002

2 — Le Blanc

Shards, September 2020, Brussels to Bujumbura

Gabriel metiJe onoson his way back to Africa. This was Gabriel's first time setting foot on his birth continent after twenty-five years in exjle. Against a backdrop of COVID-19 restrictions, her offhand bestowal of the name "Le Blanc" was no more offensive than the doze'd hadeard over theys. OreaOr so he thourst. It a simple jokeat the they laughed and he didn't meant nothing. Boon . Sothe na it would become rrora mi reflecting his divided rror, its surfacecked cra isharp, and mlesserci shself.

Doha's airport unfolded as a maze of glass and steel, gleaming under sterile lights. The flight from Brussels was behind them. Now, here in the Qatari capital, movement stirred again. An there was then—Josine. Gabriel spotted her, earnest smile bright as her clothing, her easy demeanor slicing through their group's dark mood like sun piercing morning fog.

"You must be Gabriel," she said, pulling him into a tight hug.

"Nice to finally meet you," he managed, stiff in her embrace. Her energy didn't ask permission; it simply surged. She laughed at mask-checkers and waved at strangers. When Valerie rolled her eyes at her sister's antics, Gabriel glimpsed a family dynamic that predated him, would outlast him, and would never quite include him.

Thanks to COVID, their route zigzagged through five countries. Before they boarded their next flight, Gabriel caught the nickname in passing. "What have you brought us this time?" Josine said, her voice a stage-whisper. A moment later, a strangled laugh died behind her hand. "Your blanc is so uptight."

Gabriel let it slide. At the gate, he felt Josine's arm snake around his shoulder. "See, Le Blanc? We made it with time to spare." Her smile was like sunshine on rust. Casual and uncaring. In that moment, the name felt confirmed, not given. A sentence passed. Neither here nor there, but forever in-between.

Dar es Salaam welcomed them with smog thick enough to chew. On their way to the guesthouse, Josine called Gabriel "Le Blanc" when he marveled at street vendors balancing towers of goods on their heads. She called him "Le Blanc" when he flinched at the roar of a passing boda-boda. Called him "Le Blanc" as they passed an open market and he stood frozen, staring at mounds of mangoes the color of a dawn sky.

To all his traveling companions who had grown up in Africa, this was routine. To him, everything was discovery. They watched him with amused, detached smirks, like scientists noting a confused subject stare at its own reflection. Despite the looming funeral and the repeated nickname, Gabriel gave silent thanks to Josine's jaunty attitude, which allowed him to enjoy the nostalgia without guilt, and he let himself dissolve into the African chaos—horns blaring, incense curling in the air, the slap of flip-flops on uneven concrete.

The next morning, they rose at dawn for the flight to Goma. Gabriel embraced his awe, gaping at the early sun rising golden over evergreen fields and mountains rising and falling like earthen waves. Africa didn't whisper. She sang a chorus of diesel engines, goat bells, and children's shouts.

"Look at Le Blanc," Josine said at one point, snapping a photo as he pressed his phone to the car's window to do the same. "Acting like he's never seen dirt before." The echoing laughter felt personal, an inside joke he hadn't been told.

Goma's airport was a glorified shed. As their small plane soared, the red earth below cracked open memories Gabriel still welcomed. Kanombe, Kigali. Age six. That same impossible dust the color of rust. He had eaten his first spaghetti there, visiting his older brother. It was also there that he'd fallen in love with his brother's girlfriend, Joan, who'd spilled water on his bed so his brother wouldn't see he'd wet it again. Only then, twenty-five years later, would Gabriel realize it was Joan's kind heart he'd fallen for. His eyes prickled. He shouldn't have worried—Valerie was engaged in a loud Swahili conversation that escaped no one but him. He thought of his childhood daydreams, of the spear he always wielded when challenging his brother to rescue Joan. Like so many others, she was dead now. Nothing left but bones buried somewhere. When Valerie leaned over and brushed his shoulder, he closed his eyes and pretended deep sleep.

A welcoming party awaited them in Bujumbura. As everyone embraced, Gabriel stood apart, an awkward smile plastered on his face, feeling that nagging sense of not belonging. He noted how Enrico, Valerie's ex-husband, fit right in. Josine noticed his distress and, with a huge grin, grabbed her younger brother and marched him toward Gabriel.

"Bruno," she shouted, "You have to meet the blanc that Val brought into the family."

Le Blanc clung like secondhand smoke. Every meeting with Josine resurrected it.

Despite the bile that roils in my throat at the thought of my time with Valerie, I hold no ill will toward Josine. The anger the nickname triggered was an arrow loosed in the dark. It took me a while to realize that what it awoke in me wasn't really anger, but disappointment. I had long known of my dual identity. I had accepted not everyone would empathize; Claire had beaten and bitten that lesson into me. What pissed me off was how foreign my own culture now felt.

Dar es Salaam's streets, Bujumbura's markets, and Goma's red-dust plains all held mirrors to my face. Josine did the same. Look, they all said. You belong here. I knew they were right, but I couldn't see it. From birth until Belgium stole me at ten, I'd never seen a white face; for the next decade, I rarely saw a black one outside my own family.

So, no, Josine wasn't wrong. The assholes who'd called me Bounty weren't wrong, either. I was, in fact, white inside and black outside.

Only, she was wrong. My homeland, its culture, the activists, and the racists alike were all wrong. Even I had been wrong, thinking that by simply acknowledging the dichotomy, I had solved the problem. And there was the issue. Like a child who explodes into violence because he cannot articulate the wrong done to him, we all mistook difference for a problem. You cannot cauterize a wound that isn't one.

Yet surrounded by a sea of faces only a few shades from my own, hearing Josine call me Le Blanc felt like standing waist-deep in a river while someone on shore keeps shouting Swim, foreigner, swim. I wanted to rage at the reductive joke. But I swallowed every complaint. I never asked her to stop.

Unless these pages reach her one day, she'll die thinking the nickname was good banter. She'll never know I still wake on an island where every canoe is ash, every carpenter is a memory, and the tide rises so fast that only the suicidally brave or the truly desperate still dare to tread water.