Blue Gold (4 page)

Sylvie wasn't at school that day. She had stayed home to help Mama with Pascal and with Lucie, who had just been born. But Olivier was there. He never talked about what he saw, just as Sylvie and Mama never talked about what happened to them when the Mai-Mai came into their house. At any rate, what more was there to say, except that the Mai-Mai found Sylvie's father at the school, and they shot him? Then they set fire to the whole village, as a warning to other villages. Sylvie knew better than to ask Olivier, but she wondered sometimes what Papa's last moments were like. He would have been brave, she was sure of that. He would have stood up for what was right and fair, because those were the things he believed in.

But she tried not to think about her father's death too often, because she would start imagining herself in his place, facing the soldiers' rifles, feeling the bullets enter her body—making her heart pound so painfully and her breathing so tight that she feared she might actually die. Post-traumatic stress disorder is what the doctors at the clinic called it. Just about everyone in Nyarugusu suffered from PTSD, reliving in their minds and hearts and bodies the horrors that they'd been through back home.

Sylvie wished she could be brave like Papa, but instead she locked all the bad memories away deep down inside and tried to ignore them. That was what Olivier did, too, and Mama—she was sure of it. But the weight of those memories tugged at them anyway, pulling each of them down. Keeping them prisoners of the past.

“I like school,” said Pascal, pulling Sylvie back to the present. He was scuffing through the red dust in bare feet. Pascal was only four when the Mai-Mai attacked and didn't seem to remember. For this, at least, Sylvie was grateful.

“Good. What do you like best?” Sylvie asked.

“Playing football!”

Sylvie clucked her tongue. “There's more to school than playing!”

But Pascal lived for the game. And all that he remembered about Papa was kicking the ball around the yard.
No wonder
, thought Sylvie,
that he loves the game so much.
Glancing to Olivier as they neared the school, Sylvie wondered what good memories he had about Papa. But there was no point in asking him. If Pascal was an open book, then Olivier was a closed one.

Sylvie saw that Olivier was turning something shiny over and over in his hand. “What's that?”

“Nothing.” He slipped the object into his pocket.

“Show me,” she said.

“It's none of your business!”

She grabbed at his pocket, but he dodged away.

“Leave me alone!”

Throwing up his arms in anger, he turned and headed away toward the empty dustbowl that used to be the Nyarugusu market.

“Olivier!” Sylvie called after him, angry that he was wasting the precious shillings it cost to go to school.

He disappeared behind a collection of makeshift food stalls that refugees had put up in defiance of the Tanzanians.

“I'll bet he's going to see Mr. Kayembe,” remarked Pascal.

Sylvie's eyes narrowed with concern. Hervé Kayembe came from North Kivu, too. In the fighting over coltan, the Mai-Mai accused him of working with the Rwandan rebels. They killed his wife and sons, but he escaped by fleeing the country. In Nyarugusu, he set up a business selling radios and mobile phones and calling cards, which was shut down with the rest of the shops. But everybody knew his business was much bigger than that. He ran the black market, supplying drugs and guns—and doing anything that would line his pockets with money.

“How do you know that?” Sylvie asked Pascal.

“Because Jean-Yves and I followed him.” Sylvie disapproved of Pascal's friend Jean-Yves, an orphan who came to Nyarugusu with his older brothers, who let him run wild. “Olivier sold the rest of the bushmeat to Kayembe,” reported Pascal.

Hearing this, Sylvie knew she had reason to worry. Kayembe was well known for the small army of thugs and criminals he employed. Was Olivier becoming one of them?

“I told you to stay away from Jean-Yves,” Sylvie scolded Pascal.

“He's my friend!” he protested.

Before she could argue with him further, he ran over to join some boys kicking a ball around outside the school.
If we stay in Nyarugusu
, thought Sylvie,
how long before Pascal is swallowed up by Kayembe, along with Olivier?
A familiar wave of panic rippled through her, making her heart race and her stomach twist with nausea. Sylvie felt certain that, if Papa was with them, he would have found a way to get their family out of this camp, where there was no life and no future—only day after day of waiting. The Tanzanian officials liked to tell the Congolese that it was safe to go home, but every day more refugees arrived with horror stories of death and maiming and rape. They couldn't go back, and with vultures like Kayembe about, they couldn't stay in Nyarugusu, either.

If Papa was here, they would have been in Europe or America by now. But Papa wasn't here, and many days Mama was only half with them. If they were going to leave this place, Sylvie knew it was up to her to find the way.

 

AFTER SCHOOL
, Sylvie went to the Zone 3 medical clinic, where she earned a little money three days a week helping the nurses and doctors with basic chores like cleaning and stocking shelves. Sometimes she held the tray of gauze and instruments while the medical staff attended to patients with cuts or broken bones. She liked this job the best, because she could imagine herself in their place one day, as a doctor or a nurse.

“
Bonjour
, Sylvie!” chimed Doctor Marie as Sylvie entered the clinic.

“
Bonjour!
” replied Sylvie.

Marie was in an examining area, where she was giving an injection to a small child being held firmly by his mother. The baby wailed as the needle penetrated his arm, but Marie was quick, cooing to him, “I know, it's not nice, is it? There! All done!”

The nurses at the clinic were mostly African, but many of the doctors came from Europe or North or South America, working with one aid organization or another. They took turns rotating between the Nyarugusu hospital and the outpatient clinics. The head doctor was Bernard Van de Velde, a scowling white man from Belgium. Doctor Marie came from Canada. Her skin was as dark as Sylvie's and she spoke French, Sylvie's second language next to Swahili.

“Is it polio vaccine?” Sylvie asked Marie, about the injection.

“Something new, to prevent malaria.”

The word triggered a distant memory of Sylvie's cousin, Josue, who died of malaria when he was five.
If only we had this medicine
, she thought.
Maybe he would still be alive
.

“Are you okay?” asked Marie. She had a look on her face that Sylvie had come to recognize—still smiling, but also assessing, probing, wondering what horror she had stirred from Sylvie's past.

“Fine,” she replied.

The baby had stopped crying now. His mother thanked Marie in Swahili.

“His arm will be sore for a couple of days,” Marie said in French, turning to Sylvie, who translated her words into Swahili.

“She says she understands,” Sylvie translated back into French from the mother to Marie.

“Doctor Marie,” Sylvie asked as she disposed of the syringe in the sharps bin, after the mother and child had gone, “does everyone in Canada speak French?”

“Not everyone,” she replied. “In Quebec, where I come from, French is the official language. That's why my parents decided to immigrate there from Haiti, which is also French-speaking.” She got a quizzical smile. “Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering,” said Sylvie with a shrug.

“Have you thought more about what we talked about?”

“No,” she replied, lying. The truth was she had thought of little else.

“The best thing you can do for your family is go to Canada and get an education. Once you're settled, you'll be in a better position to help them join you there.”

When, months ago, Sylvie first confided in Marie her dream of becoming a doctor, Marie immediately began pushing the idea that Sylvie must go to Canada to finish her education. Sylvie had always insisted that leaving her family behind would be impossible. Mama would never forgive her. But today, when she was feeling so desperate to escape, she said nothing—which Doctor Marie seemed to take as agreement.

“Stay right here,” she said with a grin.

She headed into the doctors' private office, returning a moment later with her mobile phone.

“Come out into the light,” she told Sylvie, leading her outside through the open doorway of the clinic. “Now smile!”

Before Sylvie had time to stop her, Marie took her photo with the phone. Sylvie burned with embarrassment
—she hated having her picture taken, just as she hated looking in mirrors.

“It's nice,” said Marie, examining the photo on the mobile's screen. “Look.”

“I don't want to look!” protested Sylvie, temper flashing.

But Marie was too busy fidgeting with her mobile to notice Sylvie's shift in mood. “With your permission,” she said, “I want to send this to a friend of mine back home.”

“No!”

Marie looked up with surprise. “Sylvie, you're so beautiful,” she told her, pitying and patronizing, which Sylvie hated most of all.

She held the mobile up. All Sylvie could see was the hideous scar across her face, and, without warning, a memory burst from its hiding place. Her heart was racing. Anxiety twisted her stomach. She was ten years old again, trapped under the soldier's sweating body. Suffocating. Weak, helpless.

Marie touched her arm. “Sylvie?”

Sylvie recoiled at her touch. Panic turned to anger.

“I didn't say you could take my picture!”

“Please, just listen. My friend's name is Alain. We've been talking. He thinks he might be able to raise sponsorship money. He has a plan.”

“No! Don't send it,” Sylvie told her. Why wouldn't she listen?

“Sylvie, the Canadian government won't accept you as a refugee as long as you're living in a safe country like Tanzania—unless somebody in Canada is willing to sponsor you.”

“No!” she repeated, and started walking away.

“Sylvie, just think about it!” Doctor Marie called after her.

Sylvie didn't look back. A black rage had seized her. She was helpless against a flood of living memories—the soldier groping, hurting, pushing his thing inside her. Then his machete raised over her face. And through it all, one thought:
Why is this happening to me?

She stared without seeing as she walked, lost in the horrors of the past. But all at once the sight of Olivier brought her crashing into the present. He was standing by one of the food stalls in the former marketplace, sipping a Fanta—purchased, no doubt, with the money Kayembe gave him for the bushmeat—and he was turning the shiny object he had hidden from her that morning over and over in his hand. It was a mobile phone, Sylvie now realized, like the one that Papa used to have. That phone had been a prized possession—nobody but her father was allowed to touch it. “But it's a blessing and a curse,” Papa told her. “People in America and Europe and China are willing to pay a lot of money for the coltan mined here, so they can use it to make phones and computers. That is the reason rebels and soldiers attack our village and so many others—so they can get hold of the coltan and get rich.”

Where did Olivier find the money for a mobile phone?
Sylvie wondered. Suddenly it rang. He opened it and held it to his ear. Whoever was calling him must have been important, because he quickly lost his lazy slouch. He closed the phone and headed briskly away into what used to be the market street, as though following orders.
Kayembe's orders
, thought Sylvie. So what Pascal said was true: Olivier was becoming one of Kayembe's brutes. They were all the same—the Rwandans, the Mai-Mai, Kayembe. She would never forget the swagger of those soldiers entering their house, like they owned everything, even people. It sickened Sylvie to see it now, in her own brother.

Papa
, she prayed silently to the spirit world,
tell me how to save him from becoming one of them!

 

LAIPING LAY AWAKE
most of her first night in Shenzhen, squished on the narrow mattress between Min and the wall, listening to her cousin's gentle snores. Her mind buzzed between the dual frequencies of excitement and anxiety. All night, she was aware of restless sleepers tossing, of girls padding along the narrow pathway between the rows of bunks, of the toilet flushing in the tiny cubicle. It seemed to her that she had just nodded off when Min sat up, jostling the mattress as she crawled to the ladder.

“Wake up, lazy!” Min whispered when Laiping lifted her head.

“Is it morning?” she asked.

“It's seven o'clock.”

“I hardly slept.”

“I know! You kept me awake all night,” retorted Min. Laiping thought this was rich, considering Min's snoring. “My shift starts at eight,” Min told her, keeping her voice low. “I won't be able to take you to the employment office. Just ask somebody where the main building is—everyone knows it. Here, take this with you.” She reached into a plastic bag hanging from a hook on the wall and handed Laiping a sheet of paper. “It's a new birth certificate for you.”