If you were late to work, Lonjino said, they would make you lie down, and beat you from the legs up to
the neck, eight times. Top to bottom and bottom to top. And each full circuit was counted as one, so it
was really sixteen beatings, Lonjino would say. The victims would lie bleeding from their heels, naked
on the ground. Other men would go back home after months of this abuse, and they would beat their
wives and their children, destroying their families.
From Lonjino, Deo first heard about the onerous taxes the Belgians imposed, how small owners of cows
or crops had to turn over the best part of their milk, produce, and meat to the local Burundian chiefs,
who administered the hills for the colonists. Lonjino talked about how, during the struggle for
independence, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Belgian helicopters sometimes appeared overhead
—“like bees,” he said. And he seemed to be in mourning himself when he told of how the nation grieved
after Prince Rwagasore, the man leading Burundi to independence, was shot to death, with an elephant
gun, at a restaurant by Lake Tanganyika. Shot by a man from a place called Greece, but Lonjino
believed that the Belgians arranged the killing. Finally, there was the happy ending—independence, the
time, Lonjino would say, when he and his family could at long last drink as much of their own cows’
milk as they liked.
Lonjino had a whispery laugh, nearly soundless. In the glow of the cooking fire, Deo would see his
grandfather’s shoulders shake and his fine white teeth light up. Knowing that Lonjino was laughing, Deo
knew that all was right with the world.
On an evening when Deo was five or maybe six years old, his mother hovering over the fire, cooking
supper, he heard a man’s voice call his father’s name from outside. “Prosper! Prosper!” It was his
mother’s cousin, from many kilometers away. He was breathing hard. He stood at the fence outside the
compound, panting and shouting angrily at Deo’s father, saying words like these: “What are you doing?
You are going to be burned down in your house with your children and your wife! How stupid are you?
What are you doing? Can’t you go out and know what’s going on?”
Deo’s father was easily provoked, as a rule, but he didn’t answer. Deo’s mother listened quietly and then
she said to her cousin, “Thank you.”
The memory of that evening had lost some detail by the time Deo was a teenager. But he remembered
the men of the family removing the pile of wood that blocked the lone entrance to the compound, and
being hustled out into the dark toward a place with tall trees while his grandfather’s dogs barked. He
also remembered hearing his older brother ask the adults what was going on—and the adults didn’t
answer.
For what seemed like a very long time, his family and several others camped out among nearby wooded
hilltops, moving again and again. Most of the men of his family had taken the cows somewhere to
safety. He and the rest of his siblings stayed with the women. There were downpours and lightning at
night. In the daytime, one or another of the adult women would leave them and return with food from
their gardens—squashes, bananas, potatoes. The women kept watch from the hilltops. He’d hear them
asking each other whether they saw houses burning. When they finally went home to the compound,
their cow barn had in fact been burned. Only Lonjino had stayed there, with his dogs and his spear. He
must have left at the last moment and hidden out in the banana groves.
The barn was rebuilt, and normal life resumed. No one told Deo exactly what had happened, and, being
a very obedient child, he didn’t dare to ask. In second grade you were obliged to read a book of fables.
All of them frightened Deo, especially the one entitled “What Killed You, Head?” The fable went like
this:
There once was a man who went out walking. On the trail, he met a head rolling across his path.
He started bothering the rolling head with questions: “What killed you, head?”
The head replied: “Would you keep going and stop reminding me of unpleasant things? I died a hero, but
you will be killed by your own tongue.”
The man continued his walk. When he arrived at his destination, he told the people there: “Do you know
what I saw? I met a rolling head on my way here, and I asked it: ‘What killed you, head?’ And it replied:
‘I died a hero, but you will be killed by your own tongue.’”
The people told him: “If you don’t show us this talking head, we will kill you.” And the man said: “Let’s
go. If you don’t find the head talking, do whatever you want to me.” And the people said: “Let’s go!”
When they came upon the head, the man started talking to it, but the head said nothing. The man
insisted, but the head did not say a word. Upset because the man had lied to them and wasted their time,
the people beat him. They beat him until he was unable to walk. After they had left, and the man was
writhing on his back on the ground, the talking head laughed at him and said: ‘Didn’t I tell you that you
would be killed by your own tongue?’”
You were warned not to talk to others about problems in the family. “Keep it in the kitchen,” you were
told. You might not be praised for being a quiet child, but if you talked a lot you were scolded.
“Hora!”—Shut up!—“You talk like birds in the morning,” his father or grandfather would say. Or: “You
talk as if you were raised by a widow.” Or, more gently: “Better not to ask a question, because you
might not like the answer.”
Chapter FOUR
New York City,
Deo pushed the grocery cart down the sidewalks of Eighty-ninth Street. There were times when he felt
crushed by the height and humiliated by the splendor of the buildings in this part of New York. They
reminded him he was alone and completely out of place. There were also times when he didn’t see the
buildings or other people passing by, but rather a parade of his family: his mother smiling shyly,
showing her glossy teeth, which people in Butanza praised; his elder brother, Antoine, short, stocky,
emphatic about everything, joking that all the loads they carried on their heads as little kids had stunted
his growth. He could hear Antoine’s big laugh so clearly! But then his mind would take a wrong turn.
Once again he would be looking in the window of that hut with the roof that had been burned, the
memory that kept surfacing. The family mutilated on the floor. What had become of his own family?
Then he would imagine them, Antoine and his mother and sister and little brothers and his father and
grandmother and Lonjino, lying violated and dead in the dirt. And then he’d realize that his cheeks were
wet, that he’d been crying in public, while pushing his cart down the sidewalk, making a spectacle of
himself.
But today, a day in late June 1994, he felt too sick to think about anything but the causes of
gastrointestinal pain. He gritted his teeth, his stomach muscles flexing around his rising nausea, trying to
strangle it. He hadn’t been able to eat all day. He imagined worms gnawing on his intestines. He
probably had intestinal worms or amoebas, he thought, from all the dirty water he’d had to drink on the
run. A doctor could find out for sure with stool studies—tests he could do himself, if he had the
equipment. He had seen the names of doctors around Park Avenue, on little brass plaques. Whatever
they might charge would be more than he could pay. He knew the broad-spectrum antibiotic to rid the
gut of parasites. But did you need a prescription to buy Flagyl in America? What would the drug cost
here?
At least this wasn’t a difficult delivery, only three crosstown blocks, and he already knew the address,
right next door to that peaceful little church, St. Thomas More. And there was no service entrance, just a
front door, a few steps up from the sidewalk.
A woman opened the door almost at once, and she held it open for him as he shouldered his way in with
the bags. She was smiling.
“How arhh you?” said Deo. He had added this to his repertoire. He still struggled with the “are,”
however. He’d worked so hard from childhood to pronounce the French “r” just so.
The woman smiled and said she was fine, thank you. She said something about showing him the way to
the kitchen. He asked her if this was a church, and she said, yes, this was the rectory. Wanting to make a
good impression, he said he was very interested. She had a friendly-sounding voice—the voice of a good
tipper perhaps. He didn’t notice much else about her until, after he’d deposited the groceries and was
walking back with her toward the door, she asked him, “Parlez-vous fran.ais?”
“Mais oui!”
Her name was Sharon McKenna. She was dressed in a skirt and blouse. She was slender, and she had
very pale skin and very blond hair, so blond he couldn’t see if it was turning white or not. She might be
as old as his mother, she might be ten years younger. Her French wasn’t impeccable, but good enough
for a conversation. She asked him get-acquainted questions. Carried away by the chance to speak, really
speak, feeling too sick to remember his lessons, he told her more than he ever told a stranger now—not
only that he came from Burundi but that he had escaped from the violence there and in Rwanda. Before
he left, she gave him a five-dollar bill, after rummaging around in an untidy-looking bag.
Maybe it was just the tip that made him carry away an image of a beautiful person, of a woman who
would look elegant even if she were dressed in an old blanket. But it was more than the money. She had
seemed interested in him, and worried by his circumstances. Deo thought he would be welcome if he
went back to see her again. Which he did, a few days later.
He found himself telling her he had been a medical student. He said he was determined to go back to
school and become a doctor, and she seemed so enthusiastic about this that for the moment he felt it
might actually be true. But then she asked him about his parents, and he didn’t know what to say. She
said she’d been hearing a lot about Rwanda on the news. He thought, “God, what should I tell her?”
Everyone was dangerous, maybe even this woman. He felt like running away. He answered as vaguely
as he could. When he left, she gave him a hug.
It had been so long since anyone had touched him with affection. But, no, he thought, she asked too
many questions. If he saw her again, she would gusimbura him for sure. But clearly she was someone
who would help him if she could. He decided to write her a letter. His African friend at the grocery
wrote it for him. Deo looked up some of the medical words, though most were cognates of the French.
He copied the letter out carefully in his own hand. He had beautiful penmanship when he tried; maybe
she would notice.
Dear Sharon McKenna
I’m very glad to find this short time in order to tell you that I’ve some troubles which make me too hurt
(bad)
In fact, since before yesterday, I feel pains around intestines and have difficult to go to the toilet
(constipation) I’m telling you all these problems about my health.
I spent all this last night without feeling asleep even if I worked hardly. I think that these pains are
caused by intestinal parasites like especially AMIBES or ENTAMOEBA HISTOLYTICA because of all
these symptoms.
In this way, I’d like I have a treatment against these troubles, but unhapply I don’t see how I can find a
Doctor for consultation on one hand, and how I can pay him on the other hand because it may be very
expensive while I’m too poor to pay. So, I don’t know if you could find for me medecines called
FLAGYL or help me in other way.
I am here to SLOAN’S even if I’m ill. That’s a pity!
Thanks a lot for your best comprehension.
God bless you.
He brought the letter to the rectory in the morning and left it with the receptionist. The very next day,
Sharon appeared at the store. Her doctor, she said, had agreed to see Deo for free. The man was pleasant,
and the examination was thorough. On the walk back, Sharon told Deo that the doctor didn’t think there
was much wrong with him, except that he was far too thin. The doctor had told her, “Your job is to fatten
him up.” She also said that she’d told the doctor Deo’s story, hoping to get him interested in a potential
future colleague, but all the doctor could suggest was that Deo’s chances might be better in Canada.
Sharon drew a map that showed where Canada was in relation to New York. Just to look at the drawing
made him weary. He didn’t want even to try to imagine the journey. A few days later, Sharon took him
out for a walk. She showed him her doctor’s report and translated it. “The tests are normal. Let me know
how I can help you.”
So his problem was maybe part exhaustion, and maybe lack of protein, and certainly psychosomatic. He
wasn’t sure this was good news.
Then Sharon asked him whether he liked girls.
For a moment Deo couldn’t speak. The doctor must have told her that Deo might have AIDS, and
Sharon must be thinking the same—that he had been a philanderer back in Africa, where AIDS was
mainly a heterosexual disease, or that he had been selling himself to men here in New York. How could
she think that? She wasn’t the person he’d imagined she was.
Yes, he liked girls, Deo said aloud. He wouldn’t speak to her again. He couldn’t bear even to look at her.
He would avoid her from now on.
But in fact he couldn’t. He wasn’t going to forgive Sharon, but when he went to see her the following
week and she said she had missed him, he had to admit to himself she was a beautiful person after all,
and that he had missed her, too.
He had told her he had to learn English to get back into medical school. She took him to an odd little
store, full of old-looking lamps and furniture but with a rack of shelves of old books, where together
they found a bilingual copy of Le Petit Prince. She bought it for him. It didn’t cost much. He devoured
it, first reading it in French, then memorizing the English text. Another time he took her to the huge
Barnes & Noble and showed her a physiology textbook he’d found some weeks before. He thought he
only wanted to share his enthusiasm for this book. He wasn’t asking her to buy it for him. It cost eighty
one dollars; it was hard to believe that a single book could cost that much. But Sharon said, “Let’s get
