When Hamisi was strong enough to walk, he was supposed to leave and join another caravan. Before he left, Neema asked him to take her to the place where her father was said to have fallen ill.
“It is two days away,” he said. “And it is not safe for two people.”
“We will go with Mama Naliaka and her brother.”
“It will still not be safe.”
“Then we will be four people who are not safe.”
Hamisi laughed, but agreed.
They left at dawn, carrying water, flour, and blankets. The road crossed thorny grassland, then climbed toward rocky hills. Neema had never traveled farther than the neighboring village.
She was amazed by how quickly Mbuyuni disappeared behind them. The town that had felt like the whole world became a spot of dust.
On the first day, they met a group of herders who warned them about thieves.
That night they slept at a small travelers' station. Hamisi taught them not to keep all their luggage in one place and not to light a large fire that could be seen from far away.
Mama Naliaka studied him. “Are you a porter or a military commander?”
“When a person carries loads for many years, he learns to protect them.”
Neema saw Hamisi smile at Naliaka, but his eyes kept returning to her. She did not know what to do with that, so she pretended not to notice.
On the second day, they reached the village of Miamba, where Juma was said to have fallen ill. An old man in the village remembered the caravan because it had arrived during heavy rains.
“Yes, there was a sick man,” he said. “He had a fever and a wound on his head.”
Neema held her breath. “A wound?”
“They said he had fallen.”
“Could he speak?”
“He said the cargo had been counted twice. He asked us to keep him here, but the caravan master said they had to continue. They left with him the next morning.”
“Did he die here?”
“No.”
That contradicted the story they had been given. The man who returned the staff had said Juma died near Miamba and was buried there.
“Do you know where he was buried?”
The old man shook his head. “He was not buried here.”
Neema felt the earth shift beneath her.
They searched for the names of the people who had been in the caravan. The old man remembered that the master was called Bakari Mkubwa—not Bakari the oil seller—a man with a scar on his cheek and copper rings. He had been Mtemi's employee, in charge of the coastal routes.
Hamisi said Bakari Mkubwa had left the job two years earlier and moved to the town of Kizinga.
“Does Rashid know him?” Neema asked.
“Every trader on that route knows him.”
When they returned, Neema did not confront Mtemi. Through Hamisi, she sent Rashid a message: “I need to speak with Bakari Mkubwa about Juma's caravan. Do not warn him. Just tell me whether he is alive.”
The answer came a month later, written by Rashid's clerk.
“He is alive. He runs a guesthouse in Kizinga. He has heavy debts and many enemies. If he learns you are looking for him, he will leave.”
Neema hid the information. She had neither the money nor the authority to go to Kizinga.
She also knew that her father's investigation could swallow up the work she was doing now.
Mzee Salim told her, “Some truths have to wait until you are strong enough to carry them.”
“And if Bakari dies?”
“Then we will have lost a witness. But if you rush now and lose everything, Mbuyuni will lose its measure, and you still will not have your father.”
Neema hated the advice because it was right.
She put Rashid's message together with the piece of wood inside a hidden basket. Then she returned to the market.
At the time, she did not know that the secret of the road would return to her on a night of hunger, when Bakari Mkubwa would need something from the people he had once sold.
---
The fire began on a night of the crescent moon.
The noise woke Neema. When she came outside, the sky over the market was red. People ran with buckets of water, shouting that the Chifu's granary was burning.
Neema ran barefoot.
The granary held grain collected as taxes and part of the town's reserve. The fire had started at the back, near a small window. People formed a line from the well, but the thatched roof caught fire quickly.
Before the building collapsed, they managed to save only thirty sacks.
In the morning, Jabali arrived with guards.
They examined the soil, the window, and the burned pieces of rope. Then one of the guards pulled something from beneath a bush.
It was a wooden measure marked with Neema's sign.
The crowd roared in surprise.
“I told you,” Mtemi said from a distance.
“A person who pretends to be too honest is often the greatest thief.”
Jabali turned to Neema. “Why was your measure behind the granary?”
“I do not know.”
“Does it belong to you?”
“It is a copy of the market measure. But I did not put it there.”
They went to her house. Beneath the bed, they found a sack of grain bearing the Chifu's granary seal.
Bi. Rehema began to cry.
“We had never seen that sack!”
Jabali seized Neema by the arm. “You will explain yourself before the council.”
Neema did not resist. As they led her away, she looked at the sack. Its rope was tied in a special kind of knot—a double-pull knot used by caravan porters so that a load would not loosen.
The people of Mbuyuni tied sacks with simple knots.
Rashid had left three days earlier.
But some of his porters had remained at Mtemi's house.
Neema kept that thought to herself.
At the council hall, Chifu Baraka sat with an angry face.
“You had a key to the granary,” he said.
“I had the key to the front. The fire began at the back.”
“Your measure was found there.”
“Anyone could have taken a copy of the measure.”
“And my grain in your house?”
“It was put there to make me look like a thief.”
Jabali laughed. “Every thief says someone planted the evidence.”
Neema looked at the Chifu. “Give me two days.”
“Why?”
“If I fail to show who did this, you can imprison me and take everything I own.”
“And if you succeed?”
“I will be given back my work, and all the granaries will be investigated before the people.”
The Chifu looked at Jabali, then at Mtemi, who was sitting among the visitors.
“Two days,” the Chifu said. “You will not leave town.”
Neema returned home under guard. That evening, Mzee Salim and Mama Naliaka came.
“The knot,” Neema said. “It belongs to coastal porters.”
“Most of the porters have left,” Mama Naliaka said.
“But not all of them.”
They searched until midnight. A boy told them he had seen a porter named Bakari buying kerosene on the day of the fire. The porter had been limping. The oil seller confirmed it, but was afraid to speak before Jabali.
Neema searched the guesthouses. Bakari was gone.
When they returned near the burned granary, Mzee Salim bent down and picked up a black grain from the ground.
“This is not millet,” he said.
It was a sesame seed.
The Chifu's granary did not store sesame.
But Mtemi's second granary held many sacks of sesame for Rashid.
Neema felt her heart beating fast.
The fire had not been started merely to destroy grain.
It had been started to hide the transfer of grain.
---