The Governor of the Northern Province Read Free

could let you know. But I don’t plan to go there until enough awareness has been raised around here of what Little Caitlin means to all of us. So, the box?”
    â€œI ask boss man. My ribbon?”
    â€œSign this petition. And come to Centennial Park this Sunday for the memorial rally. I’ll look for you there. How come you’re still wearing your parka?”
    III.
    Bokarie would send his young and hungry men off to each raid with a speech given from the flatbed of a derelict aid truck and later arrive to crunch an elder’s jaw plate against a gutter or to shoot a lingering dog. To proclaim victory. He would inspect remnants of the burnt-out villages reinvented as cities of the new nation, dividing the charred land into lots for squadron leaders baptized as local constables. On the General’s behalf and in the name of peace, he attended muggy prayer vigils for the souls of the dead travelling to the cool gardens of the afterlife. The Promised Land. He would spindle his copper-wire arms around the shuddering survivors in sympathy, those who had had enough time to flee into the brush when they heard the rebel anthems sounding up the road. Husbands and mothers and wives and fathers, they had no choice but to accept his comfort though they knew who and what Bokarie was. The terror of possibilities blunted their knowledge of his crimes.
    After each visit, he would report to the General. They spoke by satellite phone to make plans for the next incursion. He would receive instructions and then a reminder of how he had been raised up, how his help was needed to bring order to their nation. Mention would be made as well of future rewards. Bokarie would then return to the corrugated shed where he lived with two brothers and a cousin. He had promised each of them a village, a television with DVD, and local virgins, once the General named him governor of the northern province.
    But men’s plans are in agreement for the space between a butterfly’s wings, or, as in his old country, the span of a razor blade. His militia was only awaiting a final order, poised southeast for its triumphant entry into the capital city. He imagined that the General would greet him personally, that he might even be asked to address the National Assembly, but by the time Bokarie took the last village, bones and rumours of the first raid had reached the demilitarized zone and the foreign press pool. Soon, donor nations were murmuring. In the light-bulb cafés and at the dust-whorled checkpoints, strange words began squawking out of the transistors. Power-sharing and reconciliation and sanctions and multilateral intervention . Suddenly the General was on CNN embracing the President. A smiling American peacebroker was standing behind them, his hands pink meaty grips on their shoulders. When the General stepped forward and addressed the nation, his tongue was hot and sharp with the language of the new world politics.
    â€œA security coalition will rid our stricken nation of the terrorists and evildoers butchering the river people to the north. With the support of the international community, firm and fearless leadership will bring an end to this tyranny. Freedom will march where it is needed.”
    Three days later, Bokarie’s younger brother carved a wide arc across his back while he was reading a map. He had just found a shallow creek crossing into the unmonitored brush of a neighbouring country. His cousin shot the assassin in the ribs and neck. Searching the body, they extracted a pair of dark blue passports, payment in advance from the now impossible-to-reach General. Quickly tracked down, Bokarie’s older brother pleaded his innocence. It was unconvincing. Fortified by cane liquor, his back bleeding through a poultice of banana leaves, Bokarie then set out for the river with his cousin. His turtle.
    The passports were good enough to barter in Africa but too crude for travel beyond. He traded the first to get