Ore, December 1991, Mushubati
The afternoon sun beat down on the courtyard, a heat common to the African dry season, though a gentle breeze which, just after noon, offered a welcome respite, rustling the leaves and carrying the faint, distant murmur of voices from the fields beyond. The boy sat cross-legged on a makeshift cushion of leaves and tall grass, in a cool pool of shade beneath the sprawling mango tree in the backyard. Head tilted toward the sky, he enjoyed the sun’s warm kisses as rays trickled through swaying branches to nest on his face. From where he sat, the ochre stucco wall of the family house appeared almost white, drowning as it was under the baking sun. Like a canoe on a milky ocean, floating in middle of all that reflected light, the maroon-red gate looked scarlet. Closed but unlocked, the gate swayed with a slow eeeeek as the wind blew it this way and that.
Scrawny and small for his six years, Gabriel was all too aware of his cuteness—the large eyes and disarming smile that made his sisters dote on him and his brother cuff him at every chance. He knew how to weaponize it, but his brother was part of today’s negotiations, and any attempt at playing cute would only earn him a beating.
Beside him, a half-eaten green mango lay dusted with salt, its sour juice stinging the corners of his mouth. The fruit, still unripe, released a floral perfume, a teasing promise of sweetness it would never fulfill. Beyond the shade, in his mother's flower garden, arum lilies bowed in the breeze, their scent drifting over him like a fleeting caress. The hillside descended in terraces of banana trees, their glossy leaves catching the light, winking as if sharing a secret. Far below, the Makera River shimmered—a silver ribbon in the dry season, a roaring brown beast when the rains returned.
The real treasure sat in the boy's lap, a squat half-loaf of bread, its crust oily and golden, more fried than baked, the whole wrapped in a crinkled, transparent plastic bag. Its smell alone made his stomach growl with want. Bread was a rare delicacy reserved only for important guests. Muzehe, part affectionate nickname, part honorific title reserved for the family patriarch, had decreed that any bread left over was Gabriel's and his alone. This was yet another privilege of being the first boy born after a cascade of girls, the miracle child who'd slipped in just before his mother's body closed its doors for good. This was, obviously, a decree none dared question. Yet instead of tearing into his birthright, Gabriel took another bite of tart mango. He craved the bread, yes, but he understood its worth and so held it like a king guarding his war chest.
Opposite the boy sat Patrick and Chantal, whom family and friends called Nonori. Both had their backs to the downward slope, eyes fixed on the prize in his hands. During similar, innumerable past negotiations, Nonori had always offered fair terms. Patrick had not. Keeping his lips from curling into a smile, the boy reminded himself the name should always be Patrick. Never Nunu unless his brother was out of earshot. Enough knuckle-knocks had taught Gabriel his lesson.
He fished a handful of slices from the bag, ignoring the crumbs raining on his khaki shorts as he stacked the bread the way a seasoned merchant counts banknotes. “For tomorrow night,” he said, handing out half to Nonori, “and the night after that. That’s five nights paid.” He gave the rest to Patrick and licked the crumbs stuck to his thumb.
Patrick’s smirk came slow, deliberate, as his eyes narrowed to slits. He let the silence stretch. “Two slices for one telling,” he said.
Even the wind seemed to still, the air growing heavy and the leaves above pausing their dance as Gabriel's stomach dropped. This was not the deal. This was pure extortion.
“That’s not fair,” he whispered, his lip quivering. “Last time it was two nights for one slice.”
Of all his siblings’ tellings, Gabriel loved Nonori’s best. Vivid, immersive, they were always full of quiet magic. Patrick’s, a distant second, were loud and chaotic, like a classroom with no teacher, but they brimmed with fearless tangents and grisly twists that would’ve earned him the belt if Muzehe ever heard. Of course, Gabriel never told. Knowing he would give in to Patrick's blackmail, Gabriel bit down on his lip and closed his eyes to calm his breathing. He could bypass Patrick and strike a fairer deal with Nonori, but Patrick would find a way to make her share with him. And, Gabriel would enjoy a knuckle salad for his efforts. Besides, he refused, on principle, to pay more less to Nonori and more to Patrick for second-rate tellings. If Patrick was determined to swindle Gabriel, might as well let Nonori enjoy the pay she would never negotiate for herself.
Patrick dropped his voice to the low growl he used for the monster in his tellings. “No guarantee Muzehe gives you bread next week. You don't get any, we don't get any.” He elbowed Nonori, who assented with a wordless grunt, shot Gabriel a guilty glance, then looked away.
Gabriel's small arms tightened around the precious loaf, the scent of fried crust as much a comfort as it was a weapon. His mind raced, tallying unseen portions, estimating future availability, deducting debts as yet unpaid to other siblings absent from this meeting. He met Patrick's gaze, a flicker of hardened resolve replacing the earlier frustration. “One slice per telling if I pay now. Two if I pay from the next loaf.”
Silent, like a lurking leopard, Patrick stared. Gabriel held his ground as well as his breath.
Finally, Patrick snatched the additional slices with a chuckle. “Fine. But when the hyena comes, don’t come crying to share my bed.”
“You can share mine,” Nonori murmured.
Gabriel studied her, the fidgeting hands, the downcast eyes. No doubt she thought she’d failed him, let Patrick steal more than his due. And though she was not entirely wrong in her assessment, there was one thing she failed to grasp. As long as he had bread to spend, Gabriel would always come out on top.
The deal was struck. Satisfied and drunk on his perceived victory, he leaned against the trunk, the bark cool against his back.
Feeling bold, he let out a small sigh. “I want a telling now,” he said. “Once from each.”
To Gabriel's surprise, there was no attempt at renegotiating. When a stronger gust of wind blew the plastic bag in his hand, Gabriel looked down and understood where the magnanimity had come from. Only the tiny butt-end of the loaf, not even half a slice, remained at the bottom of the bag, with mere crumbs for company. Still, his lips twitched into a smirk, then a small smile; within seconds, a grin bloomed across his face.
When Gabriel looked up, he thought he detected some pity, even from Patrick's perpetual frown. He wiped the smile from his face and didn't have to search far to summon the very real disappointment nestled in his chest. Of course, he knew better than to leave it raw. He layered it with wide, wounded, watery eyes and the softest pout, a masterpiece of six-year-old innocence, calibrated for one purpose. He needed to milk the semblance of sympathy he'd caught in Patrick's gaze and churn it into just enough guilt to prevent his big brother from remembering he could ask payment from the next loaf.
Patrick began first, his telling brazen and ruthless, voice booming, the girl trembling and tender, the monster loud and laughably cruel. Nonori followed, soft and sincere, as assured in her telling as she was timid under the tree. Both times as if each was the first, with the same bliss blooming in his gut, the same timeless anticipation, Gabriel closed his eyes and let the tales carry him far away, words rising and falling with the wind that stirred the leaves, filtering the sunlight into afterglows that painted the tale across his lids.
If I close my eyes, I’m back there. The wind rustles the oblong mango leaves. Patrick’s baritone booms. Chantal’s cadence whispers. I can picture the small mango in my hand, hear the wet pop as my teeth pierce its unripe skin; I can taste the acrid, sappy wash, then the sour tang, then smell the fruity aroma of an aborted sweet promise.
Oh, what an adorably insufferable little idiot I was. It’s liberating to know that even then, a grandiose pretense was lurking just beneath the surface. How clever I thought myself! How far above the petty squabbles of mere mortals! Poor Nonori, tangled in guilt and dense Patrick, drooling over crumbs. But not me. Oh no, sir. I knew what mattered. And it certainly wasn’t that glorified fried dough. It didn't matter how tasty, rare, or golden it was, or that half the kids in Mushubati had never even seen bread. No. What mattered was the story. Not any story, but the exact same one. The only one that, back then, mattered.
Only recently, an eternity after the fact, did I realize how badly I’d been played. My siblings probably enjoyed those nightly tales as much as I did. Sure, they may have mixed things up by telling another story, once or twice, but I suspect they’d have told them for free had I run out of bread. Even Patrick, the human thundercloud himself, might have relented.
What story was worth bribing my siblings with bread? Oh, don’t get your hopes up. It was yet another version of that old tale. You know the one—brother and sister abandoned or lost in the woods. Sound familiar? It should. We can thank our colonial overlords for that, I suppose. After all, Rwanda had once been a German colony before the Belgians took over, so some cultural bleed was inevitable. By the time the tale reached my ears, it had assimilated into local folklore to become umugani—Rwanda's closest equivalent to a fairytale. As a boy, I was hooked on imigani, the plural. Come on. Keep up. My fix? Nyashya na Baba, the one I had my siblings tell over and over again, the Rwandan version of Hansel and Gretel.
You see, that's the power of umugani. A good story moves people, in more ways than one. It can bring lovers together as surely as tear nations apart. Even in the darkest nightmare you’re bound to find a dash of color—or, in our case, an unexpected silver lining to the colonial past. A good narrative will transcend borders, ignore ethnicity, and pierce all hearts the same. Stories are more than entertainment. They're a people's memory, a culture's identity, a civilization's legacy.
And beneath the lone mango tree, like a storm gathering its breath, faint but full of promise, there came a whisper, a call to become.
Years later, having fled halfway around the world, I descended the stone steps into a damp Belgian cellar where, arrayed on shaky shelves, there were more stories than I could ever consume. Or so I thought. There, a Belgo-Rwandan teen devouring French paperbacks, lost in worlds of magic and adventure, I heard the call again. It was a soft echo at first, a lover's urgent murmur that soon became a siren's song I could neither resist nor ignore.
Later still, in a moldy apartment, back when winters had teeth, under the performative supervision of a mother perhaps more lost than I was, the CRT monitor flared to life. For a third and final time, the tolling of destiny's bell visited me. The storm foretold finally spoke—Sir Patrick Stewart’s voice rumbling across the stellar void.
Space. The final frontier.
Thus began the iconic voice-over for Star Trek: The Next Generation, four words that still make my breath catch.
Every. Single. Time.
