It wasn't until the figure was almost upon him that he realized who it was.
Halima stopped in her tracks when she saw the gun pointing towards her, her wide eyes staring fearfully at Ben, who immediately let the weapon drop to his side. 'What are you doing?' he whispered at her.
'Come with me,' Halima breathed.
'Where?'
'I need to show you something.'
Ben thought for a moment. His dad would be furious if he sneaked off again, especially with the gun. But he was asleep, and showed no signs of waking up soon, so Ben decided on a compromise. 'Wait there,' he told Halima, before slipping back inside, placing the weapon in its place on the table, and then returning to see what this mysterious girl wanted with him.
'Come with me,' Halima repeated, and she led him out into the main square.
There was nobody about, but the square itself was almost eerily well-lit by the bright silver light of the waxing moon. 'We need to stay hidden,' Halima told Ben as they skirted quietly round the edge of the square towards the little street where her house was.
'Why?' Ben asked. 'What are we doing? Why did you ignore me earlier on today?' He had so many questions.
'I will explain everything when we get there.' Halima smiled at him a bit apologetically. Suddenly she raised her hand and gestured at him to stop. 'Listen,' she instructed.
Ben stood perfectly still. Somewhere, not too far away, he imagined, he could hear the faint sound of a drum. It played a simple rhythm – three short strokes followed by four quicker ones.
Dum, dum, dum, da-da-da-da.
Halima nodded to herself in approval, then gestured at Ben to follow her. They sneaked down the street, past Halima's house and on towards the clearing where they had been chatting before Suliman had interrupted them. As they moved, the sound of the drumming grew louder, and it seemed to Ben that it had grown a little faster too. Soon enough, they came to the clearing. On the other side of it, obscured by the thicket of dense trees and brush, Ben could make out the glow of a fire. He felt a tingle of apprehension run down his spine as he realized how foolhardy he was being, allowing this girl he barely knew to lead him around surreptitiously like this in the middle of the night. He stretched out and grabbed her lightly by the arm.
'Halima, I'm not going any further until you tell me what this is about.'
Halima looked down at his hand, but Ben did not move it away. 'We can't stay here out in the open,' she told him seriously. 'I am taking you to see a tribal ritual. The village elders would be very angry if they knew I was showing it to a white person. Some things are not allowed.'
Dum, dum, dum, da-da-da-da. The drumming was closer.
Ben nodded. Halima scurried away to the left, with Ben following. Down the side of the clearing was a pathway with a few trees and straggly bushes providing a little camouflage. It wasn't much, but it was something, and they ran as light-footedly as they could towards the foliage, the light and the sound of the drums.
Once they were in the thicket, they could move with less fear of being seen, but Ben soon found that he had to tread more carefully; the sound of dried wood breaking under his feet made his heart stop every time it happened – he was thankful that the drumming, almost frenzied now, was loud enough to disguise what he felt was his terrible clumsiness.
Dum, dum, dum, da-da-da-da.
They came to the edge of small clearing, and Halima stopped, gently resting her hand on Ben's arm to indicate that he should do the same. In the middle of the clearing was a fire – clearly the one that they had seen from a distance – and sitting around it, about twenty metres from where Ben and Halima were hiding, were eight or nine elderly men. They wore simple clothes – dark-coloured all-in-one tunics mostly – but round their necks they wore what looked like heavy ceramic jewellery. Two of them wore headdresses made from the fur of animals. Standing a little way apart from these men was the drummer, bent double over a large wooden djembe drum, intently beating out the increasingly wild rhythm.
Dum, dum, dum, da-da-da-da.
The eyes of all the men were trained on a figure Ben could not see clearly. It was positioned on the other side of the fire, so all he could make out was a silhouette of what appeared to be a man, fairly tall and, as far as Ben could make out, naked, at least from the waist up. He was dancing in time to the rhythm of the drum, not in a wild, frenetic way, but making short, jerky movements.
Ben found himself transfixed by the sinister sight. How long he watched before Halima interrupted his trance he could not have said. 'It is a dance for the ancestors,' she told him.
Ben blinked and turned to look at her. 'What?'
'A dance for the ancestors. The man you see dancing has great power.'
'I don't understand,' Ben whispered. 'Who are the ancestors?'
Halima gazed into the middle distance. 'The dead. Those that have gone before us. It is our duty to ensure that they should not be disturbed.'
'What do you mean, disturbed? How can you disturb dead people?'
Halima gave him a sidelong glance. 'You asked me before why everyone seemed so scared of this village.'
Ben nodded. 'I think I'm already beginning to understand,' he said. 'I know what the red crosses on the doors mean. I know that lots of people are dying here.'
'But do you know why?'
'Suliman told me it was malaria. We were warned about it before we left England.'
Halima smiled faintly. 'Malaria.' She nodded. 'Yes. That is what everyone in the village will tell you. But it is not what they believe.'
'But you told me yourself that your parents died from malaria.'
Ben was puzzled, and Halima clearly understood that from the look on his face. 'You have to understand,' she told him quietly, 'that things are not always what they seem to be in Africa. You are a stranger, so people will not always tell you what they really believe.' She was looking at him intently now. 'I have seen many people die, and I nursed my parents to their graves. What killed them was not malaria. Similar, maybe. But not malaria.'
'Then what was it?'
Halima gazed towards the fire once more. 'My father worked in the mine,' she told him. 'When the mine-owners came, people were worried. They wanted to dig near the burial grounds sacred to our ancestors. But there was nobody to stop them, and besides, they offered jobs and money. We are very poor here, and the village elders welcomed them. To start with there was no problem. But not long ago they extended their excavations, and that was when the mine-workers started to fall ill.'
'All of them?' Ben asked, his attention rapt.
Halima shook her head. 'No. Not all of them. My father and two others first. Then my mother.' Her voice was expressionless as she explained what had happened. 'He woke up one morning vomiting and unable to stand up. His head ached so badly that he could barely speak, he was hot all over and I could hear the breath rattling in his chest. He could eat nothing. My mother became ill the following day. They both died on the same night, eight days after my father fell ill.'
'I'm sorry,' Ben breathed, his expression of sympathy seeming desperately inadequate.
'At first I too believed it was malaria. Even after they died I was not sure I wanted to believe what is so obvious to me now. But it cannot be ignored. Two thirds of the men who have gone down the mine have succumbed to the same illness. Of those people, three quarters have died. In addition, certain members of the mine-workers' families have started to succumb. Everyone in the village knows somebody who has died.'