“It’s up to you, Binti,” she said, dismissively. She spoke over her shoulder as she walked to two women who’d just set out a large bowl of dried dates. “You do it or you don’t.”
My grandmother wasn’t offering me any real choice. If I didn’t come home tonight, my family would fly into panic. Again. For the second time, they would be forced to deal with my disappearance and the fact that they couldn’t do a thing about it. My mother would get terribly quiet and stop laughing, my father would work too hard in his shop, my siblings would feel an ache akin to one caused by the death of a loved one. Family. I had to reach Okwu.
However, I still didn’t know much about my okuoko. I didn’t understand how they affected me. How they connected me to the Meduse, especially Okwu. Why I could feel sensation through them. Why they writhed when I was furious. What I knew was that I could sense Okwu when I was on Math City and he was in Weapons City, which were hundreds of miles away and that I had once had a very weak but definite sense that the Meduse Chief who was planets away was checking up on me.
I could wiggle my okuoko on purpose, but I couldn’t explain to anyone how I did it. It was like moving my nostrils, I just could. In this way, while petting the shaggy fur of the camel beside me, I reached out to Okwu. I thought about it, willed it. Seconds passed. Nothing. I sighed and glanced at my grandmother, who was watching me. I looked up into the blue sky and spotted a ship from afar that was leaving the atmosphere. A mere speck. The launch port was maybe a hundred miles away. I wondered if it was Third Fish. No, I thought. Third Fish is giving birth soon.
I shook my head. Focus, I thought. Okwu. I imagined the tent my father had set up outside the Root. How it was full of the gas the Meduse breathed. Okwu was the first of its kind on Earth since the Khoush-Meduse Wars. Okwu doing whatever Okwu did in its tent when it avoided interaction with any of my family or other curious Himba. And I softly slipped my mind into a set of equations that reminded me of space and movement across small lengths of it.
Now I reached out again, my hand flat on the camel’s rump, slowly moving up and down with its steady breathing. I strained to reach Okwu and it realized this and reached for me. I felt it grasp and suddenly I felt Okwu’s mind. Sweat poured down my face and I felt all things around me tint Okwu’s light blue.
Binti, I felt Okwu say through one of my okuoko. It vibrated against my left ear. Where are you? You are far.
In the hinterland, I responded. I won’t be back tonight.
Do I need to come get you?
No.
Are you well?
Yes. The village is just far. Days away.
Okay. I will wait here.
Then just like that, Okwu let go and was gone. I came back to myself and my eyes focused on the desert before me.
“Done?” my grandmother asked. She stood behind me and I turned to her.
“Yes. It knows.”
She nodded. “Well done,” she said, holding her hands up and moving them around. She walked away.
*
They pitched their elaborate goatskin tents facing the desert to give everyone the semblance of privacy. Two men built a fire in the center of the tents and some of the women began to use it to cook. The soft whoosh of capture stations from behind two of the tents and their cool breath further cooled the entire camp. Soon, the large empty jug one of the camels had been carrying was rolled to the center of the tents and filled with water.
“You’ll stay with me,” my grandmother said, pointing to the tent two men had just set up for her. She handed me a cup. “Drink heavily, your body needs hydration.” Inside, the tent was spacious and there were two bedrolls on opposite sides. For “dinner” there was flat bread with honey, a delicious strong-smelling hearty soup with dried fish, more dates, and mint tea. As the sun rose, everyone quickly disappeared into his or her tents to sleep.
I was pleasantly full and tired, but too restless to sleep just yet. So I sat on my mat, staring out at the desert, my grandmother snoring across from me. Since we’d walked into the desert, the flashbacks and day terrors I was used to having had disappeared. I inhaled the dry baking air and smiled. The healing properties of the desert had always been good for me. My eye fell on Mwinyi, who’d been watering the camels and now sat out on a sand dune facing the desert. His hands were working before him. I got up and walked over to him.
He looked at me as I approached, turned back to the desert, and continued working his hands. I paused, wondering if I was interrupting. I pushed on; I had to know. Plus, I’d seen several of them talking and laughing as they moved their hands like this, so I doubted it was like prayer or meditation.
“Hi,” I said, hoping he’d stop moving his hands. He didn’t.
“You should get some sleep,” he said.
I cocked my head as I watched him. He was frowning as he pushed his blue sleeves back, held up his arms, and moved his hands in graceful swooping jabbing motions.
“I will,” I said. I paused and took a breath. I wondered what would happen if I called up a current and connected it to his moving hands. Would the zap of it make him stop? “What is this that you’re doing?” I blurted. “With your hands? Can you control it?” I waited, cringing as I bit my lip. For a moment, he only worked his hands, his eyes staring into the desert.
Then he looked up at me. “I’m communicating.”
“But you do it when you . . . like now,” I said as he did a flourish with his hands. “You’re not talking to me right there. I don’t understand it, if you are. And I see people doing it while talking to other people, too.”
He looked at me for a long time and then glanced at the camp and then back at me.
“This is something your grandmother should tell you. Go ask her.”
“I’m asking you,” I said. “You all do it, so why can’t I ask anyone?”
He sighed and muttered, “Okay, sit down.”
I sat beside him, pulling my legs to my chest.
“Auntie Titi, your grandmother, is my grandfather’s best friend,” he said. “So I know all about your father and his shame. You have the same shame.”
I blinked for a moment as two separate worlds tangled in my mind. Back when I was on the ship with the Meduse, they had referred to my edan as “shame” and now here was that word again, but in a completely different context. “I don’t underst—”
“I saw how you looked at us,” he said. “Just like every Himba I have ever encountered, like we’re savages. You call us the ‘Desert People,’ mysterious uncivilized dark people of the sand.”
I wanted to deny my prejudice, but he was right.
“Despite the fact that you’re darker like us, have the crown like us, have our blood,” he said. “I wonder how surprised you were when you saw that we could speak your language as well as our three languages. ‘Desert People.’ Do you even know the actual name of our tribe?”