay propped up on his bed, staring at the machines beside him. When he saw me come in, he smiled a weak, tired smile.

I walked over and put my hand on his shoulder.

“You’re going to get better, yes?”

He nodded, but wasn’t convincing,

I squeezed his shoulder, “This is bad, isn’t it—”

“Not as bad as you think…” Again, that weak, tired smile.

I pulled the visitor’s chair closer and sat down.

Despite looking and feeling so weak, Asaf wouldn’t give up on his origami angel; he believed we’d finish it in time for the PTA gala. He talked about what was missing and what we needed to do to make it work. He went on and on, not once would he talk about his sickness.

Over the next few days, we worked from his bed; he would prop a million pillows behind his back and use the floor as our scrapyard. Because he couldn’t work as hard as he had before, I had to be more involved. Problem was, he was the one with the master plan, and the coordinated fingers to make all that paper folding work. My crab hands were as useless as a pistol to Superman.

As Asaf’s health didn’t seem to be improving, mum volunteered to bring some kids from school to cheer him up. A bad idea. But once mum has got something into her head, good luck stopping her. The kids, including Malik and my sisters, came to the hospital with get-well-soon cards and balloons. Malik apologised and offered Asaf a go-around on his scooter. Asaf, in turn, made some balloons levitate and they all clapped and cheered. But after they had all gone he turned on me.

“Why did you invite that bastard here?” Asaf shouted.

“Who? Malik? He’s okay. He came as a—”

“I don’t care what he is. He came here to spy on our project, can’t you see that?”

“Can you shut up about the stupid origami for once. It’s not everything, you know.”

“How can you say that? Of course it’s everything. It’s our chance to beat that bastard and shut him up forever.”

“That’s not important anymore. I just want to see you better. That’s all I want.”

“You don’t believe I can do this, do you?”

“What? Asaf, come on—”

“Answer me!”

“No, I don’t. Not if doing it will also mean killing you. Malik can win the bike; I don’t care—”

“Get out.”

“Come on, Asaf.”

“Leave me alone! Go and never come back, traitor!”

*

For the PTA gala, I made a collection of origami Mortal Kombat characters, I even painted them… no one was impressed, least of all myself. Malik won first place. I didn’t even win a certificate.

Though I had stopped going to see Asaf, I thought of him often. So when father came home one afternoon and said he’d received a call from Asaf’s nurse in the hospital saying he’d requested to see me, I expected the worst.

I raced to St. Claire’s, panicking. I found him laying on his bed watching TV. Asaf had always been a skinny, half-starved looking boy, but with all the pillows propped around him, he suddenly looked fattish and bloated.

He saw me, smiled and waved me closer. “I think I’ve cracked the origami angel.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He whispered, “Take me to the roof and I’ll show you.”

The nurses were used to me staying over late, so they didn’t mind me sleeping over. When it got dark and the hospital slept, we placed some pillows under his sheets and snuck out using the service entrance. It was a long climb, but arm in arm we made it to the cold, dark roof. We sat on the edge and listened to the silence for a long while. When he was ready, Asaf got to his feet and stood, swaying in the dark, staring at the empty sky. He pulled out the origami angel from his pyjamas, and cupped it with both hands.

Asaf opened his palms and conducted its levitation using his left hand, like a puppeteer.

And it flew. It actually flew. It wobbled and kicked its little invisible legs, but up it went. It flew higher and higher, flapping its long majestic wings. Each inch it floated strained him like kryptonite, but he kept the bond with the angel strong.

It was beautiful and scary. I wished it wouldn’t end.

Finally, Asaf let it go. We sat down, and watched the pale stars as if our angel had drifted that far and was looking over us, though we knew it had fallen somewhere down in the parking below. We didn’t speak. Had we created the perfect origami? Had we tried to become God and passed? I don’t know. But what we’d done was unreal. Magical. Something beyond us.

We returned to his room. Though he was weak, Asaf was overjoyed. He wouldn’t stop smiling. He held my hand and didn’t let go. I slept in the visitor’s chair.

The morning after, I walked out into the parking lot and spent the whole day searching for the angel, but I couldn’t find it.

Asaf—Killer-Handshake, Dark Thunder, the Boy God—my best friend, didn’t make it past Christmas that year.

I choose to believe our origami angel floated up to heaven and didn’t come back. The same way I believe that somewhere in the skies above Asaf is forever looking down on me. Forever reminding me I don’t need superpowers to make the impossible happen. I just have to believe, like I had believed in him.

By Mico Pisanti

I

They started with the Somali shops.

That was the previous night.  During the daylight, no one dared to hear anything. No one saw anything. Only the smouldering remains of the gutted shops, the products pilfered through the gaping windows, the meagre security bars of gates guarding doorways tossed aside, and the crying families on the dusty roads of Diepsloot Township told the story.

It was 2008 all over again. Same reasons, same faceless mob, same targets. The foreigners. The job stealers. The Pakistanis. The Malawians. The Zimbaweans. The Tanzanians.

The police arrived – always after the fact. And only after sunrise. Their claim was that it was impossible to police when load shedding power outages turned the township into a dark pit of lawlessness. To us it rang of hollow excuses. A lack of will.

My name is Godfrey Chami and I am afraid they are coming for us tonight.

II

Our shop was the envy of street number 4. We didn’t have street names in Diepsloot, but it didn’t matter; everyone knew us and where to find us. They’d even done a TV story on our family. Tightly knit. Making South Africa our new home. Best prices. From washing powder to Nikes (we had a Chinese supplier), we knocked out the competition – the local spazza shops that were the staple on every corner of every shanty town in South Africa.

My father was a very religious man. He was Muslim. My mother was Catholic. How this worked, I still do not know. He attended mosque and she church. Her church was actually a hall near the police station where a spark of electricity was to be found.

Don’t get me wrong. We did get electricity, it was all illegal connections courtesy of our neighbour, Mr Maobi, and a daisy chain of extension cords that ran from his window into our kitchen. But when the country is caught in rolling blackouts every day, it doesn’t matter if you’re legal or illegal, you are all in darkness. Another reason for having no electricity was the rats. Rats chew everything, and in Diepsloot – like in most townships – the rats were legion.

So, my parents came from different religions, but my grandmamma, Bibi Zihada, who also left Tanzania with us years back, is of an older faith. My parents didn’t approve of her talking about the old ways to us, but I knew it dealt with all sorts of magical concoctions, and herbs and ancestors. I would see people, even South Africans, coming to her for advice or for potions. The problems they brought seemed to be the universal. Love, Money, Jealousy. Revenge.

On most days I attended school. My little sister, Neema, and my younger brother, Joseph, also attended, but school was something that only happened some of the time. Like, say, the electricity. So I also worked in the shop, which was our pride and joy. We lived in a hastily built shack of corrugated steel and our Bibi Zihada lived in a small brick room behind us. When it rained it leaked everywhere. This was only temporary, my father assured us. He was planning to move us into a house of brick with a decent roof. We were the three little pigs looking for an upgrade.

Of late my mother has been talking about a priest at her gatherings who is passionate about our cause, about foreigners’ rights. Father Emmanuel Andengenye. A clever man, by my mother’s reckoning. Far too good looking to be a priest, by my father’s reckoning. Her devoted visits have caused a few arguments behind the curtain which divided my parents’ bedroom from our three beds.

“That man has no sense. If he did he wouldn’t be making such speeches. Not when there are ears everywhere,” my father would protest. “We don’t have rights. Accept it. All we can do is keep our heads down and stay out of the way. And that includes not looking for these rights.”

But my mother was a headstrong lady. “What about those boys that stand on the street corner? Those boys should be in school. I walk past them every day, and the…the filth they say to me! Such disrespect! Things I wouldn’t even think a fifteen-year-old should know. Godfrey is their age and he doesn’t know these things.”

“They’re just being boys.”

“They are being rude. They have no respect for us. Nobody does. The police are the same.”

“They are our customers, Grace. They keep us from starvation.”

“So we should have full bellies and no rights?”

“It’s better than empty bellies.”

“…and no rights?”

“Yes! Of course!”

A tense silence.

“Everybody thinks 2008 is behind us. But it is not. It never left. Nothing was resolved. It is building up again. Can’t you sense it?”

“Is that you speaking or Father Emmanuel?”

“Tcht!” It was my mother’s favourite expression for anything that was so frustrating it was beyond words. “Now you’re just jealous. I am serious. I don’t feel safe at the shop.”

A harsh whisper. “Keep your voice down, woman. The children.”

Her return whisper, just as fierce. “Do you not care for your family? I am scared, Ahmed. I don’t like how those…those Zulu and Xhosa men look at me. Like I am something they can just take. They all look empty and hungry.”

Placating murmur. “They are not all like that, Grace.”

“Well, if that is so, then why aren’t they stopping those who want to harm us?”

“I do not know.”

More tense silence. But at least I could feel the anger wasn’t being directed at each other anymore. This was good. The worst thing for me was hearing my parents argue.

My father chuckled. “You know what Bibi said the other day?”

Silence.

“Grace?”

My mother sighs. “What did she say, Ahmed?”

“She said what we need is a little bit of that old magic.”

Silence.

Then. “Funny enough, Father Emmanuel was saying the same thing.”

III

One church evening, my mother took Bibi and I to the little hall to pray for our safety. Father Emmanuel was there, greeting everyone at the door. A powerfully built man with clean white teeth that gleamed. His face made me think of those actors on soap operas. He shook and greeted his congregation as we filed into the sparsely decorated hall. Plastic school chairs and a bare dusty stage. It soon occurred to me that we weren’t all foreigners. Yes there were Tanzanians. Zimbabweans, Nigerians, but there were also a few South Africans in the mix.

The father stood up on stage and closed his eyes. He lifted his arms outwards, his black robes hanging like spread wings and he pronounced with ringing clarity: “I am Emmanuel. I am the Nameless Angel.”

“Amen,” the crowd pronounced.

“So good looking. Like your Babu when he was young,” Bibi murmured to my mother. “I can see why you come here so regularly.”

“Shh, Bibi.”

Over the next hour an impassioned Father Emmanuel told us all to fear no evil, for God walked amongst us. That angels were everywhere and that we should have faith. The sweat on his brow was impressive. His movements across the stage left footprints in the dust that made me think of the televangelists I’d seen on the pirated DVDs we sold in the shop. But we never got to see the end of the sermon because something crashed through one of the high windows like a flaming arrow. A skinny old woman in full church attire of hat, handbag and blow-away dandelion hair, screeched and began batting at her flaming head. Others around her threw their jackets over her head to smother the fires. Chairs were already flying every which way, scraping along the wooden floor, as people moved towards the side doors.

“Get Bibi out of here!” My mother screamed, and I hoisted my grandmother, bird-like and brittle, around her waist and carried her over my shoulder like a barrel. I didn’t think twice as I saw more flaming rockets flying through the windows, causing little devils of fire to caper and dance on the floor.

I glanced at the priest. He stood very still. His eyes wide, his chest heaving. He stood like a holy relic. Slowly he lifted his arms, those wings of righteousness, and over the chaos of screams and running, and thudding feet, he boomed: “For the LORD will pass through the land…”

The smell of paraffin and petrol was strong in the air, stinging eyes. Someone was struggling to get the doors open. People were slipping in the glass from the shattered bottle bombs. I put down my grandmother and my mom looked back at the boiling crowd behind us.

“I need to help,” she said. “Get Bibi to safety! Go!” She was a face in a crowd, squeezed between two bodies, then she was gone.

My heart was thudding with real fear now.

My grandmother gripped my arm. “You’re safe with me, mjukuu.”

“… But when he sees the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe, the LORD will pass over your home. He will not permit his angel of death to enter your house and strike you down!” The priest’s voice was like a cry to arms.

People began to scream in fresh pain and it took a moment inside the crush of the crowd for me to register flying bricks, half rocks, pieces of cement, even a flaming tire, hurtling through the windows. Some of the other side doors were rattling like sabres against shields before a battle. The claustrophobic crush was choking me and my heart was a frenzied bird in a cage. Black spots threatened my vision, then, as the doors in front of us gave way, so too did the doors behind us, and what was waiting outside poured in.

At that moment the electricity cut off and everything was plunged into darkness. The mob surged over the trapped crowd inside, and it became a dark grunting maelstrom of sticks, cries, fists, shoves, bodies falling the ground, others being dragged off. My grandmother, the brittle bird, never let me go. She pushed her way through the war zone. Chilled night air mingled with coppery blood. Paraffin, running footsteps. People in our crowd were picking up whatever weapon they could get a hold of. An old rusty dustbin post, complete with nails. I saw it swing and catch a youth not much older than me in the head. I shut my eyes, still fighting to breathe.

It would be an hour before we made it home. My grandmother was covered in cuts and bruises. The side of her head was bleeding. But she shrugged all the concern off of herself, pressing me to my father who covered me in kisses and held me tight. My siblings were hiding under their beds, holding each other’s hands.

Then Neema asked. “Where’s mama?”

IV

“Your Babu was an albino, did you know that?” Bibi said.

I didn’t answer.

They had found her.

“A very powerful man. Revered and feared at the same time was your Babu.”

Raped and strangled.

“Of course, the witch doctors were always hunting him. They wanted his powers.”

I need to help. Get Bibi to safety! Go!

Her final words.

            My grandmother laid a bruised hand on my arm; I had gotten away with virtually no injuries. Bibi wore her own wounds well. Like it was nothing. And my mother? Darkness. I couldn’t think of that. Not yet. Maybe never. “It is in times like these that your brother and sister are going to need you.” A pause. “And your father.”

My father.

He was inconsolable. I had learnt that word in English class when we read Bleak House by Charles Dickens. An English writer being studied by African children a century after he died. Random musings.

My father had locked himself up in his shop late at night, not caring about the warnings or the curfews. He didn’t come home for two days. My grandmother had cooked for us. Even though she was in pain, her head giving her pause every now and then, she got on with it. We even went to school.

What else was there to do but dance around the precipice of the hole left by my mother?

“You must eat something, Godfrey. Please. Just a little bit.”

The hole in the air was the same hole in my heart was the same hole in the pit of me. My centre was gone. I was nothing.

A hollow being, waiting to be filled.

V

The priest came to visit under the cover of darkness.

Since the attack on his congregation things had died down a little. But the tension was there. In the streets. Our mother’s funeral was a rushed affair. And it was complicated by the identification of the corpse (my father tried to be strong, but he seemed to be disappearing into himself day by day).  Father Emmanuel had intervened on our behalf.

“It seems you are the man of the house, my young friend.” Father Emmanuel’s face was a terrain of broken cheek and fractured jaw which buried his good looks. His eyes were swollen and bruised. But he was alive, and he seemed to be feeding on the physical pain. For a moment he had struggled to speak, and I saw his swollen lips were cracked and split. “A cowardly stroke of a wooden plank with nails in it. Luckily the nails broke. None pierced my flesh. Hallelujah, it’s a miracle.”

I could not tell through his ruined face what expression he wore. If he was being flippant to a God that hadn’t saved his congregation or my mother. But it took too much energy to care.

“I am here to talk to your Bibi,” he added.

I led him out back. Past the rusty Ford Cortina. A relic from Mr Moabi next door.

“Come in,” she said. Her voice had a faint echo like the dank bottom of a well. It was a tight squeeze but we all managed to fit. We stood straight against the bare brick wall whilst she sat on the floor, her blanket spread on the hard cement. Her throwing bones at the ready. Her herbs were kept in old jars along the walls on shelves of bricks and planks.

“The nameless angel arrives,” my grandmother said. “What does he want from an old lady?”

Father Emmanuel bowed his head and said something in Sawhili. I do not speak the language. I am more fluent in the township lingo, a mishmash of Xhosa, Zulu and Sotho.

“Let the boy understand,” said my grandmother. “He is now having to grow up fast.”

“Your loss is the loss of all our people. And the danger is still imminent. I am a man of the cloth, but I am also a man of our people. And the old ways,” said Father Emmanuel.

My grandmother nodded slowly. “Are you asking for something, Father?”

“I have learnt of an attack. Imminent. Soon. This time it’ll be the shops that will be targeted.  They want to steal our livelihood. They want to chase us out of Diepsloot.”

“When?”

“Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow…”

“The cowards don’t like to attack during the day. Too many faces to recognise. They love the dark.”

The priest stood very still for a long time. So long in fact that I thought he’d gone to sleep, arms hanging at his sides, head down, as if thinking deeply. “The dark is what we need.” I felt a chill ripple up my arms. “We can use it.”

My grandmother leant forward, peering up at that beaten face. “Tell me about the dark and we shall see about the old ways.”

VI

I can feel the flames even from here. No sirens. Just people throwing buckets of water. South Africans, Zimbabweans. Just neighbours trying to put out the flames as the Somali shop owner stands, his arm around his daughter, weeping, watching the fire light up the pitch black sky. The looting was over in minutes; it was more a snarling pack of dogs than people.

I stood chilled, despite the heat pressing to my face. Chilled heart. My grief was something wild and roaring in my ears.

The priest’s and my Bibi’s words slither over one another like snakes, a fork-tongued foreshadowing in my mind.

Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”

            The old ways.

            I need your help. We can’t let this keep happening.

For no reason I picked up the soot that was landing like black snow around me and I slowly rubbed it into my cheeks, my forehead, and my lips. The acrid smell of burning wood filled my nose.

Finally the sirens came. But the Somalians were done. They would never come back here.

I turned away and walked back to our shack. My grandmother stood in the doorway. A short squat old woman. White curls, a strong face, the cut down the side of her head was scabbing over, like a badly tarred road, but healing. It would leave a scar.

She had a shawl pulled tightly around her. Her eyes looked yellow in the night fire. “Your grandfather would have wept.”

“We just need a bit of that old magic,” I said.

She stared at me as if she’d never seen me before. It was not something I would never have said. Before. Before her. It was flippant even.

But it could just be the soot on my face that made her look at me that way.

VII

They came only after the armoured Nyalas had left.

The curfew was still in full enforcement.

The one street lamp down the road flickered like a dying firefly. Orange light showing the retreating vehicles.

My grandmother had insisted we all gather in my father’s shop. She had spent the day spreading the word to every household up and down our section of Street 4.

We gathered: the car guards, gardeners, car washers, tree fellers, the domestic workers of Gauteng who left for the city before first light and came back home after dark. We communicated in broken English or Xhosa. People brought their blankets, for it was going to be an all-nighter. My father didn’t seem to see any of them as they filed in through the front door. To him the world was all shadows and ash.

It was a sombre atmosphere. The little children didn’t even whine or wriggle as they tended to do, especially when confined to one space. We kept all the lights on inside, but still we jumped at any sudden loud noises. Most of us had endured refugee camps. Border crossings. Interrogations.  Bribing officials. This was just another chapter in our long migration.

“You said my Babu was an albino. Was that true?” I asked my Grandmother. I had never known my grandfather. Not even seen a picture of him.

“Yes, Godfrey. He was a powerful man.”

“How?” We never seemed to have been wealthy. “How was he powerful?”

“Albino blood makes a person very special, in our belief. But even if he hadn’t been an albino, your Babu would have been special anyway.”

In my experience, albinos weren’t any different from other people. But I’d heard the stories from Tanzania. They were called ghosts, walking spirits, demons. Reviled. Hunted, even. Their body parts fetched a high price from witch doctors.

We need a bit of that old magic.

I shivered. “What happened to him?”

“He died of the skin cancer. An albino weakness. His skin didn’t do well in the light.”

“Bibi?” My voice hitched, I suddenly felt five years old again. The numb grief for my mother had cracks growing in it. And underneath waiting… the molten lava of pain. I felt a tremor. “What are we waiting for?”

She thought for a moment. Her gaze was outside, scanning the waiting darkness.

“The old ways.”

Another hour passed. The shop lights were attracting bugs to the window panes. Past the wings of a moth I saw something move down the dirty track we called a street.

At first a shadow, then a blur, then a man. Father Emmanuel. Running at full tilt. His robes flapping. Head up, teeth bared. His swollen face still a horror of violence. Running for his life. He slammed on the glass of the door with the flat of his hand, startling children to awaken and cry. Adults blinked, rubbing their eyes.

My father turned his head, but made no move. I got up and went to the door, unlocking the flimsy chain and bolt. The shop wasn’t the strongest built place; a converted RDP house that my father was renting from a South African man for an exorbitant price. I’d heard my father complain of the rent many times to my mother.

My mother.

My heart choked.

The priest pushed his way in.

“Don’t bother locking it,” he said. “They’re coming.” Sweat coated his brow. That righteous gleam was back in his eyes and he was filled with crackling energy. “Stand up everyone! Stand up. They’re coming. They’re coming for us.”

Now people were awake. They stood up, all of them, and made a weary rank and file towards the front of the shop.

The priest looked around. “No matter what happens. Do not be afraid. Let’s pray.” Everyone lowered their heads.

When he started to pray my back and scalp tightened with gooseflesh. “For the LORD will pass through the land to strike down the Egyptians. But when he sees the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe, the LORD will pass over your home. He will not permit his death angel to enter your house and strike you down.”

            The lights buzzed, and suddenly everything was in darkness.

People screamed involuntarily.

“Don’t be afraid.” The priest reminded everyone. “It is load shedding. Like clockwork. You can set your watch to the darkness. And darkness that is timely is fortuitous.”

Then we could hear them. A mob shouting something. Men. Angry men. Shirtless. Drunk. Their blood high on exacting vengeance for a perceived wrong. I could almost hear it in multiple veins and muscle. A hundred hearts, beating, marching, kicking up dust.

And what wrong had we done?  Being different? That we were from over there and not from here? Was that our wrongdoing?  I pushed Joseph and Neema under the counter and I put my finger to my lips. “Shhh.”

They were two pairs of eyes. But I knew they understood.

I thought of my mother, and my hands curled into fists. The chanting and shouting grew closer. And suddenly the windows were a jagged symphony of breaking and shattering. The fire had arrived too. Flames in bottles. Torches on sticks. They must have seen us all, just standing there in the dark. Not moving not saying anything. Like sacrificial lambs awaiting the eternal darkness. I wondered if that darkness tasted like velvet tears. Like relief.

For a brief moment the mob actually paused, unsure.

Father Emmanuel stepped over broken glass and went outside through the front door. Alone. A black cut-out in the flames of the mob.

“I would ask that you turn away. Before there is death,” he said to the crowd.

A thin man, clad only in torn red overalls tied around his waist and holding an old garden rake in one hand, suddenly skipped forward and swung a bottle crashing it into the priest’s head. The priest collapsed, and I felt the resolve of those in my father’s shop fall with him.

Then, amazingly, the priest struggled to his feet, swaying unsteadily. He spread those wings of his, and roared: “Then the LORD said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” He paused and then asked. “Are we not all brothers?”

The shirtless man shoved the priest back into the dirt. He then lifted the rake over his head and brought it down on Father Emmanuel’s leg with a meaty chunk. The rake’s cruel teeth found their mark, and the crowd cheered, their greedy eyes burning as bright as their torches. The priest screamed, his voice breaking off as the skinny man tried to unhook his garden rake from his thigh, but dragged him along in the dirt instead. My heart was thumping in my throat. Salty adrenaline. Bile and fury.

And then the priest’s hand caught the skinny man’s wrist, and his voice, horse and ragged said, “‘For am I not my brother’s keeper? Should I not forgive him…?’” A gasp. “Forgive him for his trespasses?”

I turned to my Bibi. Her eyes were closed and she was whispering to herself. Then she opened her eyes. They were blind and pale.

I screamed.

Above us, on the tiled roof we heard a loud thump, we all jumped.

The rake man never knew what hit him. Something black flapped onto him as if an eagle was attacking him from above. There was a gasp from the mob as well as those of us in the dark shop. Something snapped, and then the skinny man howled like an animal. The rake was lifted by the shadow and an instant later it drew back the gristle and skin off of the skinny man’s face, revealing bone. The skinny man collapsed, writhing on the ground. Then the rake embedded itself in his head, cutting off the skinny man’s cries. The black silhouette of the stranger hulked over him.

The crowd in the shop shrank back in fright. The mob was silenced.

Only the priest made a sound.

“Brother,” he whispered to the black shape. “You came.”

The dark shape turned towards us in the shop. It wore a fearsome visage of vengeance. Blind, red-rimmed eyes bleached blue by the sun. Wisps of yellow and grey hair. He was dressed in what looked like a monk’s robes, the cowl collected around his thick, powerful neck, and he stood with his arms wide.

But it was the smile, I am sure of it even now. Not the violence. That smile stopped the entire mob in its tracks.

Rows of ivory fangs, sharper than a Gabon viper’s.

“She called. And I came.” The faded eyes and my Bibi’s met. And then he turned to the mob. “You like to hunt? I know a thing or two about being hunted.” He lifted a steel claw from under his sleeve. “Albino hunters lost me my hand.”

In a move swifter than the eye could read, he lifted the skinny man by his scrawl of a neck. The man’s one eye was a staring nothing, yet he twitched. Then the stranger bit down, sinking all of that ivory death into the man’s throat.

And he drank deeply.

I do not know for how long we stood, the mob on one side, the shop of foreigners to the other, this horror beast in the great divide, drinking the blood of a dying man. All I know is, by the time he was done, what was once a man was more a fleshy husk that he cast aside. By this stage Father Emmanuel had pulled himself to his feet, favouring one leg. His trousers were already blackening with blood, but he didn’t seem to care.

“Demon!” spat someone in the mob, and there was a half-hearted jeer, which curdled and died, as the hulking thing took one step forward.

“This is no demon,” the priest’s voice was weakening, even though he still stood firm. “He is my brother. And he belongs to the old ways.”

“You will be cursed for this!” Someone else cried.

“I already am.” The stranger’s smooth silken voice caressed the night.

The mob, like an animal surged forward, wounded but still dangerous.

And again it was halted.

Suddenly my grandmother was there, between the priest and the monstrous albino, facing the mob.

My grandmother spoke then like she was lecturing a bunch of misbehaved children with monster stories: “He is blind. But by night he sees all. And with darkness being so regular these days, so regulated, you could set your watch to it. With that darkness, will come our vengeance.”

The priest continued. “Can you really take that chance? Do you really want to challenge an angel of God?”

The mob moved backwards imperceptibly, away from the shop. And slowly, they turned, and began to disappear into the black night where only the rats ran free.

VIII

The violence ceased. Over the next few days there were protest marches in the cities arranged by South Africans who embraced their fellow Africans. Politicians condemned the violence, and a certain amount of peace was restored.

I too found my own peace. A purpose. I wrote my goodbyes and left them on the till of my father’s shop. I then found my grandmother in her tiny brick room. “I would like to learn the old ways,” I demanded.

“To what purpose?”

“My mother died before her time. Those who harmed her need to be found. Will you help me, Bibi?”

She sighed: “This vengeance business is a snake eating its tail, Godfrey. I don’t wish it on you.” She sighed again and shook her head. “Just like your grandfather, you are.”

“Will Babu help me?”

She looked at me for a long time before she said, “Vengeance is in your blood.”

I smiled, and it was a smile best served cold.

END