Pigment Read Free Page B

play!”
    “Put her on now .” His voice is stern. Jalil, in the last seat in business class, sees the flight attendant preparing for takeoff.
    He hadn’t had time to phone Tamika and make his flight. Okay, he probably could have, but how could he tell the mother of their child this? How could he tell her, after all he’s put her through?
    The stewardess catches him on the phone. “Sir, please turn off your cell phone.”
    He nods.
    She continues her lap to check that devices are off and that all seatbelts are fastened.
    “Jalil?” Tamika’s voice sounds concerned. Jalil never calls her. He can’t answer. “Hello?”... “Jalil?”
    “Tamika…Something happened. I’m on a plane.”
    Tamika braces herself against the new granite kitchen counter she and Mike got for their anniversary last month; her hand rises to cover her mouth. She senses the blow coming.
    “I’m flying to Mwanza through Nairobi.”
    “Why Mwanza? She’s in Zanzibar...”
    “I thought by now she’d have told you.”
    “Told me what?”
    “There are added challenges for people like her over there, for people with her condition. It’s not safe.” He’s using his military voice to keep emotion at bay. It’s normal for him, in situations like this, situations where he is trying to keep control. “Aliya went down there to fight for people like her, to make the system prosecute people who hunt albinos.”
    In a whisper, “Hunt? I don’t understand. She was there to teach the children...”
    Emotion breaks through and he is at a loss for words.  He can’t speak.
    Tamika melts against the cabinet where she keeps the pots and pans, sliding down onto the cold tile floor that she mopped an hour ago. They listen to each other breathing, the weight striking their eardrums through to their souls.
    The flight attendant sees Jalil and repeats. “Sir, this is the last time I will tell you to turn off your device.”
    Jalil says into the phone, “I have to hang up or they’ll put me off the plane. I’ll find her.”
    The phone disconnects.
    Tamika is frozen in shock. Her eyes shoot around the room, matching the pace of her desperate mind as tears pump down her face with each shutter of her eyelids. An idea washes over her and she pulls herself up and goes to the computer in Aliya’s room. She types into the search engine: “Tanzania albino...” she pauses before she types the third word, then types “hunt” and presses enter. The screen fills up with stories and images of albino children missing limbs and mutilated remains of albino children. She holds her hand out at the screen as if she could stop seeing the images now in her head, images of the place where her daughter went. She stands up to walk away from it, but when she turns, she is faced with Reggie. He’d been looking over her shoulder from the doorway. If this boy ever looked pale, it’s now. She squats to block his gaze. She embraces him. He looks over her shoulder at the bloody corpse of an albino baby on the monitor.
    #
    A few hours into the flight, Jalil gazes out the window, into blackness. He can’t see the moon or the stars, just black. He looks at his cell phone to a picture of Aliya smiling brightly. Her voice echoes, “What made you come back?” Then he peers back into the night and his mind takes him to its darkest corner.
    #
    Seven months ago. Teheran. Jalil is driving a private securities firm military-style truck on the desert road heading back to camp, through the dusty poverty stricken streets. It’s a hot day, sweat streams down his face.
    He drives cautiously; it’s essential to study everything and everyone, to watch, to be alert and ready for possible land mines, anything off.
    Up the road is a man wearing a big coat. He is carrying something underneath and walking in the direction of the truck.
    Jalil stops and turns off the engine. He gets out and stands at the side of the vehicle with his rifle drawn. He shouts at him in Arabic, ordering him to show