When she picked the seed up, her fingers went numb and she felt a warmth spread all over the rest of her body. She held it to her eyes as a green mist like incense smoke wafted from it. She laughed, blowing at and sniffing the mist; it too was warm. When she opened her mouth, she found she exhaled the green mist a bit, too. After a minute, the mist disappeared and the smell went away. Fatima giggled, cupping the seed in her hands, imagining it to be delicate and alive like a baby mouse.
“Hello,” she whispered to it. “I’m Fatima. Maybe you like the heat from my hands. I have a fever from malaria, so I’m not feeling very well.” She set the seed back in the box and shook out her hand until the feeling returned. Then she shut the box and got up. She used her sandal to push soil over the hole the root had left and took the box and its seed inside. By the time she stepped into her bedroom, her fever was gone. She simply didn’t feel it anymore. The next day, even her parents were sure that her bout with malaria had passed.
As the days rolled on, her parents and brother came to know of the wooden box she liked to keep in her room. Her father would joke about the box with his friends, saying his imaginative daughter said the tree gave it to her. Her mother would talk about it at the market, saying her daughter treated everything like a person, even things she dug up from the ground. Her brother only rolled his eyes when he saw his sister playing with it. Fatima told the seed stories, she climbed into the tree with it, she snuck it to school in her pocket. “It doesn’t have a face or a name,” her mother had jokingly said one evening as she tucked Fatima into bed. “What is it with you and that old thing?”
“It’s my thing,” Fatima said importantly. “A nice thing that listens.”
Nevertheless, though she didn’t know it then, finding that seed in the box was the beginning of so much. She loved her favorite tree, shared its space with a fox who didn’t belong in Ghana, and because her bouts with malaria had passed, she was a happier child. No matter how late she stayed in that tree, mosquitoes no longer bit her. She was well enough to make friends and go with them to watch her older brother Fenuku play football on the nearby field. Life was nice and fun and happy for Fatima that year.
Her parents didn’t ask where she’d gotten the seed in the box. To them, it was just a thing. Maybe it was just a petrified palm tree seed she’d found somewhere in the shea tree farm and polished up. Maybe a teacher at her school or someone in the market dropped the box. Maybe it was an old jewelry box; her parents had lived in their small house since before both Fatima and her brother’s births and there were certainly many forgotten random things in that house. It was all possible and normal. Her brother wasn’t interested in the seed either. It was a thing that you didn’t plug in, a thing that couldn’t connect to the internet. To him it was a boring thing.
Almost a year to the day later, Fatima was in the tree brooding. She’d had an argument with her brother over a chocolate bar their father had told them to share. Her brother had snatched it and run off and just then, the politician had arrived and her parents were in no mood to hear her pleas for justice.
She climbed to the highest part of the tree, which was pretty high because she was so small and light. And from here, she could see over the house and thus had a good view of the strangers who’d come to the house. She wiped away the frustrated tears in her eyes as she stared. There was a black SUV, parked in front of the house. She squinted. Two men were talking to her parents, a man wearing a white kaftan and pants and a heavy-set man dressed in a European suit. She immediately recognized the suit and gasped with delight. “How can this be!” she exclaimed.
She’d seen him on the jelli telli in the Village Square when the men gathered to discuss politics and current affairs. This was a politician known for shouting and wearing gold shoes. Her father found this man incredibly annoying. Fatima loved when he came on TV because the way her father talked about him made her and everyone in the room laugh. She squinted and sure enough, his shoes glinted so brightly, they looked made of sunshine. She giggled. Her brother would be so jealous when she told him what she saw.
Suddenly, the man in the white kaftan turned and seemed to look right at her. Fatima ducked down behind a branch, a shiver running up her spine. They all went inside and Fatima waited there for a few minutes wondering if she should climb down and hide amongst the shea trees in the farm behind the house.
“Hello,” someone said from directly below.
Fatima hugged the branch she was already clutching even tighter. When she looked down, she saw that it was the man in the white kaftan. He was tall and even with his kaftan she could see that he was quite muscular, like one of those men who guards superstars. He had a black patch over his right eye and he was grinning up at her with the fakest grin she’d ever seen. His shoes reminded Fatima of walnuts.
“Good afternoon,” Fatima said, still frowning.
“Your mother told me you like roasted goat meat and she gave me some to give you,” he said, holding up a brown paper bag. “Why don’t you come down so we can talk?”
“I’m fine up here, thank you.”
“Don’t be afraid, it’s not a big deal. You found something buried here some time ago. Your mother and father told me.”
Fatima suddenly wished she could jump out of the tree, dodge the man and run to her room. She’d slam the door and lock it. Then she’d grab the box with her seed and climb out the window. But she didn’t think she could escape this man. So instead she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” In her mind she added, And I didn’t find it, it was given to me. It’s mine.
“Why don’t you come down and we can properly talk while you eat this?” he said, smiling grandly as he held up the bag again. “Your parents said I should ask you about the box, since it’s yours.”
When Fatima refused to move, his smile dropped from his face. “This is a waste of time. We’ll find and take it. It’s of better use to us than you. When my boss wins the election, even your little backward village will benefit from his policies. I was just being polite because I’m in such a fine mood.” He turned and walked away. Fatima could barely contain the horror she felt, but she stayed where she was as he strode into the house through the backdoor.
Standing in the doorway, he suddenly whirled around and called up to her, “Do you believe in aliens?” he asked.
Fatima shook her head.
“Me, neither,” he said. “But the LifeGen Corporation does and they can locate and track things using satellite and radar. Things like that odd meteor shower two years ago. They’re inventing, but they’re also always looking, watching, hoping. They pay good money. Money for campaigns.” He brought a hand-sized device from his pocket and it immediately started pinging softly. “Ah, this will be easy.” He turned and went inside the house as if he lived there.
Fatima waited for ten whole minutes. Then she leaped down the branches, tumbled to the ground, jumped up and sprinted for her room. Inside, everything was exactly as she had left it. Except her box was gone. She ran to the front of the house and stopped in the doorway. Her parents and the politician with the gold shoes were laughing, talking, discussing. But Daddy hates that politician, she thought, utterly confused. She had never seen her father behaving like a completely different person before and it hurt her eyes. And there was her box, in the famous politician’s hands.
Fatima shuddered as desperation and upbringing fought a violent battle within her mind. Upbringing won; a child was never to interrupt when adults were talking. And so in this way, six-year-old Fatima watched her father and the famous politician walk further up the road to discuss the sale of Fatima’s box and the seed within it. She wasn’t even called to say goodbye to it.