Chapter 13: Other Side of the Gate

Chapter 13 · 7 min read

The new clothes were stiff and rough, and they smelled of cheap dye. They were dark blue, with a red stripe down the front and down one pant leg. Captain Mbala had handed them out for the guests’ visit.

Before Mama Leki walked them to the gate, she stopped them one by one. She pulled Kofi’s collar straight, brushed dust off Jabari’s sleeve, and tied the herb bag to Ayo’s belt. Then she pressed two small coins into Jabari’s hand.

“For bread,” she said. “Only if you are very hungry.”

Jabari closed his fingers around the coins. “I am always very hungry.”

“I know,” she said. “That is why I gave them to you.”

Jojina ran up and grabbed Lumani’s sleeve.

“Weird-eyes,” she said. “Where are you going?”

“To find herbs,” Lumani said.

“Bring me something.”

“We will,” Kofi said, very seriously, like a grown man. “I promise.”

At the gate, Mama Leki spoke quietly to Captain Mbala. The captain looked at Kamau’s bruised face, then he looked at the children.

“I do not want a sick man ruining the visit,” he said.

He held up one finger. “Back before the evening horn. Or do not come back at all.”

He told the guards to open the gate.

They pulled back the heavy bar. Malanga stood beside them. His eyes stayed on Lumani the whole time.

Mama Leki touched Lumani’s cheek. “The world is bigger than this camp,” she said softly. “Look at all of it. And remember the way.”

Kamau said nothing. He only lifted his wrapped hand.

A woman from the drying mats watched them. She shook her head.

“Children outside the walls?” she whispered. “Before the guests come?”

Lumani followed his friends through.

Behind them, the gate closed with a heavy bang.

They all stopped and looked back.

The wall was so tall. From here, it looked like a gray mountain. Somewhere behind it, Mama Leki was standing by the gate.

“We are really out,” Ayo said. “I do not believe it.”

“Believe it,” Jabari said. He spun in a slow circle with his arms wide. “No guards. No bricks. Just sky. So much sky!”

“It is the same sky,” Kofi said.

“No. It is bigger out here.”

Kofi tilted his head back. He did not argue.

Lumani just looked at the road. It ran ahead of them, wide and brown and empty. No fence on one side. No wall on the other. He walked a few steps down it. Nobody shouted at him to stop.

“I thought it would feel different,” he said at last. “I thought something would happen when we crossed.”

“Like what?” Ayo asked.

“I do not know. Thunder. Or the ground shaking.”

“I thought there would be monsters,” Kofi said.

Jabari laughed.

“Where? I want to see one.”

Ayo’s voice dropped.

“Everyone we know is behind that wall. And we are standing here, like it is nothing.”

She turned away from the wall.

“It is something,” Lumani said. “We are going to see the world. And then we will tell them all about it.”

“All of it,” Kofi said.

Ayo wiped her face with her sleeve. “Mama Leki said the world is bigger than the camp. So let us go and see it.”

They started down the road. Jabari walked first, then Kofi, then Lumani.

Ayo looked back one last time. The wall stood gray and still against the sky. Smoke rose from behind it. Somewhere inside, a guard was shouting orders, the way one always was.

“We will come back,” she whispered.

Lumani pulled at his collar.

“Stop pulling it,” Jabari said.

“It is tight.”

“Everything about this is tight. Just walk as if you belong somewhere.”

“We do not belong anywhere,” Kofi said softly.

Lumani put his arm around Kofi’s shoulders.

“You belong with us,” he said.

Kofi leaned against him.

The road to the border market widened as they walked. Lumani watched it carefully. A dead tree, split down the middle. A stone bridge over a dry stream.

“Why are you counting trees?” Kofi asked.

“I am not counting. I am remembering.”

“Remembering what?”

Lumani did not know why Mama Leki wanted him to remember the way. “The way back,” he said at last. He kept each place in his head, like beads on a string.

Then Jabari cleared his throat.

“First rule of the market,” he said, like a teacher. “Let me do the talking.”

“You do not know where to find anything there,” Lumani said.

“Watch me. I have a sense for these things.”

“What things?”

“You know. Markets. People. Directions.”

“Have you ever been to any market?” Kofi asked.

“I have heard about them, but do not let that discourage you.”

Ayo did not even look at him.

At a pile of white stones where the road split in two, Kofi looked back the way they had come, then up at the sun. “The market is that way,” he said quietly, pointing left.

Jabari looked left. Then he looked at Kofi.

“I was about to say that.”

“Second rule,” Jabari went on. “Do not look lost. If you do, people will target you. Walk with purpose. Just pick a direction and commit to it.”

“What if the direction is wrong?” Kofi asked.

“You commit to it confidently, and then you quietly change direction when no one is watching.”

Ayo looked at him. “That is not a rule. That is a trick.”

“Every good rule is a trick.”

A farmer passed them with a cart full of melons. He lifted his hand to them.

Kofi turned to the others. “Do we wave back?”

“Nobody waves at us,” Jabari said.

“He just did,” Ayo said.

Kofi waved back. The farmer smiled and kept going. Kofi looked at his own hand as if it were new.

As they neared the market, the crowd grew bigger, and people were everywhere, arguing, bargaining, eating. Something sizzled in a pan. A baby cried, then laughed.

Then the road opened into the market itself.

There were colors everywhere. Cloth, fruit, pots, beads. A woman shouted prices for roasted corn. A man fixed a sandal while his customer waited. Smoke drifted from cooking fires, and none of it smelled like the camp.

Lumani breathed in. Something sweet was cooking, and he did not have a name for it.

The corn lady saw the red stripes down their tunics. “Camp children!” she called. “Corn! Only one coin!”

Jabari put his hand over his pocket. “We only have two,” he said quickly. “And they are for bread.”

“Then come back when you are rich!” The corn lady laughed so loudly that people three streets away could have heard her.

Two men at the next stall turned and looked at the red stripes. Then they looked at each other. Ayo moved closer to Lumani.

Jabari stared at everything at once. “Is this real?”

“Close your mouth,” Ayo said. “You look new.”

“I am new.”

“Then do not look new.”

Jabari closed his mouth. Then he remembered he was supposed to look like he had done this before, and started walking quickly again.

“Rule two,” Kofi whispered to Lumani. “Do not look lost.”

Lumani looked at the ground so he would not laugh.

A fruit seller saw them staring and smiled. She put a small yellow fruit in Kofi’s hand. “For the road,” she said. “You look hungry.”

Kofi looked at Lumani. Lumani nodded.

Kofi ate it in three bites. Then he started to cry.

“Was it good?” Jabari asked.

Kofi nodded. He could not speak.

Jabari turned to the fruit seller. “I also look hungry.”

She laughed again and gave him one too.

Jabari did not eat it. He turned it over in his hand. Then he held it out to Kofi.

“For Jojina,” he said. “You promised her something.”

Kofi blinked. “You asked for her?”

“I asked for me,” Jabari said. “Then I changed my mind. Do not tell anyone.”

Kofi tucked the fruit inside his shirt, very carefully, like an egg.

At the side of the road, an older woman sat on a wooden crate in the shade of a tall wall. She held a long drum between her knees and played a slow, steady beat, like breathing. Around her, people hurried past and shouted prices. Kofi stopped walking and closed his eyes.

“Kofi,” Lumani called.

He opened his eyes slowly. “It is real,” he said. “I always thought maybe I was imagining it. The way music makes people move.”

“Makes who now?” Jabari asked. “I have been moving on my own the whole time.”

“Can you not feel it?” Kofi asked.

Jabari looked at his feet. He stayed quiet for a moment.

“Yes,” he said finally. “I feel so hungry.”

Kofi gave him a patient look and moved on. Jabari glanced back at the woman and her drum once, then followed.

For the rest of the morning, Kofi hummed the drumbeat under his breath.

“Too fast,” Lumani told him. “She played it slow.”

“I like it fast,” Kofi said, and kept on humming.

In the center of the market stood a black stone statue. Everyone who walked past bowed to it.

Lumani stopped.

“They are bowing without even looking at it,” he said.

“I know. Just keep walking,” Jabari said.

“Who is it?” Kofi whispered.

A woman bowed as she passed them. “Hush,” she said, without looking up. “Do not ask that out loud.”

Ayo watched the woman until she was gone.

Lumani did not know who the statue was. He only knew that everyone bowed without looking, the way people in the camp kept their heads down when the guards walked by.

Ayo saw his face. “Lumani. Do not.”

He had promised Kamau to keep his eyes down. He lifted his chin anyway and walked past the statue without bowing.

Behind him, Jabari muttered, “Breakfast.”

Lumani looked back. Kofi was right behind him, small and straight, with his chin up too.

Across the square, an old man at a bead stall had stopped threading his beads. He was watching Lumani.