“Fuck, fuck,” Mercer rejoined.
Habte translated when the headman spoke. “We must spend the night as his guests. He says he will not allow us to leave until he has shown us his hospitality.”
“Tell him we would be honored. If it’s permitted, I have a bottle of brandy to bring to his table.”
The old headman’s eyes lit up with delight. “Fuck, yes.”
Two hours later, having bathed, Mercer ducked into the headman’s tent with Habte, Selome, and Gibby in tow. He was stopped by the rank odor of the tent and the smoke coiling up through the chimney slit from the small fire. Oil lamps lit the center of the tent, revealing an expanse of beautifully woven rugs on the bare floor. The headman sat amid a circular ring of men, a space opened at his right for Mercer and his party. Inside the circle was a huge hammered brass plate with several matching pots surrounding it. Next to each man was a platter of injera, the unleavened bread that was the staple of most Eritreans’ diets. There were at least fifteen children in the tent, laughing and squealing with some noisy game, their play adding to the din of the twenty adults. Incongruously, a Michael Jackson tape played on a portable radio. The King of Pop sounded like a baritone because the tape deck’s batteries were nearly dead. Selome took Mercer’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Looks like you’re going to get that traditional meal after all.” From around the cooking fire the heady aroma of their meal wafted across the room, and even at this distance the spiciness made Mercer’s eyes swim.
The headman indicated that Mercer was to sit beside him, and Selome slid into a place on Mercer’s other side. The Eritrean thrust a brass cup into Mercer’s hand and toasted him with a drink of his own. Mercer recognized the smell of tej, a delightful honey wine made only in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and he drank down the tumbler in one quick toss. Unlike the polished, sweet wine he’d enjoyed in Washington’s Ethiopian restaurants, this fiery brew was as smooth as sandpaper, with the subtlety of a stick of dynamite and twice the kick. It took all of his will not to cry out as the liquor exploded in his stomach. He finally caught his breath. “Oh, fuck.”
It took four more shots of tej for Mercer to get into the spirit of the party. He took the bottle of brandy Gibby had been holding for him and handed it ceremoniously to the chieftain. The nomad prince opened it gleefully and tossed the cap over his shoulder, where it landed unerringly in one of the cooking pots. Disdaining his cup in his desire to drink such a delicacy, he tilted the bottle to his lips, his throat pumping. He handed the bottle to Mercer. Hoping the brandy would kill whatever swam in the Eritrean’s mouth, he, too, took a long gulp. “Oh, fuck,” he muttered again. It was going to be a long night.
The women finished preparing the meal and tipped the cooking pots directly into the three brass bowls around the giant platter. The assembled tribesmen went at the food like a pack of wild dogs. They tore off slabs of injera, dunking them into the bowls so their hands came away smeared to the wrist with stew, clots of meat, and vegetables dripping onto the huge plate as they bent forward to cram the mass down their throats. Habte and Gibby ate with equal gusto, though Selome showed a bit more decorum with the size of the bites she took. The wat in the bowl closest to Mercer was made of lentils, chickpeas, and oily mutton. The bread helped absorb some of the grease, but he could feel his arteries hardening with every bite. The only thing that cut through the food’s spicy edge was the tej that the women encouragingly refilled every time his cup was only half emptied.
Unbelievably, the huge amount of food was eaten in just a few minutes, and no sooner had the last of the three bowls been emptied than the women approached and poured fresh wat for the men and replenished their stacks of injera.
“How are you doing?” Selome asked, wiping her hands on her pant leg. Her eyes were bright and glassy with wine, and the food had brought a flush to her perfect skin.
Mercer could see she was enjoying herself as much as he. He wondered what this was like for her, to sit with her people after so many years of isolation and enjoy the simple pleasure of a communal meal. “A few more cups of tej and I’ll forget that my stomach lining has been burned away.”
Selome suddenly leaned across and kissed him full on the mouth, catching Mercer by surprise. He could feel the spicy heat from the wat on her lips and felt a deeper warmth that had nothing to do with the food. The uncharacteristic intimacy shocked her as much as it did him, and she turned away, flustered.
Again the three huge bowls were emptied and again they were refilled, fresh steam rising up in dangerous tendrils that burned like acid. The headman dipped a piece of injera into the fresh stew and palmed a chunk of meat the size of his fist. He handed it to Mercer with another grin. “Fuck?”
“Oh, no problem.” Mercer emptied his tej and jammed the fatty hunk into his mouth with the relish of a native.
Four more times the pots were emptied and recharged. The communal eating platter was mounded with the food the men hadn’t been quick enough to get to their mouths before it dropped. The few die-hards still eating were making a significant dent in these leavings. The Eritreans were doused with grease from their mouths to the tips of their ubiquitous beards and from their fingernails to their forearms. The meal was finally winding down, and Mercer thought it a good time to ask his host a favor. He had kept his notebook with him, sitting on it during the banquet to keep it from either being ruined by grease or accidentally eaten by one of the clansmen. He opened the book to his sketch of the valley and mountain around the kimberlite pipe and asked Selome to translate.
“Do you recognize this place?”
“Yes, of course.” The headman tried to draw himself straight, but the prodigious amount of alcohol made his spine rebel and he slumped against his neighbor. “My father’s mother was born near that place. It is on the western flank of Hajer. We call it the Valley of Dead Children.”
“Why is that?”
“Because that is its name,” the old man pointed out logically.
“But why that name?” Mercer persisted.
“Who knows? That’s what it’s been called since long before time was recorded.” He was starting to fade away from the conversation, his eyes rolling back into his skull and his lips going rubbery around the last few words. “Even before the war, no one went to this place. Evil spirits live in the hills. My father told me that even animals refuse to enter the valley. They could feel the ghosts. Now the area around the Valley of Dead Children is full of mines. A cousin lost his eldest son there two rains ago when the boy went looking for a young goat that wandered away from his herd.”
“Have you been to this valley?”
“No.” And the headman started to snore.
Years of friendship with Harry White should have prepared Mercer for the next morning’s hangover, but his previous experiences couldn’t have possibly readied him for the pounding in his skull or the maelstrom that churned his gut. Everyone was still in the tent, most snoring loudly where they’d passed out the night before. One clansmen lying in the platter was dangerously close to drowning in the grease pooled at its bottom. Mercer came awake in slow, painful stages, dimly aware that it was still dark outside and the tent was lit with only a single guttering oil lamp.
Selome was curled up in the crook of his arm, her head resting lightly on the pads of muscle. Her face was toward him, her mouth parted and her lips shining in the murky light. Mercer recalled the surprising kiss she had given him the night before and passed it off as alcohol-induced affection. He kissed her forehead and carefully disentangled her limbs from his.