Sylvie was trying to give up meat, but savored the smell of frying bacon as we sat on the night-damp logs and ate around the morning fire. It was still before sunrise when we finished, and barely light when we climbed into the lorry with our gear for the long drive across the country.
Instead of taking the main road, which would have consumed most of the day and taken us first back to the capital, the truck cut crow-wise through the countryside, so that we would reach our new base camp, up in the foothills of the mountains, by lunchtime.
The massive wheels made short work of the dusty road, and it was impressive to see the sixty-year-old vehicle still so reliable. The high beams carved a path through the morning fog, as the wheels found the ruts of a desired path the truck had etched out on previous journeys over the trail.
“It will last another hundred years,” Ali boasted, driving with the genial self-possession of a man at ease in his world, as he began to tell the story of how he had driven the truck from Europe, across the top of Africa five years earlier, to get his start in life.
When he saw we were still full of sleep, however, and did not need to be entertained, he fell into an equally good-natured silence. I had thought him a buffoon when we met, but had grown to understand he was not even an extrovert, but a quiet man, wearing the mask the world required of him, and trying to make a virtue of that. When the world was not there he slipped his mask right back off, as easily as coming home from the office, and the man he was beneath did not suffer too great a harm from carrying the burden for the man he presented to the outside.
Sylvie rested her head on my lap, and I propped myself against the side of the truck, in a not too uncomfortable position, as we absorbed the juts and bounces of the road, until we eventually fell in the rhythm of our own breathing, and were able to fall back asleep.
I do not know how long we had been dozing, but time passed until we were roused by a violent jolt, bringing the truck to an abrupt halt. We had struck a cement barrier, hidden in the fog, and could see shadowy figures in the road up ahead, surrounding the lorry and speaking brusquely to Ali in one of the local languages.
I peered out the side rail, and was able to make out a group of men in military fatigues, brandishing a ragtag assortment of Russian, American, and Chinese rifles and machine guns.
“What is happening?” Sylvie asked, rousing from sleep.
Before I could answer, one of the men fired his rifle in the air, and pulled a dazed Ali from his seat. The rest of the bandits quickly streamed around back, where they trained their guns up at us, and began mounting the sides of the truck.
As the first of them boarded, Edward, who was nearest him, swung his pack like a shield into the soldier’s midsection, sending him sprawling to the ground.
From the road one of the others let loose a staccato burst of rounds, which struck Edward hard in the chest. His blood spattered, and all afterward was the high shriek of terror in the ear, snapping each of us aware of nothing else but our own mortality.
They climbed quickly inside the lorry then, dragging Ali up behind them, as the one up front took over control of the wheel. None of us spoke when the engine restarted. They trained their guns at our heads, before throwing Edward’s lifeless body down onto the plains, abandoning it in the dirt.
The vehicle gained speed, moving still in the direction of the mountains in the distance, above the cloud layer, as Effie shrieked in protest.
“We hereby requisition this vehicle in the name of the Army of the Revelation,” one of them said, nervelessly ignoring her cries. “If you do not resist, no harm will befall you. If you do—” He looked toward the body in the path behind us.
“You killed my husband,” Effie sobbed violently. “You killed my husband.”
“You have driven into our territory,” he replied.
Ali looked away guiltily, but dared not say anything.
“He was a good man,” Effie challenged with the authority of her grief. “We haven’t done anything. We are innocent.”
He laughed. “There are no innocents. Only those too ignorant to see.”
“We don’t even know what your bloody war is about.”
“You are American,” he replied, not really caring what her nationality was. She was of the West. Effie was wise enough not to correct him. “You are in every war, and never know what they are beyond your own narrow interests, which you tell yourselves are justified that you are saving women from their men. Children from their way of life. One helpless brown body from another savage brown body. Isn’t that right? By the great, loving hand of democracy. This was the lie of colonization, and you never tire of believing your own lie, which you now masquerade in a different play. It is ever the same. First you divide neighbors; then you divide families. But before any of this you must divide the person from himself. One so divided would do anything to himself, or his people, as the leaders you have imposed on us have. But if a man enslaves his own people, it is because he is a slave himself. Now we are a country ruled by your slaves.
“You have your own politics and your own histories of the world, and with these you replace men and women. But your world has forgotten the truth Rome taught to you, and your progenitors certainly knew: The only way to colonize a people is absolutely and for all eternity. If you do not have the stomach for that you are only stirring mischief. Freedom comes only through the voice and will and blood of the people themselves. Everything else is jerry-built. But you do not care what happens anywhere, so long as your dogs do your bidding. We choose to be men. Free and alive in our own country, or else dead and free in the earth.”
“Fuck your bloody war. You killed my husband. You killed my husband!” She screamed in anguish of what only moments ago had been her life.
“If we have made a mistake, and your husband is collateral damage — I have lost many, so I know your pain,” he said in a tone all the more disquieting for seeming sincere, as he looked at her with an eerie compassion.
“Monster,” she screamed.
“Tell me what your custom is, and how much it will take to make you whole, or else, if you prefer, I will find you a new husband,” he laughed.
Her tears subsided after that, overwhelmed by the fear of his threat. Her breathing was still erratic, though, until it seemed she might come apart completely. His menace and the dead man had cowed the rest, so that no one else spoke, or made eye contact, or tried to comfort her, until Ali spoke up.
“I am sorry, ma’am,” he said. “It is my fault.”
“It is not your fault, Ali,” Effie answered, releasing him.
“My job is to get you there safely, but I got us captured. I was shortcutting. Now look what I have done.”
“You put your own road where there was none but you needed a road to be. They just ambushed us, is all.”
“Quiet,” they commanded from the rails of the speeding truck, where they had entwined themselves like malevolent vines.
In the commotion I slipped the bracelet I always wore from my wrist over to Sylvie’s, as we clasped hands. It was a string of different-colored wooden beads, I had picked up long ago, which she pressed her palm over, then began fingering like a rosary. Her head pressed tight into my chest.
“What is going to happen?” she whispered.
“We will be fine,” I held her wrist. “Try to stay calm. But if anything too bad happens, the center one opens.”
“What is in it?”
“A cyanide pill,” I said. “If anything unspeakable happens, and we are not fine, eat it. But only if things are so bad you think there is no other way home.”