Nnedi Okorafor - Binti - The Complete Trilogy

“It’s better than you being dead, Binti.”

“W—… what happened? Why is… The Root! They burned it! And there were dead soldiers. Many! What happened?” I was shaking and crying now.

Okwu blew out gas and both Mwinyi and I started coughing.

“When you left, I stayed in my tent,” he said in Otjihimba. “Your family was kind to me, except for your sisters, who like to yell. Your family had a meeting that evening, so many were there. The Khoush came in the night when your father took me out in the desert to meet with your elders in private. The elders wanted to speak with me. And as we talked, from where we were we saw the Khoush ship fly in and blow up my tent.”

“What?” I whispered.

“The elders told me to stay with them in the dark, as your father ran back, shouting at the Khoush to stop. He told all your people to run inside for safety. There were Khoush on the ground at this point. One of the Khoush argued with your father. I could hear it; the man called himself General Staff Kuw and he had no hair or okuoko on his head. He didn’t think I was in the tent and he wanted to know where I was. Your father refused to tell him and the general accused him of sympathizing with the enemy and having a daughter who’d even mated with a Meduse—”

“Mated?” I exclaimed. The Meduse hovering around Okwu all thrummed their domes.

“Yes, the Khoush are a stupid people,” Okwu said. “Your father said they were the enemy because they’d just blown up part of his property. This angered General Kuw. That’s when he ordered his soldiers to firebomb the Root. I think they expected everyone to run out. They didn’t expect your father to run inside as it was burning. But that’s what he did and no one came out.”

“The Himba do not run away, we run within,” I said, quietly. “They went inside, even as it was burning.” I clucked my tongue, as my hands began to shake and my mind tried to cloud. “The Khoush like to joke that we are a suicidal people.”

“As the elders watched the Root burn in the night, I left them… who just stood there staring at the fire that was so huge, it showed light far into the desert,” Okwu continued. “As the Khoush, in a stupid rage, went on to firebomb more homes in Osemba. They weren’t even looking for me. I activated my armor, crept up to those standing near the house, and killed as many of them as I could. I wanted to kill that General Kuw, but he had already fled onto a ship. Coward.

“For you, for your family, they all deserved to die. When I could kill no more, I covered the air and escaped as they coughed. There were too many who were coming from their ship. One does not fight a war it cannot win. I hid in the lake and waited for the others. Now when the time comes, we will fight the war we will win.”

“They burned everything!” I heard Kapika yell from behind me. He pushed his wife away as she tried to hold him back. Several of the people had come back to listen too. “The Khoush came and burned everything! Out of spite! Because of you people!”

There were about ten Meduse and the only one who was not blue floated up so quickly that I thought it would barrel over me. It was so clear that I could see the white of its stinger as the sun shined right through it. The Meduse chief.

“See what they did to Okwu? You see why we kill them?” the chief rumbled. “We have come. They don’t know we are here. We will meet them when they are not ready.”

I stepped back and looked at them all. “You need to make peace,” I said.

“No,” the chief said. “We are here. We will make war. You should want war.”

I felt my okuoko twitch as it dawned on me. I looked beyond the Meduse, at the lake. I moaned. I turned to Mwinyi, then to the Himba standing around us. “Chief Kapika,” I said, stepping over to him. I put my chin to my chest as I took his hands. I felt him twitch, wanting to pull away from me. My otjize had washed off. I stood before him, before everyone, naked, so I was not offended by his discomfort. “Please,” I said. “I know I come to you as a barbarian. Please, put that aside for now, and focus on the fact that I am a Himba daughter, regardless of how I look and where I have been…”

“And what pollutes you,” he added.

I paused, restraining my Meduse prideful anger. I let myself tree and called up a current. As the numbers flew around me, through me, I felt calmer, clearer, and more confident, though the anger still boiled beneath, trying to push thoughts of my dead family to the forefront of my mind. I continued to hold his hands, my head respectfully bowed. “Yes, what pollutes me. But I am still a master harmonizer,” I said in a steady voice, loudly enough for the others to hear. “I am more than and better than what I was when I left here. I want to call an urgent meeting of the Council Elders.” I looked up into his eyes. “It is urgent and a matter of peace in these lands. Please. We can’t have more die.” I hesitated and then pushed on. “C—… call an Okuruwo .”

An Okuruwo was only called when the lifeblood of the Himba people was in grave danger. It was only called by elders, because it was to call on the soul of the Himba to heal itself and that took a power only the old could wield. Usually. The healing power of the Himba is carried within the elders, even the word Okuruwo is usually only spoken by older Himba. Thus, the word felt hot coming out of my mouth. I cleared my throat as we stared at each other. His irises were a deep brown, the whites of his eyes yellowed by the sun. “Have you not looked around?” he asked in his soft voice. “Your childish selfish actions led to all this strife. We don’t leave our lands for a reason, Binti. Now you speak beyond your years. What makes you think you can call an Okuruwo ?”

I didn’t miss a beat. “Because there are Meduse ships in the lake and if we don’t do something immediately, we’ll be the grass crushed beneath the feet of two fighting elephants.”

The Council Elders use the same method of communication that Himba women use to spread the word about the date of the pilgrimage: a large leaf is cut from a palm tree and passed from member to member. The Himba people are the creators and makers of astrolabes, devices of communication. However, the Himba people have been communicating important meeting announcements in this old, old way for centuries and we will continue to do so.

So I watched a young girl climb a palm tree, use a large machete to cut a large leaf, climb down, and hand it to Chief Kapika. Okwu, Mwinyi, and I stood there silent as he took it and went into his home and came out with a jar of his wife’s otjize . He held the jar out to me.

“You’re calling the Okuruwo, so you draw the circle.”

“Why don’t Himba males put otjize on their skins?” Okwu asked, floating up beside me.

From behind me, Mwinyi chuckled. I took the leaf and the jar, ignoring Okwu’s question.

“What reason does a man have to be beautiful?” Chief Kapika asked as he watched me spread the leaf on the dry dirt.

“Beauty does not need a reason,” Okwu responded.

I opened the jar. The otjize was so fragrant that for a moment, I swooned. It had been so long since I’d smelled Earth-made otjize . The zinariya squeezed and expanded my world as images of home tried to flood my brain—town’s square, the lake, the schoolhouse… his wife must have collected the clay from near there. My otjize no longer even smells like this, I thought.

“You will never understand us,” Chief Kapika said dismissively to Okwu.

I drew the circle with otjize and handed him the leaf. He looked at the circle and then at me. “Make sure the Meduse stay in the water,” he said. “We will meet and try to make this better.” He looked at Okwu, but spoke to me. “ Their tribesman is alive, there is no reason for war. They have destroyed enough.”